Media bubble is real.

A new study today reveals that yes, the US national media lives in their own special cone of silence, devoid of input from outside itself. Journalists think they are fair, balanced and generally doing a great job.

As we know, no one else thinks that.

To say there's a disconnect between many journalists and the public they serve is a gross understatement, according to a new in-depth survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. 

Per Pew, 65 percent of the nearly 12,000 journalists surveyed say the media do a solid job of "covering the most important stories of the day" and reporting news accurately. But a solid majority of the American public at large has the opposite view, with just 35 percent feeling the same way. That's a 30-point perception gap. 

When asked if journalists perform well when "serving as a watchdog over elected leaders," 52 percent of journalists agreed. But the number dropped precipitously again when the general public was asked, with less than 3 in 10 agreeing with the assessment. 

When asked if journalists manage and correct misinformation consistently, 43 percent of those in the industry said yes, while just 25 percent of the general public agreed. 

Quite apart from anything else, this is a catastrophe for the media in general. They literally have no idea who their audience is or what those people need or want. So, big brains, why is  this happening?

So why the disconnect? Perhaps it's like the old saying about the key to good real estate: Location, location location. Most of the national media are located in two places: New York City and Washington, D.C. 

In the 2020 election, just 9 percent of Manhattan voters voted for Donald Trump. In D.C., the Trump support was just 5.4 percent, underscoring that those who live in or near these cities exist in overwhelmingly liberal silos. It's only human nature that a journalist's perception of issues will generally conform to the places and people with whom he works and lives.

Longtime newsman Bob Schieffer dove into this subject a few years back, explaining just how insulated journalists have become.

"In 2004, one reporter in eight lived in New York, Washington, or Los Angeles," Schieffer notes in his must-read book "Overload: Finding the Truth in Today's Deluge of News." "That number is now down to one-in-five who live in those three places."

The article goes on to talk about the death of local newspapers and television, leaving people stuck with the NY/DC/LA news drip. Which leads to local corruption of course, because nobody but a paid journalist would be interested in wading through the megatons of bullshit in local politics to find the guys with the sticky fingers, stealing wholesale from the public purse.

Essentially the cannibalization and centralization of the national media in the USA is complete. All of them that matter work out of New York and Los Angeles, they keep a dreary outpost in Washington DC so they can report on the eye-catching antics of the President and the big cheeses of Congress and the Senate. That's about it.

Now, in Canada this dynamic has been going since roughly the 1980s to my eye. If it didn't happen in Toronto or Ottawa, it pretty much didn't happen. Outside chance to hear about it from Vancouver, Montreal, maaaaybe Calgary/Edmonton/Winnipeg. (To the Canadian media those are all one city, by the way. They think of it the same as Toronto/Mississauga/Oakville. Despite the thousand mile distances between them. To the media, Saskatchewan does not exist.) The "national" newspapers are both 100% based in Toronto, and report basically on Toronto.

This concentration has become so pronounced that the Federal government was able to essentially -buy- the Canadian media for $600 million bucks a couple of years ago. They didn't call it that of course, this was a "subsidy" to get "select media companies" through "tough economic times." But, since 2019 it has been pretty tough to find inconvenient coverage of the Liberal Party of Canada. Easy to find it in the European media though, they've been calling the Shiny Pony a dictator.

The bad part of this media bubble is that stuff like the Uvalde, Texas shooting situation occurs. I use this as an example of really quite amazing incompetence in local government. Their incompetence started with the police department letting 21 people die (and the more comes out about this atrocity the more we know that they fucking well let it happen) but the freight train of Fail keeps on going, as the middle management minions hurry and scurry to cover up their misdeeds, mistakes and outright sabotage by all pointing fingers at each other as hard as they can.

 

The people of Uvalde Texas showed up armed and dangerous to the event, and in one case went in and rescued their kids themselves when the cops wouldn't do it. So I very much think that those people did not vote for this shit. It all happened behind closed doors and in smoke-filled rooms with ideologues and corrupt assholes horse trading among themselves.

In Canada the best example of no media oversight is windmills. They're everywhere. They are the most visible taxpayer fleecing scam in this country, and nobody in the media will ever talk about it.

The good part is that this monoculture is self-correcting. As Netflix just found out, being the biggest guy on the top of the hill just means you have the most to lose. Netflix is the biggest in streaming, and they are bleeding customers this year in a huge way. This is happening, again, because all the people who work for Netflix live in New York City and Los Angeles. All the people who make content for Netflix live in NY and LA. All the people who buy foreign content for Netflix live in NY and LA. They are in the bubble. The AUDIENCE, the people who actually pay for all this, do not all live in NY/LA. They do not share cultural values with NY/LA. And therefore they are quitting Netflix. Because what rational human pays for a streaming service where there is nothing that they want to watch?

Thus the good part, if you can call it that, is that the NY/LA Axis of Media can and will go out of business if they keep ignoring their audience. Netflix did an emergency U-turn in May by firing a bunch of Wokester employees, but given their inventory is All-Woke-All-The-Time they are going to have to scramble for content their audience likes. I doubt they can do it.

This is very much the case in Canada as well. Without that federal "subsidy," most media in Canada would be going out of business right now.

Something foreigners would not necessarily appreciate or know about Canadians is that we all hate Toronto. You ask any random person in Canada on any street corner outside the 416 area code how they feel about Toronto, you will hear some bad words. Fuck Toronto. Toronto sucks. Toronto steals all our money. You'd have to be crazy to live in Toronto. Etc.

Canadians do not want to hear about Toronto. They will not pay for media content and news that talks about Toronto. Where is ALL the frigging media in Canada? Toronto. Therefore they are doomed to bankruptcy. Government can prop them up for a while, but eventually the Toronto-centric Liberal Party of Canada will be forced out of office by the rest of the country.

Update: Here's a perfect example of the Canadian media being perfectly, completely absent on a hot topic.

Podcaster Joe Rogan slammed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his recent comments that Canadians do not have the right to own a firearm for self-defense. 

On last Tuesday's episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' Rogan played a clip of Trudeau's appearance on the podcast 'Pod Save the World,' during an interview with his guest and gun rights activist Colion Noir. 

'He said you don't have the right in Canada to own a gun to protect your life. It is one of the most wild things I've ever seen anybody say, because first of all, I don't believe it's true,' Rogan said on his show. 'I don't believe he is correct in terms of what — what do they have up there? They don't have a constitution. It's not the same, whatever it is.'

In the podcast clip that aired on June 8, Trudeau said Canadians were only able to obtain firearms for hunting and sports shooting, and that people in his country who want a gun for self-protection do not have that right.

The Prime Minister of Canada came right out and said that Canadians do NOT have the right to own a firearm for self defense. Where do we hear about it? From Joe Rogan, an American, and the article is in the Daily Mail, a British newspaper.

What did we hear about it in Canada? A quick DuckDuckGo search reveals that ZERO Canadian media outlets carried that tidbit. We heard nothing from them. Crickets. Coincidence? I think not.

Moores Law at work.

 Randomly, from Slashdot today, a story about running Doom on a chip out of an LED lightbulb.

The system runs a downsized version of Doom that requires less RAM. The chip from the Ikea lamp has enough processing power to play the game at 35 frames per second over a cheap 160-by-128-pixel display.

 

 

Remember when Doom was used as a benchmark so you could brag how awesome your PC was? Now it can run on part of a lightbulb that costs $15 at Ikea.

Kinda makes me wonder what else an enterprising lad could fit in a cheap lightbulb. Microphone? Camera? Internet connection via Ethernet over powerline?

Why do Greenies always lie about solar power?

Today's Greenie Lie comes to us from Slashdot, where a  large number of people who ought to know better are having a rapture about solar power in Australia.

Dr. Saul Griffith, the author of "Electrify" and the founder and chief scientist of Rewiring America, Rewiring Australia and Otherlab, writes in a column: I recently moved back here to my home country partly because I believe Australians can show the world how much money households can save through simple climate solutions like rooftop solar. How is it that Australia, a country that historically has been a coal-burning climate pariah, is leading the world on solar? The four-bedroom house we recently bought provides a hint: It came with two rooftop solar systems of 11 kilowatts of combined capacity and a battery with 16 kilowatt-hours of storage. This system should produce more than enough to power my family's home, one electric car and both of our electric bikes with some left over to send back to the grid. Solar is now so prevalent in Australia that over a quarter of households here have rooftop panels, compared with roughly 2.5 percent of American households.

Oh? How interesting. Say on, Dr. Griffith.

Why has America been significantly slower to adopt this solution to high energy costs? The failures are mostly regulatory: local building codes and zoning laws, state rules that govern the grid connection and liability issues. Permitting can take as little as a day in Australia and is done over the web; in the United States permitting and connecting to the grid can take as long as six months. Many customers just give up. America also generally requires a metal conduit around the wiring; in Australia, the connections can be less expensive soft cables, similar to extension cords.

Well, no. Not really.  That business about the "less expensive soft cables similar to extension cords" thing really brings it home. In the USA and Canada, you can't have a multi-kilowatt solar system on a roof without conduit for the wiring. The reason is simple: snow. Also rain, hail, lighting, birds, mice, raccoons, all sorts of things which will make the insulation fail and cause a fire.

I'm not talking about a little puff of smoke here, this is a burn-your-house-down sort of fire. Little known fact, solar panels do not have an "off" switch. If light is hitting them, they are making power. You short them out, they just keep going. 11 kilowatts is going to make for a hell of a fire. I don't want that on my roof in Canada unless the wiring is running through a hefty conduit. So yes, putting that stuff up there is going to cost you and batteries are expensive.

The grid connection is the real issue. The cost of the system is too high to pay out if you can't sell power to the grid. Is there a way to connect millions of small solar generators in a grid that maintains an even voltage and amperage with low line-noise?

Here in Ontario, 15 years ago or so the McGuinty Liberal government offered to pay ~$0.50 per kilowatt hour for solar generated electricity. Lots of farmers and people with big roofs jumped at that and hurried to install solar panels. This was at the same time that the government was busy erecting huge windmills all over Southern Ontario. (I can see one of the damn things from my kitchen window, idle about half the time.) They also de-commissioned and demolished the Nanticoke coal-fired generation station on Lake Erie. (You never saw government contractors move so fast in your life.)

Well, there was a problem with all that. The problem is that the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow all the time. You have night, you have clouds, and you have calm days. Solar power supplies fluctuate from zero to max output every morning and night. They have an output drop with every cloud. Windmills are the same. Lots of power and then very little, unpredictably, all the time.

Electric power grids don't work like that. There is a very smooth and constant power supply from generation stations, and there is a similarly smooth and constant load from all the houses and businesses connected to it. The load increases and decreases in a predictable way. This can be summarized in one notion: no sudden movements.

Wind and solar are nothing but sudden movements. In principle, you can't just attach a solar generator to the power grid. It will melt the power lines every morning, because sunrise dumped 11 kilowatts-per-household into the already fully-supplied grid. Wires can only take so much electricity before they get hot. If they get hot enough they melt. That's how welding works.

Well, how did the McGuinty Liberals (and the sexy librarian Wynne Liberals) solve this problem? The solution was ingenius, my friends. They just didn't connect the windmills and solar panels to the grid. Ontario Hydro had a "permitting process" which did not begin until you already bought and installed your solar panels. Basically they didn't tell you if you could be connected to the grid or not until after you spent $100k on a system. Then the permit process worked away until after the provincial election, and they told you no. Lots of farmers got screwed. Big time.

The big, giant windmills stood and turned for years before any of them were hooked up. Even then, most of the power was sold to the Americans at a huge loss. Nine billion bucks as of 2014 and still counting They could save a fortune by unplugging those windmills and selling them for scrap.

Did the Ontario Liberal Party know this? Yes, they absolutely did. Every power engineer at Ontario Hydro told them exactly what was going to happen. It wasn't going to work. They did it anyway. For votes and money, one supposes. The long term results so far  are A) manufacturing businesses have fled Ontario, B) we have the most expensive electric power in North America, C) lots of hooked-up Friends of the McGuinty Regime made absurd, obscene amounts of money on this scam and D) the Ontario Liberal Party is no longer a party with standing in the provincial parliament. They have seven (7) seats. Too bad we couldn't have turfed them -before- they fucked over the grid, eh?

And that's the real, actual reason why there are no solar panels on houses in the USA and Canada. They don't pay. Simple as that.

If you live on an island far from electric grid power, then they're feasible. For grid connected houses? Nope. Well, not unless your local grid is so unstable that you have blackouts all the time. Then it might be worth it to add a diesel or propane generator, because it will most definitely be cheaper/easier/better than screwing around with solar panels and batteries.

Given that, why do people like Dr. Saul Griffith keep on lying about it? Probably money, would be my guess. Or possibly they're just stupid. Greenies generally are, in my experience. The type of people who think if you just wish hard enough your wish will come true, and Santa will bring you a pony.

Wish harder, Dr. Griffith.

Time for shameless self-promotion!

 I wrote a book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848PX3TC

You can buy it at Amazon. It is inexpensive and fun. ~:D It has alien probes, giant tanks and robot girlfriends.

You should all buy this book. If you do, I will finally publish the next one. ~:D (I'll eventually publish the next one anyway, but encouragement is good.)

The Phantom

This is disgraceful: CGI Stan Lee cameos.

Wadda revoltin' development.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed today that a 20-year deal between Marvel, Genius Brands International and POW! Entertainment — the intellectual property company Lee started in 2001 — will allow Marvel to license the name and likeness of Lee. He could be inserted in feature films via CGI, Disney theme parks or various "experiences" and merchandise.

"It really ensures that Stan, through digital technology and archival footage and other forms, will live in the most important venue, the Marvel movies, and Disney theme parks," Andy Heyward, chairman and CEO of Genius Brands told the pub. "It's a broad deal."

They're trying as hard as they can to kill that golden goose, aren't they?  CGI Stan Lee cameos, yeah, that's what the fans want...

Old footage of Stan? Sure. Posters, still pictures? Absolutely. Cartoon animated Stan? No problem. Computer generated Undead Stan coming back from the grave, wisecracking like he was still alive? Nope. Nopenopenope. It's gross. Don't do it.

Happy Molly Norris Is Still Hiding Day.

Yes friends, another year passed by and today we remind one and all that Molly Norris, nice lady and artist/cartoonist of no particular fame, is still in hiding. Since 2010. For drawing a picture.

This picture. It is best not to forget some things.

Okay? As you were.

Netflix lays off 150 Wokesters.

It looks like somebody on the board of directors has finally had it with the Woke wrecking crew fucking over Netflix.

Netflix's recent axing of 150 staff targeted many of the firm's wokest workers who are prolific social justice warriors on social media.

The struggling streaming service has pulled the plug on several projects that were aimed at discussing race and LGBTQ issues, Variety reported, and axed the diverse employees working on and promoting them. 

In addition to the layoffs, the company also fired nearly 70 employees working for its social media and publishing teams focused on marginalized communities.

They included Strong Black Lead, the Asian American-focused Golden, the Latino-focused Con Todo, and the LGBTQ-focused Most. 

Netflix claimed its latest layoffs were due to 'a slow down in revenue and decline in subscribers.' But they represented just 150 of the firm's 11,000 staff, sparking speculation that a purge of meddlesome woke staff was afoot.  

Emphasis mine. So what, specifically, got cut?

Netflix has also scrapped a host of woke shows - the most famous of which is Meghan Markle's doomed animation Pearl, about a socially-conscious girl said to have been based on Meghan herself.  

Other scrapped projects included Antiracist Baby and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, two adaptions by Critical Race Theory expert Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, as well as a kids' fantasy series Wings of Fire from executive producer Ava DuVernay, and the children's film With Kind Regards From Kindergarten.   

The most notable of the scrapped works was Antiracist Baby, based on Kendi's book of the same name, which had been envisioned as a series of animated vignettes set to music and intended to explore racism in America.

Netflix had previously said that the show would 'leverage the power of earwormy songs to empower kids and their caregivers with simple tools to uproot racism in ourselves and society.'

Also cancelled was a documentary written by Kendi, titled Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, which was aimed at teens and young adults.

Netflix is still proceeding with a third Kendi project aimed at adults, titled Stamped From the Beginning.

Also scrapped was the kids' fantasy series Wings of Fire, based on the book series by Tui T. Sutherland's, which would have seen famed black filmmaker Ava DuVernay as an executive producer. 

Although a fantasy story, Wings of Fire explores themes of racism and prejudice through its fictional world. 

Another project, which was revealed to be a film adaption of Adam Kline's With Kind Regard from Kindergarten, was also cancelled by Netflix. 

One of the things going for Netflix is their data capture. They know exactly what subscribers watch, what they start watching and then drop, what they fast-forward past, what time of day they watch, pretty much everything. So they KNOW what is working and what isn't. 

Seems that somebody took a hard look at those numbers and realized that A) Woke isn't selling and B) they're going to go broke if they keep listening to Wokesters like Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.

So, they did what they had to do. Because money talks and bullshit walks.

Gaslighting: a textbook example.

Gaslighting is one of those asinine words invented by Lefties. It is a noun turned into a verb, like scapegoat or 'conversate' and has really only been a thing since about 2010 according to Wikipedia. Taken from the film Gaslight in 1944, it is a pernicious form of lying in which the liar tries to deceive their target by making them question their own reality.

Leading us to today's example from the Daily Kos: Right-wing trolls accusing science fiction of being 'woke' are messing with my childhood.Specifically, people don't like the new Lord of the Rings TV series and the Wheel of Time TV series because the shows don't follow the existing cannon of the books.

Yes, no kidding. We've seen this show before.

Here's the gaslighting, courtesy ofDaily Kos 'staffer' Christopher Reeves:

Wait, what? I've read almost all of Tolkien. I've watched every Star Trek series. I've read some of Ringworld, and in general, I devoured science fiction. What on Earth are these fans so upset about? What am I missing here? I decided last night to do a little bit of looking, and I regret some of the time I sacrificed but it certainly left me with some thoughts. I can always tell things are going wrong when people use terms like "woke" which is just one of those right-wing slurs that they use to replace "compassionate" or "reasonable" it seems.

Yes friends, there is no Woke agenda to putting black actors in the Lord of the Rings series. This is just people being compassionate and reasonable. Y'all are racist trolls!

Wow, this response is not in any way kidding. YouTube videos are attacking diversity left and right, offended that Black actors have roles in science fiction and fantasy when the roles were not specifically played by white actors or noted as being white in the book, novel, or previous filmed version. The hatred at times is pretty intense:

Yes friends, there was more making the Teen Titans series a garbage fire than the casting of Starfire.  But ignoring the entire cannon of DC Comics Teen Titans regarding the character Starfire was certainly part of the garbage that was on fire. Best not to mention though, because that's racist.

What I was reminded of reading through this was a moment I particularly enjoyed from maybe my favorite series of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.

Yes, Star Trek, the series that started out as Liberals in Space and just kept getting more Woke for 60 freakin' years. (Who drops an antimatter powered warship out of warp space -inside- somebody else's solar system, blythely takes an orbit around the inhabited planet, and then acts surprised when the locals fire on them? The Federation, that's who.) And DS9 was Woke before the word was coined.

The heart of all science fiction has been to understand each other, to venture into what could be, what is, and how things can be better or worse. My dad is far from being a progressive; hell, as far as it goes politically, we don't agree on a lot. But we both love science fiction, despite his mixed reviews on the newest variants. As a kid, if I asked him he would have said without a hesitation that Star Trek 2, 4, and 6 were the best movies. What themes were in them? Environmentalism. Genetic engineering and privilege. Profiteering off of war.

I hate to break it to all of the fan boys who think they should be upset at the casting of shows: You have it all absolutely wrong. That isn't to say I'm going to love the new Amazon series, or that I thought their Ringworld series was the best—it was okay in my opinion—but it is to say that the criticism over companies making science fiction woke? That this is so new it never happened before?

Yes, this is nothing new, my friends. Science Fiction was always Woke, even before there was Woke. You're imagining all this. It's only a TV show, just relax.

Gaslighting.

Meanwhile, in other news, Netflix issued an interesting memo to its staff.

First reported by Variety, Netflix has added a section on "Artistic Expression," that commits to allowing audience members make their own choices.

"We program for a diversity of audiences and tastes," the statement reads. "And we let viewers decide what's appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices. "

The memo goes on to say that employees may have to work on content that they "perceive as harmful," warning that if this is difficult for them to accomplish, "Netflix may not be the best place for you."

This is because Netflix is shedding subscribers due to being full of nothing but Woke horseshit like the aforementioned Teen Titans tv show, and because the Woke-ists tried to jack up the company over Dave Chappelle making a trans joke on his fabulously successful comedy show. This is the company telling them to settle the fuck down and get back to work.

Remember when Dr. Who was fun?

I recall watching Matt Smith and Karen Gillian and thinking it was fun. Prior to that, not really. Following that, I haven't spent a second watching it. The show became appallingly Woke.

So here we are, 2022, the 60th anniversary, and there is a 14th Doctor. There were only supposed to be 12, but never mind all that, this is number 14.

Doctor Who's newest incarnation has been announced. Replacing Jodie Whittaker — and becoming the 14th Doctor Who — is 29-year-old Netflix star Ncuti Gatwa.

I wish the gentleman good luck, and hope that the Wokeness doesn't suck all the life out of his career.  Sir Lawrence Olivier couldn't make this turkey fly.