woke Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Wikipedia is too “woke”?

neutral and boring and well sourced

In a bit of a hyperenergetic rant, Hank Green spoke about Wikipedia and the Destruction of Trust. Hank says, “a community of a bunch of individual volunteers… has built the greatest resource of information the world has ever seen…” And tolerance.

“Elon Musk is like, ‘This is a disaster of a place’ Because, of course, it says things he doesn’t like about him. And so Elon is responding by creating Grokipedia, an AI-created version of Wikipedia… which is admittedly in the Creative Commons.

“It’s just worse in every way because it doesn’t have all of the amazing infrastructure behind it… Holding this community together and keeping it [maintained] on Wikipedia for decades is insane. It’s a miracle.”

Interestingly, Musk’s “anti-woke Wikipedia alternative,” which “aims to create a parallel version of the truth for the right wing,” shows up in this article, revealing what an intellectual fraud it is.

Conversely, “’Musk does not have armies of people writing pages. What he does have is a sh!t-ton of GPUs,” the technology that underpins AI processing…

Community

“Because if Wikipedia is neutral and boring and well sourced, then that is a threat to their worldview and it’s a threat to their ability to define reality.” It is the anthesis of rage bait, Oxford’s Word of the Year.

“Wikipedia is a community of hundreds of thousands of editors…It’s globally accessible. It’s self-correcting. And I cannot emphasize this enough, boring. . And in the media landscape, designed to amplify the drama and the outrage and the conflict, the fact that Wikipedia is kind of boring is one of the most beautiful things about it. I love it. I want a place that’s not about trying to get views.” It is a social good.

I like Wikipedia. It has become a much better source of information. Back in 2005, there was a piece about the Presidential elections. It stated that the next one would be in 2007, which, of course, was inaccurate. I fixed it, and the correction stuck. I find far fewer of such egregious errors.

Here’s a 2024 article from a high school newspaper that is not wrong. “This issue of inaccurate information expands much more than just Wikipedia… That is why it’s strongly recommended that researchers using Wikipedia always check the sources at the bottom. They could lead to better information, if anything.” And I do use the footnotes regularly.

I even donated to Wikipedia in December 2025, possibly for the first time, because it’s useful and a social good.

Under attack

Rebecca Spiess wrote in the Boston Globe (paywall likely): Wikipedia is more important, and more vulnerable, than ever. The largest open repository of human knowledge is under attack.

“The secret sauce is the robust debate among the site’s editors — all volunteers — over the most important entries.

“In an excellent article in The Verge, writer Josh Dzieza explains just how intensely editors disagree: ‘By 2005, the pages where editors stipulated policy and debated articles were found to be growing faster than the articles themselves. Today, this administrative backend is at least five times the size of the encyclopedia it supports.'”

Moreover, “In its annual plan, Wikipedia this year identified the organization’s largest challenge: finding quality volunteers…

“In its most recent annual plan, the Wikimedia Foundation noted that its long-term sustainability largely hinges ‘on a steady influx of new users who contribute quality content and remain engaged.'”

“As algorithms continually work to build up our echo chambers, fact-checking procedures look increasingly quaint, and AI slop splashes all over the internet, Wikipedia is possibly the only fully unmonetized reality that still exists. There is no algorithm, sycophant AI machine, or advertiser trying to game this place.

“That’s why it matters so much.”

March rambling: something dumb

1099-K

“Good morning, friends. That awful feeling of shame and panic when you remember saying something dumb years ago is your nervous system trying to protect you from perceived danger. Try telling your body, ‘Thank you for wanting to protect me. We’re safe now. It’s okay to let it go.'” from Good Morning, Friends: Gentle Suggestions for the Start of Your Day. I have been there!

US Secretary of State Denounces Uganda’s New ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill

‘Legal Lynching’: ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws reflect legacy of white supremacist vigilantism in Deep South

“A right-wing judge takes aim at medication abortions“

Book ban attempts hit a record high in 2022, the American Library Association says

Teaching on Eggshells

Devin Stone, the “Legal Eagle,” explains the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege and how it applies to djt’s lawyers

Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery

Can the anti-woke mob define ‘woke’?

4-year-old girl shot dead by 3-year-old sister with semi-automatic pistol

CULCHA

Can Movie Theaters Survive? It’s the Most Enduring Question In Hollywood

Stephen Sondheim’s Final Musical to Premiere Off-Broadway This Fall

Aaron Sorkin Reveals He Had a Stroke Last November: “A Loud Wake-Up Call”

How Toy Companies Bribe YouTube Channels

Artificial Intelligence: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

These Are the World’s Happiest Countries in 2023. Finland is #1, and the US is #15.

An 85-year Harvard study on happiness found the No. 1 retirement challenge

Connection Between Alcohol and Sleep

How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain

What Does Blue Light Do to Your Eyes?

Why green might be the most important color for humans. But of course!

Understanding Your Form 1099-K. “The law is not intended to track personal transactions such as sharing the cost of a car ride or meal, birthday or holiday gifts, or paying a family member for a household bill.”

Mark Evanier’s Tales From The DMV

Parroting

Former Colorado Rep. Pat Schroeder, a pioneer for women’s rights, dies at 82

The indomitable spirit of Willis Reed. I watched that Game 7 NBA Finals game in 1970 on TV. It was remarkable. He died at the age of 80.

‘Fosbury Flop’ high jumper Dick Fosbury dies at 76

John Jakes, Author of the Miniseries-Spawning ‘North and South’ Trilogy, Dies at 90

The attempts to make a modern Little Nemoin Slumberland film

Now I Know: The Slave Who Shipped Himself to Freedom and A Cute Way to Prevent Traffic Deaths and Why Movie Theaters Have Red Seats and The Problem With Living in the Center of America and I Guess You Could Say They… Excel and The Little Bit of P-Word in the Coke and This Cupcake Recipe Isn’t The Bomb

MUSIC

Please keep voting for the niece Rebecca Jade at the San Diego Music Awards in categories 20, 21, 25, 26, and 27. Also for Peter Sprague in category 4 for an album that features Rebecca.

Dry Bones – Delta Rhythm Boys. A recent Old Testament scripture was Ezekiel 37:1-14. By coincidence, I was playing that week the soundtrack of the movie Rain Man, which included a version of Dry Bones by the Delta Rhythm Boys, though not precisely that take.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture

Let It Burn from Paradise Square the Musical, featuring Tony Award Winner Joaquina Kalukango

Tchaikovsky’s Symphonic Fantasia, The Tempest

Life’s a F***ing Fantasy for Santos – Randy Rainbow

Coverville 1436: Cover Stories for Poison and Sugar Ray

Woody Woodpecker theme

Music from the Emerald Isle

What’s The Name of That Song from Sesame Street

Franz Von Suppe’s Light Calvary

Social media and bias

woke

The Weekly Sift guy linked to articles about social media and bias. He discredits the belief offered by conservatives that “social media algorithms are biased against them… But it’s worth pointing out that people who have done research on the topic have found the exact opposite…

“When you think of people who have been banned from social media, the names that pop to mind are high-profile conservatives like Trump and MTG, rather than equivalently high-profile liberals.” Even when she rewrites the January 6 script or fantasizes about killing her colleagues, that’s free speech, right? (The latter may be treasonous.)

So I’m always looking for my own bias. It’s always a challenge to double-check one’s own assumptions. On 60 Minutes, Jonathan Haidt, “a social psychologist and professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business… says the people most likely to fire their social media dart guns are those on the far right and the far left.”

But damn! Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy on The Daily Show podcast over the issue Is JFK Jr. Still Alive? It would be easy to dismiss true believers as “crazy.” But “crazy” has roots in real-world facts, mixed with extrapolations that I can’t understand.

Psy-Op

When I read that some “researcher” has “proved” that George Floyd’s death was “a Psy-Op to Usher in U.S. Race War,” I first had to ask, “What the heck is a Psy-Op?” OBVIOUSLY, I’m just not with it.

“Definitions of psyop. Military actions are designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups, and foreign governments. Synonyms: psychological operation. Type of: military operation, operation. Activity by a military or naval force (as a maneuver or campaign)”

One example of PSYOPS is “propaganda, a type of communication or advertisement that aims to influence a targeted group’s way of thinking or decision-making. Ultimately, the goal of a propaganda campaign is to compel a population to take action in line with a specific message by introducing influential information.”

The Deep State paid for Floyd’s funeral, so obviously, there is a nefarious objective at work. Florida’s General Counsel, Ryan Newman, explained what “woke” means to the DeSantis administration. “It would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” The description actually seems reasonable. But Newman thinks it’s a BAD thing.

Social Media

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the writer, sociologist, and MacArthur Fellow, was on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in early December. She talked about The Illusion of Twitter as a Public Square. I think it’s worth the ten minutes to take in her POV.

Of course, the whole Internet may be vulnerable to attacks on the infrastructure. But also underwater cables keep the system operating. “When they congregate in one place, things get tricky.”