unFocus Projects
type: channel
description: Home of Scripts 'n Styles for WordPress, Backstage2D and History Keeper! - Kevin Newman and Ken Newman
date: 2026-03-25T13:51:44Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Just World Model Substack
items: Destructive Social Media 2026
items: unfocus.com – What Are We Doing Here?
items: Update from the future!
items: Weak Memes and Loser Frames
items: Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway.
items: Democrats Lose Because They Don’t Understand the Game
items: Democrats, Here’s How to Fight Back
items: Responsible Gun Regulation
items: Another Week, Another Shooting in America, Another Failure by Democrats.
items: Windows Color Management, a Rant
items: America’s Three Moral World Views
items: The Folly of Left/Right Filters
items: Progressive Morals with Examples
items: The problem with the issue of climate change (other than calling it “climate change”…)
items: Political Discourse and the Media.
items: Matt Taibbi’s take on school closures, is completely rational?—?and entirely wrong
items: Democrats SUCK at Messaging
items: MMT Explains Our 2 Tiered Economy and Inflation
items: Metroid Dread, more like Metroid Hate

Just World Model Substack
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2026-03-25T13:44:33Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: I’m trying something new. Always something new. I’ve set up a substack at https://unfocus.substack.com. I’ll use that to talk about the Just World Model engine I’m building with LLMs. The posts there will be more intentional, and more focused on that specific effort, while the posts here will be somewhat meta, or random, like a […]
encoded: I’m trying something new. Always something new. I’ve set up a substack at https://unfocus.substack.com. I’ll use that to talk about the Just World Model engine I’m building with LLMs. The posts there will be more intentional, and more focused on that specific effort, while the posts here will be somewhat meta, or random, like a personal blog. The first post at substack is similar to material I’ve posted before on medium, refined. The Circus and the Big Tent. Seems like a good split! I’ve been thinking about this topic for ages, so it’s kind of nice to finally be writing about it. The general idea is that most political communication from those other than the very organized, well funded right wing, is narratively, completely reactive. No one other than the right wing seems to have much of an understanding for how this stuff works, even though they are the more compassionate, and more reasonable ones (they don’t want to literally invoke rapture through nuclear war – mostly.) There is an app build coming with that – which is really more what the project is about than the writing. I probably won’t touch on technical aspects of that app, how it works, what its built with, there, but I might do that here from time to time, because it’s technically interesting stuff, and that is, after all, what I used to blog about here. More soon!

Destructive Social Media 2026
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2026-01-26T23:40:45Z
subject: Social Media
subject: Commentary
description: I’ve written before about the horrendous algorithm at the core of every social media platform‘s “engagement” algorithm. They align political posts with human posters, on an incredibly ignorant and stupid single dimension, based on American 2 parties, with left (Democrat) and right (Republican) steps. In Facebook you used to even be able to see this […]
encoded: I’ve written before about the horrendous algorithm at the core of every social media platform‘s “engagement” algorithm. They align political posts with human posters, on an incredibly ignorant and stupid single dimension, based on American 2 parties, with left (Democrat) and right (Republican) steps. In Facebook you used to even be able to see this – but they’ve hidden it all now. In the old days, you could have people who were anti-abortion, and anti-gun (but only motivated to vote on one or the other). These days, those idiotic sorting algorithms are so good a sorting posts and people to match everything and everyone against that single measure, that they effectively propagate uniformity among 2 opposing, and increasingly extreme sides. It’s maddeningly simple to understand and explain (1 short paragraph,) and would have taken almost no effort to fix back then – except now, the problem is exacerbated by LLMs and other AIs having been trained on this nonsense. Now AI sorts people in to the same 2 extreme camps, except we can’t actually fix it any more, because even the people who make this slop, don’t understand how it makes decisions. So – we are utterly screwed, when it comes to these anti-social platforms (to be clear- that’s Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, most especially TikTok, even YouTube, etc.) The only real way to fix it, is to divest – to just stop using those hateful platforms. In that vein, I’ve jumped out of medium, back to the old web 1.0 model of hosting my own blog. I’m also in the process of trying to break away from all the centrally planned hosted “web 2.0” platforms, and more toward decentralized platforms. Roughly, that means: Medium -> unfocus.com (a simple blog) Facebook/Twitter -> mastodon (social.unfocus.com) – https://unfocus.com/@kevin Discord/Slack/etc. -> Matrix (a synapse server) for private messages – @kevin:unfocus.com I don’t quite have an answer to the finance half of this. One of the things that those Web 2.0 things can do reason…

unfocus.com – What Are We Doing Here?
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2026-01-20T04:32:52Z
subject: Fun & Games
subject: Commentary
subject: Dev Stuff
description: I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want this space to be. The original idea behind unfocus.com, maybe born out of the naivete of youth, was that there was too much focus on myopic ideas around political ideas. The idea then was to take a step back and think about the bigger picture, thus […]
encoded: I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want this space to be. The original idea behind unfocus.com, maybe born out of the naivete of youth, was that there was too much focus on myopic ideas around political ideas. The idea then was to take a step back and think about the bigger picture, thus the idea of “unfocus”. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about politics, about political theory, strategy and especially messaging and how that works in our embodied minds. Most of that hasn’t really made its way on to these pages. I did spend some of the last few years blogging about those topics on medium, with dozens more drafts than published articles. I still find that space interesting, but it’s I think, not what I want to spend my effort on here. I think what I’d like to focus on here, are projects. That’s what I used to blog about, before the algorithm driven economy burgled the attention from my mind. That’s what I’d like to blog about again. I’ll probably leave the old political stuff up (to mirror medium,) but will likely remove it from any feeds on the site. So let’s talk projects! What do I want to do? I’m not sure. The software space is in a state of jubilee, from the over hyped, but still useful LLM driven AI bubble. Many things really are possible, and some things have never been easier. How to get passed the hype, and land on the slope of enlightenment early, might be worthy of some blogging. In this place, in the archives, there are still many articles about to achieve very difficult things with fun tech like Flash from back in the day. Today, the LLMs are actually pretty good generating code that can achieve much of what was hard back then, at least for “solved problems,” easily (ethics aside – we’ll get to that.) I’ve got a couple of ideas about things to work on. I’d really like to step away from the political turmoil we find ourselves in, and just make games, and other forms of art, but the collapse of western civilization is quite distracting. One idea I had w…

Update from the future!
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2025-11-18T18:25:31Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: I resurrected this blog! I intend to make some updates here eventually, hopefully not a false start. This blog has been dormant, and barely even functioning for years. In that time, I did post a bit on medium. Those posts are mostly political commentary in nature, as I watch my civilization implode, and I’ve back […]
encoded: I resurrected this blog! I intend to make some updates here eventually, hopefully not a false start. This blog has been dormant, and barely even functioning for years. In that time, I did post a bit on medium. Those posts are mostly political commentary in nature, as I watch my civilization implode, and I’ve back ported them here. But I’m actually looking to pivot away from that a little bit, so we’ll see if I keep them. I want to get back to my technical roots, and fun – I have updates coming for Quint Dice, and some other thoughts about technology (AI!) The intention is to use unfocus.com as central location for a bunch of things, on medium (maybe), youtube, and other stuff. The focus will be on tech, with maybe an occasional political rant. Longer form thoughts coming soon.

Weak Memes and Loser Frames
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2025-10-18T15:16:05Z
subject: Politics
description: Weak Memes and Loser Frames Why are we so bad at this? Once again?—?IT DOES NOT MATTER IF WE ARE NONVIOLENT. Focusing on that, rather than on what we want our message to be in moral and values terms, is entirely counter productive. The fascists are going to cut to footage from another country, and claim […]
encoded: Weak Memes and Loser Frames Why are we so bad at this? Once again?—?IT DOES NOT MATTER IF WE ARE NONVIOLENT. Focusing on that, rather than on what we want our message to be in moral and values terms, is entirely counter productive. The fascists are going to cut to footage from another country, and claim we are violent, regardless of our actual behavior. It should go without saying, that of course, we should protect ourselves, and not start shit. Don’t be the one. But you have you know, ultimately, it doesn’t matter how peaceful we are?—?they don’t want peace. They ARE going to start violence. ICE is already violent?—?it’s already started. They ARE ALREADY claiming WE are violent, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Our behavior does not factor in to their plans. This meme does kind of sort of, in an extremely weak way, get around to something like a message?—?but it’s a counter message, stated at the end, when it’s already too late to frame anything. A proactive statement— would be “Constitution or bust”?—?a better phrase, which the weak as shit Democrats would caution against might be New Hampshire’s state motto, “Live Free or Die”?—?the lawyers?—?100% of the Democratic Party, and 90% of the problem?—?would probably caution against using language like that, basically, the reason we’ve already lost. I can think of a few other slogans: Trump, go fuck yourself Republicans are Fascists, and so are (centrist) Democrats <a class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/waitingforwar?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZXbK_TDQmYJeP4ut134dhRQynompdKrFNKVrxN5-emSE5R3WAFaqC9W5mnfolrmZtpGXP_zo50a3_KFpJucwJo_7q-gc6o5Eri0y-yNagwZ3zc6drt_uR1L7cISYxFr59Yy7Se-0_JNys6ULTZkzVRj_93S6ZrzB5tXi9IaB3iAr23DvmEC-_1o2lJOp1pl98I&__tn__=*NK-R" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/waitingforwar?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZXbK_TDQmYJeP4ut134dhRQynompdKrFNKVrxN5-emSE5R3WAFaqC9W5mnfolrmZtpGXP_zo50a3_KFpJucwJo_7q-gc6o5Eri0y-yNagwZ3zc6drt_uR1L7cISYxFr59Yy7Se-0_JNys6ULTZk…

Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway.
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2025-10-09T15:53:52Z
subject: Politics
description: Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway. This photo is from 2017?—?Can you tell? Alex Radelich I keep hearing the dumbest take from the “not-right-wing” imaginable. They keep saying stuff like, “Don’t get violent, cause they’ll use it against us,” or “Don’t show up in black, cause it’ll look like the armed resistance […]
encoded: Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway. This photo is from 2017?—?Can you tell? Alex Radelich I keep hearing the dumbest take from the “not-right-wing” imaginable. They keep saying stuff like, “Don’t get violent, cause they’ll use it against us,” or “Don’t show up in black, cause it’ll look like the armed resistance they need.” “Don’t give them what they need.” Truly stupid crap like that. Of course we should not start any violence?—?absolutely that’s true, and it almost goes without saying. But the rest?—?why is it stupid? It literally could not matter less what you do, or how you look, or what you say. It’s the “because”?—?the expressed consequence of bad behavior. No. It does not matter if you behave “badly” or wear the wrong color or style of clothes, but numbers do matter. Stop dis-inviting people because they wear the wrong clothes. Understand what is happening. The Right Wing has an entire media ecosystem, a messaging strategy, and an echo chamber, and nowhere in any of that is there a concern for reality. They will simply say you did something, they will say you said something, they will say you looked a certain way, or that you dressed funny, and then repeat it over and over again. They’ll show stock footage of unrelated events from foreign countries, or from 20 years ago. They’ll use AI to fake the footage they want. YOUR BEHAVIOR CANNOT IMPACT THEIR DECISIONS. You have to understand the game. Understand the media landscape. Understand social media algorithms. Understand how the messaging works to persuade and mislead. This is the dumbest take I keep hearing from the “not-right-wing.” It’s pervasive, reinforcing ignorance. It’s a doubling down on willful weakness. Your behavior cannot impact Republican decisions here. It could not matter less how peaceful your protests are, they are going to claim it isn’t anyway. Fox News, and Breitbart, and the 200 other right-wing media talking point factories they call “think tanks…

Democrats Lose Because They Don’t Understand the Game
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2025-10-08T16:04:10Z
subject: Politics
description: Democrats Lose Because They Don’t Understand the Game The Right built an empire on values. The Left strangles itself on defense with data. Ditch the Donkey. Here’s a Lion. (Keyur Nandaniya?—?unsplash) It’s not just tone-deaf communication?—?Democrats have a structural dependence on our opposition’s discourse machinery. We’re operating inside a Republican semantic field?—?the mental map their media […]
encoded: Democrats Lose Because They Don’t Understand the Game The Right built an empire on values. The Left strangles itself on defense with data. Ditch the Donkey. Here’s a Lion. (Keyur Nandaniya?—?unsplash) It’s not just tone-deaf communication?—?Democrats have a structural dependence on our opposition’s discourse machinery. We’re operating inside a Republican semantic field?—?the mental map their media ecosystem built?—?and we don’t even notice the walls. We chase the data led by Republicans, and pat each other on the back over it. It’s not just that we are the nerds who love to cite data points. It’s that we don’t bother to understand how that data is filtered and skewed by the worldview promoted by our opposition. It’s that we don’t do the work to sell our own better worldview. So we are constantly losing ground. Think about how that works in practice?—?Democrats, rather than building our own frames, invoked by our own language, poll-test Republican key phrases which invoke a Republican worldview, to find safe linguistic footholds within that worldview. It’s the weak behavior of the bullied. It’s not rational politics?—?it’s reactive branding. Democrats aren’t even attempting to take ground in the war the Right is waging; we’re running focus groups in enemy territory. The Fatal Mistake: Thinking “Big Tent” Means “No Values” The Democratic “big tent” ideal isn’t some empty kumbaya about letting everyone in. It’s a values-based worldview?—?openness, fairness, pluralism?—?but party leaders keep acting like those aren’t real political weapons. They treat values as window dressing instead of the foundation of persuasion. When DNC chair Ken Martin told Jon Stewart that Republicans have “an easier time” because they’re “more consistent ideologically,” he revealed his ignorance. Conservatives have little in common in libertarians. Republicans aren’t more consistent than Democrats. They’re more strategic. They know the war they’re waging?—?and it isn’t policy trivia. The Right’…

Democrats, Here’s How to Fight Back
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2025-10-03T21:16:49Z
subject: Politics
description: Democrats, Here’s How to Fight Back Democrats don’t even know how to think about fighting back, let alone know how to fight. A clue: a desire for a “big tent” party is based on values, which suit a world view. It’s not some vacuous, “let everyone in” kind of position. It’s not some rational point of […]
encoded: Democrats, Here’s How to Fight Back Democrats don’t even know how to think about fighting back, let alone know how to fight. A clue: a desire for a “big tent” party is based on values, which suit a world view. It’s not some vacuous, “let everyone in” kind of position. It’s not some rational point of view. The desire is based on a world view, based on values. I recently listened to Jon Stewart interview clueless DNC chair, Ken Martin. A truly frustrating hour, where Martin hinted at a bunch of values, express a few, but then claimed that it’s easier for Republicans to have values, because they have a consistent ideology, and Democrats don’t. I’m so sick of explaining this. He’s wrong on both sides. Republicans don’t have a consistent ideology, any more than Democrats do, and Democrats are probably more consistent than Republicans. That’s not what’s happening, you unmitigated disaster of a politician. The actual difference its that Republicans know what they are doing. That’s the entire truth. And what they are doing is breathtakingly simple, and well documented, and also, completely reproducible. The Democrats are simply too arrogant, or too ignorant, or just paid too much by their donors, to adequately replicate what the Republicans are doing. Okay, that last part is just a dig at the biggest objective fact that undermines all Democratic legitimacy. The truth is, even if they think there is some way they can take legalized bribe money legitimately, there would be a world view to allow for that too—and they’d be able to describe it. But they don’t even bother justifying what they actually do. This to me is the clearest indication, that they just don’t know what they are doing. Let’s start with what they do—they promote specific policies, rationally, and they promote specific candidates, in specific races. All the money they funnel from their donors goes in to one of these 2 causes (and occasionally in to opposing anyone who has actual value, and expresses actual valu…

Responsible Gun Regulation
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-06-03T18:34:20Z
subject: Politics
description: Responsible Gun Protection Regulation Responsible people can handle dangerous things?—?it’s the irresponsible ones we need to regulate. Unsplash We need responsible gun protection regulation, which is right there in the constitution. An extreme in either direction is irresponsible, and protects no one. Unfettered gun access is an intentional misread of the constitution, it’s dangerous and […]
encoded: Responsible Gun Protection Regulation Responsible people can handle dangerous things?—?it’s the irresponsible ones we need to regulate. Unsplash We need responsible gun protection regulation, which is right there in the constitution. An extreme in either direction is irresponsible, and protects no one. Unfettered gun access is an intentional misread of the constitution, it’s dangerous and completely irresponsible. Totalitarian “gun control” is also an intentional misread of the constitution, and is also irresponsible. Both fail to protect both school children and the cause of freedom itself. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. What we need is responsible gun protection regulation, to keep the guns out of the hands of lunatics and criminals, and to protect the right of American citizens to own and operate dangerous things?—?of many kinds. We can do both, responsibly, if we start talking about these issues responsibly, with the aim of protecting our people and our rights. We CAN do both. The public already supports just about every measure we already have on the table that can be described as “responsible protections”?—?universal background checks— at a rate of about 90%. We don’t have to accept that our public spaces and school campuses are dangerous, as conservatives want us to do. We don’t have to accept absolute government “control” as Democrats want us to do. How we talk about this issue (or any issue) matters. I really wish Democrats in particular, as both the more compassionate party, and the more reasonable party, would finally understand how this works… The gun issue is about protection, responsibility and accountability, and the constitution provides for that. Make it about responsible protection measures and we’ll solve this problem with surprising speed, because the right wing cannot respond righteously to these better values. But if Democrats keep…

Another Week, Another Shooting in America, Another Failure by Democrats.
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-05-25T17:08:07Z
subject: Politics
description: Another Week, Another Shooting in America, Another Failure by Democrats. Blame lies ultimately with Democrats, because it’s their refusal to learn even a little bit about how moral messaging works that lets the Republicans cling to power using this among other idiotic wedge issues. Gun responsibility. Gun responsibility. Gun responsibility. And a bit of protection. […]
encoded: Another Week, Another Shooting in America, Another Failure by Democrats. Blame lies ultimately with Democrats, because it’s their refusal to learn even a little bit about how moral messaging works that lets the Republicans cling to power using this among other idiotic wedge issues. Gun responsibility. Gun responsibility. Gun responsibility. And a bit of protection. I blame Democrats for the state of the gun responsibility debate, because they keep saying “gun control” (while Republicans say “liberty”). Until they learn, nothing can actually change. It’s 1000% on Democrats shoulders to lead on this issue, but they are so arrogant, that they actively refuse to learn how any of this works. I see that you, Democrats, all have a lot of high level degrees, yes, you see yourselves as very rational. I get it. Very impressive. Now that I’ve acknowledge your merit, can you finally understand why that’s not enough? This issue has to be about a moral truth?—?responsibility and protection?—?the responsibility of gun ownership, responsibility to protect our citizens from criminals, responsibility to protect the constitution, all that. No amount of explanation about why you need to be allowed to “control” us will ever, for one minute, have a snowball’s chance in hell, of making any progress. Fuck your control, just because. Deal with it. It’s about responsibility, and it’s about protection. Every time the know nothing Democrats talks about “control” they hand victory to Republicans. And they have not one clue why. And it’s not that they aren’t smart enough to figure it out?—?it’s that they are too fucking arrogant to even try. Republicans are basically cartoon villains at this point. That makes it worse, not better. Democrats LOSE TO CARTOON VILLAINS. God, fuck the Democrats. It would be so easy to take the issue of gun responsibility, and the issue of reproductive liberty, away from the cartoon villains. When do we finally do it?

Windows Color Management, a Rant
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-04-08T15:10:22Z
subject: Uncategorized
description: Windows Color Management, a Rant Microsoft is uniquely unable to solve a problem Apple solved ages ago. Photo by Fotis Fotopoulos I just got a new monitor, and it supports 98% of the P3 color space, a high gamut screen. I had a high gamut screen some 10 years ago. Just as 10 years ago, Windows […]
encoded: Windows Color Management, a Rant Microsoft is uniquely unable to solve a problem Apple solved ages ago. Photo by Fotis Fotopoulos I just got a new monitor, and it supports 98% of the P3 color space, a high gamut screen. I had a high gamut screen some 10 years ago. Just as 10 years ago, Windows is still unable to properly support this screen. The result is that on Windows, all colors are over saturated for everything. Now, the monitor maker has some blame here. The associated profile seems to resolve in the sRGB color space, and Windows is applying that. But the problem is, there’s no easy or obvious way to simply select a better color profile (like a generic P3 color profile). And, even if I do go to the ancient, incomprehensible ICC screens (I’d bet $100 the developers who built that thing don’t even know how it works), it doesn’t actually apply to most apps! The app has to be aware of color management and tag the content appropriately. But even apps that are aware, like Photoshop, only tag the content you might be working on?—?so their own UIs are often over saturated. Even color aware apps on Windows aren’t properly color managed… The problem is breathtakingly easy to describe, by simply describing the way it works on macOS. In macOS, I can simply choose a different color profile, including one that I produce myself with a color calibrator (Spyder or similar), and the result is that all the windows that aren’t color aware, are adjust to look not over saturated. It’s like magic! It’s also easy to describe why—macOS simply treats the unmanaged stuff as if it were sRGB, and adjusts it accordingly. So why is this so hard for Windows to photocopy? All I want to do is apply a more appropriate color profile, and not have red icons stab me in the eye. It already works on macOS. So what’s the problem? Get out your photocopiers, Redmond, and make it work. Maybe if this stuff worked right, we wouldn’t need “sRGB” mode, like this new monitor supports. What a crock?—?it shoul…

America’s Three Moral World Views
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-02-03T17:50:37Z
subject: Politics
description: America’s Three Moral World Views The concept of left/right in politics is debilitating in it’s lack of dimensions, but it’s useful to structure discourse. I thought I’d broaden things out to offer a less debilitating, and hopefully more accurate break down of American political world views. Things are still more complicated than this, but it’s based […]
encoded: America’s Three Moral World Views The concept of left/right in politics is debilitating in it’s lack of dimensions, but it’s useful to structure discourse. I thought I’d broaden things out to offer a less debilitating, and hopefully more accurate break down of American political world views. Things are still more complicated than this, but it’s based on the idea that there are actually 3 main world views in American politics, not just two. No one fits neatly in to just one world view, and no one is consistent on which they apply to all issues?—?most of us use one or another almost completely unconsciously, based on social context, and will apply different ones to different issues. The main things I wanted to show with this are where the identitarian politics and “centrism” really fits, because left/right doesn’t cover it. Identitarian politics, how I loath thee. It is the politics of identity, of “othering”?—?whether it’s about the aggrieved minority (Democrats), or the aggrieved majority (“white” Republicans), it doesn’t matter?—?it’s all the aggrieved in-group vs the out-group oppressors, asserted by a static unchallengeable authority, and it’s always dangerous?—?yes, even when Democrats do it. Terms like “liberal” and “centrist” have been so debased, that it’s hard to even discuss them. We live in a liberal culture, with a liberal democracy, and a liberal economy. We are almost all of us liberal, despite the way right-wing media uses that word as a slur against their favorite straw-man opponents. Whenever CPAC conservatives talk of “liberty” they are dipping in to liberal moral frames. “Centrists” are simply arrogant?—?they believe they sit in the void in the middle of this chart, but they are really just promoting a specific kind of economic classical liberalism mixed with a moderate amount of social support (progressive morality). Centrists have failed to noticed how much they’ve drifted to an extremist kind of liberalism (neoliberalism) away from support in an…

The Folly of Left/Right Filters
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-02-01T15:21:34Z
subject: Politics
description: The Folly of Left/Right Filters Medium and the debilitating concept of left and right Photo by Yogendra Singh from Unsplash I wrote a while back about how Facebook and Twitter have made a core mistake in their political algorithm which filters all content, and all users, into the debilitating concept of left and right, leading to […]
encoded: The Folly of Left/Right Filters Medium and the debilitating concept of left and right Photo by Yogendra Singh from Unsplash I wrote a while back about how Facebook and Twitter have made a core mistake in their political algorithm which filters all content, and all users, into the debilitating concept of left and right, leading to media silos. In previous articles, I’ve written about the 3 common world views in America, and they aren’t even the only ones. Many others have written about how politics have become extremely partisan, and how much more consistent party identity aligns with believes about a given set of issues. All of this is due to the mistake of those sorting algorithms, which create silos on 2 extreme ends of a single dimension?—?party affiliation. And worse, party affiliation based on American notions of 2 party rule. A simple way to fix it is to stop filtering people based on the broken idea of left/right. What a reductionist load of shit that entire idea is. If you are pursuing “engagement” so you can sell clicks, reads, or ads, then it makes sense to only show people what they want to see. It’s not even good for that. The simplest adjustment would be to gauge individual user interests, on individual issues, instead of filtering everything through an absolutely moronic left/right false dichotomy. Then you could have someone who’s media silo shows them content that doesn’t align cleanly with party identity. You might for example, get a pro-life reader, who is also anti-gun. That used to be a thing. It is increasingly less so, and the the reason for that isn’t a mystery. It’s the social media, and Medium publication sorting algorithm producing remarkably consistent messaging machines aligned along party silos. It’s the ultimate algorithm driven echo chamber, and hit has to stop. A FAR better approach, at least for society and for mental health, would be to not even filter based on preferences, but filter based on something healthy. I suggest a measure …

Progressive Morals with Examples
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-01-27T17:02:19Z
subject: Politics
description: Progressive Morals with Examples Our morals are better. Let’s fight for them. Snowball fight? The right wing has a strategy to change American culture to adopt their abhorrent, often self conflicted, “strict father” moral world view. That strategy is well formed with a clear goal, and a specific method to achieve that goal. It’s based on […]
encoded: Progressive Morals with Examples Our morals are better. Let’s fight for them. Snowball fight? The right wing has a strategy to change American culture to adopt their abhorrent, often self conflicted, “strict father” moral world view. That strategy is well formed with a clear goal, and a specific method to achieve that goal. It’s based on science, to control the cultural narrative. Progressives don’t understand what this strategy is based on, how it works, or why we keep losing every battle. We let the right wing define the terms of every conflict, react to that, and then lose. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can lead again?—?but we have to understand the rules of engagement, and exactly what the right wing is doing. It’s not that complicated, but it involves understanding world views, and that’s especially hard when the new information conflicts with your own world view. Progressives have a moral world view based primarily on empathy and support. George Lakoff calls it “progressive family morality.” We have an authority model based on open inquiry and accountability. Conservatives don’t have any of this. Their moral world view, “strict father morality” is different. It’s based on discipline through punishment, and an authority model based on a mix of in-group seniority and gender, and often (but not always) other characteristics like religion and race, and that authority cannot be challenged, except on the basis of discipline or lack thereof. That last bit is important?—?it’s not important to them that their precepts are correct, only that they remain unchallenged. Now think about how progressive authority works?—?you might already see some conflict. A moral world view is the basis for all political views?—?the starting point, the premise of every political arguments is a moral truth defined by your world view, and a moral cannot be challenged or proven rationally. What is right (righteous) just is. This is the hardest part of all this for rational “centrists” an…

The problem with the issue of climate change (other than calling it “climate change”…)
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-01-26T18:08:03Z
subject: Politics
description: The problem with the issue of climate change (other than calling it “climate change”…) is that for most of the folks who are trying to get something done, they’ve adopted a needless barrier that we get universal buy in to solve it. That preference for solidarity based policy alone has done more harm to the […]
encoded: The problem with the issue of climate change (other than calling it “climate change”…) is that for most of the folks who are trying to get something done, they’ve adopted a needless barrier that we get universal buy in to solve it. That preference for solidarity based policy alone has done more harm to the mitigation strategy than any other aspect of this issue. What am I talking about? Well, there are multiple kinds of policies (I’m ripping this directly from Matthew Taylor’s RSA presentation on “The Power to Act”). 1. Solidaristic – we all agree to turn off the lights when we leave a room, and recycle our plastics. 2. Hierarchical (authority) – we ban the use of fossil fuels, or mandate catalytic converters, etc. 3. Market bases – we’ll compete to create better products, which reduce the reliance on the old ones, etc. The environmental movement mostly focuses on #1 (probably arguing they need that to get #2, which is in absolute terms, bunk). But really, I agree with Matthew Taylor, if we want to make any real progress, we need to properly balance all 3 (I’d actually argue, you only need to balance #2 and #3, and that #1 is a consequence of that balance, with Taylor’s 4th type – despair – being a consequence of failing to do that – the 4th one, sound familiar?) What would that look like? Well, how about if instead of trying to use that old conservative punishment model, where we restrict what people want to do (burn coal), we instead provide incentives to produce the competing technologies more rapidly. There are 6 renewable sources of energy, and only 4 dirty sources. We already know the clean ones will be more efficient than the dirty sources, it’s just a matter of time. So lets accelerate that. I know, I know, the “experts” say that it won’t be enough – well, the experts thought we couldn’t replace ozone depleting freon with anything else in refrigerators, and it took one congressmen, and a small cash reward, like a year to get 3 alternatives back in the 80s. S…

Political Discourse and the Media.
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-01-25T22:15:53Z
subject: Politics
description: Political Discourse and the Media. All politics is moral. The facts of any given political issue are filtered through a moral world view. Every determination is colored or even dictated by the underlying morals of the world view applied to that issue. Even the facts are accepted or rejected based on that. It’s in our brains. […]
encoded: Political Discourse and the Media. All politics is moral. The facts of any given political issue are filtered through a moral world view. Every determination is colored or even dictated by the underlying morals of the world view applied to that issue. Even the facts are accepted or rejected based on that. It’s in our brains. It’s how we work. This reality MUST become the basis of a new 21st century model for political discourse, if we are to avoid catastrophe and warfare. In America, we have 2 parties, and one of them has been leveraging this knowledge to their benefit for decades, almost completely unchecked by the other. Let’s examine the issue of immigration through 3 different world views in America. For progressives, the morality of immigration all about support and nurture. They see immigrants at our border as folks who need help, and they want to do what good progressives always want to do?—?to help and support people who need help. Every response to the issue of immigration can be understood through that moral lens. To accusations of wrong doing, progressives mostly reject that wrong doing occurred?—?rationalize it away as asylum seeking due to extraordinary circumstances. Even if we acknowledge that crossing a border without papers is legally wrong, progressive corrective action is guidance and support, especially for a minor offense like not having your paperwork in order, so there should be no punishment. But really, it’s the moral impulse to help that guides progressives. Conservatives apply a different set of morals to this issue, the morals of sanctity, of following the law, and of social order. Their only possible response, given their world view’s exclusive method for corrective action, is punishment, not guidance or support. The simple judgement is that those folks broke the law, and should be punished, because that’s what you do to people who break the law. It doesn’t matter how trivial the infraction is, and pointing out that it’s a misdemeanor wi…

Matt Taibbi’s take on school closures, is completely rational?—?and entirely wrong
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2022-01-04T17:53:11Z
subject: Politics
description: Matt Taibbi on school closures?—?completely rational?—?and entirely wrong Matt Taibbi: School closures, not critical race theory, was primary issue for parents in Virginia…Journalist and podcaster Matt Taibbi said Thursday that Democrats are on the road to losing more support on an issue…thehill.com Understanding that all politics is moral, there’s an even simpler way to see this. […]
encoded: Matt Taibbi on school closures?—?completely rational?—?and entirely wrong <a class="markup--anchor markup--mixtapeEmbed-anchor" data-href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/587748-matt-taibbi-school-closures-not-critical-race-theory-was-primary-issue-for" href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/587748-matt-taibbi-school-closures-not-critical-race-theory-was-primary-issue-for" title="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/587748-matt-taibbi-school-closures-not-critical-race-theory-was-primary-issue-for" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Taibbi: School closures, not critical race theory, was primary issue for parents in Virginia… Journalist and podcaster Matt Taibbi said Thursday that Democrats are on the road to losing more support on an issue…thehill.com Understanding that all politics is moral, there’s an even simpler way to see this. Rather than understanding the supportive role that public school takes up in society, parents have been primed by decades of unchecked Republican talking points, telling them how morally bad government and public school is, and especially those dirty teachers from that “other” librul group (itself, ridiculous). Rather than the heroic nurturers of future generations they really are, “everyone knows” that teachers are lazy, incompetent and have sneaky intentions to brainwash and indoctrinate your children. There’s a reason “everyone knows” that, and there’s nothing rational about any of it. It’s unchecked moral propaganda, unanswered by Democrats, who always seem to seek badly reasoned rationalizations for their loses, rather than moral understanding. In this case, Matt Taibbi makes one up, right out of thin air. No it’s not CRT (critical race theory), a talking point that promotes a sense of a moral “truth” (it’s not about the policy, it never is?—?people don’t vote for policy, ever), no, Taibbi suggests, it’s parents doing the rational thing for their children. Ugh. This is not complicated. Republicans are using plane old, vanilla in-gro…

Democrats SUCK at Messaging
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2021-12-02T21:08:10Z
subject: Politics
description: Democrats SUCK at Messaging The media keeps asking for your messaging, because what you’ve said is not good enough. In this article on “The Hill” there is a video of Nancy Pelosi, being visibly annoyed at the media for asking what I assume, she thinks is a stupid question. Go watch that and then come […]
encoded: Democrats SUCK at Messaging The media keeps asking for your messaging, because what you’ve said is not good enough. In this article on “The Hill” there is a video of Nancy Pelosi, being visibly annoyed at the media for asking what I assume, she thinks is a stupid question. Go watch that and then come back. Ready? Here’s the problem. Acting responsibly, to protect and provide for our people, those are moral values. That’s what Democrats are trying to do, and what irresponsible Republicans refuse to do, with regards to running government, following science, and distributing vaccines. Democrats keep describing policy, as if that’s what motivates people… NOBODY CARES. The moral values that underpin the policy is what Democrats need to describe?—?FIRST?—?to “frame” the issue. It’s like setting the why of the issue first, then explaining the policy, if you must justify this through 17th century reasoning. Democrats are SO BAD AT MESSAGING. That’s why the media keeps asking for your message… All politics is moral, and the dumb stuff you say literally doesn’t make any sense from any kind of messaging stand point, unless you already agree with the unspoken premises. Pelosi. Makes. No. Sense. Literally can’t be comprehended. Look, it only took me a few sentences to explain this. George Lakoff explains moral politics even better (all the time). When will Democrats learn? Republicans DON’T SHARE OUR MORALS. They want to change them?—?and have been successfully changing them for decades, and we have to fight back. And all we have to do to fight, is simply state our morals. Better if we put a similar effort in to it as conservatives, but it is not complicated. Our morals are better than theirs. Progressives and even so-called centrist Democrats primarily emphasize care and nurture and sense that we are in this together. We have straight up, plain vanilla, better morals, than that scornful nonsense Trumpian (fake) big “C” Conservatives believe. “Build Back Better”. ? Get it togeth…

MMT Explains Our 2 Tiered Economy and Inflation
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2021-11-23T17:22:23Z
subject: Politics
description: MMT Explains Our 2 Tiered Economy and Inflation A novice take on the way Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) explains inflation from a permanent K shaped economy. Basically, MMT says we get inflation when money policy juices demand and we are at full employment, or we juice just one sector which is at full employment, while […]
encoded: MMT Explains Our 2 Tiered Economy and Inflation A novice take on the way Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) explains inflation from a permanent K shaped economy. Basically, MMT says we get inflation when money policy juices demand and we are at full employment, or we juice just one sector which is at full employment, while the others are constrained. This all follows from the basic rules of supply and demand. We have a 2 tiered worker economy?—?wealthy professionals, and everyone else. The wealthy professionals can still afford Nike sneakers, houses, and new cars, but everyone else can’t. It’s telling that Nike stopped even trying to sell sneakers to poor people around a decade ago. That’s the K as measured by either income or ability to spend?—?one group’s trend is going up, and the other is going down. Some call this a “K shaped recovery”?—?but it’s permanent, if policy doesn’t change. So what happens when Nike and car companies choose to produce fewer, much more “premium” (expensive) products, and sell to fewer people with increasing expectations? Inflation! Supply and demand. Pretty simple. Wealthy professionals, the top of the K, have produced more demand than there is supply. The bottom of the K?—?their demand is irrelevant, because they can’t afford anything, having negative disposable income. Democrats make this worse by emphasizing education as the only possible way out, while we are pretty much at the peak of the ability of our education system to churn out more professionals. That had been raising the top of the K, but we are now at full employment in those ranks. Those who can professionalize, become the only ones who can afford a house, a car, or Nike sneakers, and we are just about at saturation. Republicans make this problem worse when they cut social support, and suppress wages, and therefor reduce the ability of blue collar and service workers to spend in the economy. That deepens the bottom of the K. Both exacerbate the problem by encouraging over seas p…

Metroid Dread, more like Metroid Hate
type: item
creator: Kevin Newman
date: 2021-10-21T03:27:02Z
subject: Game Reviews
description: Metroid Dread, more like Metroid Hate The E.M.M.I. are a hateful, game breaking gimmick. Metroid Dread should be called Metroid Frustration, because that’s all it is. I don’t even mind the difficult bosses. They are a bit old school, and require failure, then rote pattern memorization, but that’s fine?—?there’s a way to beat them, and once […]
encoded: Metroid Dread, more like Metroid Hate The E.M.M.I. are a hateful, game breaking gimmick. Metroid Dread should be called Metroid Frustration, because that’s all it is. I don’t even mind the difficult bosses. They are a bit old school, and require failure, then rote pattern memorization, but that’s fine?—?there’s a way to beat them, and once you figure it out, it’s not that hard. The world, and the winding path through that world (even if it is a bit too linear for a Metroid game?—?Fusion had a similar problem) are beautiful?—?and I mean gorgeous. I didn’t like it at first, and if you are feeling the same near the beginning, try to stick through (if you can stomach the E.M.M.I.s), it gets glorious. That’s not the same with the E.M.M.I. They are frustrating, and hateful, and because their final killing blow is randomly timed, there is no way to reliably escape, which amps the anger and frustration, and the feeling that the game designers hate the player. I don’t play games to feel pissed off. That’s all I feel from this particular aspect of the game, anger, hate, and frustration. But I don’t want to just complain, so here are some simple ways to fix it. 1. Just get rid of them. I mean it. Not having them would be FAR more atmospheric than having them. The mood could be set by having creepy music, and that spooky lighting scheme going on in there. You could even leave the red dot on the map, just for atmospherics. Remove them, at least until you have to defeat them with the powered up lazer thingy. That’d be fine too. Make it an option, please. I’d love to replay this game one day?—?but I’ll NEVER replay this, as long as they are there. I’m not even sure I’m going to get through this game once… It’s so unpleasant. 2. At least make the escape timing challenge something that can be defeated reliably. It sucks every time to get caught, but all that little mini-non-game does is frustrate further. It adds nothing, except extended frustration, because there’s no way to reliab…