@zkat Hmm, maybe I should offer a GTS instance (even if just for that one feature)...
A binman in Turkey’s capital found a bag of thrown-away books on his rounds and couldn’t bring himself to take it to the dump. He kept it. Other workers started doing the same. The pile has now grown into a public library of over 9,000 books, run by sanitation workers, in an old brick factory 📚
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/15/europe/garbage-collectors-open-library-with-abandoned-books
I think this is part of why I find myself thinking lately that skepticism needs to become an academic discipline -- because (as I understand it) a discipline is something that you apply first to yourself before attempting to teach others.
Me, I want to turn it into a giant recording studio.
I mean, it's already got a control room... :D
They didn't tend to outright lie so much about matters of fact, though, did they? They might change the topic, use ambiguous phrasing, pretend not to know about something they definitely knew about, break treaties -- but I'm definitely not used to this outright "facts are fake news".
Fig. 1: the rarely-mentioned "Up Yours" Nebula
#BadAstronomy #WorseAstronomy #RudeAstronomy #NaughtyAstronomy
As always, they'll take even the tiniest nugget of truth and plaster lies on it until it resembles the narrative they want to manifest.
It's kind of like the opposite of turning a grain of sand into a pearl.
Yeah, that I don't know. ...and as the regulatory environment comes more and more under the control of wealthy parasites, it becomes harder and harder to get good data. :-/
It really is information warfare. We need to start responding appropriately.
(...not that nobody is doing anything about it; we just need a lot more.)
@courtcan ...never mind that attacking them is not going to do anything to reduce the threat... but it sounds like that understanding is at least a couple of levels up from where that guy is... which, sadly, is probably where too many USians are.
InfoMess.
I strongly agree with most of what you're saying, but I have to nitpick on one point: https://dataconomy.com/2025/07/17/ai-bands-are-now-topping-the-charts-and-earning-real-money/