cultural reviewer and dabbler in stylistic premonitions

  • 21 Posts
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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • This is also a reason to have functional LoraWan mesh network

    fyi LoRa is a useful building block for building offline (non-internet) mesh networks but LoRaWAN is not: LoRaWAN is for IP-over-LoRa and it requires one of the nodes to have internet access to talk to a centralized server which mediates everything. (tldr: forget about LoRaWAN.)

    Sorry I don’t have time to braindump on other things in this space, but I will say https://columba.network/ looks interesting - it is a reticulum client for android which can use LoRa (if you have a LoRa radio) and also BLE (100m range) and WiFi (both locally to other nodes and to the internet to talk to distant nodes). I have not actually tried Columba myself, but i think it looks promising.

    edit: looking closer i think the one big missing feature in Columba for this type of application is group chat. Unfortunately Reticulum doesn’t have a decentralized group chat yet; its 1:1 chat protocol (LXMF) is completely decentralized (two people can keep talking if they’re in range of each other even when they can’t see anyone else in the mesh) but the group chat protocol it has now (called RRC, similar to IRC) requires a centralized relay server. You can run an RRC relay yourself, including on a non-internet-connected network, but it only works for people who are able to reach that relay (and it doesn’t keep history so you miss what was said while you couldn’t reach it). I see that the Columba author has actually implemented RRC for Android, but it’s currently in a separate app called eridanus. I don’t know if anyone is trying to build a decentralized group chat protocol on top of reticulum yet but probably someone is. It’s a very complicated problem to solve well, though.





  • So your proof is a nearly 20 year old article on a pro-Iraq war correspondence and interviewing a right wing pundit during Trump’s first candidacy? It hardly says that NPR is a propaganda mouthpiece, but rather says they have made mistakes as all outlets have done

    If you just listen to (or read) their reporting about the current wars you’ll see they’re still doing the exact same things described in that (almost) 20-year-old article. These aren’t mistakes, it’s their standard operating procedure.

    It hardly says that NPR is a propaganda mouthpiece

    it does, actually. Even when they are being critical of the Trump administration (which they often are) they’re doing it from the standpoint of the (to borrow a lovely term from UK English) loyal opposition.

    And US was wrong to attack Iran, but that doesn’t rule out both sides from doing bullshit reporting. It isn’t that black and white when it comes to sources.

    I agree here. Which reminds me that after you called me out for posting PressTV links you didn’t answer when I asked you this:

    PressTV is absolutely propaganda, and I am selective about what I repost from them - it’s usually something I think is news (or a newsworthy perspective) which is not being reported by western sources. Eg, this is the most recent thing I posted from there. The primary source for the story (the IRGC) is named in the headline; it isn’t like it is pretending to be something it isn’t. Do you think that post is not newsworthy? Is it better for people not to know that the IRGC is saying that? Or, what alternate source could I have linked to about it?

    These weren’t rhetorical questions; I’m actually curious what you think.

    And I am almost certain that stuff in WorldNews@lemmy.ml is pretty biased because it is lemmy.ml

    Which news communities do you think are unbiased, though? You said earlier:

    NPR and DW aren’t good examples of western propaganda, as they tend to be less biased. NYT more. BBC is mixed. […] Propaganda exists on both sides and it is important to keep that in mind. Though propaganda from dictatorships tend to be a bit more wild and obvious.

    Are there some news communities which you would consider “less biased” but which would actually remove (what you acknowledge is) propaganda from the NYT? (I doubt it, but, surprise me?)

    I think every outlet has biases, and I agree some are more obvious than others. But allowing only the less-obviously-so propaganda from one “side” doesn’t strike me as being less biased at all.

    Fwiw if you look at !worldnews@lemmy.ml right now you’ll see plenty of western propaganda outlets there amongst the Iranian and Chinese etc sources.





  • However the other comment wasn’t something worth removing

    imo it was ignorant bigotry also. 🗑

    NPR and DW aren’t good examples of western propaganda, as they tend to be less biased. NYT more. BBC is mixed.

    If you think NPR is “less biased” I highly recommend reading this which might help you see how they are anything but - that article in particular is about how NPR was instrumental in bolstering domestic support (particularly “reluctant” or “critical” support among their “progressive” listener demographic) for the Iraq war from the beginning right up to the end of it. See also this and this for somewhat-more-recent analyses of NPR’s propaganda form.

    I am not a campist

    So, for example, in the current war in Iran… you’d say both sides are wrong? You think the US should stop attacking them… but also Iran should stop defending themselves? 🤔

    And you think people who read DW’s Iran section are getting an unbiased view of the situation, while people who read !worldnews@lemmy.ml are being fed “propaganda” because I post some PressTV reporting of IRGC statements there?


  • Additionally, removing this comment comparing Hamas with Republicans was you

    Indeed it was, and I stand by that removal! In context they were actually saying the Palestinian people deserve genocide because… checks notes Hamas won an election in 2006.

    You must have noticed this was their previous comment in that thread:

    screenshot of Removed Comment "I don't care what the term is, I haven't fallen for propaganda. Hamas will kill LGBTQ where they stand, it's fact. I'm sorry if this destroys your reality but come on. We already know how they treat women. If the people of Palestine actually overthrow hamasand show they want freedom for women and LGBTQ, the I will fully be on their side , but to me, wanting to help Palestine is like wanting to help southern evangelicals. Don't do that." by Nebraska_Huskers@lemmy.world

    … but for some reason you decided to only show their second comment here? 🤔

    Anyway, if you don’t think that is bigotry we’ll have to agree to disagree; I’m not interested in debating it. But icymi do see also the rest of that user’s modlog 🙄 (spoiler: this person claiming LGBTQ rights as their reason to support genocide was eventually banned by their own instance for transphobia)

    Also you seem to like using PressTV, an Iran state-controlled outlet, in your posts on World News on lemmy.ml. You think there is no propaganda there?

    PressTV is absolutely propaganda, and I am selective about what I repost from them - it’s usually something I think is news (or a newsworthy perspective) which is not being reported by western sources. Eg, this is the most recent thing I posted from there. The primary source for the story (the IRGC) is named in the headline; it isn’t like it is pretending to be something it isn’t. Do you think that post is not newsworthy? Is it better for people not to know that the IRGC is saying that? Or, what alternate source could I have linked to about it? I also post things from NYTimes, BBC, NPR, DW, etc, but I don’t think any of them covered that story. (Are those outlets all strictly not propaganda in your view?)


  • nowhere did I say it was propaganda in this instance

    you didn’t say it but you strongly implied it by saying in this thread that i “spread propaganda” without mentioning (until your later comments, thanks) that you don’t actually think what i’m saying here is “propaganda” (by which you mean, i infer, “incorrect”).

    I am saying you spread propaganda because it has been proven time and time again that you do.

    proven! lol ok, sorry i missed my trial 😂

    fwiw depending on the definition of propaganda i could actually agree with you - a lot of what i post is advocacy for something (as is some of what you post).

    eg, looking at a few of my recent posts: is this propaganda? or this? or this? i would say all three definitely are, in the sense that they are politically motivated communication, and i stand by them.

    but you’re obviously using the term “propaganda” in its pejorative sense because you disagree with (some) of what you’ve seen me advocating for (and/or agree with other things you’ve seen me debunking), which imo is intellectually dishonest. rather than say “i disagree with arthur about XYZ, but in this case the evidence is lacking for the claims being debunked in this thread” you just said that i “blatantly spread propaganda” and drew a spiderman meme equivalency between me and the other person who you now acknowledge (thanks) is “more wrong” in this case.