The Crowhill Journal

Joe Rogan is upset at CNN’s Jim Acosta for claiming he took “horse dewormer.” The implication is that Rogan heard some conspiracy theory, went down to Tractor Supply and self medicated.

Rogan says he got the medicine from a doctor.

Ivermectin is not approved by the FDA as a treatment for Covid, but it is approved for human use for other things, and it’s my understanding that doctors often prescribe a medicine that’s used for one thing to treat something else. (I’m not promoting Ivermectin or anything else. If you have a medical issue, talk to your doctor.)

Now someone might say “what Acosta said is true. Ivermectin is also used as a horse dewormer.” Sure. It’s true in some aspergery / asshole sort of way. And warfarin is also rat poison, so would it be fair for a news guy to say that somebody was taking rat poison? As if he just went to the hardware store and bought rat poison because he read some stupid article on the Internet?

Acosta — like so many other people in the media — is a partisan liar. His goal is not to inform, but to infect and inflame.

It’s come to the point (actually we’re well past the point) that you should never believe anything you hear in the media until it’s confirmed by multiple sources on opposite sides of the partisan divide.

Somewhat along these lines, a professional friend posted a link to this article: Facebook posts from misinformation sources get 6 times more engagement than reputable news sites, new study says

I commented as follows.

This article highlights three things that seem incredibly obvious to me.

1. People are more engaged by fake news. It tickles the ears and scratches where people itch. Truth isn’t so accommodating.
2. Any system / structure that crowdsources news is going to promote more and more fake news.
3. Systems that crowdsource news are not in the public interest.

No matter how much some people would love for that to be true.

Oklahoma Doctor At Center Of Viral Ivermectin Story Says Report Is Wrong

Some people were overdosing. They were taking cattle doses, which is really dumb. And clearly people should not be taking medicines on their own, without a doctor.

Imagine an experiment that collected 10,000 people to live in a small town. The 10,000 people were evaluated across multiple levels: race, religion, height, weight, personality, intelligence, background, political views, etc., and were divided into two groups as equally as possible. Then they were all given a treatment to change the color of their skin. Half became green, half became purple.

What do you expect would happen after a couple years?

I would expect confirmation bias and in-group loyalty to cause both groups to develop “racist” attitudes towards the other.

For example, one day a green guy is rude to a purple guy. The purple guy starts to think, “maybe those green guys are more rude than us purple guys.” Over the next few days, an equal number of green and purple people are rude to him, but every example of green rudeness confirms his belief, and every example of purple rudeness is an exception. This view quickly spreads among the purples.

Both groups start to develop attitudes and suspicions about the other group, which only adds fuel to the fire.

This is, in my opinion, entirely predictable based on what we know about human nature. We’re suspicious of people who aren’t like us, even on trivial things.

Have you noticed how people brighten up and feel closer when they discover some trivial similarity — they like the same soda, eat the same cereal, put the toilet paper on the roll the same way, or some other ridiculous thing. And the reverse is true. We’re suspicious of people who aren’t like us.

This can be overshadowed by insisting on a group identity that drowns out all the dumb little things. “We’re all Marines,” or “we’re all Americans,” or “we’re all Jews,” or whatever. You create an identity that supersedes trivial stuff, and you intentionally suppress the trivial stuff.

If this is true — and I believe it is — the absolute worst way to ease racial tensions is to keep pointing out race, and explaining everything on the basis of race. As Morgan Freeman said, “stop talking about it.”

Of course I questioned if I should write this post for that very reason. If my advice is to stop talking about race, why am I talking about race?

Because right now, the people who are talking the loudest about race are saying all the wrong things, and are causing racism to be a bigger problem. Unfortunately, those of us who want racism to go away have to respond. We need people to realize that the race baiters are doing exactly the wrong thing.

Which is no surprise. There’s lots of money to be made in the race-baiting game. Just ask Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

So the idiots in Hollywood would have a reference for when they write wedding ceremonies.

Why do they always have to mess it up?

UNPERSONED: The Chinese government just erased one of its most famous actresses from history as though she never existed

It’s not that I care that much about celebrities, but (1) it’s important to call attention to how rotten the Chinese government is, (2) it’s important to remember that we don’t want any authority, of any kind, to have this kind of power, and (3) if I can do my part to poke the bear, I will.

(Or, should I say “poke the Pooh bear”? China bans Winnie the Pooh film after comparisons to President Xi.)