“Tis the Season”

https://newslit.org/

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception:  How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation."  In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information.  They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1.  Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2.  Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs.  Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3.  Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp.  Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4.  When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5.  Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.  

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source:  Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

The world is pretty messed up these days. And that’s to put it, perhaps overly politely. The young nation state of the United States of America is going through one of, if not the biggest challenge to its survival. There have been a few of those challenges over our first 246 years in existence. It’s got a real bad case of the “Killer C’s.” (Skin) color, Covid, Climate Change (denial), Culture (wars) and chaos. The Killer C’s all being driven by the “F” word of all “F” words: Fascism.

We have a ground war in Ukraine started by the latest incarnation of evil and the world’s current chief Fascist. We ourselves have our own incarnation of a Fascist lurking in our own midst. This puppet person is responsible for facilitating a series of Democracy-damaging actions that Constitutional democracy may or may not survive.

By my Google-based rapid research, there is approximately one gun for each of the more than 335,000,000 Americans walking, crawling, laying or wheeling around. Some of those are automatic weapons of war. I guess we need them to shoot up Electrical sub-stations, assault police stations and conduct peaceful protests.

Yet despite the sorry state of affairs that we have collectively put ourselves into, I think the world is actually a pretty damn good place to be. It better be. So far, despite the efforts of Richard Branson, Elon Musk and billionaires of that ilk trying to find someplace better than our current planetary home, this is it. We’re already there in the best place we could be. Best treat it with a little more respect or we’ll have to adapt to living in our own waste.

Sorry about that last paragraph. I started to tell you how I really feel.

Actually, if we figure out as a country and world how to vaccinate against our once or twice a century flirtations with fear-mongering, white supremacist tyrants, the world and the United States would be much more pleasant places to be.

Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Together we call them “The Holidays.” They provide a period of temporary relief from our self inflicted wounds.

And, they give us Major League Baseball’s Winter meetings. This holiday season also brought The World Cup. This is usually a Summer event unless the host country is Qutar.

We got a glimpse into the future of U.S. soccer (I prefer to call it football). By the way, how the hell does a game where the only time that you contact the ball with your feet are when the team kicking is trying to give the ball to the other team after it has failed? Anyway, this year’s World Cup 2022 was a good thing.

Music, food, friends and family abound. The family part is good as long as you agree not to discuss anything outside of your family.

And best of all despite it all, I get to say…

I love you and I wish you a joyous and peaceful holiday season.