The weaponization of misinformation has become one of the major trends shaping American culture. “king” Trump and the MAGAts in Congress are doing nothing to prepare the United States for climate change, and there isn’t much alarm because a large percentage of Americans, who get their news and commentary from social media think climate change is just a conspiracy scheme.
iPhone social media apps including TikTok, Facebook and X. Credit: Matt Cardy / Getty
With so many media sources these days — commercial television, social media, old-fashioned newspapers — some are bound to be more reliable in terms of accuracy than others.
Researchers have found that people who believe climate change is a conspiracy get most of their news and information about current events from social and commercial media sources.
After Donald Trump was reelected president, chief executive of Meta Mark Zuckerberg fired his company’s social media fact-checkers, with the intention of replacing them with a “community notes” format like the one used by Elon Musk’s platform X. The model relies on corrections added by users to posts that are false or misleading, Mark Andrejevic, a media professor at Monash University’s School of Media, Film, and Journalism, wrote in The Conversation.
The model has been described by Musk as “citizen journalism, where you hear from the people. It’s by the people, for the people.”
However, for this to work, the “citizen journalists,” as well as their readers, must value accuracy, accountability and “good-faith deliberation,” Andrejevic […]
Léonie Chao-Fong and Tom Phillips, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
The incompetence of “king” Trump and his administration is becoming glaringly obvious as you have probably already learned. But let’s not overlook “king” Trump’s scheme to create concentration camps. Here, in a British newspaper, is an account of what is being done in at the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Similar plans are in process at several other military bases. And I can tell you that even in rural areas of the country ICE is in action. On my island today two families were captured by ICE agents.
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The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea. Credit: Miami Herald / TNS
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.
Trump signaled earlier on Wednesday that he intended to issue an order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to open a center in order to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”
The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, Staff Writer - Popular Science / Grist
Stephan:
I have a dozen more stories about the disaster that is occurring as “king” Trump attempts to get confirmation of the utterly incompetent people he is attempting to appoint. I have a dozen stories in my file about Kash Patel, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and a host of other horrors that have been nominated. But there are other trends in the world that are going to affect your life and the lives of millions of people in other countries. Here, for instance, is the latest on what is happening to the world ocean currents, and it is very bad news.
‘There’s been an uptick in that imbalance and that has led to an uptick in the rate of ocean warming.‘ Credit: DepositPhotos
The two years of heat have created a scientific mystery, with 450 straight days of record high global sea surface temperatures from April 2023 to July 2024 — a streak that exceeded climate scientists’ predictions even when accounting for climate change and the natural climate pattern known as El Niño. A study published on Tuesday by researchers at the University of Reading helps solve the puzzle and points to one prominent culprit: the sun.
The study in Environmental Research Letters found that the rate of ocean warming has more than quadrupled over the past 40 years, driven by Earth’s growing energy imbalance — accounting for roughly 44 percent of the […]
I have been tracking America’s literacy trend for years (see SR archive) because from the fifth century BCE, the linkage between literacy and democracy was understood; a correlation that still exists. Our democracy is in sharp decline as the news about “king” Trump’s administration reveals daily. And part of the reason for this, I believe, is because we are becoming an increasingly illiterate nation. Fifty four percent of Americans can’t read and comprehend past the 6th grade level and 43% can’t read and comprehend past 5th grade level. Here is the latest study of American public schools. It has a bit of good news and a lot of bad news. I note particularly that there is a growing schism between the literate and illiterate. In my view, this is an indication that the Great Schism Trend is going continue into the next generation.
Eighth-grade students are averaging their lowest-ever reading scores since the Department of Education began tracking nationwide progress in 1992.
The newly released results for the 2024 National Assessment of Student Progress paint a dim picture of reading skills among students who are on the verge of entering high school, even as the data shows that absenteeism rates have begun to trend down since the last NAEP in 2022.
Reading scores for 8th graders have fallen in eight states and seven of the nation’s 25 largest school districts since 2022. The results are even worse compared to pre-COVID-19 pandemic tests—8th-grade reading scores were lower in 28 states and 11 of the 25 largest districts compared to the 2019 NAEP.
“Today’s NAEP results reveal a heartbreaking reality for American students and confirm our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind,” the Department of Education said in […]
The stature of the United States in the world has suffered a massive wound. I predict the Chinese are going to step into the void created by “king” Trump. We are a declining nation both within our own borders, and geopolitically.
‘king” Trump Credit: Brian Snyder / Reuters
Chaos and uncertainty are swirling around the Trump adminisration’s new order halting most foreign aid grants for three months – and introduced the possibility that organizations dependent on federal funds could soon face bankruptcy, according to a report in Politico.
By Monday, groups spanning from health providers to landmine removers were still digesting the Friday directive issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with some bewildered by its scope and still struggling to make sense of it, the report added.
“This ‘stop work’ order is cruel and deadly,” Health GAP executive director Asia Russell told Politico. “It will kill people.”
The sudden freeze, which reportedly shocked State Department officials, is spurring organizations to weigh which programs to cut and whether to trim employees or even cease operations, according to the publication.
“We operate on a shoestring budget,” the head of one non-governmental organization on the receiving end of funding from the State Department and USAID told Politico, who […]
