i mean, take a look at some of this "fake news".

you don't think we can teach our kids to be able to spot this, to figure it out? then, you have a pretty low level of respect for human cognition, don't you? why not throw away the whole charade, then, and just install a technocracy? we're too stupid to make the right choices, anyways.

i point this out pretty regularly: it was jefferson that argued that you need an informed populace for democracy to make any sense. if you're going to condemn voters to ignorance as a bunch of hapless idiots that need to be conditioned to make the right ballot choice, then you're not really a believer in the principle of democracy, you're just a vulgar gramscian, trying to come up with a sneaky way to manipulate voters into doing what you want them to; you're a machiavellian tyrant, you're not a democrat. we need to be systemic about this, but the purpose has to be in ensuring that voters have the cognitive tools to make an informed, self-interested choice. that's democracy. these other ideas are not.

i am fully confident that a well-educated populace will make the right choice; in fact, so are the oligarchs, and that's why they won't educate us.

don't fall for that; fight for education, not censorship.

we do not have a crisis in social networking.

we have a crisis in critical reasoning.

no.

listen.

this is ideological...

i'm an anarchist, so i believe in collective ownership of property, which is the definition of actual anarchism, but being an anarchist also means that i'm not in support of nanny state policies that try and control people's access to information, how they think or how they act. if i wanted any of that, i'd just be a communist; it is mostly speech issues that are the reason i'm an anarchist and not a communist.

what we need is better media literacy, and better critical thinking skills. as a culture, on both sides of the north american border, we have been trying very hard for generations to eliminate our critical thinking skills. now, we've come up against a technology that is demanding us to be better thinkers, and we're failing to do it, and we're failing to do it because we're not being educated properly. we need to come to terms with the errors we've made in the neo-liberal period, and reverse the cultural decline in the promotion of individuality, of independent thought.

so, i do not support restrictions on social networking; i support a return of critical thinking in the education system. and, it is not a minor concern - it is a very strong ideological break point that you are on one side of and i am on the other side of.

i will stand with the free speech activists, as i always have.

https://fair.org/extra/lie-the-sandinistas-wont-submit-to-free-elections/

i will not be supporting charlie angus when jagmeet singh is forced to resign in the fall.

https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9395856-charlie-angus-trudeau-government-pushing-for-action-on-tech-giants/

here's a pot calling a kettle black.

yikes.

you can't make up stuff like this; it's in the "too surreal for the onion" category.

and, if this is the approach the government wants to take, it will need to change it's spokesperson in order to generate any sort of credibility whatsoever.

hearing this from freeland cannot be interpreted any way other than as a bad joke; she has absolutely no credibility, whatsoever, at all - and it's 100% entirely her own fault, for excreting such an immensely large volume of completely irredeemable, absolute and total bullshit.

the chinese are right to ignore her.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/chrystia-freeland-canada-china-michael-kovrig-spavor-detained_ca_5ced7e8de4b009400937d74d?ncid=other_trending_qeesnbnu0l8&utm_campaign=trending

yeah.

literally run an actual international banker.

for fuck's sakes.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/05/28/liberal-insiders-looking-at-mark-carney-as-trudeaus-successor.html

because sri lanka is a bastion of free expression and democracy, a place that backwards countries like canada and the uk should strive to be more like in their approach towards civil liberties.

if we only we were more like sri lanka....we can dream, we can hope...one day...if we try really hard....

what an idiotic, absurd farce.

bravo to zuckerberg and sandberg for refusing to give these buffoons the time of day.

and, i will lead the street protests, myself, if i wake up to a facebook ban in this country - a premise that i am not actually taking seriously.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/facebook-grand-committee-tuesday-1.5152436

i hope they increase welfare rates and subsidized housing availability to compensate, because this is a formula to increase the poverty rate.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/alberta-youth-minimum-wage-kenney_ca_5ced628be4b0bbe6e334411b?ncid=other_trending_qeesnbnu0l8&utm_campaign=trending

tornadoes happen when hot air slams into cold air, which is why they happen in transitional periods of the year. so, will climate change produce more tornadoes? well, that depends on if it produces more extreme temperature gradients, and that's a very specific question that is more regional than global.

hurricanes, on the other hand, are caused by very hot surface temperatures over open bodies of water. it is a complicated and dangerous thing to do, as there are so many other factors, but the research that exists does suggest a substantive predictive correlation between rising open temperatures and the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. you can make a very crude but very real connection here: more hot water = more hurricanes. that's legit.

you can't do that with tornadoes, because it's not about the global increase in average temperatures but rather about how large the difference in temperature is between competing air masses.

so, let's say the average summer temperature in your region increases by five degrees celsius, but you still find yourself subject to extreme blasts of winter cold. then, you'd get more tornadoes where you live, as the difference between your hot and cold weather extremes is getting larger, which is what causes the tornadoes. on the other hand, if you live in a region where the winter temperatures increase by a large amount, but the summer temperatures remain moderated by the ocean or something else, then you'll see a decrease in the number of tornadoes.

if climate change works out the way the models suggest, and models have margins of error, then i would suspect that the american midwest would see a decrease in the number of tornadoes, which would get pushed further north into canada. the reasoning behind this is that the higher levels of latent heat in the south would act as a greater buffer for the polar winds. the tornadoes would not stop, they would just move further north. but, the south should not get excited, as that means more hurricanes, instead - and, subsequently, more flooding in the mississippi drainage system.

globally speaking, i wouldn't expect an increase in the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere to create larger temperature gradients overall, unless it is happening in conjunction with something else (like a solar minimum), so much as i would expect to see a difference in the overall distribution of tornadoes. some areas would see less tornadoes, others would see more; the sum total of tornadoes, globally, would remain roughly constant.

it's one thing to run your mouth off on social media where nobody really cares what you say and whether it's true or not, but you expect a congress person to actually take the time to do some proper research if she wants to actually be taken seriously by actual adults.

i remember getting asked to play "marco polo" when i was a kid, and thinking they were talking about exploring china. can't we play gulliver's travels, instead?

wait. why are you all running amok?

it actually took me years to figure out what the fuck they were even talking about.

(i just watched a silly documentary on marco polo who, of course, did not actually exist. at all.)

he should call up richard wolff, and make a big deal out of asking him for advice.

he is the expert, here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/05/28/bernie-sanders-backs-policies-dramatically-shift-corporate-power-us-workers/

this article is based on 35 year-old propaganda that is relevant to almost nobody alive today.

the premise is that sanders ought to be in trouble because he supported a communist government in central america in the 80s, but sanders' position is that this wasn't a communist government, and he's right: it wasn't. sanders is even letting the right define the term "communist", which is far too generous, but at least allows for the debate to exist around defined terms; he is conceding the definition of "communist" as "unelected dictatorship", then pointing out that the sandanistas were actually a democratically elected government.

now, here's the thing: if you're like 80 years old, maybe you remember the talking points from the reagan administration and the propaganda from whatever the government news network was in the 80s. i think it was actually abc at the time. something like this might reactivate memories of ancient propaganda, and set you off like a manchurian candidate. it's possible.

but, to 90% of the voting population, the war in nicaragua is something you read about in a history book. and, guess what the history books say? the truth of the matter: that the sandanistas were democratically elected, and in fact very popular amongst the voting populace. it was their popularity that necessitated us intervention, because this is what america has been doing overseas for years: overthrowing popularly elected governments and replacing them with repressive dictatorships, like the contras.

now, you're going to try and counter my statements with some government lies, but, listen, that doesn't work anymore, because we're talking about history, and the books have already been written. the whole world knows this lie.

i'd encourage republicans to push this point; it will only help him, because the fact is that bernie was right.

but, what i'm more curious about is what anybody has to say about biden's role in iran-contra. that is a serious political liability.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/bernie-sanders-pro-sandinista-past-problem.html