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[BlackFlyme]

Watching the documentary Hot Coffee in law class.

I knew the media was spouting false facts about various lawsuits, and corporations were trying to save face.

I didn't know about businesses trying to get into the government to limit lawsuits and awards. Or about PR firms creating fake associations to make it look like the public was against lawsuits, once the bill was vetoed. Some places had very low damage caps due to this.

The pictures of the burns were horrible.

[IcyTea31]

I'm feeling ill, tired and depressed, and there's a maths final tomorrow I've barely studied for. Failure wouldn't be the end of the world, but that doesn't save me from the listlessness.

[Reelya]

Or about PR firms creating fake associations to make it look like the public was against lawsuits, once the bill was vetoed.

They call this "Astroturf", i.e. if there's no grass roots support for your corporate cause, you make a fake group. This goes back to the 1970s. Grassroots campaigning was effective in the 1960s, leading to the Clean Air Art, Clean Water Act etc. So polluting corporations looked for ways to combat this. PR firms stepped in by appropriating the 1960s tactics of activists: protests, letter writing and petitions.

One of the main culprits for running these shows is a PR firm called Burson-Marsteller of New York. Their clients include big polluters, big tobacco (cancer denialists), and PR work for genocidal governments in the third world. In Australia for example, the forestry industry association (loggers) paid them to set up the "Forestry Protection Society", who paradoxically always support chopping all those filthy trees down, and use their "green" credentials to try and take over meetings of other environmental groups and campaigns. The Forestry Protection Society literally had the same mailing address as the Forestry Industry Association, and the "head" of this Protection Society was actually a female office junior who worked for the Industry Association. So they are a corporate front group, and they pick a photogenic young office junior to be the "spokesperson" for the "community". This is the standard Burston-Marsteller method of operation.

One giveaway is the names of these groups: they tend to be things like "citizens for a sensible forest policy", where that policy just happens to be "chop down all the fucking trees". But they don't couch it this way. The split the demographic up into people who might want access to forests: hunters, mountain bikers, campers etc, call them up and give them each a different spiel about how they're being denied the right to use the forest. Then you get each concerned group to support your bill to make the national parks open to commercial exploitation. Each of the different right-wing front groups also share mailing lists between each other, so they can mix-n-match demographics who might be rallied to support some corporate agenda. It's basically a distributed botnet of conservative idiots.

[Vector]

-snip-

[Reelya]

What I've sort of worked out is that there's a triangle, with government, media, and corporations at the corners, and in the middle of the triangle, there are "think tanks" and these "Astro Turf" groups (which are think tanks rebranded as "concerned citizens"). Basically, corporations and vested interest groups set up these front-groups, then politicians who wish to support the corporate agenda can cite the "think-tank" as if it was independent scholarship, and the media can print their views (shared by the corporate owners and advertisers of the paper) as if they were independent scholarship.

This is the main difference between media in the USA and in Australia/UK/Europe. When there is a "big question" here in Australia, they almost always turn to qualified university professors to give an opinion most of the time. But in the USA, it's often someone from a corporate "think-tank" that is the go-to expert: So-and-so from the such-and-such-Institute/Foundation, and not "Dr So-and-so of "such-and-such-University". Hint: anything called an "institute" or a "foundation" is a corporate entity reliant on sponsors, not an actual center of learning.

Some more cool groups:

"Americans For Tax Reform" <= this group is actually really insidious. They are based in Washington and ever since Clinton was elected that have a weekly Wednesday meeting of the conservative "right-think" for that week: basically the official conservative spin on the weeks events. This gets faxed out to over 1000 conservative radio stations, papers and TV news. It's suspected it's one of the reasons for all the conservatives having the same "spin" on a number of news items at the same time: Rush Limbaugh has a famous line where he says "I just got a fax that has some incredible information on it", in regards to some Anti-Clinton information. In the book, this utterance is dated to March 10, 1994 - a thursday, the day after the meeting. Even GW Bush was known to visit The Meeting, cap in hand.

"Citizens for a Sound Economy" - sold themselves as a consumer rights group but was actually all about lobbying to change laws in favor of it's corporate donors. It has strong ties to the origins of the Tea Party - many of the key players involved with the early CSE's lobbying for the tobacco industry seem to have been involved with the origins of the Tea Party, suggesting that the Tea Party is just one massive Astro Turf operation.

"National Wetlands Coalition" (which is a "green" group sponsored by Exxon and Texaco). Wants to protect only the important wetlands - i.e the bits with no oil or gas.

[RedKing]

This is the main difference between media in the USA and in Australia/UK/Europe. When there is a "big question" here in Australia, they almost always turn to qualified university professors to give an opinion most of the time. But in the USA, it's almost always someone from a corporate "think-tank" that is the go-to expert: So-and-so from the such-and-such-Institute/Foundation, and not "Dr So-and-so of "such-and-such-University". Hint: anything called an "institute" or a "foundation" is a corporate entity reliant on sponsors, not an actual center of learning.

Well duh....everyone knows that professors are a bunch of liberal ivory-tower intalekshuls. 

And not all institutes and foundations are corporate shills (Such as the Confucius Institute, a multi-university consortium to promote Chinese-language and Chinese culture programs).

For my part, I've been convinced for years that advertising and marketing are professions for which there is a special level reserved in Hell. These are vocations whose sole aim is to make people want to buy something that they did not particularly want to buy before the marketing sorcerer works their dark magic.

[Rolan7]

My dad's a lot sicker than I thought.  I thought he'd be recovering, but instead he's getting saline because he can't keep water down.  It's been over a week...  He really should go to the doctor but instead his girlfriend's looking after him.  He always avoids going to the doctor to a stupid degree.

Our relationship is... very complicated, with a lot of regrets on both sides.  We keep things platonic now, and that works pretty well.
But I talked to him today and I think that was a bit comforting to both of us.  Like comforting a friend.

I mean, unless he changes his mind, I'm not exactly his son anymore.  Maybe even if he does change his mind -  Of course I'm bitter about it, but we actually do get along better as just friends.  A lot of the things I hate him for, I can tell he had good intentions.

I do hope he recovers from this soon.

[RedKing]

*bro hugs*

It's never easy to see a parent in a rough shape. Even one you have a strained relationship with.

[chaotic skies]

I love being too nervous to say two words. I mean, I knew I was an awkward, shy person, but holy fucking shit, I didn't know it was this bad. Guess I'm going to be stuck in this stupid cycle again, just like last time. And every other time. I wish I could change this, just once. Just one time, and I know it wouldn't happen again.

[RedKing]

I love being too nervous to say two words. I mean, I knew I was an awkward, shy person, but holy fucking shit, I didn't know it was this bad. Guess I'm going to be stuck in this stupid cycle again, just like last time. And every other time. I wish I could change this, just once. Just one time, and I know it wouldn't happen again.

Oh come on, it's not that hard to say "Waffle House". (You didn't say *which* two words.) 

[TheBiggerFish]

I love being too nervous to say two words. I mean, I knew I was an awkward, shy person, but holy fucking shit, I didn't know it was this bad. Guess I'm going to be stuck in this stupid cycle again, just like last time. And every other time. I wish I could change this, just once. Just one time, and I know it wouldn't happen again.

You can do it.  Be brave.
*hugs*

Also, *hugs Rolan*

That sucks...

[chaotic skies]

I love being too nervous to say two words. I mean, I knew I was an awkward, shy person, but holy fucking shit, I didn't know it was this bad. Guess I'm going to be stuck in this stupid cycle again, just like last time. And every other time. I wish I could change this, just once. Just one time, and I know it wouldn't happen again.

Oh come on, it's not that hard to say "Waffle House". (You didn't say *which* two words.) 

"Really? REALLY?! Oh. Okay. I can say that. Waffle Ho....Waff...Waffle Hou....WAFFLE HOUSE! There. I said it."

[Lord Shonus]

And it's impossible to find ammo for it.

While you might not find any in stores, many old calibres are still manufactured in small amounts and sold on the Internet. It's not cheap to get ammo for antique weapons, but not impossible either. Of course, actually firing the gun will cause wear on it and lower its value.

After doing some research, the only real way to get ammunition for that type of revolver is to wildcat it, which is both expensive and dangerous if you aren't an expert.

[Truean]

Damn depression, skewing views of things.

In fact:
Today was a decent day. I went for an interview.
Finished that interview and didn't do anything wrong, despite numerous setbacks.

In a depressed person's head:
The interview sucked. Probably failed it from fear of some of the questions being inane.
From there it spirals to remembering bad things that happened. Repetitive intrusive thoughts.
Catastrophizing and seeing things badly.

It would be interesting if there were some better way to deal with all of this and things generally.
The coping mechanism would be nice.

[TheBiggerFish]

@Truean:
*applies (platonic) hugs*