I'm keeping my expectations low.
Being overly optimistic will only lead to dissapointment. It seems inevitable that this will continue to be a hard slog.
Hyperreality
joined 2 years ago
For those who want a proper analysis, I strongly recommend the Institute for the Study of War's analysees which they update regularly.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-24-2023
Today's summary includes 8 maps.
IRC they also have an interactive map somewhere on their site.
They can and do change in just a couple of days, but the real issue is that the media invariably fails to mention the margin of error or confidence interval.
It's always Candidate A 51%, candidate B 49%. When in reality it's inevitably something like "There's 19/20 chance that candidate gets between 48.5-53.5% of the vote, and that candidate gets between 46.5-51.5% of the vote."
And then when candidate B wins, the media will go "Why did the polls get it wrong?" when the election was always to close to call definitively.
Oh, and this is obviously ignoring the far more sinister use of misrepresented polling data, micro-demographically targetted thanks to big data harvested from social media. Think Cambridge Analytica algorithms which have determined that women in village X with one child and dog, being more likely to vote party Y, and then targetting them on social media with stories about the polls showing the result is a foreglone conclusion and that there's no point voting.
Hypocrisy is also a sin. The christian right are invariably hypocrites. They pretend to espouse values they don't believe in, then they judge others despite being deeply flawed themselves. It's not even an itty bitty sin. Hypocrisy is caused by pride and pride goes before a fall. And to top it off, they don't even believe they're being prideful. You can't ask for forgiveness for something you fundamentally don't believe is wrong. So according to their own religious text, they're all going to hell.
I have a related degree. The reason people distrust polls, is because the media frequently misreports or misrepresents them.
Eg. aggregated polling from the 2016 suggested Trump had a 1/3 chance of winning. If you believed some media coverage every poll said Clinton was certain to win. That was how the media reported on the polling, not the polling itself. Invariably Trump winning in 2016 was within the margin of error.
that whopping MoE
Not a large margin of error. You're extrapolating from 1000 people to 300 million. It's astonishing it's that low if you think about it.
because they’re usually done by telephone
Not that common anymore. Often they'll do a a telephone poll then supplement it with online or other methods. Here's IPSOS's article about this poll:
The study was conducted online in English. The data for the total sample were weighted to adjust for gender by age, race/ethnicity, education, Census region, metropolitan status, household income, and political party affiliation. The demographic benchmarks came from the 2022 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Party ID benchmarks are from recent ABC News/Washington Post telephone polls.
A fun one is Leviticus 19: 33-34
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Unsurprisingly, this is a commandment the religious right almost universally ignores.
I mean, I don't think we'll see Trump running on a campaign to allow migrants to vote, apply for welfare, or outright give them passports the moment they cross the border.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
― John F. Kennedy
IRC it's roughly equivalent to the amount of CO2 emitted by a cat during its lifetime.
Sorry Mr. Purrsalot. Daddy needs a holiday. Don't worry, it'll be over soon.
The GIF is playing.
If he pretends to choke while eating it on live television, he gets bonus points.
4 figures:
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Skyrim. I don't regret it. It was like escaping into another world and with mods is endlessly varied. Some of the mods were genuinely moving and stuff like The Forgotten City or Enderal are food for the soul.
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Fallout 4. Don't regret that either. A much needed escape and with mods it's endlessly varied. Also enjoyable building settlements.
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New Vegas: same as skyrim.
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Star Trek Online MMO: regret it. It wasn't fun after the first hundred hours, it was like feeding an addiction at a very low point in my life. I returned after many years, and had much the same experience. Doubly sad because Trek has given me so much joy over the years.
You know what it is? Lazy. They could be doing some proper investigative journalism, but that costs time and often money.
So instead they write an article about Trump being fat. We know he's fat. We know he's lying about his weight.
But let's be real. He's hardly alone. The vast majority of Americans are fat (something like 70%), and almost 40% are obese. I assume many of these people are also in denial about it. How are they supposed to feel about this article?
Hell, google the author of this article. He's also overweight. It's not unlikely he's also in denial given he chose to write this article. That isn't an attack. Life happens, you're busy, and if you're not careful you get fat. Invariably you're a bit insecure/vain about it. That's only human.
Let he who is not fat throw the first stick of butter.
When it comes to Trump, him being fat is the least of his crimes.