AbnormalHumanBeing

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Yeah, they aren't unbiased, they are more hesitant perhaps than other outlets on the other end of the bias spectrum - but not covering? Covering up? The biggest headline result when I just visited bbc.co.uk was about the starvation campaign.

Their bias can actually be somewhat helpful - it lends legitimacy to what they are reporting on, and makes it harder to claim that it's "just biased pro-palestine pseudo-journalism" or some crap like that.

AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

I don’t believe that people should be forced to “stay in their lane”, but if you’re going to go wading into waters that are not your own, you gotta stay humble.

Yes. And I can even sympathise with that being hard. It's genuinely hard to do so and takes work and emotional stress, people potentially dogpiling on you from both sides doesn't help either. But it sadly is the only way to arrive at something approximating truth. Influencer culture, atomised society and increasing isolation and social media in the context of a "presenting the most interesting you" culture sadly make this even harder. And even without that, there is always, and will always be, the danger of getting caught up in defending a point that is just wrong, because our psyche as humans latched onto it for reasons of identity/ego preservation or otherwise emotional wellbeing. Discourse culture ideally has to account for that with respectful arguing in good faith, even when the other side is wrong. Of course, that is an ideal that cannot always be reached, especially with more fuzzy, non-empirically provable points, or discourse that has very direct and tangible effects on our lives (politics, mainly, which is one reason it can be so draining).

Your perspective is valid as your perspective in the discourse, as long as it can be viewed as authoritative where you can rightfully claim you have knowledge and expertise (and even then, of course, it can be contradicted with proper arguments or newly emerging facts), as well as an outsider estimate where you just have an educated guess. And the latter isn't worthless, but should be distinguished from more confident takes for the sake of discourse. Even just vibes-based perspectives are valid as a part of a discourse, but they have to clearly be able to be put into context and qualified, and have to stomach being superseded.

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

EDIT: Accidentally posted while still typing and reading, aaah, this is unfinished.

EDIT2: Okay, this is as done as I will do it, I also looked at the clock, and I won`t be awake for long now anyway.

EDIT3: Okay, this one is the last one, I really have to get to bed, because I am also noticing how diving into this is not good for my health. But turns out you can disregard the stuff I wrote below except for the last sentence, and me still thinking the data is more ambivalent narrative-wise. But while I still maintain the language was confusing, I finally noticed an unambivalent line from the survey: "Of the following issues, choose any that played a role in your [vote for presidential candidate/decision to not to vote for president]. Check all that apply." So, yes, this was indeed also non-voters.

I admit, now that I explicitly checked, that is also how I would interpret (from the PDF):

This survey is based on 604 interviews conducted by YouGov on the internet of registered voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and not Kamala Harris in 2024.

But it is also just ambivalent enough to create questions when combined with the language of the article: Since both the study and the article seem to be by the same institute, I doubt it's a miscommunication error. The language of the article is repeatedly so specific.

For Biden 2020 Voters Who Cast A Ballot For Someone Besides Harris

29% of voters nationally who voted for Biden in 2020 and cast a ballot for someone besides Kamala Harris

When Biden 2020 voters cast a ballot for someone besides Harris in 2024

And then there are questions in the PDF like:

Next, think back to how you voted in 2024. You will see issues that some say may have impacted their vote. For each of those, please say how you feel about that issue.

That seem to indicate that this indeed only targeted people that did vote.

So, colour me genuinely confused, it seems like such a specific and deliberate usage of language. And I have to admit, it feels weird to me, especially considering the IMEU has an interest in making Gaza the most important topic. Note that the same numbers of the survey could also be used to support different narratives, like: 68% said abortion access was important to them and influenced how they voted in 2024, vs 27% saying the same about violence in Gaza. Or Question 12 vs 13, showing that on a policy difference exclusively on Gaza, the people surveyed would still predominately support the Democrat, and only 8% mention not voting if the Democrat supports Israel unconditionally. So, this also does not fit the narrative neatly.

But if this does indeed represent non-voters as well, and one third of those truly did not vote because of Gaza, yes, that is indeed a large enough group to swing close results in battleground states.

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Ah, thank you, my search-fu did not provide me good numbers like that.

However, unless I am misreading them heavily, those numbers don't seem to lay out what you mention. They are exclusively about "Biden 2020 Voters Who Cast A Ballot For Someone Besides Harris". Again - I don't think that group is large enough, because even combined, all the left-of-Democrats third party votes seem to be negligible. That is "29% of voters nationally who voted for Biden in 2020 and cast a ballot for someone besides Kamala Harris in 2024". So, again, if I combine Jill Stein, Cornell West, and Claudia De la Cruz, that is 0.72% of the popular vote. Even with a naive calculation of taking all 29% of those that would then be commies like that, that seems like not enough to put Trump into office, unless highly concentrated in very embattled swing states.

EDIT: OK, I forgot, that means also people voting Trump, not just third party. So the influence could theoretically be more. But I doubt commie agitprop pushed a lot of people to outright voting Trump.

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Hmm, maybe, it is always hard to prove an effect like that. Best one could do is exit polling with specific questions of what influenced the decision, and other polls in general. I was interested what polling was available there, most I found was just non-voters as a larger group, which seems to be predominately non-politically engaged and mostly centrist. One article I have found seems to indicate the non-voting Democrats don't really fit the narrative of being swayed by radical left influencers and agitprop either.

I am also unsure how visible those kind of influencers were on mainstream social media, as I am not active there at all. I always had the feeling they were mostly visible in their own bubbles and by people who got angry at them, thus also getting them served by the algorithms. Their effect on motivating people to stay home, I'd be genuinely interested in seeing in polling numbers, but I sadly could not find any polls with questions like "who influenced your decision to not vote".

In general, psychology-wise, I think motivating people to stay home that would have voted otherwise is I believe a much lower effect, than the failure in motivating people to get up and vote, who would have stayed home otherwise. Which was not the responsibility of those commie influencers the way I estimate it. However - I admit there may have been an effect: By inducing fatigue in activists that had to argue with them, taking away time and resources for trying to reach and motivate properly undecided non-voters.

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

I don't think it does much for gaming, as the video and article also point out, but even if it turns out to just be placebo - my old and creaking PC here feels more responsive than it did with Manjaro, Vanilla Arch and Garuda respectively.

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

I am European, so, an outsider perspective, but....

I'd love to know actual numbers, because I get the feeling "commies who voted third party" are too small a group to swing elections. Just a quick look at the numbers on Wikipedia give 0.11% for the Socialism and Liberation candidate. Jill Stein got more, as did RFK even after he had withdrawn already, but I doubt they were the popular choice of the communists arguing here on Lemmy during the election campaign. (Where I, personally, argued for voting for first Biden, then Harris, because I did not see the left in the US as organised enough to react to the kind of oppression Trump would bring early, whereas I'd wager a Democrat would not have escalated like this. Just to root my own bias for context.)

I am not saying it is impossible that they could have swung a very close state, but I admit, I do think it is very improbable.

So, this feels very much like impotent rage to me, directed at the annoying but ultimately equally impotent agitprop people on here. They are loud on here, but do you really think they were that influential during the election?

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Benutze ~~uBlock Origin~~ DuKlotz Ursprung und ~~Firefox~~ Feuerfuchs sowohl auf ~~Desktop~~ Schreibtisch als auch ~~Handy~~ Händlich. Bisher keine Probleme gehabt - Ob es ~~ReVanced~~ ErneutSchrittlich noch gibt weiß ich gerade gar nicht, aber ich nehme an schon? Schaue auch tatsächlich mittlerweile gar nicht mehr so viel YT DR, schon noch einzelne Menschen, aber erstaunlich viel Video-Bedürfnis ist zumindest bei mir von ~~PeerTube~~ MitmenschRöhre ersetzt worden.

EDIT: Ups, da hätte ich doch fast vieles nicht gezangendeutscht D:

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Ich finde es faszinierend wie ich heutzutage Werbung tatsächlich quasi nur noch über Maimais oder Gespräche mit Freundys mitbekomme. OK, Plakatwerbung erreicht mich noch. Und alle Jubeljahre sehe ich auch was auf YT DR bei jemandem ohne ~~Adblocker~~ Werbeklotzer. Aber selbst wenn ich meine Mutter besuche, wo der Fernseher läuft, ist das eigentlich immer ÖR und wenn da mal Werbung läuft, schaltet sie um oder mindestens lautlos.

Aussage des Kommentars: Es ist erstaunlich einfach geworden echt entspannt von Werbung losgelöst zu leben.

AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

I was about to make a joke about "amateur file picture", but while typing it I realised that sounds like porn images.

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Zoomer Twitterbrain word for Avatar.

Well, I am surprised they are that into retro gaming! But who can blame them, that is one handsome fella to play as

And the games were early trans representation!

(Just to ruin the joke: That is short for transportation, I know. But Ultima actually was pretty "woke" for its time, I guess.)

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

I had appreciated her having a different perspective than my own, still rooted in scientific thinking. Then I started noticing her commenting on things authoritatively, where she had no expertise here and there (especially outside of STEM, where my special interests lie).

And then I stopped watching her after I had noticed more and more hints of that, where she seemingly acted like a high IQ and knowledge in her own field means she is qualified to disregard other perspectives outside her field. I am sad it got that bad, but I am not too surprised.

AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

My first account was on .ml roughly 5 years back, when it was basically the only instance. I had heard about there being a FOSS alternative to Reddit - but I quickly lost interest because the community was just too small back then. Re-activated my account when the API exodus happened, because there was finally a community large enough to provide a lived-in feeling. Have only gotten more dedicated to the Fediverse ever since.

AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Thank you!

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AbnormalHumanBeing @lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 9mo ago

Interesting! Thank you for the explanation - the time gap had always felt a bit strange to me, but I had hand-wavingly assumed that was time the displaced youths had needed to grow up.

Do you have additional sources to dive into? I must admit, I had been under the impression so far, that the Taliban had been composed mostly of Pashtuns originally from Afghanistan, and not Pakistani Pashtuns at all.