cogitoergofutuo

I’m also from the US and I’ll second that this is basically correct and should be taken as an implicit assumption about most Americans if you’re looking in from the outside.

Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”)

The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.

That’s cool, all manner of illegal shock content has always shown up on the chans as well, since day one. “Channer” as a term applies equally to all people in that ecosystem, even those that are reviled by the rest. :)

Yeah those videos are certainly despised by channers, what websites did they run into those videos on in the first place?

Too little too late. I left Twitter a few days ago after I saw some users complaining about animal torture videos showing up in their feeds and search suggestions, and this was on the heels of the footage of the shooting in Texas making the rounds.

It’s a completely unsurprising thing to see when you actively court channers after kneecapping content moderation.

> say there's a site that allows anyone to pirate with minimal friction with one click. Still think piracy isn't lost sales?

Say that this site is user-funded and actually buys a copy for every click. Still think piracy is lost sales?

“What if reality were different in a way that I’ve concocted specifically for the purposes of this discussion?” is a fun game!

It is not the author’s job to proactively search out and adjust for crazy interpretations of mundane sentences. That rule would be funny.

“NOAA reports record hurricane activity — BUT DON’T WORRY HAARP ISN’T INVOLVED” would be a hilarious but pointless headline.

The author of this article literally spent ~$500 on a phone.

Sometimes scientists cover the same stuff as other scientists in the interest of checking reproducibility or finding new data. Sometimes new stuff is discovered, sometimes not.

I’m still not buying that “most readers” are so familiar with that conspiracy theory that they would jump to “FBI agents have taken it upon themselves to publicly accuse the CIA in involvement in 9/11”

There is so much room for discussion about incompetence and bad systems when talking about 9/11. There was even a whole tv show with Jeff Daniels a few years ago that managed to talk about it without reading like lyrics from an Anti Flag album.

I did not interpret the headline that way. I’m not sure why someone would jump straight to that aside from the “Bush did 9/11” memes that get circulated every now and then.

> It says nothing about the CIA covering up an involvement in 9/11

The title doesn’t say that the CIA was involved in 9/11.

I’m a big fan of AT-ATs but I like AT-STs as well.

> "Best for readers" is not particularly subjective here.

This is correct. It is exactly the same amount of subjective as the word “best” normally holds. Since there has never been a reproducible measure of best-ness in any objective sense of anything linguistic, it’s squarely in the territory of subjectivity.

If by “best” you mean “understandable to virtually all readers” then “comprised of” and “composed of” are equally “best”

If best-ness is measured by something other than usefulness, then the person that decides the new set of weights with which to weigh best-ness is performing a personal and subjective act. “Orthodoxy to a standard of English as cited by me in context of the year x” does not automatically qualify something for extra best-ness points.

I will gladly entertain the issue of “comprised of” somehow lacking in accuracy with a person that is genuinely confused by its inclusion in a sentence.

An ATM machine that dispenses clout.

> It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way that's best for their readers.

This sentence contains a load-bearing “best”. The Wikipedia editor’s contention is that they have established the canonical “best”, and it is that contention that is being scrutinized.