News that makes you say WTF! (33 Viewers)
- Thread starter Ford Prefect
- Start date
It was in 2002. Flying in from San Francisco where the Giants were playing the Angels. I asked a cashier at a grocer in Hana where was the best place in town where I could watch the next World Series game. He answered, "My house". Yeah, the vibe of not even a big hotel or bar out there was pretty cool. 
It was in 2002. Flying in from San Francisco where the Giants were playing the Angels. I asked a cashier at a grocer in Hana where was the best place in town where I could watch the next World Series game. He answered, "My house". Yeah, the vibe of not even a big hotel or bar out there was pretty cool.
Oh man, sorry for West Maui @Hawaii Juve Fan.
I just wished reporters would stop centering these stories around tourists and tourism when locals are losing their homes, neighborhoods, and histories.
I just wished reporters would stop centering these stories around tourists and tourism when locals are losing their homes, neighborhoods, and histories.
The roads are still closed and I have heard a lot of things through social media that I hope aren't true. One of them is that the banyan tree has been burned down. Lots of homes, at least 1 condo, a number of businesses all burned down. There are/were also fires in upcountry Maui and Kihei. I feel badly for everyone that has lost property or worse family members and also for the emergency responders. The winds were as strong as I've ever seen it here.
I understand where you're coming from, but at the same time I feel like most European media manage to strike a balance.
Obviously the pain of losing your house, maybe losing part of your neighbourhood and identity are far worse than having to temporarily relocate or annull a holiday. But at the same time this last bit can be of immediate relevance to their readers or viewers. A tremendous amount of Northern and Western Europeans go on holiday to Southern Europe during the summer months. Greece is a popular destination. In those circumstances I don't find it odd that newspapers want to show what conditions they can expect if they go to an island that is pretty much ablaze. As long as they also show the toll on actual residents, I have no issue with this.
They did this to Rhodes, Greece in a huge way and it annoyed the fook out of me. Essentially Rhodes was treated as this neocolonialist playland for interlopers to escape boredom and source new Instagram photos to FOMO their friends. Unlike Hawaii, there was very little mention of anything from the perspective of the people who actually live there.
Look, I get that people learn to have attachments and sympathies to people and places through their tourism. But that's no different than the zoo model of animal conservation: that we have to capture, extricate and imprison animals in cages to make the ones in the wild more relatable to the tourists who are destroying their native habitats every time they click "buy" on Zara.com.
The locals affected are framed merely as servants of the privileged tourist class, whose prime reason for existing is to tend to the plantation for the gentry who might grace them with a visit.
As climate change goes wider, these stories are going to impact more and more "surprise" places. We need to get out from under this narrative of "it's over there in our tourist haunts" to "the fires are burning our asses at home now". Centering on tourists still perpetuates this myth of othering the impacts of climate collapse.
Look, I get that people learn to have attachments and sympathies to people and places through their tourism. But that's no different than the zoo model of animal conservation: that we have to capture, extricate and imprison animals in cages to make the ones in the wild more relatable to the tourists who are destroying their native habitats every time they click "buy" on Zara.com.
The locals affected are framed merely as servants of the privileged tourist class, whose prime reason for existing is to tend to the plantation for the gentry who might grace them with a visit.
As climate change goes wider, these stories are going to impact more and more "surprise" places. We need to get out from under this narrative of "it's over there in our tourist haunts" to "the fires are burning our asses at home now". Centering on tourists still perpetuates this myth of othering the impacts of climate collapse.
Again, I understand where you're coming from.
It's just that I did not get this idea from my local media at all. Yes, they highlighted some of the "struggles" of Belgian tourists. But they also spoke about homes that were lost and the impact on locals. And they do this pretty much every time.
As for your second point, I unfortunately completely disagree. In most of (Western) Europe the debate is far beyond that point. Almost every natural disaster anywhere on Earth is put on the news to demonstrate climate change in such dramatical fashion it cripples people with anxiety. The one newspaper I have a subscription too actually had a survey on whether positive news about climate change (such as advances in the reductions of CO2 or new tech in clean energy) would be more helpful in the sense that at least it would convince people this is still a fight worth fighting instead of giving up.
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It is true that you cannot have a global disaster without a regional media source highlighting the local angle and focusing on the few with connections to the homeland. That even helps get over the human bias of the Identifiable Victim Effect.
But the more we follow this tourists-first logic, the more we can promote the myth that these things only happen where tourists go and they can still come home safely to their homes with only the slight inconvenience of a changed flight and a few scary stories to tell their friends.
That last point you get at is the doomerism issue. Look, I think humanity is f'ed either way... and in this way I'm a bit more with the nut jobs at Deep Adaptation on how to deal with it. The pain will have to grow much deeper, the losses will have to come much more dramatically, before people in larger numbers feel we need to break away from the current system that's aggressively causing these problems.
The thing I don't like about the selective publishing for behavioral outcome over fact is it only encourages a climate of conspiracy theories and informational distrust, which are two major factors that are only fanning the flames right now. As soon as media or government policies are oriented less towards being factual and more towards selectively showing and hiding facts to achieve a desired psychological response or outcome, the more everyone is going to distrust all information and feel the entire game is rigged.
This is what happened when the US White House started making up crazy crap about how taking the Covid vaccine meant you no longer needed to wear a mask ... even if one works against a vector of infection and the other for transmission, and both are very, very different. So Covid denialism had more fuel when they saw how information was presented to influence behavior rather than to empower everyone to make better decisions for themselves.
But the more we follow this tourists-first logic, the more we can promote the myth that these things only happen where tourists go and they can still come home safely to their homes with only the slight inconvenience of a changed flight and a few scary stories to tell their friends.
That last point you get at is the doomerism issue. Look, I think humanity is f'ed either way... and in this way I'm a bit more with the nut jobs at Deep Adaptation on how to deal with it. The pain will have to grow much deeper, the losses will have to come much more dramatically, before people in larger numbers feel we need to break away from the current system that's aggressively causing these problems.
The thing I don't like about the selective publishing for behavioral outcome over fact is it only encourages a climate of conspiracy theories and informational distrust, which are two major factors that are only fanning the flames right now. As soon as media or government policies are oriented less towards being factual and more towards selectively showing and hiding facts to achieve a desired psychological response or outcome, the more everyone is going to distrust all information and feel the entire game is rigged.
This is what happened when the US White House started making up crazy crap about how taking the Covid vaccine meant you no longer needed to wear a mask ... even if one works against a vector of infection and the other for transmission, and both are very, very different. So Covid denialism had more fuel when they saw how information was presented to influence behavior rather than to empower everyone to make better decisions for themselves.
This is true, but I think you have to understand that in most of Western Europe the media have been talking doom about climate change for decades now. It's always ice melting here or drought over there. It is endless. I remember this being a big subject in elementary school and I'm 36. I'm sure there are some people my age who consider it a miracle we're still alive today. I don't think you'd find many people here who don't believe in climate change. You would find a lot of people who think we're doomed and can't do anything to improve our chances on a better outcome. So I get where the newspaper is coming from.
I don't think you take feet out of the fire because people feel depressed about it. That's just masking. And I know climate anxiety is a massive problem in youth around the world.
The minute you alter your sharing of information to influence behavior is a slippery slope you cannot recover from, because trust is lost and the real crazies with apocalyptic narratives suddenly get more appealing and seem more rational compared to a media-government apparatus that seeks to control behavior and coddle their feelings.
The minute you alter your sharing of information to influence behavior is a slippery slope you cannot recover from, because trust is lost and the real crazies with apocalyptic narratives suddenly get more appealing and seem more rational compared to a media-government apparatus that seeks to control behavior and coddle their feelings.
I'm not sure you'd have to alter it.
You could combine news worthy facts and add news about technological or legal advances to news about catastrophes. In a way it's not very different from adding disclaimers or suicide hotline numbers to articles that are about people committing suicide.
I will say this though: I'm not entirely disappointed with climate anxiety being a thing. I'm sure it might cripple some people and have a negative effect on them. But there are also a lot of people who perform really well under pressure. I know I do my best work when I have to work against crazy deadlines.
You could combine news worthy facts and add news about technological or legal advances to news about catastrophes. In a way it's not very different from adding disclaimers or suicide hotline numbers to articles that are about people committing suicide.
I will say this though: I'm not entirely disappointed with climate anxiety being a thing. I'm sure it might cripple some people and have a negative effect on them. But there are also a lot of people who perform really well under pressure. I know I do my best work when I have to work against crazy deadlines.
News is always biased towards doom and gloom anyway, I don't think we can ever fix that. Humans are wired to pay attention to threats more than feel-good stories over a hot cup of tea with their mittens on. It's part of our evolutionary survival.
An active strategy to suppress bad news -- and not because it's just the media spreading doom but rather something factual but hard to swallow -- sounds like a worse option to me at least.
And I'm pretty convinced that any excuse given to continue the industrialized nation rat race -- of consuming more, selling more, valuing ourselves more by what we have -- is going to need a serious beat-down before any critical mass will be possible to achievably seek viable alternatives.
An active strategy to suppress bad news -- and not because it's just the media spreading doom but rather something factual but hard to swallow -- sounds like a worse option to me at least.
And I'm pretty convinced that any excuse given to continue the industrialized nation rat race -- of consuming more, selling more, valuing ourselves more by what we have -- is going to need a serious beat-down before any critical mass will be possible to achievably seek viable alternatives.
There is change, but it is slow. Perhaps a mostly unnoticed trend, but still a trend, is the disappearance of fast fashion. In the 2000's you'd buy a t-shirt, wear it two times and throw it out. Most people are now willing to pay a bit more to buy stuff that lasts. And stores and brands advertise that way as well.
Awareness is a big first step. All it takes is a look at Kantamanto in Accra, Ghana to see where your purchases really end up.
But those are isolated choices. It's much easier to cut back on red meat, cheap clothing, or the occasional flight in favor of a train. It's much harder to question what is it all for and what does "progress" truly mean in one's life and society. That's the slap-in-the-face shock that still needs to come.
But those are isolated choices. It's much easier to cut back on red meat, cheap clothing, or the occasional flight in favor of a train. It's much harder to question what is it all for and what does "progress" truly mean in one's life and society. That's the slap-in-the-face shock that still needs to come.
A bit easy to say for someone whos done it all. The slap in the face is that earth has always been the playground of scarcity and no amount of 2 bit civilization veneer or empty slogans will change that. Just take a look at whos asked to make sacrifices first: the weak. Sooner or later the masks will drop and we will get back to our merry warring ways. And you know what? It's just as well.
You guys remember MH370?
https://x.com/theurigeller/status/1690794074322726912?s=46&t=44zFspkwtn4Oth1i9vk6Xg
Man, I really hope this shit is real.
https://x.com/theurigeller/status/1690794074322726912?s=46&t=44zFspkwtn4Oth1i9vk6Xg
Man, I really hope this shit is real.
You guys remember MH370?
https://x.com/theurigeller/status/1690794074322726912?s=46&t=44zFspkwtn4Oth1i9vk6Xg
Man, I really hope this shit is real.
https://x.com/theurigeller/status/1690794074322726912?s=46&t=44zFspkwtn4Oth1i9vk6Xg
Man, I really hope this shit is real.