selflesscentrism
Fact-Checkers Proven False; Admit Blame in Attempting to Censor Candace Owens on Facebook “Joe Biden is literally and legally not the President-elect." -Candace Owens 11/12/20 TRUE OR FALSE: Candace Owens identifies herself as a woman? Joseph Biden is the 46th President of the United States? Candace Owens is identified as a person of color? PolitiFact was caught blue-handed for censoring a woman of color? Joe Biden is the President-elect of the Associated Press? OJ Simpson is responsible for the deaths of Nicole Brown & Ron Goldman? Accept that you are biased. Your feelings don't care about your facts. Or is it the other way around?. It's immaterial (ie: does not matter) if you believe in OrangeManBad, trunalimunumaprzure or niether. What should matter is that you would refrain from repeating false statements. Look at your bias from both sides (if that is even possible for you): A) You support Biden-Harris and believe they are the best choice. B) You Support Trump-Pence and believe they are the best choice. C) If you don't believe either, you can try to look at it from either side, A or B. If you believe A, should your preferred outcome materialize at ANY cost? In other words, if you were a Biden person, what is the furthest length you and fellow supporters might go to ensure he reaches the White House? Would you lie and cheat if you had to? Would you stand by and let others lie for you and to you? If you believe A, should your preferred outcome materialize at ANY cost? In other words, if you were a Trump person, what is the furthest length you and fellow supporters might go to ensure he remains in the White House? Would you lie and cheat if you had to? Would you stand by and let others lie for you and to you? Serving Justice or Serving Your Biases? Did you believe and that "justice was served" when OJ Simpson was acquitted of 2 counts of murder in 1995?. At the time, almost half (47%) of all people, regardless of race, SAID they did. But did they really think he was innocent? Some of the 12 jurors (who were sequestered for the entire trial) have changed their opinion. This is important NOW because you may be sequestering yourself or having facts sequestered for you in 2020. We are all sometimes guilty of introspectional laziness when it serves us. Now is not a good time for that. No explanation from PolitiFact Attorneys:
Fact Checkers DO INDEED LIE and it takes time money and lawyers to get them to stop. When Candace Owens tried to prove to PolitiFact what was truth versus fiction- a fiction that PolitiFact has itself propagated- the censorship lords would have none of it. Only after Owens' lawyering up did the Gods of tech show their mortality: "Upon first glance, this video from Ms. Owens was labeled false from PolitiFact in error. We already have removed the label from the video and you should now be able to see it unobstructed. As we’re about 25 minutes into this, we still don’t know how or why the post was labeled ‘false.’ We are investigating and hope to share more information with you formally on Monday.
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Latently Biased 'Authority' Defines you an "Exceptional reader" if you Donate Wikipedia is the self-declared gatekeeper of authoritative information on the Internet and proves they are with these two statements: A) "If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you." So.... If you are an exceptional reader who has NOT already donated, then....What? B) "Show the volunteers who bring you reliable, neutral information that their work matters." Show them what? They are volunteers, correct? What are you showing them when you donate? Let's unpack the part about "reliable, neutral information" and how that relates to "their work". The volunteers are humans and "their work" is to edit and arbitrate what is valid and what sources are qualified as authoritative and noteworthy. FULL AWKWARD MESSAGE HERE To all our readers in the U.S., It might be awkward, but please don't scroll past this. This Saturday, for the 1st time recently, we humbly ask you to defend Wikipedia's independence. 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If you are an exceptional reader who has already donated, we sincerely thank you. If you donate just $2.75, Wikipedia could keep thriving for years. Most people donate because Wikipedia is useful. If Wikipedia has given you $2.75 worth of knowledge this year, take a minute to donate. Show the volunteers who bring you reliable, neutral information that their work matters. Thank you. Wikipedia has come full circle now, just in time for Dystopian New Year. Can you recall the time 15-20 years ago when citing Wikipedia as a source would either get you heckled or an automatic "F"? In the early days, authentic authorities like college professors and legitimate publishers cautioned that due to Wiki's being subject to public edits of any article, the risk of information vandalism (that a Wikipedia article could be altered by anyone) disqualified it as a valid source.
Now, according to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is the most authoritative source for information on the Internet, narrowly out-legitimizing Snopes.com "Wikipedia is neither reliable nor neutral" said your 2001 college professor. To see the raw irony of this story you must look beyond the karmic risk factors of opening your home to strangers for a fee while disguising it as hospitality. The law of diminishing returns applies to this subject both literally and as a well intended pun. As AirBNB prepares to bring shares of its common stock public, this S-1 Registration Statement filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commision lists among its many “risk factors” the dilemma of Google’s algorithm subjecting the home-sharing site to being arbitrarily outranked in organic search results.
"We believe that our SEO results have been adversely affected by the launch of Google Travel and Google Vacation Rental Ads, which reduce the prominence of our platform in organic search results for travel-related terms and placement on Google." Going public is the two-sided sword in which the sharpest side is having to disclose material facts to the public in advance. In this case, the very-woke home sharing platform from San Francisco CA has come to terms with Google optimizing its own search engine quite ironically in the very same way AirBNB optimizes the way you see available listings- that is arbitrarily. It's like being awokened with a splash of ice water in your face and peering into a big mirror. Most grownups think of “search engine optimization” as the practice of websites attempting to outsmart each other- and the various search engines themselves- to win the war of ranking in keyword searches. The ice-cold reality is that the “O” in SEO actually pertains only to the “SE” in question. Plainly, search engines of all types optimize results with their own deliberate intentions, whether for advertising revenue, social causes or public policies- and they do so by blaming an algorithm. If you can momentarily place aside your own view of antitrust laws and try to neutralize your disposition of whether or not Google is monopolistic, you can see that AirBNB just got woke to the irony that they are not special anymore. Diminishing returns speaks to shrinking margins and the reality of a seemingly anti-competitive market. AirBNB thought they had some kind of an advantage and all they got was a participation trophy. Over-performing Asian kids in Washington State were lumped in with white students to tip the scales in favor of overstating white privilege. Is it disgraceful or just ironic humor? You decide.
Randonymous came across this article in Reason.com the gist of which shines vitamin D on North Thurston Public School cheating all 16,000 while pulling major wool over their parents' eyes. After a facing a backlash the school district walked it right back on the same day. One of our district’s Strategic Plan goals is Continuous Growth – All Students, All Subjects. One of the outcomes we are working towards in this goal is to have an “increased growth rate of underperforming groups eliminating achievement and opportunity gaps.” For this reason, in one of our online documents from 2019, titled “Monitoring Student Growth,” we evaluated the achievement data by “Students of Color” and “Students of Poverty.” In the document we grouped White and Asian students together. Upon reflection and response by members of the Asian-American community, we will change how we look at achievement data and appreciate the feedback we received. We apologize for the negative impact we have caused and removed the monitoring report from our website. We feel it is important to continue the practice of disaggregating data, so we make equity-based decisions. When we reviewed our disaggregated data it showed that our district is systemically meeting the instructional needs of both our Asian and White students and not meeting the instructional needs for our Black, Indigenous, Multi-racial, Pacific Islander and Latinx students. The intent was never to ignore Asian students as “students of color” or ignore any systemic disadvantages they too have faced. We continue to learn and grow in our work with equity as a public-school system and we will ensure that we learn from this and do better in the future. We welcome additional feedback and ideas for our district moving forward in this very urgent work. Send to communityrelations@nthurston.k12.wa.us. Today is Mr. X's Birthday. Part of the following examples are gleaned by paying attention to him. Remembering this date without a CRM reminder is a dividend earned from the investment of attention paid to him over the past decade. Gratitude is bliss. Succeed at Failing
Protect Others from Harm When Sacrificing Ourselves for our Purpose or Higher Calling. We inevitably hurt ourselves in our deep work and that’s acceptable. Maybe it’s only a few blisters along the way or perhaps as harmful as compromising our health and wellbeing with lack of rest, exercise and/or proper nutrition. We might even face an outright financial collapse. No matter what, we will sacrifice ourselves in some ways. Among the biggest sacrifices we’ll make for a higher calling is failed relationships or simply foregoing them in the first place. A short list of historic figures reveals exemplars who either never married or, if they did, stayed away from home and kept few, if any, friends in the midst of deliberate practice. We may fail in many ways on a great path but most of us will simply fail to succeed at failing-and this keeps us from realizing our greatness. Closely studying historic examples of great failures are helpful but we have to look harder for those because they are the success stories seldom told. Much closer to home are the more obvious cases. A sampling of our peers, family and friends offer examples of squandered lives not lived to full potential because these people, quite simply, failed to accept failure as a gift. Instead, the stigma, fear and rejection of our imminent failures stop us from trying to succeed- this wisdom is as well documented as it is ignored but the point of this example is go one step further. We must protect others from collateral harm when we fail as much so as when we succeed. It's okay if we squash our bodies or cut a decade off our life expectancies and even finish our life in poverty. The only big regret of a great life well-lived may be our leaving a wake of other lives affected or harmed by the marks we’ve made on history. Simple examples include missing our childrens’ school events, leaving our successors to suffer in financial ruin or that our life’s great work and its benefit on society dies with us. Maintain Eye-Level Contact Indiscriminately with others Eye-level means in the figurative sense while making literal eye contact. And it means becoming acutely aware of our tendency to classify people into groups by status and hierarchies. When we come face to face with a hero or someone we should normally “look up to”, we’ll do us both the favor of not looking up or down to the other, being star struck or holding one up on a figurative pedestal. Instead, we’ll practice looking and talking to each other like our equal. Don’t mistake this for a manipulative power tactic to control the dynamics of the engagement. Instead, we look at each other equally as a dignified display of basic human respect, the kind that we are born with, not the kind that we can earn and lose. "The reason why this practice is valuable is because it is extremely rare" Starting off at “eye-level” will put most all others at ease while establishing mutual respect and rapport for both of us. This is an uncommon practice and, as such, needs to be deliberate and disciplined as it is formed into our habit. The best way to develop this habit is the reciprocal- when we come face to face with others in any other supposed level or hierarchy. Whether we are in the presence of our company CEO or we ARE the CEO, an Olympic gold medalist, astronaut or homeless person. Look at and speak with all others at eye-level, including minor children. Our social behavioral tendency is to demonstrate our subservient position to “higher-ups” when we greet and engage with them and we are habitualized into this. Conversely, the tendency is to put others in subservient positions when they are seemingly lower down on the hierarchical food chain. Action Verbs: Pay, Hold & Give Attention When we pay for and exchange our money & time for “things”, we forfeit our time and money for them. When we pay for and give our disciplined attention to people, nature and things we multiply, make and keep more of it. The value of disciplined attention is a sustainable resource. Time and money are divisible, become scarce and depleted. Real property wears under the sun and gets weathered with the seasons or potentially destroyed in natural disasters. The values of capital assets such as stocks and bonds are marked to market, subject to dilution, involuntary mergers and acquisitions and divestiture. The value of supposedly “material” things and tangible assets are measurable however uncertain. Trust your Truth Because it’s Inescapable When it’s suddenly dark or stormy, as it inevitably is or will be, we can lose our way from our true path looking for quick shelter or following the nearest light. We can be distracted by false targets and forget our truth, our purpose or calling. Our energy can become diverted and our attention gets divided & distracted when we find ourselves in turbulence. When doubt arises we question our purpose and can feel a sense of loneliness. This is the most important time when we need to remember that we have our purpose, to think of protecting others now and to pay acute attention to the moment instead of striving for temporary light and shelter. We must have faith that no matter what scrutiny or cynicism we face from others and doubts that evoke within that our true intentions will will come to light within and illuminate from within. This is how the truth saves and frees us and why we need to trust it. Know Why. Or At Least Keep Curious Whenever in Doubt How we are doing is more important than what we are doing. Why we are doing is more important than how or what we are doing and even more important than who we are serving. When we consider the profound importance of asking “who am I serving” we can further see the value of what, how and why. How Biased Are Your Google Search Results? Image you’re visiting a landfill. You’re at the dump and looking around at an abundance of refuse, waste that other people have discarded and left behind in large piles. It all looks collectively worthless and without value. The individual pieces of garbage- parts of plastic, wood, paper, metals and glass- each appears to be valueless on its own. Close your eyes for a moment and picture yourself at the landfill while you try to remember the last time you were in such a place. Can you image the sights, sounds and smells?
Now imagine the last Google search you clicked and the way those search results appeared on the page as a collection of words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. Can you consider those results similarly to the piles of trash and waste you imagined at the landfill? Let’s improve on this by considering how these certain, individual pieces of trash that seem totally unwanted and without value might actually have value-either individually or collectively. You might consider how pieces of wood, paper and cardboard could be collected and burned in a campfire, to be used for heating or to cook food. Can you think of how aluminum cans or plastic bottles have value when they are collected, sorted and delivered to a recycling center and exchanged for cash? It takes some effort and energy to actually do this or to even think about these objects in this manner. As you imagine yourself at the stinky landfill can you try to appreciate how the next Google search result you generate has a similar implied lack of value? It’s pretty easy to consider the similarities of a Google search result to a pile of refuse left behind at your local county dump. The point is to realize the stark differences between implied values of each of these examples on their face. A stinky dump is full of worthless crap that nobody wants nor has any use for. But how is a Google search result any more valuable than the piles of waste at a landfill? There is no correct answer and this isn't a trick question. Imagine now that tomorrow you will visit the same landfill and you notice things have changed overnight. You can see that a team of workers has rearranged everything and there are new piles of trash organized into stacks and heaps. There are a few piles of only wood pieces next to a few piles of glass pieces and then another few piles of aluminum pieces. You are so lucky to have had this work completed for you without you having to expend any energy, time or effort to do so yourself. Is this a good way for us to look at our next Google search result? How have the order of results been rearranged for us and how might my results be rearranged differently than your results? Finally, what if there were a way for us to reshuffle the entire contents of the results in random order? Would that be much different than looking at a giant heap of garbage at our local landfill? Can you notice how you-or someone else close by- is displaying high conviction about something? In other words, think of someone who is unswayable in their conviction and absolutely convinced about a position or perspective they’ve adopted. When you think of “adopted” think of adopting a child, for instance. That child is forever yours. To get some context let’s consider financial decisions based on changing economic factors. Or perhaps you can think of a social ideal or political theme.
When we take a position on a matter, we are so convinced of it that we plant our flag into the soil of that position- we own it. We have decided that we are “right” and convinced that we have chosen correctly. What happens next is important: What are we going to do now that we are convinced? You may notice, if you pay close enough attention to yourself and others, that “high conviction” may not correlate directly with high decisiveness to act on those convictions. Proposed another way, you might be certain of the near term direction of the economy, but waiting for more confirmation to decide whether to buy or sell real estate, make investment decisions or convert currencies. Here is the question: What could be the cause that leads our high conviction to the effect of low decidability? Could it be the burden of having to process an infinite sea of existing and forthcoming information? We may be convinced, but not ready to act. If this resonates with you, please continue reading with an open mind. The information firehose of contemporary society is exacerbated by technology- there is so much information readily available- and new info “coming soon”- that it actually might be setting us back and counterproductive to our own best interests as a society, community, family and as individuals. It’s springtime 2020 and the topic is Covid 19 (CoronaVirus) that has essentially brought the global economy to a standstill. It’s a fluid matter and new information is surfacing by the minute. We don’t know how deep or how long this will affect society. So we wait. We may be convinced there’s a “new normal” and that the world we knew in January 2020 has changed forever. We may be sure of this- but we are waiting to see more before making decisions. We’re convinced but can't decide. Why is this? Could it be the spectator sport (our hobby) of news and current events? As we tap and click to stay informed and on top of the latest details, this should empower us and embolden our self confidence to decide. But could it have the opposite effect and actually impair our decisiveness? Email Inbox Analogy Many of us have our primary email account that we have used for logins and subscriptions to various apps and online accounts. These inboxes have become so cluttered with unsolicited spam and alerts that we can hardly keep up with cleaning them up, let alone digesting the contents of each new email. Doesn’t that seem and feel like the nature of news, commentary and keeping up with current events? There’s too much of it to see and process all of it. So, we have to pick and choose as we sift through an enormous pile of information. We scan the sender and subject columns for relevance and click on the ones we want to see first, perhaps not the ones we need to see first. Then we will check again later for new messages. How do we spot this in ourselves and others? The first step, if you’re interested enough, is to look in the mirror. The idea is to look at our own habits in the mirror, figuratively speaking. But we really might consider doing this for real as a primer. Are you really sure about something? What do your actions have to say about that? The community of meditation students are 2 years into a dharma drama stemming from their leader's past transgressions being exposed. In short, he was #metoo'd and consequently knocked off from his throne. The irony is stark and cuts sharply through the community. It is being characterized as having caused a state of groundlessness throughout this community. As a casual observer, I wonder if there are any grounds for that?
Imagine a sporting event or long movie that never ends. All of the athletes and performers continue playing and performing indefinitely. The audience has no idea when the game will end or which team will win. The audience doesn’t know if the film will have a happy or sad ending. If some of the movie’s scenes might be shocking or scary maybe the other scenes may be sad and invoke an emotional response. Sometimes the officials in the sporting event will make a call or penalty that causes the other team to be angry and outraged. Eventually, some people would fall asleep in their seats for a while. A little bit later, they’ll wake up again to continue watching the acts and scenes that follow. The audience is still captivated and waiting for the outcome to see if their team will win or if the movie ends well. Meanwhile, while their time and attention is held captive, they are foregoing and neglecting everything else outside in the natural world because they are stuck on the inside. Most sadly though, they are neglecting the connections to their family and friends who aren’t sports fans or movie buffs. Perhaps their family and friends are stuck watching a different type of never ending movie or sporting event.
That is the news in 2020. We should walk out of the theater or arena and toward the natural world and humankind. Don’t think of this as walking away from something bad. It’s easier to walk toward something good, or at the very least, something better. If you compare the thought of walking forward toward something versus walking away from something and if you really pay attention to a personal example each, then the difference will be clear and profound. You could use these as helpful exercises to enjoy yourself and others today in a noticeable way. Here is a very personal example: I found something indescribably helpful for me to lower my stress and anxiety while simultaneously making time and space in my mind and heart to appreciate more things about all people, especially the people close to me who are infected with discontent and contempt for political divisions. It's not a vitamin supplement, seminar or anything you can buy or subscribe to. Stop watching, listening and reading the views of the news the same way you can imagine walking out of a really bad movie. Have you ever walked out of a bad movie or left a sports event before the end? You can look at this example in two ways-the the difference is profound. Instead of walking away from the movie, imagine walking toward the daylight outside of the theater. Instead of walking out of the sports arena, imagine walking toward the outside where there is spaciousness and room to move about. If you decide to try an information cleanse- where you deliberately wean yourself of the habit of news and political commentary- you will need to set your intention with your goal in mind. Instead of walking away from this bad movie called political discourse, think of yourself walking toward spaciousness and the freedom to enjoy and appreciate the world and everybody around you. When we cut ourselves off from the daily news and our being absorbed in various interpretations of current events, we aren't running away or hiding from the outside world. In fact, the opposite is true- we’re walking toward the the real world, our neighbors, mother nature and the treasures that life has to offer. Conversely, when I am absorbed in the daily narrative of politics and sensational headlines, I am neglecting my time and my attention for people around me, the miracles of life and the realization that all people share basic goodness. |
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