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Notes by John McQuaid | export

 Misconceived story of the day: paralleling a family's decision to leave Iowa because their child can no longer get transgender care with a family's decision to leave Oregon because they're fed up with liberals, saying both are "political" decisions and this is why we are fracturing as a society. This framing flattens out so much relevant detail – mainly the existential threat of policies targeting trans people – that the story becomes meaningless, anti-informative https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/us/politics/politics-states-moving.html?smid=nytcore-android-share 
 "U.S. society is fracturing in two and the Times is ON IT" is always the worst take 
 This is a methodical and frightening reconstruction by the Washington Post of a Tesla crash into a semi-truck that killed the car's driver, showing the risks of so-called Autopilot mode. But one of the more striking things about it is words – the truly obnoxious mansplaining response by Tesla to the family's lawsuit, which sounds like Elon Musk wrote it himself (he probably did!)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/tesla-autopilot-crash-analysis/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001

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 How Bob Menendez got a new car for his future wife, Nadine Arslanian (whose old one was totaled when she hit and killed a pedestrian in an accident). It does not involve going to a dealer and negotiating a favorable price https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/nyregion/nadine-menendez-mercedes-death.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

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 This does seem to be the problem. The far right House members want ... something – so many things, without them the country will be lost! But they can't figure out what that is because it bears no relation to any governing reality, and they never will figure it out, and replacing Speakers will not help https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/03/kevin-mccarthy-house-speaker-vote-2/#link-IWMUBVOOHVD45HQOCU6TC3KJIM

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 nostr:npub1dh3yqkjrapc8eakjl8nltzdfag23ja6anuenwny7gmv8mq8jc46q8zrgvh Have you seen Barbie? I am ... 
 @ebfbed9f I have - it's good! A lot of fun... 
 The mass appeal of Taylor Swift, and also "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" and Beyonce and any number of other mainstream, generally freewheeling pop culture phenomena that sound distinctively of the present, not 1956, are signs that the culture wars – for all their destructiveness – are really a series of panicked rearguard actions https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-template-for-right-wingers-upset-with-taylor-swift 
 Framing of this NYT piece (by Peter Baker) on Biden's speech on the Trump threat to democracy is one politician attacking another, making accusations of terrible things. The thing is, Biden's "accusations" are statements of fact, he is just recounting things Trump has said, which literally are threats to democracy, there isn't really room for interpretation
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/us/politics/biden-mccain-library.html

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 Why did the political press play up the "Trump goes to Detroit to show solidarity with striking auto workers" story when it was so obviously going to turn out to be a fraud? Best explanation is, this was seen as another variant of the "rust belt diner" story, and a kind of knee-jerk response (Trump+white working class=magic we can never understand or question) kicked in
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/trump-uaw-strike-fake-news/675484/

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 This is impressive, but still seems like there will be certain limits – like those journalists and all of us face – for ChatGPT in being able to reliably track or interpret emerging events, whether over the span of hours, days, or weeks. There will be more fragmentary accounts, confusion, divergent reports/interpretations, misinformation, etc. the closer you are to the present moment 
https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-says-chatgpt-can-now-browse-internet-2023-09-27/ 
 @f8d9bc1c The campaign "narrative" at the moment is so comically skewed/clichéd that you do have to wonder if political reporters are thinking "is it too much?" But no, they probably aren't 
 The #enshittification of frequent flier programs – Delta establishes what is essentially a caste system for elite status, place it out of reach for many more/most users, and if you want to keep trying, you'll have to book all travel through Delta sites https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/09/15/delta-changes-miles-lounges-status-hackers/

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 The idea of customer rewards programs is to gamify something tedious – flying, buying coffee, etc – then be relatively transparent and generous at first, then over time make the rules progressively more opaque and the rewards ever more meager or unachievable, until it's not clear why anyone would play the game anymore. 
 One kind-of new thing here is Silicon Valley billionaires pushing eccentric-apocalyptic versions of eugenics, like if Birchers married Scientology – linking up with the far right & broader networks of young right-wingers, & ultimately laundering it into MSM op-eds
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/richard-hanania-racist-pseudoscience-woke-silicon-valley/675335/ 
 Interesting narrative in which Drea de Matteo's anti-vax stance and decision to join OnlyFans is treated as a kind of heroic journey. Fox News: purveyors of anti-vax, anti-liberal, sex-positive feminism https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/sopranos-star-drea-de-matteo-joins-onlyfans-after-labeled-savage-by-hollywood-not-accepting-defeat 
 Like the Isaacson 'great man' exegesis, Yaccarino tweets are an example of a conventional form of discourse (here, corporate happy-talk) being undermined/demolished by its subject
https://defector.com/linda-yaccarino-is-the-last-funny-twitter-bit-left 
 Indicating how Musk is transgressing the rules/expectations of "great men" (by not being so great in various ways), of the establishment media, of corporate image-making, and of basic "let's make a profit" business economics – all of which are nice to see attacked, but the entertainment value alone is clearly not worth the price 
 Seems like a baffling choice, given CNN's experience (and everything we know). What do NBC News/Meet the Press brass think is going to be different this time? Why would they think (as CNN did with Kaitlin Collins) this is a good way to showcase Kristen Welker/MTP? 
https://apnews.com/article/trump-kristen-welker-meet-press-nbc-803ec8997fd36c3278e02ef6374baa6d 
 The use of "pro-life" as an antiabortion movement slogan goes back 50 years, to Roe v. Wade. Now some kind of rebranding is underway, by some Republican Senators (?) because this is definitely a messaging issue
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-try-find-new-term-life-stave-electoral-losses-rcna103924

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 How PR firms are gaming the Rotten Tomatoes system. Review sites have become a new battleground for public perceptions of films, TV shows, and other forms of content, and it turns out with a little work and money targeted in the right places, the stats can be juked. At the same time, nobody cares what individual reviewers think, only about the aggregated opinion #, calculated by an astonishingly simple/dumb formula
https://www.vulture.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-movie-rating.html

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Event not found
 Also, the original account is now in doubt, at minimum he has to clarify which thing happened - did Musk not turn something on (a more passive act, even if the result is the same), or turn something off?