Media Part of the Fragile Stories

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Fake news is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, fake news is older than real news. As facts recede, the power of concocted stories will Only Grow  

 “It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis,” Henry Miller wrote in contemplating art and the human future

Via the site’s FAQ: “HOAXY – beta – Visualize the spread of claims and fact checking [Indiana University] visualizes the spread of claims and related fact checking online. A claim may be a fake news article, hoax, rumor, conspiracy theory, satire, or even an accurate report. Anyone can use Hoaxy to explore how claims spread across social media. You can select any matching fact-checking articles to observe how those spread as well

Here I am trying to go to bed at a decent time only to find out that Sinbad never played a Genie in a movie! Even though I know Ive seen it!  The movie that doesn’t exist and the Redditors who think it does

We are expecting an earth shattering Kaboom  Scientists Are Getting Nervous About Italian Supervolcano

World According to Trump By Tom Engelhardt, a co-founder of the American Empire Projectand the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of theNation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book isShadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Originally published at TomDispatch

Antibiotic-Tainted Seafood From China Is Making Its Way to Tables Near You 

 Google finally changes algorithm promoting Holocaust deniers --- In the category of – and what took you so long – this is not news to librarians category – and the – if you have not done so, change search engines now suggestion – try DuckDuckGo – Via Fortune – “In recent months, Google has confronted a new and unsettling trend: Its top search results for questions about the Holocaust lead to neo-Nazi sites while queries about different ethnic groups direct users to racist or inflammatory material

Claim: 2016 Was The Best Year Ever For TV

TV evolved in form and content in 2016, pushing the boundaries of both what is considered an episode of television and whose stories are seen as worth telling.

Lawyer seeks to identify author of three-word ‘horrible’ Google review” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; Eugene Volokh]

366 links to understand fact checking in 2016

YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG: These Are the Media’s Top Ten Embarrassments of the Year

Best of media corrections, 2016 edition

THIS WHOLE ANTI-“LATITUDE OF FAKE NEWS” CRUSADE IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Facebook ‘fact checker’ who will arbitrate on ‘fake news’ is accused of defrauding website to pay for prostitutes – and its staff includes an escort-porn star and ‘Vice Vixen domme.’

Its main ‘fact checker’ is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog ‘ViceVixen’ says she is in touch with her ‘domme side’ and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking pot ...

SEC Charges Former New York Pension Official and Two Brokers in Pay-to-Play Scheme SEC. “Approximately $50,000 spent at restaurants, bars, lounges, and on bottle service.” There have to be prostitutes in the mix, and I’d hazard they are buried in this line item

Data and resources on careers in numerous professions as well as on how to find a job


Nixon: The American people don't believe anything until they see it on television

Policymakers, researchers and journalists alike will soon have access to roughly 4.2 million state government decisions in a single database. West Virginia University political science 

researcher, William Franko, a professor in the Rockefeller School of Politics and Policy, is 

part of a research team collecting every legislative bill, executive rule and judicial decision 


across all 50 states, some dating back to the 1950s. Over the next three years, the policies 

will be collected, digitized and compiled in an open source database. The first-of-its-kind 

database will serve as a comprehensive source of data to track the movement of policies 

from one state government to another….”


India Overtakes Britain as the World’s Sixth-Largest Economy Foreign Policy

Ten things I think about the Russian hacking story

1. Russia is doubtless behind the hacking of the DNC. We know that Russia is using hacking, disinformation, and financial support to influence elections globally. Of course, while two wrongs don't make a right, the USA does not come to this table with clean hands. We have supported outright coups around the world and spy on both friends and foes alike.


Steganography: Hiding Data in Images

tel:12%20(2015)%2082%E2%80%9388 Negative comparisons about one’s appearance mediate the relationship between Facebook usage and body image concerns. 


NON-BACKLASH LATITUDE: Michigan Student Made Up Anti-Muslim Hate Crime 

Several days after the U.S presidential election in November, a female student at the University of Michigan reported being attacked by a man who threatened that if she did not remove her hijab, her would set her on fire.

The student told police that the obeyed the man’s order before fleeing the scene and reporting the incident. She described the perpetrator as a white male between the ages of 20 and 30. University police alerted students of the alleged crime, and said they were “disturbed by this report of hate crime in our community.” The FBI was called in to investigate.

Now police in Ann Arbor have determined that the “hate crime” never happened. After conducting multiple interviews and reviewing surveillance footage, investigators found “numerous inconsistencies” in the alleged victim’s statements, which led them to conclude that she made it all up.

Well, it’s not like she was kicked off a Delta flight for speaking Arabic

This 104-year-old blogger is keeping the dying art alive

Most days, Dagny—small and sweet, with neatly pressed white hair—sits behind her desktop PC in her apartment in a suburb of Stockholm and ...

Want To Dance In Public (Or Your Living Room) To NPR’s Favorite Dance Tracks Of 2016? Now You Can

Oh. NPR has gotten sort of hip. “Berlin and Vancouver are obvious hot spots right now (and that’s reflected in the mix), but there are developing scenes in Atlanta, D.C., Melbourne, Glasgow, Cairo and Tokyo that are generating truly memorable tunes.”

The impact of appearance comparisons made through social media, traditional media, and in person in women’s everyday lives [full text PDF]. Jasmine Fardoulya, Rebecca T. Pinkus,Lenny R. Vartanian. School of Psychology, UNSW Australia, Sydney, New South Wales 205; Australia School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. Body Image 20 (2017) 31–3.

Top 100 Economics Blogs And Websites For Economists Feedspot. NC is #20. Readers, we could put a “Top 100” badge in the sidebar (looks like a gold medal). Too cheesy, or a useful “fake news” prophylactic?

Peeling the Onion of Author Publicity | Bill Peschel

Next year, Russians will observe the centenary of the Russian Revolution. And their government will make sure they know almost nothing about it... Putin on Ignorance 

Is The Rise Of Post-Apocalyptic Art Telling Us Anything?

“Rather than focus on the gory details of how the world might end, post-apocalyptic art casts its gaze upon the reality of the world that follows catastrophe and persists without human beings, as nature gradually reasserts itself over the architectural remnants of society. The emerging genre is not without its critics, and many practitioners remain uncertain or divided about what affect — if any — such post-apocalyptic imagery might have on its audiences. But as issues like deindustrialization and climate change rattle the globe, these artists are popularizing the forgotten or unseen places that are already being affected — and potentially mobilizing their massive online audiences to seek solutions.”

These Books Didn’t Have A Lot Of Flashy Support This Year, But Hoo Boy, Are They Ever Good

The Observer critics give you ideas for all kinds of 2016 books that, as one critic says, “should have been huge.”

Data Farming Proving Lucrative in the Cyber Underground