The graphic above was sampled from a post by Nate Silver. It in turn was taken from an academic article (linked to in Nate’s post). It illustrates the ideological leanings of Twitter users.
I’ve read both the post and the original article and, unfortunately, it does not really enlighten me on the question that occurred to me: how were the classifications arrived at? The biggest warning flag to me was the characterization of CNN as “moderate”. I suspect that “moderate” is not the right term. “Eclectic” might be better.
Read the entirety of Nate’s post. However the classifications were arrived at I think it makes pretty good sense. TL;DR is
- Twitter used to have a sharp leftward bias
- That produced some very bad decisions
- Right-leaning users lean right harder than left-leaning users lean left
I think the first two are correct and I’m not so sure about the third.
I would modify with some important details.
1) Twitter had a leftward bias because 70%-80% of its users were left leaning. Since new tech is mostly adopted at first by the young and the young lean left this is what you would expect. It was not due to Twitter management censoring right wing content.
2) Very bad overstates it. In deciding what to count as actual misinformation they catered to their audience. They, as shown by the Twitter files, were not carrying out some govt agenda. As a result they delayed talking about Hunter’s laptop for a few days, while it was being covered extensively elsewhere.
3) I didnt do Twitter and dont think you did either. However, I would expect that those who chose to work in a left leaning climate were probably those most devoted to the cause and there were a lot fo trolls.
Steve
OT-In case you didnt see it Construction Physics has a nice piece on bridges in the US.
Steve
It IS a good post.
However, the problem I have with all assessment of bridges, whether by the ASCE or the FHA, is that we very rarely decommission bridges in this country. They get counted and evaluated whether they’re in active use or not.
I agree that we should maintain high traffic bridges. Failing to do that is mostly a failing of state and local governments. However, a significant number of bridges are rarely or never used. Should we really be repairing those or should they be decommissioned? IMO that should mostly be a decision of state or local governments but they will never decide to decommission a bridge without pressure of some kind.
I cant actually find a total for how many bridges we decommission yearly. I can lots of news articles about bridges being permanently closed. My sense, prompted partially by seeing what is done in rural PA, is that while many bridges are not officially decommissioned they just dont get fixed.
Steve
And consequently continue to show in the AFCE and FHA rolls.