29 thoughts on “October 7, 2016: Like a Hurricane”

  2. To make matters worse, Drudge took to Twitter and accused the government of purposefully inflating Matthew’s intensity to send a message about climate change.

    “The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate,” Matt Drudge, who runs the Drudge Report, tweeted.

    Sorry. This is not an appropriate time or place to play politics. Republican Governor Rick Scott has been very clear. "Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate."

    2. What's the desired endpoint for blatant stupidity? It is just deranged thinking.

      As sean said, the devastation caused by the hurricane wasn't in doubt by the time that idiotic tweet was written.

      1. What's the desired endpoint for blatant stupidity?

        Adoption of a world view and continued promulgation. Same as every other type of thought. It's just evolution as applied to ideas - so long as the species/idea can find a way to keep going, it will.

    4. I've been thinking about "facts" a lot lately and why there is so much disagreement. I think one of the big problems is that in a very short period of time we've gone from a very narrow channel of information (3 television channels, local papern etc.) to every person with a computer being able to publish whatever they want.

      There used to be editors, fact-checker, etc. We used to be able to believe something we heard or read. It wasn't perfect but at least it went through an initial filter before it got to us so we were confident it wasn't a total fabrication.

      Now even the most trusted sources rush a story to publication so that their accuracy is called into question. People don't have the time or resources to do their own fact-checking. And it is obvious that many people don't have the ability to objectively determine if something is false.

      I called put a Facebook friend's political post that ws false. I provided the information that refuted what he claimed. He defended it because it "sounds like it could be true even if it isn't." How do you argue with that logic?

      1. Happens all the time. Someone links to an article that I know is false. I link to snopes or something similar that proves it's false. The response is "Well that doesn't matter, I'm still right." If truth doesn't matter, there's no place for the discussion to go.

        2. Well, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Humans are emotional beings, and they respond more to how they feel than anything else. If it were as simple as giving everyone science books and Snopes articles, all of society's problems would go away pretty quickly. With complex beings we need more complex approaches than, "See, told you so."

          1. Your experience may be different from mine, but in my experience it's not an oversimplification at all.

              1. Sorry I extrapolated that argument too far. I'm just so infuriated lately by rhetoric lately that some people are incapable of changing their minds

                1. it's a fact of human nature that disconfirming evidence is often heavily discounted in certain circumstances.

                  1. Of course. And sometimes it takes years to change someone's mind. It's way harder than presenting a fact.

                    1. I believe that people can change, but they have to make the decision that they are willing to change. I don't believe that we should give up on people. On the other hand, I often remind myself that there were plenty of people whom Jesus himself was not able to convince, so what more can I expect of myself?

      2. Another big problem is that when the recession and inability to adjust to digital mediums hit the newspaper business, the first people to lose their jobs were copy editors. When I first started in the business, it was a requirement that every story received at least 2 reads from 2 different people other than the author before it was even put on the page. After the page was complete, it was proofed by at least one person other than the one that put it together before it was released to be printed. The front page would basically be printed off and pretty much everybody would be given a copy before it was released. In the last couple years before I was laid off, those policies had long been ignored.

    2. It's good to know that the architect of football was also a horrible, horrible asshole.

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