Part of the problem with this approach is that prediction engines are predicted on the idea that there’s more of a thing to predict.

So unless they really, really go out of their way with modeling the records to account for this, they’ll have a system very strongly biased towards predicting more criminal behavior for everyone fed into it.

So far. But the thing with viruses is they are susceptible to mutations.

We’re already seeing it jump across several mammalian lines. Probably only a matter of time.

The thing about disease is that it spreads.

There are people today dealing with serious complications of COVID even years later who were infected by stupid people doing stupid selfish things.

Everyone suffers if morons become willing petri dishes.

“This is not fine.”

This has been a fixed problem for about a year now.

You’re awfully talkative for the dead, btw.

With the advances in AI this is no longer as reliable an option, and will quickly become less so.

But absolutely letting someone know where you are going and as many identifying details about who you are meeting is wise. As is having them check in on you by a certain time after.

They don’t mean in terms of aid.

The US has refused to submit themselves or their soldiers to international criminal law for a long time now, for plenty of other reasons.

Not at all. I have never believed in the supernatural, so that’s not related to my interest or lack thereof in the material.

I am actually toying with the idea of writing out some of the Thomas research in more depth soon, actually.

Still not under a real name like with a book or anything, but some longer posts vs just comments.

Don’t talk about the Emperor that way. The Senate forced his hand.

I support religion as long as it gives people a sense of community, hope, and strength.

I used to feel this way. Then 2020 happened and I realized just how damaging any degree of magical thinking and faith based reasoning was for a society.

I no longer think there’s an innocuous amount of irrationality. Just varying degrees of social harm that come with any of it.

Right-wing media has really done a number on critical thinking.

Correlation is not cause and effect.

It’s more likely that the lack of critical thinking was there in the first place and served as the soil for right wing media to sink its roots into.

Can’t believe this shit-hole country was an actual threat ever.

We have representatives of the US political party leading for President right now echoing Kremlin propaganda on the floor of Congress and their candidate is cheered on and welcomed for saying he’ll be a dictator who will undermine Western diplomatic relationships opposing Russia and would even encourage Putin to invade those countries, all while state level party representatives are literally saying that ‘democracy’ is a bad word that they oppose.

How the fuck is Russia not an “actual threat?”

There’s more to modern warfare than nukes, missiles, and tanks. And by the end of November Putin stands a very good chance of having won the kind of megalomaniacal victory that Stalin or Hitler couldn’t have possibly dreamed of.

Looking for something to do?

You can throw the first stone for only $9.99.

Until it isn’t.

Ask Gaddafi how ‘fear’ worked out as a tactic in the end.

Do you even know the timeline of the Watergate story?

It goes on for a very long time and started out nowhere as big a deal as it ended up.

I have a hard time seeing material differences funding would have made to the situation Woodward and Bernstein found themselves in or how it would have added a plausible sudden threat to their life following up on the initial story (that they didn’t write).

If a reputable reporter (or even anonymous tag for someone with a strong reputational representation on the platform of following through) posted “major story related to undisclosed leak connected to US election” or “associated with offshore banking” you think (a) that it would have prevented the story from occurring or (b) wouldn’t have been funded?

You do know that Deep Throat was feeding information well after the reporting first occurred, right?

Ah, yes, because crowdfunded platforms have never been connected to major international leaks.

And what US media company were those initially leaked to again?

No, definitely not a board of editors.

Independent peer review is not the same as a fixed board or editorial oversight.

You don’t think there would have been moneyed interests in exposing Watergate?

The more correct statement would be that the many, many instances of abuse since Watergate would have been more major news stories with this model.

Do you know why Snowden didn’t give the documents to a single US news organization? It was because the NYT sat on a story for over a year about how the NSA had a dedicated room at a major ISP for wiretapping the entire country. Why? Because it was an election year for Bush’s reelection and they didn’t want to sway the result. Google it.

So he leaked it to The Guardian. Where not only were their offices eventually raided in a separate country, but not that long after the US chief ended up becoming the head of the Guardian’s entire news bureau and today their coverage is indistinguishable from the rest of US media.

After Vietnam the US intelligence services realized that the 4th estate was a serious problem for their agendas. You may know that after Watergate Bernstein wrote about the CIA’s relationship with the media in depth. When asked a few years ago about it he now says “oh, I don’t think they have much time for that anymore.” If you believe that, then yeah, you might think something like Watergate could still happen today with the current media climate.

Personally, I’d rather place my bets on crowdsourcing a prisoner’s dilemma where competing interests would need to fund actual investigative journalism to spin their narrative in those channels rather than simply having state puppet media as a propagandist mouthpiece where inconvenient stories are buried or sat on and the only differentiating factor is which partisan puppet masters are pulling the strings.

You won’t have something like this in mainstream press, and that outfit only exists because of the Guardian falling apart after Snowden. And while they still do a decent job, they are a shadow of themselves years ago.

Legitimate media is being systematically dismantled year after year and being pushed more underground, and you’re complaining that a crowdfunded model would prohibit the investigative journalism of the 1970s?

That kind of journalism no longer exists and hasn’t for decades.

Watergate couldn’t happen today irrespective of a crowdsourced advance model for independent journalism, and if you don’t realize that you aren’t paying close enough attention. The only ‘leaks’ you see in mainstream US press now are the ones being fed by the press departments of one of the three letter agencies (now even foreign three letter agencies for some outlets).

And nation states aside, stories smaller than you’d even believe have successfully had corporate sponsors threaten to pull ad dollars unless the stories were taken down. We’re taking tiny things where the only people reading it were the people at these companies with the Google alert for mentions of the company.

Just what kind of media climate do you think you live within?