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Actually, affirmative action is reverse discrimination

Though I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, the term "reverse discrimination" is a misnomer at best and discriminatory at worst — because it implies, that discriminations are or can be different. They aren't and they can not — any preference given to one race, sex, etc. is discrimination and there are neither "forward" nor "reverse" among them.

Back to the topic, I'm surprised, it took so long. That the Big Education discriminates against Asians and Whites has long been very well known. Asians in particular have been advised to not identify their race at all — this would put them into the same category as Whites, which is an improvement. For ultimate win, claiming to be Black — if you can pull it off — is the best. The suit, apparently, compares the treatment of Asians with that of Blacks — which is a safer ground — but the real outrage is the Black privilege ... Too bad, the claimants in this suit are too chicken to go all the way.

I can not imagine, who — other than people with serious dislike for America and a wish to hurt it — would impose such policies on the country. No one would set out to find a surgeon of a particular race to treat them — why is it Ok to seek out a firefighter or a judge of a particular origin? It is so patently idiotic, a sinister motive is easier to imagine...

And it was the Obama administration who came up with the plan, you have it wrong. The Obama administration stopped the shuttle, the Bush administration had a plan to replace it and I think you'll find that both sides of the aisle wanted to keep the shuttles and not lose any US manned launch capabilities.

It's interesting to hear these comments from a few years ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Also, you should review the mixed messages about NASA and space exploration that have come from this administration. Sure, blame the GOP but without any leadership it's no wonder why we're in the predicament we are now.

Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Eugene Cernan, commanders of Apollo 11, Apollo 13, and Apollo 17 respectively, said:

        "When President Obama recently released his budget for NASA, he proposed a slight increase in total funding...the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating."
        "It appears that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded."[18]
        "For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President's plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years."[19]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The death penalty is not an effective deterrent against murder.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-...

What deters murderers is not the penalty, but the likelihood of being caught.

Actually, what deters murders most is not having a gun.

The death penalty is not an effective deterrent against murder.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-...

What deters murderers is not the penalty, but the likelihood of being caught.

Meh.

This guy is obviously a massive douche and murderer, and there's no doubt as to his guilt, but I think killing him doesn't reflect well on us as a society. To me, killing killers always had the same logic as suspending people who ditch school. It's like-- wait, what's the message here exactly?

Given the history of "humane" non-cruel, non-unusual tools for execution ("hanging! no wait, firing squad! no, we mean electrocution! Umm... lethal injection? Gassing?"), it strikes me as just one of the many feel-good but fucked up practices we haven't dropped yet.

Hello,

    I hate to inject some facts into your prejudice, but it's a sad fact that large swaths of South America have higher immunization rates for measles (as an example) than the US does.

    Even Mexico is only 2% behind US vaccination rates on measles. Check it out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

--PeterM

To be fair, one person was forced to retire.

Officials said a former CIA interrogator named Charlie Wise was forced to retire in 2003 after being suspected of abusing Abu Zubaida using a broomstick as a ballast while he was forced to kneel in a stress position. Wise was also implicated in the abuse at Salt Pit. He died of a heart attack shortly after retiring from the CIA, former U.S. intelligence officials said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

However, when you look at the presence of WikiPedia on the internet, it's basically first hit on google in every search on every possible subject. It's probably the number one source for people to find information about a subject. They have a HUGE presence.

Yes -- all the more reason to NOT keep encouraging them. I know most people use Wikipedia on a frequent basis, but if you start poking around the Wikipediocracy posts (not just the one listed in TFS), you start to see a LOT of serious issues there.

Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source of information. Let me repeat that: Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source of information.

(Or, if you prefer a more mainstream media discussion, look here for something recent.)

We should be lamenting your fact that such a screwed up resource has become so dominant as a source of information for so many.

I love the idea of Wikipedia. I was an active contributor back in the early years. But it's never "grown up." It's like a piece of open-source software stuck forever in alpha because active contributors are dwindling, new contributors get mired in a bureaucratic nightmare of argumentation over meaningless "policies" rather than content, and the actual source has remained so open to "Wild-West-style" editing that past hard work is continuously degraded by people deliberately introducing "new bugs into the code."

Meanwhile, they're asking people to donate money -- not to the actual contributors or authors, or even to the admins who police the content to keep the vandalism at bay. But instead to some weird set of people who are only tangentially related to all the supposed "high-value" content that isn't produced or directly managed by them.

Really? If this were a software project, you'd want to contribute to a software project like that? (Well, in all honesty, it IS a software project, not an information source that you're contributing to... but that's another whole discussion....)

And what about honesty in their fundraising? Wikipedia doesn't want people talking about the bureaucratic crap going on behind the scenes or about the rampant vandalism that threatens the apparent value that you point out people place on the site... and they also can't be honest to readers and potential donors that they have plenty of money to keep the servers running ad-free -- they're just choosing to spend it on other things??

Anyone who actually reformed this mess into something even moderately more stable and reliable would definitely make it worth billions, as in your estimation. But it's not there, and until it is reformed significantly, it has a high probability of getting worse and more problematic over time.

read this about the FBI and their decades of convictions due to flaws in hair analysis - "The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions." - just hope that one of your family isn't in that group.

If you still think all people on death row are ALL guilty, you need to get yourself educated on miscarriages of justice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

You want facts? Challenge accepted!

How about Lobbyists Now Spend More on Congress Than the Government Does, think that is for shits and giggles? Or Study shows revolving door of employment between Congress, lobbying firms, or even better you can go and see the sellout of the week right here!

You see THAT is why your "vote" is nothing but a sham, its because if you "herp derp, vote the bums out" they just walk across the street and become the lobbyist that buys the guy you just voted in! Saying you can do squat with voting, or blaming the public for how things are is like making you try to "win" your weekly paycheck by being forced to play 3 card monty with a street hustler and then blaming YOU for not getting paid because "if you tried real hard you should find the lady!"...no you won't, the game is rigged, and playing a rigged game and expecting to win? Its a suckers bet.

You've got to realize though, that those congressmen are our constitutional representatives. They represent the power of the people in this democracy

I think the OP is referring to the fact that the NSA lied to Congress and the American people when asked about spying, not on Congress, but on the American people:

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

James Clapper: "No, sir."

Wyden: "It does not?"

Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."

(watch for yourself)

Some Republicans have said He should be fired. Obama said he misspoke.

One might think he should have been arrested. Instead, they arrested the lawyer who asked him why he lied..

We've seen this double-standard applied recently-- no one arrested for torture except the CIA Whistleblower. Leakers getting huge sentences unless their rank is high enough.

If the CIA can get away with spying on Senate computers then that's it. They really are above the law.

They've gotten away with much much worse already. (I started adding links but there are hundreds of them...)

He's totally wrong about this issue. But this is the guy who stood up when Bush administration thugs (Card and Gonzales) tried to get the Justice Department to sign off on their warrantless wiretapping program. He refused, prevented them from going around him and later threatened to resign: http://www.washingtonpost.com/... You can disagree with him on encryption (and I do), but this is not a guy who has no respect for the Constitution.

I'll just leave this here.

And yet the first image in that article you link shows that conservatives have the stronger echo chamber, and is exactly why consistent liberals are more likely to get pissed off and un-friend people: https://img.washingtonpost.com...

If you de-friend someone (or large groups of someones), their stories are basically not going to be on your feed in the first place, and liberals have been shown to be more likely to de-friend conservatives over political differences than conservatives de-friend liberals http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/10/21/liberals-are-more-likely-to-unfriend-you-over-politics-online-and-off/

In my experience, the reason for this is that conservatives push out a lot of hate in their postings and liberals don't. No one wants to read a lot of nasty name-calling.

In my circle, it's been widely the other way around... or at least it used to be, circa 2008 (Obamamania) - early 2012. By the time of the actual election things had moderated down somewhat, and it's been better since. But my feed was *filled* with pro-leftwing, anti-rightwing links of vitrol, often to ThinkProgress or Salon during that time, with lots of associated name-calling ("Those damn Rethunglicans", etc.)

I've been heavily involved in the arts community over the years, and had (and still do have) many friends still in college. The liberal skew was *extremely* strong.

Right before the 2008 election, when *everyone* was changing their profile pic to the Obama "HOPE" image/logo, I replace mine with the McCain/Palin logo. Friend count dropped by 10 in the first 30 minutes.

If you de-friend someone (or large groups of someones), their stories are basically not going to be on your feed in the first place, and liberals have been shown to be more likely to de-friend conservatives over political differences than conservatives de-friend liberals http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/10/21/liberals-are-more-likely-to-unfriend-you-over-politics-online-and-off/

In my experience, the reason for this is that conservatives push out a lot of hate in their postings and liberals don't. No one wants to read a lot of nasty name-calling.

If you de-friend someone (or large groups of someones), their stories are basically not going to be on your feed in the first place, and liberals have been shown to be more likely to de-friend conservatives over political differences than conservatives de-friend liberals http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/10/21/liberals-are-more-likely-to-unfriend-you-over-politics-online-and-off/

Perhaps because, as the article you cite says:

However, that doesn't mean liberals necessarily like all of the ideas they see. Consistent liberals were the most likely group to block or unfriend someone because they disagreed with their political postings, with 44 percent saying they had "hidden, blocked, defriended, or stopped following someone" on Facebook due to their political postings. Only roughly one-third (31 percent) of consistent conservatives had done the same -- although this might be attributable to lower levels of ideological diversity in their online ecosystem.

And that conservative echochamber isn't limited to conservatives' online interactions: It's a reflection of the lack of ideological diversity in their real life relationships. Two-thirds of consistent conservatives told Pew that most of their close friends share their views on government and politics, compared to just over half, or 52 percent, of consistent liberals. For mostly conservatives, 42 percent of their close friends have the same views, while just 26 percent of mostly liberals respondents who said the same.

so maybe liberals have more conservative "friends" to de-"friend" than conservatives have liberal "friends" to de-"friend".

If you de-friend someone (or large groups of someones), their stories are basically not going to be on your feed in the first place, and liberals have been shown to be more likely to de-friend conservatives over political differences than conservatives de-friend liberals http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/10/21/liberals-are-more-likely-to-unfriend-you-over-politics-online-and-off/

Unless you're a complete recluse or are making a conscious effort to sequester yourself from any popular culture, it's virtually impossible to be in your teens or 20's and not be exposed to various legitimate liberal political stances -- most often during college years. OTOH, it's quite easy to never interact with any "real life" legitimate conservative arguments, other than straw men that the liberal political arguments are using.

Thus you end up with 25 year olds who have no basic understanding of conservative economic principles, or presume that there's no other possible motiviation for some random socially conservative policy than abject hatred and/or slavish religious belief.

From Radley Balko's excellent column at http://www.washingtonpost.com/... :

When white people fled St. Louis in the early-to-mid-20th century, they took advantage of Missouri’s lenient incorporation laws to set up new towns to keep blacks away. As blacks began to move west, white people would move a little farther out, incorporate again, and set up new zoning laws to restrict black residency. The result is a county filled with dozens of tiny towns, nearly all of which have their own government and police force. The primary source of revenue for the local towns is sales tax. But the poorer (which means blacker) towns don’t generate enough income from sales taxes. So they turn to municipal fines to keep themselves from going under. The poorer the town and its residents, the more likely the town relies on fines for a greater percentage of its annual revenue. Which means that the blacker the town, the more likely its residents are getting treated like ATMs for the local government.

The cops in these towns don’t deal with felony crimes. The county police investigate those. A local officer’s job is to administer fines. Most cops are drawn from whiter, wealthier areas, in part because so many people in the poorer areas have arrest records. That means you have cops patrolling areas they aren’t from who are charged with extracting fines from people with whom they have little in common, and for petty offenses.

We did see a few examples of overt racism from city officials in the months after the Ferguson protests. But a system like this, one created by racism, will produce racist results even if none of the cops, prosecutors, or judges are racist themselves.

Because Paul is already changing his views?

Where have you been the past 6 years?

Paying close attention and actually understanding what is going on.

A law is gone, or "rid of", when it's *gone*. Not when its enforcement is variable, low, presently ignored, or deferred.

Be precise. When your argument or implication is faulty, informed responses will disrupt your points even if the idea behind them had some merit.

Obama's been very effective at using his presidential powers in a legitimate manner. And he's not been shy about it -- unlike most presidents, his actions are published right where you can get at them. This is worth a read.

Lots of hand waving on both sides. The facts are... other.

You go ahead and live in your little 1000stft apartments, riding on filthy subways, walking in the heat and the rain from the station to your work/home, getting mugged (by the cops or the bad guys), never really seeing the sun, etc.

I'll stay in my 2,400 sqft home, with deer in the back yard, a nice greenbelt in the neighborhood (where you don't get mugged), the smell of wildflowers, a 10 minute commute (5 minutes to the grocery store), and low crime.

it isn't the total, it is which legislation it involved. ;) Nice try though.

First of all that is not what you posted in your other thread.

Why didn't the reporters do the same thing with a Jr Senator from Illinois? Remember, he was just a couple years into his first term as Senator, voting "present" more often than anything else.

Second, your complaint is that he voted "present" still implies that this was more important than the thousands of "yes" or "no" votes he cast. I would argue that was an important part of job was to cast votes.

Having exposed your lie, now you want to switch it that so that he proposed no meaningful legislation. Seriously, can you use the internet?

Washington Post says you're lying. The New York Times says it as well. Do you live in an alternate world where you just believe things which are not only untrue but easily verified to be untrue but believe them anyway?

Only 7% of reporters are Republicans.

What are the odds that the 14% "other" is Libertarian?

Yes, nearly a quarter label themselves as Democrat, but most don't label themselves anything, which is good!

You know what motivates scientists? Science. And to a lesser extent, their ego.

It's amazing how all of these pure Beings of Science can exist without any sources of funding, or motivation deriving thereof...

Oh wait.

Science if hard work for little pay

Little > 0

$500k is also > 0

I'll let you have the last response. Just thought someone should, in the name of scientific accuracy, throw actual truth into the froth.

Oh, one last truth...

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that the phrase "liberal media" was a conservative talking point

Only 7% of reporters are Republicans.

I would say to draw your own conclusions from that glaring fact but you already have, and you got them wrong.

The Obama Administration is "scandal free" because the press will barely cover a topic for at most few days and then drop it. Bush or any other Republican would have been forced to resign for the IRS scandal, for example. Nixon would have finished his 2nd term if the press had treated him with such kid gloves.

But occasionally, the press does report something worthwhile, if anything just to show that they're not just rewording White House press releases.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Well criticizing Obama is proof your a racist.

The Obama Administration is "scandal free" because the press will barely cover a topic for at most few days and then drop it. Bush or any other Republican would have been forced to resign for the IRS scandal, for example. Nixon would have finished his 2nd term if the press had treated him with such kid gloves. But occasionally, the press does report something worthwhile, if anything just to show that they're not just rewording White House press releases. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Noting is "phishy" here. This is the new norm.
Get used to it.

Along with the "phisting" part of getting stuck with the check on paying for all this bullshit right? Effectively being forced to fund crime. I think I understand exactly how that would be attractive to 'chicks with dicks' that would storm the 'wood pile' "An NSA officer also was injured, though officials did not say how." http://www.washingtonpost.com/... .

Most tollerable in the pack is....Rand Paul

Which says a lot about the GOP. He however is terrible with dealing with reporters.

You don't understand stages of brain development. Santiago RamÃn y Cajal spent teenage years in jail and went on to receive the Nobel prize. And didn't commit any crimes after the age of 25 as far as anyone can tell.

If you think that inability to control impulses is lack of demonstrable intelligence, you are the stupid guy here.

Get Educated

Don't worry guys, our anomynity is protected by software originally developed the United States Navy and funded by the United States Government. Keep on divulging all your secrets.

Dear Germany: you get no points for putting up statues to controversial dissidents from other peoples' countries. You're clearly trying to make a bold political statement here, but to do that you need to take a stand against members of your own nation. Put up a statue to the folks who prosecuted the Christian Democratic Union's campaign donations scandal in 1999, or Kathrin Oertel, the leader of an anti-islamic nationalist group who recently resigned and recanted, and *then* you can pat yourselves on the back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

It's very, VERY important to pay attention to the terms when someone starts flashing around statistics.

Why are you telling me? I wasn't "flashing statistics", I was pointing out that the GP post was comparing apples and oranges.

That's the people who get paychecks. We're not talking about the truly rich, who don't have to work for a living, they make their money in investments - that is, capital gains. Now, capital gains is taxed, but at a much lower rate.

You need to look at the combination of corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, because capital gains are simply corporate profits that haven't been paid out to you as dividends. So, if the company pays a dollar in corporate taxes on their profits, that comes out of your capital gains as much as if you pay a dollar in capital gains taxes on your personal tax return.

When you do that, you'll see that the US has one of the highest tax rates on capital gains of all nations, ahead of most European countries (only Denmark, Italy, and France are higher).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

That's also one of the main reasons corporations are leaving the US: not only are they subject to excessive regulations and cost of doing business, they also face a very tax-unfriendly environment.

Bush was still worse.

If they need a warrant (from the FISA court) to access the data (just like previously)

Well, if you put the "just like previously" part into your own post, then we aren't disagreeing, that this is not much of an improvement — and that was my premise.

That agreement now established, let's move on to what's wrong with the existing Act — and what's likely to remain wrong even after the proposed amendments are passed...

And the problem with FISA-court is that — unlike all other courts — it does not hear both sides . They may deny the rubber-stamp allegations, but they have only rejected 11 surveillance requests out of 33900 submitted since the court's inception to 2013...

how is it not abiding by the fourth amendment?

I said nothing about the Forth Amendment, actually. Whether it even applies to one's communications is no immediately obvious. No, my claim is not whether Patriot Act violates the Constitution, but whether or not the upcoming changes to it constitute a discernible improvement.

Would you prefer that law enforcement/spy agencies had to be fully tied and unable to conduct investigations?

I would prefer, that the government had no way to force private companies to preemptively record data about me just in case it may be needed by some future investigation.

Without being so forced, some companies may still prefer to do it seeking your business and others may choose not to seeking that of libertines. The existing regulatory mandate — cooperate with the FBI or else — troubles me greatly, and should trouble everyone...

When it's connected to an implanted insulin pump, it's controlling lives pretty directly:

                        http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

So we're blowing money on e-readers

Do you even glance at the headline any more? It's e-books, not e-readers. You can read an e-book on practically any device with a screen, from a $30 e-reader to a cell phone or a 10 year-old computer.

It's cheaper to buy a simple e-reader than it is to buy your average textbook, and the e-reader can hold lots of textbooks.

Clearly we need start some sort of program to promote basic literacy for Slashdot readers. Maybe if we gave them free e-books...

How about $250 million worth of more free pre-school for underprivileged kids, which has been proven to lead to better outcomes?

You mean like this?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

I think he was mixing it up with the recent story about flawed hair analysis.

Updated with link

You can't have it both ways, chuck. If you want men to be sensitive and vulnerable... willing to cry... and share their feelings... then you need to not tell them they're man babies whenever they point out that the system is in some respects biased against them.

When did I say I wanted men to be "sensitive and vulnerable...willing to cry...and share their feelings"? I mean, goddamn, all you do is share your feelings like a toddler with a wet diaper. I'm advocating growing up.

As to raping and killing women, this is just idiotic strawman... who is advocating that?

I'm glad you asked:

https://storify.com/a_man_in_b...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

https://www.boston.com/news/lo...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ga...

You drew a face on your ass... then pulled your pants down, opened your asshole, and made shit come out of the mouth your drew on your butt. You are speaking... shit.

You know, that's not the first reference you've made to stuff going in and out of butts. This is more verification of my theory that Men's Rights Activists became whiny manbabies because of trauma associated with potty training. You just couldn't make mommy proud, and now you're going to show them bitches!

All you can eat internet is going to drive up prices.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://nypost.com/2015/02/12/n...
http://www.techtimes.com/artic...
http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog...

A much more fun race would be Paul vs. Sanders.

I think that the heavy movement to "ban" guns and guns parts--whether such bans are useful or not--is in contradiction of the 2nd Amendment. That people have been doing this and trumpeting it has only gotten the American people used to the Bill of Rights applying in a more narrow fashion, leading to lack of outcry about the violation of every other Bill of Rights Amendment except the 3rd. (And, with the way more urban training missions are going in the military, I wouldn't be surprised to see that violated in the next few years, just so the government can cover all ten...)

He mentions a litany of taxes and you choose a single one and dismiss the whole argument because that one tax doesn't encompass the entire argument? It may be an overstatement but somehow I doubt it is much of one. I have to be in one of the lower tax brackets here in the US (less than $40k) and all told I pay at least 33% of my income to the government (local, state, federal). None of the individual taxes exceeds 10% after tax returns but all told they add up pretty quickly. Most people have no idea of the number of taxes they are subjected to, I counted up almost two dozen that effect me during the average year.

It sounds like you think you pay too much in taxes. I can sympathize. I don't know of anyone who actually likes paying taxes. Even so, we have two choices: either increase taxes to pay for the services provided by the government or cut services. From your post, I'm guessing that you might prefer to cut services. So, which services would you like to see cut from the budget? And before you even go there, foreign aid makes up about 1% of the federal budget. If you really want to start busting federal budgets, the three largest items are Defense, Social Security, and Medicare. In fact, just those three make up about two thirds of the federal budget. And we haven't even begun to discuss your state and local government taxes/spending. So which one would you like to start with?

Right, it sucks that they had to close all the schools, in order to afford this :(

You're right. It does. That's my point.

speaking of which....

Here's an article about the lower half ot the 1% having trouble buying influence in the next election, thanks to the Citizen's United and McCutcheon cases:

"The bottom half of the top 1 percent is getting a sense of what it is like to be a political spectator in the country’s exclusionary wealth primary."

And as long as the security of schools is no t guaranteed (see Boko Haram kidnapping hundreds of female students), donations won't help as much as you think.

Actually, I think the actions of Boko Haram say otherwise. The fact that they have taken notice that their women and girls are getting educated suggests that it has hit a raw nerve with them. Hint: people don't typically use deadly force to take care of problems that don't exist.

What you need are armed forces at and in schools.
Funny enough: the US works successfully on that after numerous school shootings there; nobody cares about that in a 3rd world country

You have an odd definition of success.

So...you believe Harry Reid when he said he made it up to score points in the political arena?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Pretty clear here, Harry says that Romney paid taxes, but now Harry wants to see Romney's tax returns. Would you show other people your tax returns?

Something I will be curious to see over the next few decades is how propaganda is affected by advertising saturation. Something that has been worrying marketers is that young consumers (ones more accustomed to multitasking and who grew up with heavy advertizing) filter out a larger amount of marketing than other groups. Even as their knowledge and skills improve (ah, the dark uses of all those psych majors), advertising is becoming more difficult and consumers more jaded and less uniform. Since propaganda can be seen as a specialized form of marketing, I wonder how that type of manipulation is going to adjust. It used to be that one coherent message would affect most of the population the same way, but increasingly the same techniques and narratives will have differing effects on different populations. So what we tend to see more and more of is propaganda generating smaller more fanatical groups along with others forming backlash against tem.. it kinda works if you examine only the successful parts of the application, but is no longer all that useful for changing general public perception, just creating partisans.

Having traveled to North Korea and seen what propaganda looks like, you are wrong. Good propaganda is something that people want to believe, or could easily believe, even if it isn't true. Good propaganda has no opposing viewpoint that is credible. Good propaganda speaks to the choir, where the choir intentionally designed to be the largest possible audience. And anyone who isn't in the choir is a bad person.

Consider as just one example the propaganda that in North Korea, everyone must choose from 28 official state haircuts. It's something that the average American could easily be convinced to believe. Perhaps you read the story and believed it too. It sounds plausible enough for most westerners to believe.

Unfortunately, it was complete bunk. But just about everyone I talked to bought it. And they thought I was the odd one for believing otherwise.

And no, I don't mean that YOU think it was illegal, or some judge said was 'probably' illegal. That a Federal court found it to be illegal. It's been over 2 years so this should be easy. I'll wait.

There's this. And this. And there's also this. Yep that was easy. I hope you didn't have to wait too long.