mozz

mozz, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

infoterkiniviral.com

Okay that's a little weird

by NEWSLINE PAPER — Wednesday, May 08, 2024

Newsline Paper? Is the head editor named Fred Humanmale?

While on board, astronauts David Scott, Alfred Worden, and James Irwin used the Lunar Module Falcon to sneakily bring about 400 illegal mail covers to orbit and the moon's surface. The goal of the stamp traders was to make these postal covers, which are also known as "stamped envelopes," useless so that they could sell them to collectors as souvenirs.

Something about this nonsensical sentence structure seems familiar

Even though the Apollo 15 mission was a huge success, some people's actions hurt its image and showed how bad it can be to act unethically in the search for space. The event is still a serious and important part of NASA's past because it shows how important it is to act ethically and keep space missions completely honest.

Privacy& Pollicy

Readers are encouraged to verify any information found on our website independently before making decisions or taking any actions based on it. We do not assume any responsibility for errors

NEWSLINE PAPER provides the latest viral news and updates from Around the world

Oh they have an RSS feed

https://nullphpscript.com/

Oh...

I reported the post as botshit

mozz, 8 months ago

I deliberately didn't click, so as to not reward them for making me want to click and find out which star

It was Euron Greyjoy I guess

mozz, 8 months ago

A minor accident had forced me down in the Rio de Oro region, in Spanish Africa. Landing on one of those table-lands of the Sahara which fall away steeply at the sides, I found myself on the flat top of the frustum of a cone, an isolated vestige of a plateau that had crumbled round the edges. In this part of the Sahara such truncated cones are visible from the air every hundred miles or so, their smooth surfaces always at about the same altitude above the desert and their geologic substance always identical. The surface sand is composed of minute and distinct shells; but progressively as you dig along a vertical section, the shells become more fragmentary, tend to cohere, and at the base of the cone form a pure calcareous deposit.

Without question, I was the first human being ever to wander over this . . . this iceberg: its sides were remarkably steep, no Arab could have climbed them, and no European had as yet ventured into this wild region.

I was thrilled by the virginity of a soil which no step of man or beast had sullied. I lingered there, startled by this silence that never had been broken. The first star began to shine, and I said to myself that this pure surface had lain here thousands of years in sight only of the stars.

But suddenly my musings on this white sheet and these shining stars were endowed with a singular significance. I had kicked against a hard, black stone, the size of a man's fist, a sort of moulded rock of lava incredibly present on the surface of a bed of shells a thousand feet deep. A sheet spread beneath an apple-tree can receive only apples; a sheet spread beneath the stars can receive only star-dust. Never had a stone fallen from the skies made known its origin so unmistakably.

And very naturally, raising my eyes, I said to myself that from the height of this celestial apple-tree there must have dropped other fruits, and that I should find them exactly where they fell, since never from the beginning of time had anything been present to displace them.

Excited by my adventure, I picked up one and then a second and then a third of these stones, finding them at about the rate of one stone to the acre. And here is where my adventure became magical, for in a striking foreshortening of time that embraced thousands of years, I had become the witness of this miserly rain from the stars. The marvel of marvels was that there on the rounded back of the planet, between this magnetic sheet and those stars, a human consciousness was present in which as in a mirror that rain could be reflected.

-Antoine de St. Exupery

mozz, 8 months ago

It's pure magic

mozz, 8 months ago

😃

It’s so good

mozz, 8 months ago

I suspect it receives relatively few big rocks from anywhere else though

mozz, 9 months ago

Things are good, not because of the amount of stuff inside the thing that is provided to be discovered.

I read this guy talking about when they nerfed fire in early Minecraft, how he and his friend before the nerf had accidentally set the entire continent on fire and had to run away in a boat for a long time across empty distant ocean, and landed in some strange place and how they set up the beginnings of their first base there that they played out of for years.

Things are good because of the quality of experience you have on the thing. Social media, operating systems, video games, life in general: Adding to it to make it "good" from the outside, often detracts from the goodness of the experience, from the ones experiencing.

mozz, 9 months ago

100% agreed. I didn't even really play more than poking at Minecraft one time to see what it was about, and the instant vibe of being alone in a vast alien landscape with no other living soul for any distance in any direction is exactly as he described.

mozz, 10 months ago

It legit looks like an AI image generator was told to generate a nebula that's also a bat

mozz, 10 months ago

I highly doubt NASA is in the business of doing that (and FWIW Snopes agrees with me).

mozz, 10 months ago

There's a big difference between "touched up" as in, fix the contrast and adjust the color balance, versus "touched up" as in let's make a nebula look like a bat. The first, me and Ricky are in agreement that they're doing. The second, me and Snopes feel strongly that they're not doing.

mozz, 10 months ago

I want to normalize having a sarcastic commentator making scathingly aggressive Youtube videos about people in the news who are doing unethical things.

mozz, 10 months ago

He can still make videos about The Completionist and WataGames

mozz, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

What's the factual issue with what he said about Jirard? Like for example, would you say any of the big blockquotes in this story are specifically untrue?

Edit: Buried way down in the thread is my response after watching the video. TL;DR I stopped watching when after faffing around for 30 minutes, the guy finally got to the point, and almost immediately said with a straight face, "The times where Jirard has stated that funding has occurred might be obvious miscommunications or simple misstatements. Human error."

mozz, 10 months ago

I asked about the specific claims in the story I linked to.

Claim #1 can be verified by watching Jirard's video

Claim #2 can be verified by watching Jirard's video

Claim #3 is a simple statement of logic, no factual assertion

Claim #4 is a statement of what's in Jirard's video, and an argument about how the law works, no factual assertion beyond what's in the video

Claim #5 is a simple statement of logic (predicated on what's in Jirard's video)

Claim #6 is an assertion about what Jirard claims "constantly"; hard to verify without watching literally everything Jirard has published

Literally nothing in the story I linked had anything to do with anything not in the public record. I was asking about those specific claims to get a sense of what exact statements of Karl's you're talking about. Your answer doesn't give me a ton of confidence that you're being precise in your allegations about Karl.

I haven't watched your video and don't plan to for a little while because of time reasons, but I'll take a look. I am curious on the topic (why I asked you the question I did.) The only other thing I'll say on the topic is, Karl's been on the receiving end of a $100k+ lawsuit already from the subject of one of his videos; it's possible that he's saying irresponsible things without consulting with his lawyer who would otherwise advise him not to, but I think it's unlikely.

mozz, 10 months ago

he only thing he actually proved was that approximately $600k sat in a bank account that most people probably believed was being moved along more judiciously than that

The assertion was that Jirard had confirmed that some of the money was spent on things that weren't charity, and that the explanations Jirard gave for why it hadn't been given to charity after years had passed were nonsense. All of that depends just on Jirard's statements.

That said, I can buy the idea that there were other allegations in the video that shouldn't have been made because they're not provable; I'll watch your video.

a trap allowing Jirard to legitimately counter-sue

Counter-sue? Karl is suing Jirard? When did this happen?

mozz, 10 months ago

There were no legal threats from Karl's side to get lost in. There were statements about Jirard's conduct, but no threats. I'm suddenly a lot more skeptical about what you're saying, although I'll still watch the video.

mozz, 10 months ago

Okay, I've seen enough; I made it to 33:12. This video is way longer than it needs to be; Karl made some pretty specific allegations, which do line up with the legal definition of charity fraud (which is laid out in clear legalese in the video), if they're true. The most critical part is the way Jirard repeatedly on stream made very specific statements about where the money was going to go, or had gone, that turned out not to be true by his own later admission. The video could have started at 28:29 with "what is fraud, and did it happen," and done at most a couple minutes' Cliffs Notes for the rest.

I waited and waited for this to be addressed.

At 31:02, he artfully excerpts a statement from Jobst saying the behavior was "unethical and almost certainly illegal," by saying only the "certainly illegal" part. Those are two very different statements, and this was the first time my whoa-hold-the-fuck-up meter started to register.

At 31:30, he airs one of the statements by Jirard that's not really an issue, and explains that as a general statement it's not really an issue. How about the statements Karl took issue with? I was back in waiting mode.

At 33:04, he says, "The times where Jirard has stated that funding has occurred might be obvious miscommunications or simple misstatements. Human error."

Shut the fuck up Mr. Lawyer Man. You can't make a whole half hour lead up about why the whole thing is a huge misunderstanding and what a great position Jirard is in since he never actually did any fraud, and then just casually drop that "Oh yeah and those the times he lied about where the money had gone he probably just made a mistake and it's not a big deal." Especially since part of the defense is, well we were waiting before we actually gave the money for it to be enough to be able to do X Y Z fancy thing.

I am not a lawyer. There may be some additional explanation that clarifies why they were "obvious miscommunications." But I saw enough to satisfy my curiosity.

mozz, 10 months ago

I think I got so mad that I spent half an hour of my life watching this, that I replied to myself. But my response (after watching most of the video) is up there.

mozz, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Often, when I am covering a topic I lack familiarity or specificity with, I bring in an outside source—in the case of nonprofits, that meant talking to sources like lawyers and financial experts on the challenges that can face charities. (Lawyers, it should be noted, often don’t speak in absolutes about specific situations when talking to media outlets.)

Jobst didn’t do that, essentially meaning he was interpreting the documentation himself.

Citation needed. I don't know that Karl consulted with a lawyer before making this video, but given that he's right in the middle of getting sued and has spent over $100k on legal fees defending himself in that lawsuit, it'd be pretty surprising if he didn't talk to his lawyer before making this video, but instead just sort of sprung it on him as a little surprise.

I'm curious what Ernie's reason is for asserting specifically that he didn't talk to a lawyer about his video.

I can take or leave Jobst’s claims of embezzlement—I think while Khalil probably spoke a bit too loosely during IndieLand, the format is a livestream and does lead to a lot of loose talk. Dude is filling time for hours, because that’s how the format works, and that lends itself to slip-ups. It doesn’t seem like he was being intentionally misleading, for the most part. But I do think that if Khalil decides to do another livestream like this in the future, he should probably cut out the middleman. It’s clear that what they were building towards struggled from an execution standpoint, and the use of a charity tied directly to Khalil has raised too many questions.

By saying that he'd donated money he hadn't donated, he was just... filling time on his stream? "For the most part?" Doesn't that aspect of the issue deserve a little more attention than this one dismissive paragraph?

(Edit: I expanded the quote to give full context. Contrast this against how Karl "not a bad journalist -- far from it" Jobst actually showed quite a few exact clips of Jirard saying the things he was referencing to support his arguments with specifics, instead of just making vague statements about "slip-ups.")

I have more I'd like to say about other things in this article, but honestly most of it is just beside the point. Like I said, the actual situation is actually extremely extremely simple. Seeing these huge videos or articles, which talk about charity fraud but spend almost all their runtime dealing at incredible length with issues other than "Did Jirard commit the technical definition of charity fraud?", actually specifically emphasizing that it wasn't a big deal if he did for the short time they touch on it, seems very weird.

(Edit: I could actually sympathize a lot more with the "Karl went too far" narrative before I spent so much time on things people are posting in this thread. It's definitely true that he's not a journalist and he makes money running a flashy Youtube channel; I could easily believe that he publicly attacked a couple of genuinely awful people like Billy Mitchell and it worked well, and he sort of got carried away looking for the next target, and then went too far in his Completionist video. I'd only ever really heard Karl's side of the story, and I didn't care about the topic enough to look into it any more. But these two attempts at defending what Jirard did are genuinely ridiculous.)

mozz, 10 months ago

Jobst: He seems to have committed charity fraud

Video: Whoa whoa whoa, there's a very technical definition of charity fraud; you have to operate a charity and make false statements about what you're doing with the money (subject to a few additional caveats and restrictions.) This is a terribly irresponsible thing Jobst is saying without having proof of it or understanding the law as well as I do.

You: "There was no smoking gun" "He didn't prove it"

Also video: Those times Jirard clearly said untrue things about what was happening to the money, well hey, anyone could make that type of obvious innocent mistake

mozz, 10 months ago

I'm not trying to get into a big back-and-forth about this, but just to take one more stab at what I've been saying:

The Moon video, Jobst, and the article someone else sent me here all seem to be in agreement that Jirard is on video claiming to have already donated money that it turned out later he hadn't donated. I'm not sure where you're getting that there's a lack of evidence of charity fraud.

Jobst, if I remember correctly, showed the clips of him saying it. Moon said they were "obvious miscommunications or simple misstatements." Ernie said they were "slip-ups" and that he was just filling time on his stream. To me, the latter two sound like bullshit. You are, of course, free to draw your own different conclusions and judgements about any or all of this. Just the fact that he said some things doesn't automatically mean he's guilty. But it's weird to say there's no evidence when all the sources seem to acknowledge (with their own wildly differing spins on the presentation) that there is.

As for your implication that I'm just saying all this because I wasn't interested in the video, I just like Karl Jobst's videos, etc:

"Well, I haven’t ignored [evidence for creationism]; I considered the purported evidence and then rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can’t be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged." -Carl Sagan

mozz, 10 months ago

I watched that section of the video, yes. Did you watch the section of the video after that, that I listed the timestamps of? I talked about it at some length.

mozz, 10 months ago

Actually: I've exhausted the length of time I want to spend on this. Sorry. You're right that the early section of the video spends a ton of time being derisive towards Jobst, and explaining at incredible length that charities can in general do whatever they want with their money, which is true, and throwing shade at Jobst and strawmanning his complaints a little.

After quite a long time of that, it finally gets around to acknowledging one of Jobst's core complaints, which was not just that Jirard did whatever he wanted with the money (which is his right), but that he lied about it (which is, with certain caveats and reservations, a crime.)

I pretty much gave up on the video when he finally did admit that that happens but dismissed it so airily as oh, that was a "misstatement," it's fine, instead of acknowledging it in any kind of head-on manner or making some convincing argument that Jirard wasn't actually on video lying about it.

I'm actually find with tedium; I was irritated at the video because not because it was dry (it wasn't really), but because it seemed like it was spending time obfuscating the truth and dealing with trivialities. Did a lawyer help Jirard with his apology video? Probably. Where did Jobst get the simplified explanation of charity fraud he used in his video? I don't care, as long as the conduct does match the actual definition. Why was Jirard "saving" the money? It honestly doesn't really matter -- he can, as Moon notes, do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't lie about it. But if he does lie, all of a sudden the explanation for why he was doing what he was actually doing when he was saying something else is probably irrelevant. Just get to the point. Etc.

Anyway. That's my take on it. You've got yours. Good luck and all the best.

mozz, 10 months ago

Update: Moon took down his video, and posted this, saying among other things "Karl is right: I didn't engage with the entire body of evidence, thereby getting crucial facts wrong."

mozz, 10 months ago

Battlefield 1942. Vehicle combat, area-control mechanics, "realistic" shooter gameplay (before that term became an obscene word), and class-based team mechanics had all been invented before, but the way it brought them together and the degree to which it polished them to arrive at something fun as hell was nothing less than revolutionary at the time. It was so groundbreaking that (for better or worse) it basically spawned the "AAA WW2 game" genre that then lasted for decades.

Then, the sequels were so consistently mediocre that the original was more or less erased from history.

mozz, 10 months ago

Fun fact, mostly unrelated but something in your message reminded me: I once played against a guy at a Go club, and we had an enjoyable game but he beat me. He wanted to talk to me about the game afterwards, and he started replaying the game for me from memory so he could make commentary. He replayed a pretty decent chunk of the beginning; I honestly don't remember but I think around the first 25-30 moves of the game.

I later learned he was the visiting Go person who was just stopping by the club for social reasons but could demolish anyone. He was incredibly kind and polite.