I rarely post, so apologies if this has been posted here before, but this excerpt from a letter by Thomas Jefferson in 1807 seems relevant. In short, the problems described about modern news media are entirely true, but - frustratingly - not at all novel.
"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. it is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
My own special snowflake story: I am an experienced solo developer interested in getting up to speed with modern version control. I like that Git is popular and I prefer to learn well-supported tools. But every time I approach learning Git for my own needs, I get stymied and confused.
- I don't work in teams with other developers. I have no need to share code with anybody.
- I am not concerned about data loss, per se, because the systems I build include their own custom automated backup solutions.
- I don't develop in a VM on my local machine; I develop on a remote dev machine which is an exact system replica of the remote live machine (minus the software under development).
So what do I want from Git -- or something like it?
I want a good way to manage pushing features from dev to live with granular control. I may be working on 3 features plus a batch of bugfixes on the dev machine. When 1 feature and some of the bugfixes are ready to go I want to be able to push them live without pushing incomplete features live; and of course, I want this all to be as frictionless as possible because I don't want to waste time monkeying around with my dev tools when I should be working on dev itself.
Gary's guide doesn't completely get me here, but it is a nice, accessible start. So many Git resources I have read immediately launch into how Git works under the hood. Guess what? I don't care! Would you teach someone how to drive a car by first explaining how combustion engines work?
Maybe Git isn't the best tool for me after all, but with Gary's guide at least I know what commands to run without filling my head with an engineer's treatise of its internal engineering.
I don't find any difficulty when being a pedestrian in L.A., besides actual distances.
As a pedestrian you don't need to "share the road", only to cross it. Sidewalks seem plentiful, even if underutilized, and most road crossings have been well marked and signaled. Cars have generally been respectful when I cross.
Cycling here would certainly make me more nervous, outside of the corridors with well-spaced dedicated bike lanes. But walking is fine. It's good exercise and the weather's great.
Do you all remember when the "news" was "leaked" by "anonymous hackers" who claimed to lift Apple user data from a hacked FBI laptop? The Internet lost its mind frothing against the surveillance state.
The minority of critical thinkers who suggested that maybe the claims of anonymous hackers shouldn't be taken entirely at face value were either ignored or shouted down. Blanket denials by the FBI were met with retorts of "we know they're lying!". News outlets -- many the very same covering the PRISM story -- repeated uncritically the accusations of the FBI harvesting Apple user data.
Do you all remember what the actual outcome of that story was? Spoiler alert: the allegations were grade-A bullshit. The only part that was true was that it involved (old) data lifted from a hack (against an app developer). Everything else was bogus self-aggrandizing, and the Internet loudmouths played right into it. Why? Because it confirmed people's existing fears.
The sad reality is that everything that has hit the news about this PRISM story -- and the Verizon story -- has actually shed very little light on anything. We have a source with unknown credibility providing incomplete and possibly even misunderstood information colliding with large corporate and government interests. Maybe everyone is lying. Maybe nobody is.
The only thing that is certain is that people unquestionably believe claims that confirm their existing beliefs.
"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. it is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5...