Lowbird

Lowbird, 8 months ago

This is a really good article, and I like that they made their data public and put a link to it right in the article.

Also, I knew it was bad, but looking at these numbers it’s even worse than I thought. I recommend reading this one.

Like, this part:

Asymmetry in how children are covered is qualitative as well as quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times ran an Associated Press report Opens in a new tabthat said, “The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Hamas’s assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children and young music festivalgoers.” Notice that young Israelis are referred to as children while young Palestinians are described as people under 18.

During discussions around the prisoner exchanges, this frequent refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was even more stark, with the New York Times referring in one case to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.” (Palestinian children are referred to as “children” later in the report, when summarizing a human rights groups’ findings.)

A Washington Post report from November 21 announcing the truce deal erased Palestinian women and children altogether: “President Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that a deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.” The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.

That is so fucked up. And there are a bunch of other examples like it re. the disparity in the language these newspapers use.

Tangentially, and though this is a whole can of worms and rather beside the point we should be focusing on at the moment: I am also disturbed that it’s apparently still common practice to bundle women together with children like this - if they just mean “noncombatants” or “caregivers” then they should say that, just saying “women and children” like this demeans female combatants and male caregivers alike. I can sort of understand an argument for it in certain contexts where women are subjugated and denied a lot of rights, but this language is used regardless of social contexts.

Lowbird, 9 months ago

I think it’s moreso that TikTok’s algorithms, whatever that black box may contain, are far better for discoverability than those of all the other platforms.

It’s guided by what each individual viewer wants to see (or hates to see, if they can’t resist interacting with videos they hate), so small media bubbles are created for better or worse, but Tiktok will hand on-the-ground news reported by Palestinians to people who want to see it without those viewers having to look for it or know it’s there to be looked for.

By contrast, if you go to youtube, you might see whatever shows up in the general “popular” tab, or you might enter a search for Palestinian news (which requires you to be actively looking for it in the first place vs just there and able to be shown it) but you’re likely to get mainly clips from major US news channels, with their framing of the situation, and maybe some Israeli ones. Not the heaps of videos by random individuals that you’ll find on TikTok. Even if that type of video is uploaded, youtube won’t recommend it if it’s from a new channel and doesn’t already clock a bazillion views. But TikTok can make a little video from a random person go from zero to everywhere very quickly.

TikTok in general is just better for finding “man on the street”/“what is it like to be there right now” reports from affected individuals. As well as for finding other own-voices type videos by individuals who aren’t media stars or news reporters or the hosts of big youtube channels, but who are the ones most directly in a situation.

Of course there is bias or outright misinformation on the platform too. It is best approached with caution and media literacy, but one need only look at U.S. media’s coverage of the current situation to see that is the case for mainstream news organizations too.

Lowbird, 10 months ago

Also, it’s the type of thing that makes me very worried about the fact that most of the algorithms used in things like police facial recognition software, recidivism calculation software, and suchlike are proprietary black boxes.

There are - guaranteed - biases in those tools, whether in their processors or in the unknown datasets they’re trained on, and neither police nor journalists can actually see the inner workings of the software to know what those biases are, to counterbalance them or to recognize if the software is so biased as to be useless.

Lowbird, 11 months ago

Do they not burn? Ever time I’ve thought of trying wooden utensils with a pan I’ve worried I’d burn them, so I’ve always thought they were just for serving or mixing.

Lowbird, 11 months ago

If you use cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless pans, buy a chainmail scrubber. They are SO GOOD.

Also steel wool ball scrubbies are nice for real cast iron disasters, but they can scratch or get gross if used as a first resort.

Nonstick is not worth it and cast iron is a million times easier to care for than people make it out to be. You can wash it with soap - it was only old school lye soaps that were an issue. You can let food soak in it some. If it rusts or the seasoning is damaged, that’s easy to fix. It’s a hunk of iron - don’t worry about babying it if that’s the thing keeping you from trying it!

I find it does sometimes have food stick more rhan with nonstick, depending on whether I’ve been doing the extra cast iron care things recently or not, but the ability to use steel utensils/spatulas/scrubbies compensates for that very well, imo.

Tldr try cast iron or carbon steel if you haven’t!

Lowbird, 11 months ago

And you seem to be suggesting that Israel should now invade - which will mean slaughtering and displacing and injuring innocents as well as Hamas members - because Hamas slaughtered innocents. People have and will die for things Hamas did that they had nothing to do with. This is a “Hamas did it, therefore it’s fine or even morally right for Israel to do it” argument.

Which is the sort of revenge-first argument that will inevitably just fuel the same argument going back the other direction, and around we all go again, and innocents keep dying the entire time.

There won’t be any stopping the cycle of violence while the root issues that caused it in the first place - the Nakba displacement and slaughter of Palestinians from their homeland, and Israel’s subsequent apartheid government and occupation - is acknowledged and addressed.

However and whenever it stops, there will be people who did evil who will go free. Just like there were low-level Nazis and people who helped put the Nazis in power who went consequence-free when WWII ended. It’s a legistic impossibility to deliver perfect justice to ever evildoer. If we make that the goal and try anyway, then all we get is more evil-doing, more revenge-seeking, more blood, and no real ultimate justice to show for it.

So, in my opinion, achieving peace, an end to systemic injustices, and compensating victims as much as possible (e.g. making sure the families of those lost on both sides have food, shelter, safety and education), should take predecence far above and beyond making sure everyone who deserves punishment is punished.

Especially since history’s previous examples of invading a country to stamp out a terrorist organization (cough cough Afghanistan…) didn’t exactly work to end the target organization, let alone the terrorism and violence and so on in yhe region as a whole.