SAS so I could get more work. Plus it’s crazy fast and great for statistics and economics, which is my field. It’s also easier to learn for non programmers than Python. It’s a great language, and its only real fault is terrible naming constraints. It sucks to be the guy pushing for more C# and Python because no one knows SAS, but at this point the cost is just prohibitive.

This but FreeCAD!

Comparative Advanta-whoosy whatsits?

Seems complicated, let’s get rid of it.

Totally hear where you’re coming from, and I think in a perfect world, a journalist could recuse themselves of reporting on things where they are hopelessly biased (see Cuomo incident before the later revealed stuff), but I still argue the goal should be to examine and eliminate biases as much possible, and avoid the appearance of minor ones unless they are somehow damning. The introspection necessary to examine your own biases rather than just avoid them helps make you more capable of being more impartial overall, in my opinion.

I think there’s real debate on if through such a concerted effort to not give into to one’s own biases, you swing too far and start favoring the opposition, but that happens with anyone trying to avoid appearances of impropriety. Not giving your kid the starting pitching slot even if he deserves it because you’re the coach, a judge not accepting a free ride to a conference everyone else gets, etc etc.

Then you get a spot writing op-eds so you can dunk on strawmen who don’t have the reach or voice to argue with you!

You’re literally advocating for what is essentially approved propaganda. That you think there is an objectively correct bias terrifies me, and if you had sense, it would terrify you too.

No, there is no “correct bias”. No bias is the goal. In fact, the goal is to be beyond even an appearance of bias. That’s the only way you can be trustworthy. That’s why the Times doesn’t let their writers sign open letters. That’s why they can’t join lobbying orgs and don’t give money to political candidates. These are just sacrifices you make if you want to be a hard news journalist. Same as having to watch what you say if you’re a spokesperson or CEO, same with having to stay fit if you’re a firefighter, same with a ton of jobs that have requirements that you may find unreasonable but are widely accepted because they’re good for the job and the industry.

There is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias, and you truly believe it’s not okay to speak out against genocide?

You wanna talk about terrifying. This sentence is terrifying. No such thing as objective truth?! You’ve bought into the fake news, alternative facts propaganda being pushed for the last decade.

-Trump said x.

-Israel did Y.

-The president released a statement saying Z.

-A rocket exploded at a hospital in Gaza, it is unclear at the moment who fired it

-Here is an investigative report featuring video highlights, statements, and photos piecing together what likely happened in that rocket explosion

These are objective, unbiased facts. It obviously gets stickier when you start talking about what facts to report. Then you start talking about reporting on commentary on facts by people and orgs with clear biases themselves. Usually (or at least historically) journalists could cover their bases by finding both sides of an argument , and letting those players describe and clarify the facts themselves.

This is where the whole modern argument comes in over modern journalists giving too much weight to countervailing theories or crackpots in the interest of appearing unbiased. You may have heard it described as “both sides” reporting. For a long time, this was by far the best way to report facts, appear unbiased, and make sure everyone was heard and reported on. But recently there have been HUGE debates within journalism over how to report on say, climate change, when the vast vast majority of scientists say that it’s happening, and it’s man-made, and offer more and more conclusive studies supporting that. You can still find a few crackpots, but at what point are you choosing facts (“this crazy org said this about the new study”) that themselves create a bias? Since climate change has been seen as a political issue for years, journalists have been worried about appearing unbiased, because a sniff of impropriety can drive people away from mainstream media and to the newer, very biased, lacking in ethics orgs. They started shifting away from this, and now people are both leaving unbiased news and those unbiased sources remaining are STILL getting hammered by media critics and commentators on the “both sides” narrative issues.

The point, though, is that people deeply care about and deeply debate this stuff on the margins. How do we best remain and appear unbiased? How do we best inform and explain current events? And then they debate this stuff at the margins because there are different opinions on it. But no one is saying news journalists should be able to sign petitions and open letters. It is so far outside of acceptable that I bet you could poll newsrooms at the Times, Post, Tribune and not get a single journalist who thinks going on public record about current events should be A-ok.

I hope the history books of the future describe the atrocities of the present, because clearly we can’t rely on the news.

If you’re not aware of these very basic ethical and functional debates in journalism, that are covered and discussed ad nauseum in papers of every slant and those in the middle, my guess is you’re just not consuming much news. It’s impossible to miss this stuff. So I can’t imagine you’re going to pick up history books if you’re missing this stuff as it’s happening.

Thank you! It’s crazy to me that people can’t understand appearance of bias and why a paper would want to avoid it. Do people not work in industries with professional ethics? There are whole courses taught in this stuff when getting a degree in journalism, it’s debated in newsrooms and by editors, even in op-eds writing commentary about the news. Did people just fall asleep during the Trump years as people were figuring out how to handle that?

You know what terrifies me? Someone saying, unironically, “there is no such thing as objective truth, just perception and bias.” Russian disinfo and the Trump campaign appear to have won - we live in a post truth society where not only do facts not matter - they don’t exist. Why bother reporting only on them?

You literally can police people’s bias if they want to be a good journalist. That’s why the NYT has a clear policy on this stuff, that she violated twice! Some people can’t control their biases or don’t want to, and that’s fine. They don’t get to be journalists at organizations that have to maintain strict impartiality.

Also, if you think the newsroom doesn’t have deeply debated guidelines and rules on how and when you use the label terrorist vs freedom fighter, or how to avoid using either term, you’re kidding yourself. This is why editors exist.

It’s wild that we live in such polarized times that every single comment in this thread is talking about how this is wrong because of some variant of “she’s being fired for calling it like it is.”

That’s not what happened. She was fired (forced to resign, same difference) because she went on record with a political viewpoint and made value judgements. YOU DONT GET TO DO THAT AS A JOURNALIST. It doesn’t matter if she’s right (she is, in my opinion, before someone accused me of supporting apartheid and misses the point). What matters is she has taken away any appearance of being unbiased, both for her and by association for the paper. It’s crazy damaging and the Times should have fired her instead of letting her resign. This is like journalistic ethics 101. My parents were both journalists and wouldn’t even talk to me about who they voted for - and they weren’t even in hard news.

I know these days there are so many biased news agencies and lots of opinions masquerading as news, but for hard news agencies this kind of thing does not, and should not fly. The woman was dumb and I hope she was ready for a career writing op-eds and being a partisan talking head, because she’ll never write hard news at a reputable source again.

Yeah, my immediate thought was wondering why this manufactured content is here. Maybe a repost bot from Reddit where accounts with karma can be sold for disinfo?

That’s how it originally was in the US. I had it for years and it was absolutely useless, I used to complain about what’s the point of even having it if the only benefit was ONE return without a receipt per calendar year. You’re telling me you want to track all my purchases, but you can’t actually track all my purchases? Give me a break.

Then a few years ago they added free coffee, so it became worth it again. The 5% off thing is new enough I remember being surprised when I learned it.

Definitely same.

For our northern cousins, an illustrative story. I was attacked by a dog and with my arm and leg bleeding everywhere my first call was to my wife to get her to come pick me up because I knew an ambulance would be insanely expensive, and my second call was to insurance to find out if I could go to the hospital instead of urgent care. They sent me to urgent care, where they told me it was the worst attack they’d ever seen that wasn’t on the face.

The kicker is that I even have GOOD insurance, but that’s the reality of not knowing if it’s gonna bankrupt you or be covered or not: hesitation. That’s the reality of having years of habit-forming second-guessing when you had bad insurance, or when with good insurance and a tight budget. Imagine what is like for people with bad or no insurance.

The article didn’t say she was a settler in an occupied territory though, she was in a Kibbutz on the border of Gaza. The settler problem is in the West Bank. The article DID say she advocated for Palestinian rights, which I don’t understand why you’d deny unless you have some proof otherwise? Hamas killed civilians indiscriminately - they were bound to kill some very good people. I don’t understand why someone who advocated for Palestinian rights is so hard to believe. It’s just super sad.

You’re getting at my favorite article of all time, The Shockingly Simple Math of Early Retirement. Say what you will about Mr. Money Mustache or even early retirement in general, but this article really is the absolute simplest and best way to think about retirement savings. It’s why I often feel poor or pressed for money but never worry about retirement, because I max it all and pay myself first, and I know as long as my percentage is high I’m on track.

Plus even before I could max my 401k and Roth (and we recently had a kiddo so had to stop Roth for a bit) or get a high savings rate, I put in way more than was comfortable because the power of compounding is worth rice and beans and not going out drinking for a bit. Now that I’m middle aged my nest egg is huge, and we’ve been slowly able to lifestyle inflate. But I am soooo glad my younger self saved like crazy. Time flies by, and money compounds before you know it.

Well frankly I don’t think the original point was super well made, since folks are talking about entirely different points now, but I’d agree with soccer, and tennis and golf in particular really being comfortable with far more silence in broadcasting - but that’s true on both sides of the pond. But the idea that surface level analysis is unique to American sports coverage is pretty false in my experience. Every sport I know a lot about seems covered at surface level - every sport I don’t know a ton about seems covered great. But I’ll say despite knowing a ton about amfootball the broadcasting is still pretty impressive. The soccer analysis I’ve seen is pretty good too but I’ll admit my depth of knowledge is much shallower. But there is definitely a size of audience and sportscaster population issue as well, because small sports I know a lot about have much worse coverage.

I absolutely agree that US broadcast networks show more player centric fluff portions than English or Spanish broadcasts (the only other languages I’ve watched). But the original post was more about surface level analysis, and that’s more about audience size and quality of broadcasters IMHO. But yeah, fluff, particularly between plays/matches, is crazy annoying. I hate US Olympic coverage when I can juxtapose it with BBC.

This is hilariously false. It’s a major vs minor sport thing and having a population of talent to draw on. Top top top euro soccer announcers are just as amazing as top top top US basketball and football announcers, but as soon as you start watching a handball broadcast there is very little separating it from a rowing broadcast or a darts broadcast or whatever. Sometimes you get a good play by play announcer but color is almost always rough, because it’s insanely hard, not because Americans are bad at it lol.

I’ve done sports announcing, and come from a journalism family where my dad taught radio broadcasting.

Sports casting is hard. Like really, really hard. It is very easy to criticize the way someone does it, but it is incredibly difficult to fill hours of silence. I did live commentary for college wrestling, and I was a very knowledgeable high school wrestler, but frankly sometimes there just isn’t something exciting or even describable happening. Jockeying for control, positioning, or feeling out an opponent - sometimes the announcing is “they continue struggling!” Then you think of a sport that isn’t nonstop action like American football, or God forbid, baseball? Huge swaths of time where there is nothing to say. This is why professional sports casts on major networks have huge teams. They can pull up obscure stats that don’t really mean anything, instant replay analysis done nearly live, and a ton of graphics to keep things moving and exciting.

Then you have the issue others have talked about, where your audience may have almost no knowledge of what to you is a deeply technical sport. So every time you explain a wrestling move, or defensive pass coverage, you have to assume no knowledge. You have to explain why someone is doing something, but luckily that actually fills up a bit more time because God forbid you have dead air on a broadcast, so of course you do it. And the type of deep analysis a knowledgeable fan might want is actually really hard to not only come up with live, but while watching something live without the benefit of watching a replay or a better camera angle.

Anyway, my point is that you should try to do an entry level sports broadcasting exercise. Turn the sound off on a game, and try to cast it and record yourself. You will be absolutely shocked at how much silence there is, or how many asinine things you say. Even the “worst” broadcasters that you experience on any major network have such insanely deep knowledge and an ability to just keep spewing information and anecdotes out that I promise you would be so much more impressive if you heard an amateur, or better, tried to do it yourself.

It’s not actually junk prediction, though you might call it doom-bait journalism. WHO put climate change related deaths at like 150,000 people annually in the year 2000. Those numbers will obviously go up, which is why they’re backed in a lot of studies, but the real rub on reporting here is that they’re talking about “over the course of a century”. So it’s a completely reasonable estimate, it just ignores a lot of nuance like “some countries are having higher population growth so we’re not going to just lose 1 billion (though these deaths are theoretically preventable)” but also “the vast majority of these deaths will be concentrated in Southeast Asia and poorer countries.”

Did you listen to the NPR report? I don’t understand how you still have these questions.