Hello everyone, just reminding you that I'm still alive. I thought the following articles were pretty interesting & relevant to the kind of stuff I write about, and I figured you might enjoy them too.
"Face It, We Loved Watching Torture" - Matthew Gault, War is Boring
- "Repeat After Me - Torture Doesn't Work"
"Dragnets, Dirty Harry and Dying Hard" - Alyssa Rosenberg, Washington Post
- "In Pop Culture, There Are No Bad Police Shootings"
- "How Police Censorship Shaped Hollywood"
"The Cheery, Ordinary World of Fascism", Annibale, War Nerd
"The Challenge For Anti-Racists Looking For Solutions In Trump’s America" - German Lopez, Vox
"Bolivia Files Formal Complaint Over Its Representation In Ghost Recon Wildlands" - IGN
"Television Is Trying To Kill Us" - TVTropes
Also, please check out my older reading list as well.
Finally, here are some of my own favorite (read: most-polished, still relevant) articles:
Analysis: 300
Authorship, Blame & Neutrality
Analysis: The Birth of a Nation
Dehumanization
Realism
I think if you read all of those you've got a pretty good handle on what I want to tell you.
But just in case, here's an even simpler summary:
1: Everyone learns unconsciously through fiction (even important people, and on every ideological spectrum), which should scare you because fiction is written by unreliable writers who shave down the complexities of life to make exciting stories (at best) or biased propaganda (at worst). Please do not learn from fiction if you can help it. Please refer to real data when making decisions, formulating views, and crafting arguments.
2: Because you can't avoid learning from fiction, writers should have at least some responsibility to minimize the damage caused by their material. At the very least they shouldn't propagate overtly false information, especially for cheap entertainment.
Thanks for reading!
J.Shea
