• 0 Posts
  • 37 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 10th, 2023
  • arquebus_x@kbin.socialtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•The New York Times should not be considered a reliable source of journalism.
    1·
    7 months ago

    I don’t read the Times anymore. I get my news elsewhere. That said, there are a few things to consider here, when it comes to the relative shittiness of the NYT vs other major papers. We have this notion, unfounded, that the NYT “used to be” better, or more progressive, or what have you. Certainly compared to the other two “papers of record” for the country (Washington Post and Wall Street Journal), it’s a raging pinko rag. But the fact remains that it was founded as a conservative-leaning paper, continued to be a conservative-leaning paper in the 20th century and, surprise surprise, remains a conservative-leaning paper. The lean is more Tower of Pisa than Man Vomiting on Sidewalk, but it’s still conservative.

    Many of its bad takes (and there are many) are squarely in line with mainstream views. At worst, its views lag behind the country by a few years. And like all major news corporations, it is incentivized to maximize its visibility (and therefore revenue). Given the options of 1) publishing something incendiary that will put the paper in the public eye and help in creating more news to print or 2) doing additional work with the anticipated result of the truth not being nearly as interesting and therefore not nearly as attention-grabbing, they’re going to do the less work option.

    Next, the NYT is a victim of the news cycle just as much as the TV networks, if not more so. While the website updates fairly regularly throughout the day, the paper comes out once every 24 hours, and must be prepped hours in advance. This means that breaking news suffers from two issues: 1) it has to be investigated at a speed faster than the TV networks because they paradoxically don’t have the luxury of time and 2) they can’t afford to be tentative when they don’t know something. CNN and Fox especially can get away with saying “we’ll report back when we know more” because that “back” is maybe 30 minutes from now. “Developing stories” exist on news networks. They do not exist for print papers. If you publish, you have to claim to be definitive, or people will stop reading. (“Why should I read the NYT when they just keep saying they don’t know shit?”)

    Finally, and we should take some solace from this, it should be noted that the NYT, despite being one of the “papers of record” for the country, is basically screaming into the void. Almost no one reads it. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, they’re not conservative enough for the people who can throw money at a news organization when there are free alternatives available, and they’re not progressive enough for the rest of us to care. The number of eyeballs scanning the NYT is vanishingly small compared to the eyeballs staring at Fox News - or even CNN, for that matter. Basically, the NYT just doesn’t matter anymore. They can say whatever the fuck they want. They’re not influencing anyone who isn’t already on the same (sorry) page.

    I certainly wouldn’t fault anyone for giving up on the NYT because of its journalistic errors. I certainly have. But we should neither be surprised nor shocked. This behavior is baked into the cake, and it has been since 1851, and got even worse after 1980 when CNN first went on the air. They didn’t suddenly get stupid, and they never betrayed us. We have simply never been their intended audience.

  • arquebus_x@kbin.socialtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO
    172·
    10 months ago

    Under many sane readings of the constitution, this isn’t a power congress has.

    The constitution only explicitly articulates the process for establishing treaties, not ending them. So it’s a bit of a gray area as to whether the president can end them by himself, since he can’t establish them by himself.

    To my mind, it would seem exceedingly weird if establishing a treaty required the consent of the Senate but breaking one didn’t. What’s the argument to be made that the two aspects (establish/break) are so fundamentally different that the rules for the first aren’t also the rules for the second? Why does the president need consent to say yes but does not need consent to say no?

    It’s definitely been done before, but also never directly contested. (In previous cases SCOTUS has avoided answering the question by saying they didn’t have jurisdiction.)

  • arquebus_x@kbin.socialtoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.world•It's 2023 and I still have to gaffer-tape my fuckin tortillas to store them
    383·
    11 months ago

    Duct. Duck is a brand name

    Yes. But also mostly no.

    Wikipedia:

    “Duck tape” is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as having been in use since 1899 and “duct tape” (described as “perhaps an alteration of earlier duck tape”) since 1965

    and:

    In 1971, Jack Kahl bought the Anderson firm and renamed it Manco. In 1975, Kahl rebranded the duct tape made by his company. Because the previously used generic term “duck tape” had fallen out of use, he was able to trademark the brand “Duck Tape” and market his product complete with a yellow cartoon duck logo. Manco chose the term “Duck”, the tape’s original name, as “a play on the fact that people often refer to duct tape as ‘duck tape’”, and as a marketing differentiation to stand out against other sellers of duct tape.

    People should really do the bare minimum double-check before showing their whole ass.

    As others have noted, “duct tape” is the last thing you want to use on ducts. Better to actually call it “duck tape,” as it was for the first 65 years of its existence.