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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31066 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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An article about fusion cannot be viewed through a political lens like anything to do with race.

I mean, it can, but more importantly an article about fusion can be easily viewed through an “I have no idea what I’m talking about” lens. This usually manifests as asking and answering the wrong questions rather than providing flatly incorrect information.

Regarding fusion in particular, I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure that the prospects for fusion being much of an improvement on fission are very low with most current designs (because they'll still have similarly high capex costs), but this is almost never mentioned in articles about fusion power.

Perhaps one way to test this would be to check how the NYTs reports on non-political stuff compared to sources which are presumed to not have a political agenda, like science websites.

Perhaps one way to test this would be to check how the NYTs reports on non-political stuff

Non-political stuff? Hard to find something like this in the current year. If NYT decides to give space to something, it must have some political importance.

compared to sources which are presumed to not have a political agenda, like science websites.

As others in this thread said, mainstream science websites and magazines have the same agenda as NYT.

So, how can normie noobs check whether NYT coverage of, for example, Australian cockroaches, is accurate (without spending few years of their lives studying entomology)?

Well, they cannot.

Best hope is to find some world class cockroach experts (fortunately, in the age of twitter, you can find genuine experts on every conceivable topic here, broadcasting to few dozen followers) and ask.

Do not ask directly "Is NYT article about cockroaches scientifically accurate, or as accurate as usual?".

Just no not mention NYT at all, just write that you are interested in cockroaches and want to learn more, ask curious questions about their life, and among these questions send some about topics covered in NYT.

"Is it true that North Australian giant cockroach regularly changes gender?"

I would assume most science websites have more or less the same agenda as the NYT.

+1 Pop sci websites share both the biases and incompetency of the NYT.

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