• OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Oh fuck off. “Cosmos” was never meant to be an ongoing series. Sagan didn’t intend for it to be more than one season. And there were two follow- up seasons with Neil deGrasse Tyson later on.

    Also, there are 51 (and counting) seasons of “NOVA.” Not all Americans are stupid.

  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    lots of sensitive fee fees in here LOL

    ok, i’ll join in: americans are stupid

    and it’s by design. remember when al franken asked betsy devos a simple question and it was made abundantly clear that she didn’t know the first goddamn thing about education? but she bought her seat, so she became the secretary of education, saying we need guns in schools for “potential grizzlies.” i’m not fucking making that up

    not only do 1%ers (the people who are calling the shots on public education) not give a fuck about public education, but they actively despise it, as that is money going to poor people instead of themselves AND an educated populace is bad for the aristocracy. so yes, there is a MAJOR anti-intellectual bent to all of american culture thanks entirely to republicans from the top all the way down to the mayor level, and spoiler alert: it’s not getting any better, since every attempt to improve education is blocked. by people who watch duck dynasty

    edit: i need to add: to the people who insist on arguing against the painfully obviously hyperbolic statement “all americans are stupid” without taking 2 seconds to consider “maybe the core claim is that way too many americans are stupid, not literally every single american”-- you are reinforcing a side of the debate, just not the side you think you are

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      edit: i need to add: to the people who insist on arguing against the painfully obviously hyperbolic statement “all americans are stupid” without taking 2 seconds to consider “maybe the core claim is that way too many americans are stupid, not literally every single american”-- you are reinforcing a side of the debate, just not the side you think you are

      Hah! You claim to be against anti intellectualism yet you move your own goal posts when people prove you wrong via a counter example!?

      spoiler

      /s /s /s

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      as that is money going to poor people instead of themselves

      You need to look no further than the GOP obsession with cutting government programs to back this up. The “money going to” is in fact taxes and so if government programs are cut Republicans can also further reduce taxation on themselves and the ultra wealthy without hurting the deficit as much. They couldn’t possibly care less about government assistance programs because they don’t need them, it’s just the “poors” that do and we all know the Republicans mindset on that: get good or die, loser. Let the church do charity, but don’t “force me” to care about you.

      • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        People are idiots. The average person can be reasoned with, but you put a bunch of people together, and the madding crowd takes over.

        • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I dunno, the rest of the world here is watching you guys being complete jackasses. So it’s hard to take your issue seriously

          • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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            1 month ago

            “The rest of the world” is hardly monolithic. Some of the world despises American conservatives. Some of the world admires them. You know who almost none of the world looks up to? The US Democrat party. Authoritarian neolibs who don’t go far enough left for leftists, and don’t live up to their campaign promises to help the struggling masses, but are just as happy as Republicans when Wall Street is winning.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      I would recommend a comma or period (or, arguably, a semicolon), an exclamation point and some capitalization.

      Edit: Two exclamation points would also work. But not in a row.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 month ago

              Oh goodie. I have to explain yet again that I am seriously ill which leaves me with very little energy to do much and also stuck in a town I hate far away from any friends. I’m sorry I can’t go out and join an intramural sports league for your benefit.

              • Psythik@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                I spend all day on the internet too (fuck sports), but I spread that time across various platforms. I have a severe mental health issue that prevents me from holding down a job, so I get it. But I also realize when it’s time to lurk more.

        • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          wow that looks like a very wide normal distribution maybe a mixture with another smaller peak at middle east lol

        • keegomatic@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          That article is from ten years ago. I’d suspect the numbers would still be worse than they should be, but Ukraine has become a much bigger situation since then which is why you’re using it in this example, so this is not an accurate picture you’re painting.

            • keegomatic@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Do you really think Ukraine being featured prominently in American news, pop culture, political discourse, and zeitgeist in general for the past two and a half years hasn’t affected those numbers? You would not have used Ukraine in this example had it not been for the current conflict. To use numbers from ten years ago is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality.

                • WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  There was those great videos of a presenter asking people on the street to point out various countries on a world map that didn’t have the country names.

                  Answers were… interesting, to say the least.

                • keegomatic@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  Like I said: “I’d suspect the numbers would still be worse than they should be”

                  But also, you’re doing it again. You’re saying “despite the latter [Afghanistan] lasting 20 years,” but dude you linked images from 2006. It hadn’t been 20 years yet. In fact, that data is from nearly 20 years ago!

                  That is, again, extremely misleading data to support the argument you’re making.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      A society full of people who just don’t understand really basic things.

      On the one hand, Americans lean toward positive assessments of US nuclear policy. A majority believe nuclear weapons are either very or somewhat effective at preventing conflict between the United States and other countries (63 percent). Almost half (46 percent) are at least somewhat confident that the US missile defense system will protect them in the event of a nuclear war. And Americans who say they are familiar with nuclear deterrence (40 percent of the overall sample) overwhelmingly think it has been effective at preventing a nuclear attack on the United States (88 percent of those familiar with deterrence).

      On the other hand, just under half the public think nuclear weapons make the United States safer (47 percent). When combined, almost as many say that nuclear weapons don’t make a difference (24 percent) in making the country safer or that they don’t know enough about nuclear weapons to express a view (19 percent). On this question, there are significant differences between age groups, racial groups, and partisan affiliations. Only among Americans over the age of 45 does a majority say that the US nuclear arsenal makes the country safer (55 percent); a plurality of younger Americans say they don’t make a difference. White Americans are more likely than other racial groups to say nuclear weapons make the country safer, largely because Hispanic and African Americans are more likely to say they do not know enough to express a view. And Republicans (61 percent) are more convinced than Democrats (45 percent) that nuclear weapons make the United States safer.

      https://thebulletin.org/2023/08/survey-most-americans-dont-know-much-about-nuclear-weapons-but-they-want-to-know-more/

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 month ago

          This has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with incuriosity.

          I’m not smart at all.

          I’m probably the stupidest person you’ve ever talked to.

  • Dorkyd68@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    As an American myself, your average Americans head would spind then explode due to extreme confusion 10 minutes into sagans show.

    Duck dynasty However is, misogynistic, extreme evangelism, shoot em up guns, blownin up stuff, and incomprehensible hillbilly nonsense that your average American thinks they understand quite well. They don’t know it’s yet another propaganda enterprise made to make you think you know, ya know?

    Anyways sorry for the rant I just really despise that whole family

    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      If I recall, all those Duck Dynasty characters were a complete fabrication. Like if you look at their “before” pics they dressed and shaved and had haircuts like 9-5 corporate jobbers.

      They were a manufactured product to pull in rubes and spin them up on white Nationalism and white Christ rhetoric. And, of course, it worked.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Hell, how long have the Kardashians been on TV? Take a look at the show The Circle, where people with no discernible skills see who is best at social media. We’ve been deep in Idiocracy for quite a while. Oww! My Balls! is just over the horizon.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      Duck Dynasty was on until 2017. The people on it are still major right-wing celebrities.

      Edit: American ignorance update!

      CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — How well do Americans succeed at distinguishing statements of fact from statements of opinion? The answer: Not very well at all, according to new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign scholars.

      Americans struggle to tell the difference between statements of fact and statements of opinion – a troubling trend that has grave implications for civic discourse and for navigating the torrent of political information that citizens receive every day, said Jeffery J. Mondak, a professor of political science and the James M. Benson Chair in Public Issues and Civic Leadership at Illinois.

      https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/1254104642

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Before we get off on the wrong foot, I want to say that you and I have a lot of positive interactions on this site and I generally agree with you.

        This is a meme for an edgy freshman with Fight Club and Joker posters in their room. A scripted science show with a limited scope and a decent budget that was cherry picked for being one season vs a cheap, fast reality show that was also cherry picked for its longevity is a bad comparison and doesn’t imply anything about the intelligence of a country.

        But instead of defending it, all of your replies are just “look at this other way Americans are stupid!” which just makes it seem like you are that high schooler caricature I described earlier.

        I KNOW you’re not a teenager and I’ve always seen you act better than that in other threads so what going on with this one?

  • Sarmyth@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    No shortage of documentaries or reality TV. We live in a land of plenty. What you watch is up to you though. They even remade cosmos in 2014, so there’s interest there.

  • saltesc@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’ve heard of the dead guy’s series from almost half a century ago.

    I have no idea wtf Duck Dynasty is. Sounds like something I’d order with plum sauce.