Gen Z, the followers of Jahn and Miri

JAHN: Is this supposed to be a good thing, Miri?
MIRI: Of course it is.

 

Every day they navigate memes, photos, social media, chats with their friends, flashes of video, influencers influencing, news articles from a zillion places across the net. ...

"Within a week of actual research, we just threw out the term information literacy," says Yasmin Green, Jigsaw's CEO. Gen Zers, it turns out, are "not on a linear journey to evaluate the veracity of anything." Instead, they're engaged in what the researchers call "information sensibility" — a "socially informed" practice that relies on "folk heuristics of credibility." In other words, Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just don't care.

Jigsaw's findings offer a revealing glimpse into the digital mindset of Gen Z. Where older generations are out there struggling to fact-check information and cite sources, Gen Zers don't even bother. They just read the headlines and then speed-scroll to the comments, to see what everyone else says. They're outsourcing the determination of truth and importance to like-minded, trusted influencers. And if an article's too long, they just skip it. They don't want to see stuff that might force them to think too hard, or that upsets them emotionally. If they have a goal, Jigsaw found, it's to learn what they need to know to remain cool and conversant in their chosen social groups. ...

They don't read long articles. ...

Instead of listening to stuffy old teachers, like CNN and the Times, they take their cues from online influencers — the queen bees and quarterback bros at the top of the social hierarchy. The influencers' personal experience makes them authentic, and they speak Gen Z's language.

More.

 
https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-most-trusted-news-source-online-comment-sections-google-2024-6

Election 2020: He's dead, Jim

 

He's dead, Jim

They're all dead.

Libertarians will never boldly go where no man has gone before

That's because they'll be retreating underground to their inner planet "Galt".

Libertarians hate the original Star Trek on television for some reason, more than any other show (the riveting "24" also does poorly with them). Who knew?

The story is here.

Except that libertarian Justin Amash likes to imagine Thomas Massie is his X-Wing Starfighter wingman in the Rebel Alliance. He said so with a Lego toy a year ago.

Maybe it's time to raise the qualification age to run for Congress? 

It Takes One To Know One: Liberalism Believes In Nothing

"Caesar ... and Christ; they had them both. And the word is spreading only now."

Oh dear, here, but if the author only understood that he also believes only in death:

[B]y now the base knows what Governor Romney believes, too. By now we all know what Governor Romney believes; by now his beliefs are more manifest and less mysterious than that of any candidate who’s ever run. Governor Romney believes nothing. ... What’s happening in and to the Republican Party this past week isn’t an aberration; it’s happening because of what the party has become . . ..

It's like a bad episode of Star Trek, in which The Enterprise visits a planet bent on civilizational suicide but must follow The Non-Interference Directive and let it go all to hell.

Jeffrey Goldberg Likes One Thing About Newt Gingrich

He wants to go "out there":

All at once, the passengers contorted themselves to get a view out of the starboard windows.

And there it was. The actual shuttle, the space shuttle Discovery, piggybacking a ride atop a Boeing 747, on the way to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where it would be retired. A ripple of excitement -- boyish, unvarnished excitement -- moved through the cabin.

It was an entrancing sight, and completely improbable, especially to people like me, who still don’t quite understand how a 747 gets into the air, even without a space shuttle as carry-on luggage.

The 747 and the space shuttle made a pass over the Washington Monument and the capital’s other grand marble temples, all consecrated to the American idea. They gleamed in the sun as they received a salute from a spacecraft that represented the physical manifestation of American ingenuity and confidence.

Then the 747 left our view. We settled back into our seats, having been elevated for a moment by a magnificent and elegiac vision -- elegiac, because the end of the shuttle program marks the first time since the dawn of the Space Age that the U.S. government has no immediate plan to launch humans into space.

A few minutes later, while we were still parked on the tarmac, ... the plane’s steering seemed to be malfunctioning. ...

We returned to the terminal, and I watched on CNN as Discovery finished the journey to its nursing home in the Virginia countryside. Only then did the obvious thought cross my mind: Newt is right.

This isn’t a thought that has often crossed my mind, especially over the past several months, but on the matter of space exploration and the role it has played in teaching Americans that they are capable of performing exceptional acts of creativity and bravery, Newt Gingrich is exactly right.

Read the whole thing, here.

KIRK:  Ahead Warp One, Mr. Sulu.

DIFALCO: Heading, sir?

KIRK:    Out there. Thataway.