16 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2024
    1. because she was over-prepared and used emails

      Bill Penzey Jr is gaslighting readers again with this statement. The facts are that Hillary Clinton used a private email server for official communications as Secretary of State (2009-2013). The FBI found over 100 classified emails on the server that were not encrypted as required, this included 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret".

      After the investigation began, her IT team deleted ~30,000 emails and destroyed devices by smashing them with hammers, preventing a full investigation. The Obama Administration corrupted FBI found her “extremely careless” (an understatement) but did not recommend charges. This impacted her 2016 presidential campaign - but not because she was "over-prepared and used emails".

      From his statement, it is apparent that Bill Penzey Jr. is not a serious person capable of grasping established facts about the world around him and has no business pontificating on political matters. At worst, he's spreading deliberate misinformation.

    2. all because Biden’s son had a computer

      Though democrats in politics, the Biden family, and the media lied repeatedly before the election, Hunter Biden’s laptop was confirmed to be confirmed his.

      This is relevant because it contained incriminating photos of Hunter Biden; as a result, Hunter Biden was tried and convicted on Federal gun charges.

      There are still outstanding lawsuits relating to the contents of the laptop as of this writing.

      Bill Penzey, Jr. knows this, and by suggesting that Americans were merely upset that Hunter had a computer is an attempt at gaslighting people, which is dishonest and manipulative.

  2. Apr 2022
  3. Dec 2021
    1. Historians are aware of all this. Yet the overwhelming majority stillconclude that even when European authors explicitly say they areborrowing ideas, concepts and arguments from indigenous thinkers,one should not take them seriously. It’s all just supposed to be somekind of misunderstanding, fabrication, or at best a naive projection ofpre-existing European ideas. American intellectuals, when theyappear in European accounts, are assumed to be mererepresentatives of some Western archetype of the ‘noble savage’ orsock-puppets, used as plausible alibis to an author who mightotherwise get into trouble for presenting subversive ideas (deism, forexample, or rational materialism, or unconventional views onmarriage).11

      Just as Western historians erase indigenous ideas as misunderstandings or fabrications or outright appropriation of those ideas as pre-existing ideas in European culture, is it possible that we do the same thing with orality and memory? Are medievalists seeing mnemotechniques of the time and not properly interpreting them by not seeing them in their original contexts and practices?

      The idea of talking rocks, as an example, is dismissed as lunacy, crazy, or some new-age hokum, but in reality it's at the far end of the spectrum. It's so unknowable for Western audiences that it's wholly dismissed rather than embraced, extended, and erased.

      What does the spectrum of potentially appropriated ideas look like? What causes their adoption or not, particularly in cases of otherwise cultural heterodoxy?

  4. Nov 2021
    1. Robert George has created the Academic Freedom Alliance, a group that intends to offer moral and legal support to professors who are under fire, and even to pay for their legal teams if necessary. George was inspired, he told me, by a nature program that showed how elephant packs will defend every member of the herd against a marauding lion, whereas zebras run away and let the weakest get killed off. “The trouble with us academics is we’re a bunch of zebras,” he said. “We need to become elephants.”

      There's something intriguing here with this cultural analogy of people to either elephants or zebras.

      The other side of this is also that of the accusers, who on the whole have not been believed or gaslit for centuries. How can we simultaneously be elephants for them as well?

  5. Sep 2021
    1. The result has not been a gratifying bulking up of our neural “muscle.” On the contrary, all the mental effort we’ve mustered over the past year has left many of us feeling depleted and distracted, unequal to the tasks that never stop arriving in our inboxes. When the work we’re putting in doesn’t produce the advertised rewards, we’re inclined to find fault with ourselves. Maybe we’re insufficiently gritty; maybe, we think, we’re just not smart enough. But this interpretation is incorrect.

      We've been gaslighting ourselves about how our brains work. It's not a muscle, having "grit", and many of our attempts at productivity are completely wrong.

  6. Mar 2021
  7. Oct 2020
    1. Some (36%) said they agreed that the threat of “‘fake news’ had made them distrust the credibility of any news.” Almost half (45%) lacked confidence with discerning “real news” from “fake news,” and only 14% said they were “very confident” that they could detect “fake news.”

      These numbers are insane!

  8. Jul 2020
  9. Apr 2020
  10. Mar 2020
    1. it really doesn’t take much clicking around the regional Internet to find a gaslighting cookie notice that pops up with a mocking message saying by using this website you’re consenting to your data being processed how the site sees fit — with just a single ‘Ok’ button to affirm your lack of say in the matter.
  11. Jun 2019
    1. Generally, modern-day gaslighting takes place in the context of a relationship in which one partner is manipulative, self-centered, low on empathy, and has a vested interest in always being right
  12. Jul 2018
    1. When messaging is coordinated and consistent, it easily fools our brains, already exhausted and increasingly reliant on heuristics (simple psychological shortcuts) due to the overwhelming amount of information flashing before our eyes every day. When we see multiple messages about the same topic, our brains use that as a short-cut to credibility. It must be true we say — I’ve seen that same claim several times today.
  13. Aug 2017