Yeah, sometimes.

But, like Lemmy is (almost) entirely populated by people who so strongly disagreed with the political drama (either uspol or redditpol) of reddit that they took specific action about it.

It’s a wonder Lemmy isn’t all radical politics.

Have you seen the final count of the vote (which was released a week or two ago)? Neither candidate won the popular vote (Trump 49.9%, Kamala 48.4%) which was not predicted by the polling. They were projecting a very close race, but everything else was wrong.

The people conducting the polls use a technique called random sampling to select candidates from a pool that gives more accuracy. But it’s not perfect and the academics think it’s sus too (I dropped a few studies in another comment).

You have to dig for it a bit, but the actual survey can be downloaded (as a pdf) from CNBC. Their data show bias. The data over-representing people over 60. Their education numbers are biased towards the less educated. Their racial numbers are biased (slightly) towards white people. Their income numbers are biased towards wealthier people.

Their voting data shows a major bias towards people who voted, but I’m actually okay with that one, at least in the context of the political reporting. The people who didn’t vote’s opinion on the political situation in the US is not as important as the people who voted. As part of an economic survey about holiday spending that also asked questions about the recent election, it’s not so great though.

No one of those biases would be a big deal, but in totality they add up to a significant and misleading bias that favors the opinions of older, white, middle-class respondents who vote and graduated high school (but attained no further education). That demographic is also the biggest consumer of CNBC content, so the reason for the bias seems fairly obvious. And again, as an “All-America Economic Survey” that’s not really a big deal, especially considering the massive gaps in the data they polled. But as a barometer for political opinion it skews the data in very important and meaningful ways.

Nothing. That information is not actually useful for most people. But I fully acknowledge that’s just my opinion.

A better solution would be different metrics for different topics. Consumer faith in the economy can be measured by spending, especially if that data could be broken down by demographic. That data absolutely exists, whether businesses would make it public is abother thing entirely.

The results of the election, especially given it was less than six weeks ago, is a much more compelling data point for how Americans feel about the president elect and his policies. Just under half of all Americans voted, so that’s a pretty decent sample.

The “best solution” would be for news organizations to pool resources and do it more reliably. That would mean no more flash polls or opinion polls, and favor longer term tracking of public sentiment.

Social media companies also have much more robust sets of data that better encapsulate public opinion, they could share that quarterly or even just sell reports to news outlets.

But polls are so unreliable and so many people blindly trust and believe them, eliminating that entire class of reporting would be preferable to continuing to publish and circulate that information.

Most of them would be from an academic source most likely. That kind of polling would be very expensive and time consuming. There probably aren’t commercial, short term polls with that level of rigor.

A 2020 study published by Berkeley found that the accuracy of election surveys (which are conducted similarly to opinion polls) was grossly exaggerated.

A 2018 Cambridge study says “the level of error has always been substantially beyond that implied by stated margins of error.”

For good, reliable data, several orders of magnitude more than 1,000 and it would need to have the methodology and data published along with it.

Opinion polls in general are not reliable sources of information and the wrong approach anyway. Telling people that X% of their neighbors hold Y opinion is a well known and effective propaganda and marketing tool for influencing opinion and decision making.

It’s essentially institutional peer pressure.

Overall, the survey found that 54% of the public are “comfortable and prepared to support” Trump as president. That’s down 2 points from when he took office in 2016. Some 41% are not comfortable, up 5 points from 2016.

The survey of 1,000 people nationwide was taken Dec. 5-8. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

The survey found 60% say deploying the military to the border to stop illegal drugs and human trafficking should be a 2025 priority for the new administration, with an additional 13% saying it should still be done but later in the term. The proposal is only opposed outright by 24%, including 51% of Democrats, 12% of independents and 3% of Republicans.

Support for raising tariffs is also more lukewarm, with 27% backing it outright and 24% saying it can be done later in the term. It’s opposed by 42% of respondents.

I’m sorry, this article isn’t worth the bits it’s saved in. Trying to read the national opinion and using just 1,000 people is bad science. At best this represents the (very small) portion of the population who would waste their time responding to a junk survey.

Neither argument hold any merit and is an example of the tyranny of history. Who cares what a bunch of dead assholes thought was theirs? The people who live there (not the politicians who pretend to represent their interests) are the only people that have any legitimate claim to authority on what should be done about the region.

I wish I had more upvotes for you. Thank you for the clarification. I’ll edit my post to reflect that so as not to accidentally spread misinformation

It is divisive propaganda. Probably.

The US Government has said the drone sightings are not a hazard to air traffic nor do they pose a threat to national security. Many of the drones have been sighted around military installations and equipment which, given their “no-threat” official position they probably know what they are and either can’t or won’t say.

Based on the drone’s size (larger than some small manned aircraft flown by citizen pilots), observable flight time (2+ hours), altitude (above 400ft/~120m), and the number of them, they are almost certainly a registered and monitored commercial drone or a defense contractor test.

It’s likely propaganda because of it’s timing to the CEO shooting and the way in which the state(s), federal government, and media have been responding. A US senator claimed that they were from an “Iranian Mothership” off the coast of the United States. Governors have been giving the public’s curiosity an official voice. The (social) media has been amplifying the story because those companies have CEO’s who also have made their fortunes on screwing over regular folks.

I imagine from a certain perspective this all might sound like the conspiracy nut has stopped taking her meds, but it’s much more banal than that. Civil unrest is not good to maintain the status quo which is what governments and media organizations are (broadly) designed to do. Most of their efforts are not malicious; they’re really just trying to keep the peace.

tl;dr The drones are a distraction from the growing civil unrest for the subset of the population that is fantasy prone to get distracted by.

edit: My knowledge of aviation law seems to have been largely wrong. A response to this comment clarifies the rules and regulations regarding drones. Based on the information they shared, I still think the parts of the government that care about our airspace would be aware of craft the size and altitude of the drones sighted.

The same word I say first everyday: “shit.”

In a lengthy Substack article — which he titled “A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies” — Moore wrote that Mangione’s alleged mention of him has resulted in requests for the director to comment. “It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer,” he wrote. “My phone has been ringing off the hook which is bad news because my phone doesn’t have a hook. Emails are pouring in. Text messages. Requests from many in the media.”

Moore went on to write that many of the requests inquired whether he would condemn the murder of Thompson. “After the killing of the CEO of United HealthCare, the largest of these billion dollar insurance companies, there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry,” Moore wrote. “Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them.”

He went on to write that the anger is completely justified, and that “it is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”

Moore added that “yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away.”

It’s hard to imagine the guy who directed the music video for Rage Against the Machine’s Sleep Now In The Fire saying anything else.

In Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was captured on Monday, local police told ABC News they also faced threats and negative blowback for arresting the suspect, as did the McDonald’s where he was arrested.

CIS assessed it “highly likely that threats will continue to target [law enforcement] and other public offices participating in Mangione’s case.”

This is just sloppy reporting. CIS says cops and other officials will receive more threats, not that they will be in more danger. But it’s 2024 and ABC is a major news outlet that depends on keeping the government and (especially) His Majesty happy to keep their ota broadcast license.

This reeks of propaganda trying to sway the “blue liners” away from support for the coming class war. It makes sense. The “cop feelings > children lives” set are violently stupid and (usually) well armed.

If CEO’s are the problem why would you buy DDD merch from a dragon? Seriously, if you want performative swag hit the thrift store and make that sh!t yourself.

It’s more nuanced than that. At least from the small section of that population I’ve interacted with it seems like there is very little malice in their actions. They don’t care and/or don’t understand the impact of their choices.

I had the misfortune of having to sit through a couple meetings with the First Buddy (when a company he owned contracted one I worked for) and he is the only exception I’ve encountered. He struck me as actively hostile as if he viewed everyone around him who wasn’t agreeing with him as threats to be immediately and definitively dealt with.

I’d suggest that the dragons of the world come in many colors and alignments.

The proposed bill would enable the state to start building a strategic bitcoin reserve by accepting taxes, fees and donations in bitcoin that would be held for a minimum of five years, Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione announced on an X Spaces event Thursday.

Texas is not only the second-largest economy in the U.S. and the eighth-largest in the world, it also has the highest concentration of bitcoin miners in the country. The hope is that some of them will begin paying their taxes in cryptocurrency. The initial proposal does not include a direct bitcoin purchasing strategy.

Why stop there, why doesn’t Austin issue a state coin called Alamo or Lonestar? The state could use it as a financial device to fund capping all the abandoned wells across the state or building the concentration camps to house all the queers and brown people. So what if state governments aren’t allowed to mint their own currency, the constitution is just some piece of paper liberal Washington used to illegally deprive governors of being little monarchs.

Back in reality. That’s an insanely bad idea. Bitcoin is extremely volatile and Texas is going to get screwed.

Yeah, I mean the quotes I pulled were the most self-aware wolves nonsense in the article, but the rest were basically either “we need more security” or “oh no the poors are onto us”.

I’ve never met a CEO or member of the ultra-wealthy that wasn’t either a sociopath, narcissist, or completely detached from reality. I’ve only met about a dozen of those kinds of folks but they all had that same vibe.

Are you surprised?

The biggest fear is that the hatred expressed in social media posts about Thompson—and glorification of 26-year-old shooting suspect Luigi Mangione—will lead to copycat attacks, says Bill George, a former Medtronic CEO and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. “People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero,” he told Fortune.

Fortune reached out to dozens of CEOs this week to get a sense of how they’re reacting to this moment. The majority declined to comment. We are quoting anonymously those who did respond, to allow them the freedom to give us their most candid answers. These have been edited for length and clarity. Some have previously been reported by Fortune.

— “The disconnect between public perception and personal humanity has been striking, with some commentary bordering on dehumanizing. This highlights the critical need to humanize leadership and address the pressures faced in high-visibility roles.”

— “When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”

— “I think we’re living through very seriously dangerous times where we’re normalizing antisocial behavior and normalizing violence on both extremes—on the far right, and on the far left. We basically moved, over the last 10 to 12 years, to a world that I don’t recognize. It’s very scary … I do understand that there’s enormous amounts of injustice and that we need to bring everybody along, and there’s a lot of things that we do, but I don’t think revolution is the answer to solving problems.” (a former CEO)

Collecting stuff is basically the ultimate hoarder hobby.

Haha, yes those creatures are so strange, isn’t that right fellow humans? Who do they think they’re fooling? Get a copy of A Changeling’s Guide to Being Human and blend in better, aw jeez.