Say you’re at a rally and you see a group of mostly white men, dressed alike and walking towards you. It’s a white supremacist group—but which one can it be? Now, thanks to the Topic Magazine article "Decoding the Language of Extremist Clothing", illustrated by Julia Rothman and written by Tasneem Raja, there's a handy dandy reference guide available to help you identify the threat! Whether it be a radicalized gaming knight of Kekistan, or one of the paradoxically disability-collecting chubbos from the Traditionalist Workers Party, this article is a virtual Audubon Society field guide to racist, hateful losers!
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In the spirit of knowing thine enemy, you might want to consider reading this rather interesting New York Magazine interview with former White House Trump-whisperer and all-around nasty piece of work, Steve Fucking Bannon. The interview is part of the mag's ongoing exploration of the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis, which includes "a new radical politics on both the left and the right; epidemics of opioid abuse, suicides, and low birthrates; and widespread resentment, racial and gendered and otherwise, by those who felt especially left behind." Be sure to check out the comments section when you're done with the interview! A number of highly intelligent readers make minced meat out of Bannon's arguments, which -- despite seeming somewhat reasonable and maybe even appealing upon first read -- are exposed for the bellowing cant that they are.
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So you probably remember hearing all the brouhaha last month about "3D printable guns" and the "free speech" controversy about whether or not people should be allowed to post instructions for them online and whatnot. What's a liberty-loving freedom warrior to do?
The first thing to consider, as far as yer old pal Jerky is concerned, is the fact that these "guns" are mostly single-use, and thus, absolute crap. Why go through the trouble of printing a one-and-done handgun when America is already awash in excellent, re-usable firearms?
On the other hand, I've seen a lot of people on the far right corners of Reddit saying that it is every Qanon-believing, Democrat-despising, red-pilled (((establishment)))-hating Kekistani meme warrior's duty to download, then seed, the torrent for said firearm/file.
Well, I don't know about you folks, but it sure seems to me as though putting out a blueprint for a relatively harmless but attention grabbing single-use printable handgun, then sitting around and waiting to see who downloads and seeds those files, would be a great way to locate easy-to-trigger individuals with authority "issues", in order to make any future round-ups of said undesirables more easy and orderly.
So... best to think twice before doing something which I think is probably at LEAST as stupid and potentially self-destructive (if not as fucking disgusting and unmitigatedly evil) as downloading child pornography.
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Are you interested in learning The Crazy True Story of Trump Moscow? If so, then you should read the excellent and comprehensive Buzzfeed article, which begins:
Regular readers of the DDD know that I believe Youtube to have long ago become little more than a Far Right propaganda platform, shoving loads of conservative, alt-right, and even unapologetically fascistic talking points down our collective throats, no matter what you do to get them to stop. I have personally lost count of the number of times I've tried to use their criteria selection interface to try and prevent them from recommending videos by the likes of Sargoon of Arcade, Styxenhammer666, Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum. But no matter what I do, there's always a "Stoopid Feminist is Stoopid!", or "SJW REKT by LOGIC!", or "BLM is NIGGER KKK!!!" video that manages to slither and slime its way into my recommendations.
With the above in mind, I am very grateful to Rebecca Lewis of Data & Society for doing the research and providing solid evidence to prove that no, it isn't yer old pal Jerky's imagination revving into paranoid overdrive; this is an actual phenomenon. And even though it may have more to do with algorithms than with any vast sinister conspiracy... the results are basically the same.
If you're interested in this topic (and you really, really should be), then you should definitely check out this Guardian article about the study, and then download and read the PDF of the study, itself.
All through the hot summer campaign of 2016, as Donald Trump and his aides dismissed talk of unseemly ties to Moscow, two of his key business partners were working furiously on a secret track: negotiations to build what would have been the tallest building in Europe and an icon of the Trump empire — the Trump World Tower Moscow.
Talks to construct the 100-story building continued even as the presidential candidate alternately bragged about his relationship with Vladimir Putin and rejected suggestions of Russian influence, and as Russian agents worked to sway US public opinion on Trump’s behalf.
While fragments of the Trump Moscow venture have trickled out — most recently in a report last night by Yahoo News — this is the definitive story of the Moscow tower, told from a trove of emails, text messages, congressional testimony, architectural renderings, and other documents obtained exclusively by BuzzFeed News, as well as interviews with key players and investigators. The documents reveal a detailed and plausible plan, well-connected Russian counterparts, and an effort that extended from spearfishing with a Russian developer on a private island to planning for a mid-campaign trip to Moscow for the presidential candidate himself.
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Regular readers of the DDD know that I believe Youtube to have long ago become little more than a Far Right propaganda platform, shoving loads of conservative, alt-right, and even unapologetically fascistic talking points down our collective throats, no matter what you do to get them to stop. I have personally lost count of the number of times I've tried to use their criteria selection interface to try and prevent them from recommending videos by the likes of Sargoon of Arcade, Styxenhammer666, Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum. But no matter what I do, there's always a "Stoopid Feminist is Stoopid!", or "SJW REKT by LOGIC!", or "BLM is NIGGER KKK!!!" video that manages to slither and slime its way into my recommendations.
With the above in mind, I am very grateful to Rebecca Lewis of Data & Society for doing the research and providing solid evidence to prove that no, it isn't yer old pal Jerky's imagination revving into paranoid overdrive; this is an actual phenomenon. And even though it may have more to do with algorithms than with any vast sinister conspiracy... the results are basically the same.
If you're interested in this topic (and you really, really should be), then you should definitely check out this Guardian article about the study, and then download and read the PDF of the study, itself.
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If you've read and digested all of the above, and you still have room for more, then how about this article about how AI can tell what your sexuality and political leanings are based solely on facial recognition software, or this article about how researchers have found that smoking marijuana can cause earlier manifestations of serious mental illness, or maybe read this op-ed piece by Rob Tibbets begging right-wing politicians and pundits to stop using his daughter Mollie's corpse as a prop for their anti-immigration propaganda. This, of course, caused a gaggle of upset right-wing commentators (like Candace Owens) to declare that if the Tibbets family was not on board for a Far Right racist crackdown on Hispanics as mass revenge for the murder of their daughter, then their skulls should be used as bricks in Trump’s wall. Such loving people.
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