rud.is

It is surprisingly shorter (or longer if you grok regular expressions) than you think it might be: http[s]://.*.

Like it or not, bias is everywhere and tis woefully insidious. “Mainstream media” [MSM]; Alt-left; Alt-right; and, everything in-between creates and promotes “fake” news. Hourly. It always has. Due to the speed at which [dis]information travels now, this is the ultimate era of whatever _you_ believe is “true” is actually “true”, regardless of the morality or (unadulterated, non-theoretical) scientific facts. Sadly, it always has been this way and it always will be this way. Failing to recognize Truth tis the nature of an inherently flawed, broken species.

The reason the MSM is having trouble defining and coming to the grips with “fake news” is that it — itself — has been a witting and unwitting co-conspirator to it since before the invention of the printing press. Tis hard to see the big picture when one navel-gazes so much.

Nobody wants to be wrong and — right now — the only ones who _are_ wrong are those who disagree with _you_. Fundamentally, everyone wants their own aberrations to be normalized and we’re obliging that _in spades_ in our 21st century society. Go. Team.

Rather than sit back and accept said aberrations as the norm, verify **everything** that is presented as “fact”. That may mean opening an honest-to-goodness book or three. Sadly, given the sorry state of public & university libraries, you may need to go to multiple ones to finally get at an actual, real, fact. It may also mean coming to grips with that what you want *so desperately to be “OK”* is actually not OK. Just realize you have permission to be wrong.

Naively believe *nothing* (including this rant blog post). Challenge everything. Seek to recognize, acknowledge and promote Truth wherever it shines. Finally, don’t mistake your own desires for said Truth.

>_The parent proposed a committee made up of parents and teachers of different cultural backgrounds come up with a list of books that are inclusive for all students._

Where’s the [ACLU](https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/artistic-expression/banned-books)? They’d be right there if this was an alt-right’er asking to ban books with salacious content they deem (rightly or wrongly) “inappropriate” or “harmful” to teens. I hope they step up and fight the fight the good fight here.

We’re rapidly losing — or may have already lost (as a society) — the concept of building resilience & strength through adversity. I’m hopeful that the diversity we bring into this country with immigrants and refugees (if the borders don’t close shut or we scare them away) that know what true adversity is will eventually counteract this downward spiral.

Refs:

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When something pops up in the news, on Twitter, Facebook or even (ugh) Gab claiming or teasing findings based on data I believe it’s more important than ever to reply with some polite text and a `#showmethedata` hashtag. We desperately needed it this year and we’re absolutely going to need it in 2017 and beyond.

The catalyst for this is a recent [New Yorker story](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html) about “computer scientists” playing off of heated election emotions and making claims in a non-public, partisan meeting with no release of data to the public or to independent, non-partisan groups with credible, ethical data analysis teams.

I believe agents of parties in power and agents of the parties who want to be in power are going to be misusing, abusing and fabricating data at a velocity and volume we’ve not seen before. If you care about the truth (the real truth, not a “necessary truth” based on an agenda) and are a capable data-worker it’s nigh your civic duty to keep in check those that are want to deceive.

**UPDATE** 2016-11-23 10:30:00 EST

Haderman has an (ugh) [Medium post](https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.vvcd9bguw) (ugh for using Medium vs the post content) and, as usual, the media causes more controversy than necessary. He has the best intentions and future confidentiality, integrity and availability of our electoral infrastructure at heart.

The [first public informational video](https://www.greatagain.gov/news/message-president-elect-donald-j-trump.html) from the PEOTUS didn’t add a full transcript of the video to the web site and did not provide (at least as of 0700 EST on 2016-11-22) their own text annotations/captions to the video.

Google’s (YouTube’s) auto-captioning (for the most part) worked and it’s most likely “just good enough” to enable the PETOUS’s team to avoid an all-out A.D.A. violation (which is probably the least of their upcoming legal worries). This is a forgotten small detail in an ever-growing list of forgotten small and large details. I’m also surprised that no progressive web site bothered to put up a transcription for those that need it.

Since “the press” did a terrible job holding the outgoing POTUS accountable during his two terms and also woefully botched their coverage of the 2016 election (NOTE: I didn’t vote for either major party candidate, but did write-in folks for POTUS & veep), I guess it’s up to all of us to help document history.

Here’s a moderately cleaned up version from the auto-generated Google SRT stream, presented without any commentary:

For those technically inclined, you can grab that feed using the following R code. You’ll first need to ensure Developer Tools is open in your browser and tick the “CC” button in the video before starting the video. Look for a network request that begins with `https://www.youtube.com/api/timedtext` and use the “Copy as cURL” feature (all three major, cross-platform browsers support it), then run the code immediately after it (the `straighten()` function will take the data from the clipboard).

library(curlconverter)
library(httr)
library(xml2)

straighten() %>% 
  make_req() -> req

res <- req[[1]]()

content(res) %>% 
  xml_find_all(".//body/p") %>% 
  xml_text() %>% 
  paste0(collapse="") %>% 
  writeLines("speech.txt")

In this emergent “post-truth” world, we’re all going to need to be citizen data journalists and it’s going to be even more important than ever to ensure any data-driven pieces we write are honest, well-sourced, open to review & civil commentary, plus be fully reproducible. We all will also need to hold those in power — including the media — accountable. Despite whatever leanings you have, cherry-picking data, slicing a bit off the edges of the truth and injecting a bias because of your passionate views that you believe are right are only going to exacerbate the existing problems.