Dempf

Most based admin possible.

I watched the B-Boys and B-Girls finals last night out of curiosity, and it was actually pretty cool and fun to watch. Still not sure how it's scored though, seems like they get a lot of points from judges for originality and not repeating moves.

Utah fry sauce

I've definitely had that feeling before. I was really into Chinese rock bands and bought a bunch of CDs. I've been slowly uploading them. I mean China is a big country with lots of people, so it's not like these bands are completely unknown, but when I used to go to concerts in China some of the groups that I thought rocked the hardest didn't tend to pull big crowds. And when you look on Chinese Internet for this stuff, you usually find crappy MP3s, not rips following proper procedures.

I still think about the band where I showed up late because the train to Beijing was delayed and then the taxi driver couldn't find the venue address, so I just barely caught their last song. Then afterwards I was hanging out chatting with people and they were like, since you only got to hear one song you deserve to meet the singer. And they were friends with the singer so they called her to come out. It seemed like she was blown away that any foreign fans at all are into her music, and when she found out I didn't yet have a place to stay for the night and was planning to find a last minute hostel or hotel she said "no, you're not doing that, you're staying with my friends who have a spare room".

Whenever I rip & upload Chinese rock, I think about those people who were so friendly and gracious towards me. Like who tf invites some random stranger at a rock concert over like that. And none of those bands, even the ones that made it "big" really got the attention that I thought they deserved. They were pouring their heart and soul into their music.

Sometimes I buy CDs and rip to flac so that really obscure shit doesn't get lost forever.

I mean look at this dumpster fire of a comment section.... I don't think we as a community are really making a good case.

Personally I think the bot is a bad idea because I always hated that kind of shit on Reddit. I'd rather have discussion with real people than just have a bot that always comments.

But the people attacking MBFC are really coming out of left field in my view. If I was a mod, I don't know if I'd want to listen to feedback either.

Look, honestly I don't really know who Ryan Grim is, but I googled "Ryan Grim" and "The Gray Zone" and apparently "the grayzone crowd comes after [him] all the time".

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1696331666980053126

I also don't know enough to really get into a discussion about Israel / Palestine, and I don't know anything about the drama with WaPo in the article you linked so I can't say whether or not it's 100% factual as you say.

Maybe in this specific instance, The Gray Zone is correct, and in agreement with Ryan Grim. I don't know. But the thing is, you are I are in a discussion about bias and source quality. And I'm saying to you that, in my view, The Gray Zone doesn't pass the smell test.

That's the whole point of MBFC: to get a smell test of whether a source is worth considering or not.

What I am saying is, I'm not going to spend hours of my life going through your source to check it out, and possibly verify it, or refute it point by point. Especially when the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on it is:

Coverage of The Grayzone has focused on its misleading[25][26] and false reporting,[27] its criticism of American foreign policy,[1][4] and its sympathetic coverage of the Russian, Chinese and Syrian governments.[4][21][28][29] The Grayzone has downplayed or denied the persecution of Uyghurs in China,[33] and been accused of publishing conspiracy theories about Xinjiang, Syria and other regions,[34][35][36] and publishing disinformation about Ukraine during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which some have described as pro-Russian propaganda.[32][36]

The article about Xinjiang that I linked to you was just from a random source I clicked from Wikipedia.

I realize that I am probably coming across in a rather dismissive way, but honestly I think that's the point -- if I can convince myself this quickly that a source looks suspicious, it's in my interest to dismiss it just as quickly. In the past I've spent dozens of hours doing deep dives on random sources that friends have sent me, and in every case it's been a waste of time because I ended up coming to the same conclusion that I did in 5 seconds of reading Wikipedia.

I know some people love doing these deep dives, but I've realized for myself -- like back in 2010 when one particular person was sending me crap from Natural News -- that unless I truly get "this needs the benefit of the doubt" vibes, all that time I spend just makes me feel bitter and angry at the world, and I end up having gained nothing and learned nothing from the experience.

So again, I'm sorry. Your source may be correct. But it looks seriously suspicious. Personally, I'm not willing to look any deeper than that.

I don't know if I would take thegrayzone.com as a good source, personally:

https://www.axios.com/2020/08/11/grayzone-max-blumenthal-china-xinjiang

Yeah I mean look what instance this was posted on.

Probably they will ban me just for saying that.

Don't know a lot about Mondoweiss, but I found this article that cites Weiss saying some pretty out there stuff:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/

I don't know that I like it if MBFC is just taking pro-Israel advocate at their word, but another commentator said they rated other pro-Israel sources as questionable as well. Example:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/israel-war-room-bias/

Another commentator brought up Mondoweiss, which is interesting. I don't know that I disagree with MBFC's rating, as Weiss has previously said some pretty out there stuff:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/04/mondoweiss-is-a-hate-site/

But I mean I'm far from an expert in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and in fact I'm pretty ignorant to be honest.

The comments in here feel pretty weird. At best, people are following a trend that I hate, where we are on a link-aggregator platform, but someone assumes that you already have all the context and refuses to post a link. At worst? Well there's that guy threatening the mods that he'll spam the community if the mods don't let him have his way.

It has been getting so bad that even boring regular phone trees will hang up on you if you insist on talking to a human. If it's ISP / cellular, nowadays I will typically just say I want to cancel my account, and then have cancellations route me to the correct department.