Slashdot Mirror
George Orwell's '1984' Tops Amazon's Bestseller List (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Sales of George Orwell's dystopian drama 1984 have soared after Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the reality-TV-star-turned-president, Donald Trump, used the phrase "alternative facts" in an interview. As of Tuesday, the book was the sixth best-selling book on Amazon. Comparisons were made with the term "newspeak" used in the 1949 novel, which was used to signal a fictional language that aims at eliminating personal thought and also "doublethink." In the book Orwell writes that it "means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." The connection was initially made on CNN's Reliable Sources. "Alternative facts is a George Orwell phrase," said Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty. Conway's use of the term was in reference to White House press secretary Sean Spicer's comments about last week's inauguration attracting "the largest audience ever". Her interview was widely criticized and she was sub-tweeted by Merriam-Webster dictionary with a definition of the word fact. In 1984, a superstate wields extreme control over the people and persecutes any form of independent thought. UPDATE 1/24/17 6:56PM PST: Orwell's dystopian novel is now the #1 Best Seller in Books on Amazon.
The right has now usurped what was once the sole domain of the left -- Relativism.
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity within themselves, but rather only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration.
Since when was living in La la land the sole domain of the left?
Note that it's not the "bad words" people you call SJWs complain about, it's the actual racism behind them. They are fine with things like movies that use words in context.
In actual fact, it's the alt-right that is demanding people curtail their free speech. For example, demanding that people don't criticise them or call out their racism, because being called a racist is offensive to them. They present it as an alternative political stance, much like Trump's alternate facts.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The only incident I'm aware of with "chink in the armour" when when ESPN used it in a headline on a story about an Asian American basketball player. At best it was just a bad choice of words.
Anyway, screaming "SJW!" at people who point these things out is just an attempt to silence them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Watch that interview very carefully. There is no way she was talking about "other" facts that weren't being reported. She meant to say exactly what she said. The administration has "alternative facts" that better fit their agenda.
Look, I realize that there is this bitter rivalry in US society between liberals and conservatives. But try to put politics aside, and try to think as a sane human being.
Donald Trump is the guy who insisted Barack Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the US. He is the guy who once claimed he owned the Empire State Building, which is false and was false at the time. He is the guy who said he has been on the Time magazine "more than anybody" which is false. He is the guy who so often claimed that he never said something he just said a few days earlier. His Trump University has been trialed for fraud. One of his advisers is a guy who owns a right-wing conspiracy theory website that is specialized on the spreading of fake news.
Try to think about this rationally.
Donald Trump is either a serial liar or simply delusional. You can look all of his insanity up. If you believe him and his administration more than established, international media networks such as CNN, you have to face the fact that you have decided to stop being a rational thinking person.
Not at all the same thing. When people experience something that actually happened to them that the other person is unaware of or considers inconsequential because stats say it's rare etc. then it's a lived experience.
Trump's inauguration crowd was not bigger in his "lived experience". It was smaller, the extra millions he claims were there simply don't exist. He did not have that experience.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, Trump exaggerates, but he isn't alone in doing so. The bulk of the press was in the bag for Hillary, despise Trump, and the reporting shows it. What they report as fact is just as often opinion and deceitful framing as Trump is braggadocious.
And let's not forget that rational, intelligent people can disagree on matters of import, the significance of facts, and so forth without ceasing to be rational.
Then your awareness is severely lacking.
Look up:
donglegate (forking someone's repository is a sexist slur)
Ban on chanting 'USA' because it can be used as abbreviation of 'You suck ass'.
List of microaggressions according to University of Wisconsin
What about Yale students supporting repealing the 1st amendment?
Or some quotes by prominent feminist celebrities?
Also, look up feminist glaciology, sexist carbon fiber and sexist snow plowing for more absurds spewn by SJWs.
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Newsflash number two: They are a majority.
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Last I used "people of color" on Slashdot, some SJW called me out on this too. Apparently it's no longer an acceptable phrase anymore. The goalposts keep moving.
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And legalised drugs, sorting people into social classes based on intelligence, procreation entirely through industrial processes, and a purely centrally planned and managed economy. I'm guessing lobiusmoop hasn't actually read Brace New World and just wants to sound literate.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm aware of that stuff, more aware than you in fact. I bothered to figure out what the actual truth behind the Breitbart headlines is.
"Feminist glaciology" actually isn't. The hard science of glaciers is not being addressed in that paper, merely the social and political reaction to what is happening with them.
"Sexist carbon fibre" is nothing of the sort, merely pointing out that some prosthetics are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to males but not so much to females who may prefer something different.
The Yale thing was a standard prank for the camera performed by a guy who specializes in them. Like the ones where they show Americans confusing Iraq and Australia on a map and saying that the nation of Islam should be nuked.
I could go on, the "sexist snow plowing" is a great example of "blame everything on feminism", but you get the picture.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Oh dear Mashiki, still haven't got the hang of this fake news thing, have we?
Really? This is coming from the guy who has a video link to something that can be disproved in 15 seconds with a simple google search.
The claim is that it "echoes" Bane's speech, in terms of tone and meaning.
Except of course the part where they're not talking about the "tone and meaning."
See. to be fake news it has to be some fact that someone made up, not an opinion that something resembles something else and is quite funny if you do it in the Bane voice.
You mean the part where WAPO said: "But beyond the thematic similarities, a short section of Trump's speech sounded like it could have been lifted word-for-word from Bane. Watch and decide for yourself." Which is a complete fabrication? Whoops.
Om, nomnomnom...
Otherwise they wouldn't have whined at the military for 'chink in the armour'.
And of course, as is common with this kind of silly claim, this is without any reference or context.
References:
* https://twitter.com/Khun_Chanin/status/560904975136882688
* https://twitter.com/JarheadPAO/status/561012000109895681
And thank you Trumpites for the public education, as we see Conway and her fellow merry band of sociopaths try to create Newspeak before our very eyes.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
To be fair to Trump, Hillary Clinton got nailed in a similar way when she claimed she was under fire during a visit to the Balkans in the 1990s. Of course, her response when called on what was a false claim wasn't to insist that she had been under fire, in complete defiance of the facts, but rather to admit that she had been mistaken. That eyewitnesses will often get even rather large details of an experience wrong is not in any way controversial. I took an introductory psychology course last year that had a very good section on how memories, even recent ones, can be faulty; prone to bother intentional and accidental alteration. Stress can often interfere with memory formation, and the way the brain stores memory is in an encoded format, so memories are in fact reconstructed, and not just simply video files, so even during the reconstruction phase, memories can be altered.
Now where Clinton and Trump differ is that when Clinton was called on the clearly false claim that she had come under weapons fire while landing in Bosnia, she apologized and admitted her memory of the event was wrong. Trump, on the other hand, lacks even a false sense of humility, and simply asserts, in defiance of the facts, that his experience was true.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most of them would still be struggling to finish it, so I don't see your point.
What speech codes? Like treating people with respect? And which words or phrases are now criminalized?
Not using people's "right" pronouns could get you fined in NY
In Canada it's basically illegal to insult anyone or say or do something they don't like: "A teenager was later arrested for growling and woofing at two Labrador dogs in public, a café owner was investigated for showing biblical passages on a TV screen, and an LGBT group was arrested under section 5 for protesting anti-gay persecution in the Middle East. While one would hope such a law would only be used in extraordinary circumstances, it's actually very common."
40% of millenials are OK with making "offensive" speech illegal
The overwhelming majority of college staff are leftists and colleges overwhelmingly limit speech on campus
EU is banning anything that is politically sensitive: "To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, hate speech means just what those in power choose it to mean – neither more nor less. And now, continent-wide censorship has been forced upon us by the powerful, and they will decide what the rest of us can and cannot say and can and cannot hear, all with the aim of dictating what we can and cannot think."
I could go on...