Thank you for putting ‘alternative facts’ in quotation marks (in one of your recommended posts). It's an oxymoron and a fiction. Dictionary.com defines ‘fact’ as:
“noun 1) that which actually exists or is the case; reality or truth. 2) something known to exist or have happened. 3) a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true…” (it goes on, but those are the relevant definitions). So a fact is an established truth and, by definition, cannot have an alternative. There's just no such thing: if there are alternatives it's not a fact, it's a theory. ‘Alternative theories’ is a legitimate and acceptable term, but it doesn't have the authoritative ring of ‘alternative facts’. If it were up to me I'd expunge the term from the language, its use punishable by up to five years in an ‘alternative relaxation retreat’ 😉. But it's all part of the arsenal of misinformation, disinformation and the rest of the Orwellian ‘double-think’, misleading and downright lying used by Trump and the rest of his sewer clowns to con and gaslight the US electorate.
BTW, I use the 😉 emoji to indicate I'm kidding (and 🙃 to indicate sarcasm or irony). Sad to say that we need to make that clear in this day and age, that there are people who would make such statements in all earnesty 🤦🏼♂️🙄. I use the word ‘people’ loosely: they have no sympathy, compassion nor empathy, all qualities central to being human, humane and to humanity. I'd go further and say that empathy is a defining characteristic of intelligence. Dolphins, orang-utans and benobos have it, three of the most intelligent species apart from us. I suppose, to be accurate I should say ‘emotional intelligence’ rather than just ‘intelligence’, but I still maintain that emotional intelligence and empathy are key aspects of intelligence in general. A lack of empathy is usually attributed to psychotic personalities: psychopaths and sociopaths.
Good point, Even. you show the level of confusion and lack of consciousness we are living with today. Next there will be a poll on the taste of Soylent Green. (FYI, the movie Soylent Green is taken from the novel "Make Room! Make Room!" which is a dystopian tale taking place in 1999 (written in 1966). The novel serves as a critique of overpopulation, environmental destruction, and economic inequality. The movie pushed it out further to 2022.)
I remember the film. It starred Charlton Heston (before he'd come out as a complete dickhead) and Edward G Robinson (in his last rôle). If I remember correctly, weren't there three types of Soylent? Green being the highest quality—the others were red and yellow. The book is by Harry Harrison. I guess we should be grateful that even 2022 was overly pessimistic, not to belittle Harry Harrison's amazing foresight. I didn't become ecologically aware (or ‘green’, if you like) until the mid 70s. Mind you, I was only seven in 1966 and I can't really take credit for becoming green in the mid 70s; it was more of a process, triggered by the ‘oil crisis’ of 1973. That was a pretty momentous year. Here, in the UK, we had frequent power cuts, the introduction of the three-day-week, both a direct consequence of the aforementioned oil crisis. That and the development of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons and the theory of limited nuclear war (🤪), an impending glaciation—we are actually currently in an ice age, just a milder period where the glaciation is limited to the poles; the threat from climate change isn't the increase in temperature in and of itself, it's the rate at which it's happening. The planet has been much warmer in the distant past, but the changes in global mean temperature took place over hundreds or even thousands of years. All these things made it seem like an existential crisis. I don't mean to make light of the current existential crisis, I think it's worse. The global rise of the far-right and their denial of humanity's rôle in global warming are sickeningly worrying. I find it extremely ironic that, coming from such a hubristic mindset, that climate change is the one thing they're ‘anti-hubristic’ about. I guess it's really another form of hubris, just an inverted one: “We're far too insignificant to affect the world's climate” or “CO₂ levels are only 400 ppm” (parts per million. They forget to mention that they were below 300ppm before the industrial revolution. Just because CO₂ is only 0.04% of the atmosphere doesn't mean it doesn't have a significant effect. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas (25×) and the rise in its levels have been even greater than the 33% rise in CO₂. Democracy's biggest weakness is for politicians' tendency to focus on the four/five year election cycle and their tendency to ‘kick the can down the road’. There's an inherent unwillingness to make unpopular, difficult but necessary long-term decisions, an inbuilt inclination to procrastination.
Anyway, before I get too doom-and-gloomy, I was only trying to point out the cyclical nature of these crises. I prefer to remain optimistic, especially if the alternative is so bad that it would make me throw up my hands and decide that it's all futile. That's not to be complacent and trust that by some miracle we'll find an easy solution (and I've heard some, to my mind, crazy ideas: e.g. launching thousands of reflective ‘umbrellas’ (parasols would be more accurate) into orbit; we have no idea how catastrophic an effect on plant life that might have). We need to keep fighting and urging our representatives to take urgent action.
Nor is he a genius. He's made his money off the ideas and work of others, a privileged, rich and entitled 🤬 arse. Back when I still had a Xitter¹ subscription I remember getting one of his tweets in my feed: without the slightest sense of irony or self-awareness he tweeted “You don't have to be a genius to be a billionaire.”! I can't remember who this intended insult was aimed at but the delusion actually made me guffaw and shake my head.
¹ I first came across ‘Xitter’ from ‘Ethereal fairy Natalie’ (here, on SubStack) and, after complimenting her on its invention asked if she minded if I used it. She replied “by all means” and went on to explain that its spelling was Pinyin (i.e. that the ‘x’ is pronounced ‘sh’ 🤣).
Wanna break the feedback loop? If so, then Revolution is necessary. And believe it or not, we can create an extraordinary new social media specifically designed for peaceful revolution for that (revolution). Here's how: www.humbledeeds.com
Thank you for putting ‘alternative facts’ in quotation marks (in one of your recommended posts). It's an oxymoron and a fiction. Dictionary.com defines ‘fact’ as:
“noun 1) that which actually exists or is the case; reality or truth. 2) something known to exist or have happened. 3) a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true…” (it goes on, but those are the relevant definitions). So a fact is an established truth and, by definition, cannot have an alternative. There's just no such thing: if there are alternatives it's not a fact, it's a theory. ‘Alternative theories’ is a legitimate and acceptable term, but it doesn't have the authoritative ring of ‘alternative facts’. If it were up to me I'd expunge the term from the language, its use punishable by up to five years in an ‘alternative relaxation retreat’ 😉. But it's all part of the arsenal of misinformation, disinformation and the rest of the Orwellian ‘double-think’, misleading and downright lying used by Trump and the rest of his sewer clowns to con and gaslight the US electorate.
BTW, I use the 😉 emoji to indicate I'm kidding (and 🙃 to indicate sarcasm or irony). Sad to say that we need to make that clear in this day and age, that there are people who would make such statements in all earnesty 🤦🏼♂️🙄. I use the word ‘people’ loosely: they have no sympathy, compassion nor empathy, all qualities central to being human, humane and to humanity. I'd go further and say that empathy is a defining characteristic of intelligence. Dolphins, orang-utans and benobos have it, three of the most intelligent species apart from us. I suppose, to be accurate I should say ‘emotional intelligence’ rather than just ‘intelligence’, but I still maintain that emotional intelligence and empathy are key aspects of intelligence in general. A lack of empathy is usually attributed to psychotic personalities: psychopaths and sociopaths.
This bugged the heck out of me. Thanks for calling attention to it!
Good point, Even. you show the level of confusion and lack of consciousness we are living with today. Next there will be a poll on the taste of Soylent Green. (FYI, the movie Soylent Green is taken from the novel "Make Room! Make Room!" which is a dystopian tale taking place in 1999 (written in 1966). The novel serves as a critique of overpopulation, environmental destruction, and economic inequality. The movie pushed it out further to 2022.)
I remember the film. It starred Charlton Heston (before he'd come out as a complete dickhead) and Edward G Robinson (in his last rôle). If I remember correctly, weren't there three types of Soylent? Green being the highest quality—the others were red and yellow. The book is by Harry Harrison. I guess we should be grateful that even 2022 was overly pessimistic, not to belittle Harry Harrison's amazing foresight. I didn't become ecologically aware (or ‘green’, if you like) until the mid 70s. Mind you, I was only seven in 1966 and I can't really take credit for becoming green in the mid 70s; it was more of a process, triggered by the ‘oil crisis’ of 1973. That was a pretty momentous year. Here, in the UK, we had frequent power cuts, the introduction of the three-day-week, both a direct consequence of the aforementioned oil crisis. That and the development of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons and the theory of limited nuclear war (🤪), an impending glaciation—we are actually currently in an ice age, just a milder period where the glaciation is limited to the poles; the threat from climate change isn't the increase in temperature in and of itself, it's the rate at which it's happening. The planet has been much warmer in the distant past, but the changes in global mean temperature took place over hundreds or even thousands of years. All these things made it seem like an existential crisis. I don't mean to make light of the current existential crisis, I think it's worse. The global rise of the far-right and their denial of humanity's rôle in global warming are sickeningly worrying. I find it extremely ironic that, coming from such a hubristic mindset, that climate change is the one thing they're ‘anti-hubristic’ about. I guess it's really another form of hubris, just an inverted one: “We're far too insignificant to affect the world's climate” or “CO₂ levels are only 400 ppm” (parts per million. They forget to mention that they were below 300ppm before the industrial revolution. Just because CO₂ is only 0.04% of the atmosphere doesn't mean it doesn't have a significant effect. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas (25×) and the rise in its levels have been even greater than the 33% rise in CO₂. Democracy's biggest weakness is for politicians' tendency to focus on the four/five year election cycle and their tendency to ‘kick the can down the road’. There's an inherent unwillingness to make unpopular, difficult but necessary long-term decisions, an inbuilt inclination to procrastination.
Anyway, before I get too doom-and-gloomy, I was only trying to point out the cyclical nature of these crises. I prefer to remain optimistic, especially if the alternative is so bad that it would make me throw up my hands and decide that it's all futile. That's not to be complacent and trust that by some miracle we'll find an easy solution (and I've heard some, to my mind, crazy ideas: e.g. launching thousands of reflective ‘umbrellas’ (parasols would be more accurate) into orbit; we have no idea how catastrophic an effect on plant life that might have). We need to keep fighting and urging our representatives to take urgent action.
Another spot on reflection, Evan!
…we don’t have government anymore, we are dealing with REGIME and that’s how it works
He left S. Africa as Apparteid ended w8th Mandela. He ran crying to his Mama in Canada. He's been a bigot from the get!
Nor is he a genius. He's made his money off the ideas and work of others, a privileged, rich and entitled 🤬 arse. Back when I still had a Xitter¹ subscription I remember getting one of his tweets in my feed: without the slightest sense of irony or self-awareness he tweeted “You don't have to be a genius to be a billionaire.”! I can't remember who this intended insult was aimed at but the delusion actually made me guffaw and shake my head.
¹ I first came across ‘Xitter’ from ‘Ethereal fairy Natalie’ (here, on SubStack) and, after complimenting her on its invention asked if she minded if I used it. She replied “by all means” and went on to explain that its spelling was Pinyin (i.e. that the ‘x’ is pronounced ‘sh’ 🤣).
Wanna break the feedback loop? If so, then Revolution is necessary. And believe it or not, we can create an extraordinary new social media specifically designed for peaceful revolution for that (revolution). Here's how: www.humbledeeds.com