I wonder what happens to someone whose United States citizenship is revoked. My president-elect suggested this as a potential consequence to burning the American flag. [1] Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! — Donald J.…
So, the social media sphere is abuzz over our President-elect tweeting about a member of the cast of the Hamilton play reading a statement to the VP-elect. The P-elect seemed upset about it all. The VP-elect seemed amused people are buzzing about a non-issue and people should expect the P-elect to be the kind of person they…
Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements, a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect… Repetition makes statements easier to process (i.e., fluent) relative to new statements, leading people to the (sometimes) false conclusion that they are more truthful… Indeed, illusory truth effects arise even without prior exposure—people rate statements presented in high-contrast (i.e., easy-to-read) fonts…
Saw something that looked clickbait-y and for once glad I clicked on it because I learned a new term I want to scream from the mountaintops: bullshit curation. Clickbait sounds almost respectable. One of my favorite recent terms I learned from Jon Stewart was “Bullshit Mountain.” It refers to the Orwellian spin of stories from political…
Saw a probably clickbait title “Mishaps overshadow message at the Republican National Convention.” It got me thinking that this is probably another case of media attention hyperbole. The media fixation story I recall was several years ago about child kidnappings. Every week it made national headlines about a child who disappeared or was taken by…
In my naive freshman year I was arriving at campus around 7:30am to get a relatively decent parking spot and only have a ten minute walk to class. I could arrive at 7:45am, but the walk would be closer to fifteen minutes. Plus, I could use the extra 20 minutes to study before my 8:00am…
(There seem to be two Black Guns Matter campaigns. One about Blacks owning guns. The other about owning tactical rifles also showing up as #blackriflesmatter.) Several years ago before Orlando, before Charleston, and maybe even before Sandy Hook, I had a conversation with my mother about guns and gun rights and gun control. I made a…
Well, calling the current political, social, or even game discourses debates is probably too generous. That implies discussion which means an attempt at listening to the other if only to hear their point of view enough to counter it. At this point, much of what I see are the use of memes to perpetuate Straw…