Category: media

BEST Social Networks 2025

On By Rick McIn blogs, ethics, Facebook, friends, gymnastics, hiking, human rights, internet, media, things getting worse, TwitterLeave a comment

For most people, Instagram and TikTok are the most entertaining. I don’t much look at either.

If you want to avoid POLITICS, Meta (Instagram, Facebook, Threads) has definitely reduced the emphasis on political arguments. In Canada, a bonus for using Facebook is that news links are banned.

I haven’t quit Twitter — surprisingly — as my own feeds focused on Gymnastics and Hiking are still good. If I click on Following and avoid For You, the stream is valuable. Of course I quickly block anything I don’t like.

I post today as many of the people online I trust and respect are migrating to Bluesky.

Looking more for VIDEO than anything else, these are the sites I use most:

I hate advertising. Facebook doesn’t offer paid ad-free feeds, so I use ad blockers.

I hate Elon Musk and refuse to send him even one penny. So use ad blockers.

I use WhatsApp only for small group communication. It’s excellent. Messenger, as well, only for communication with very few people.

I’ll check Reddit once in a while if I’m looking for something specific.

Mastodon could be my favourite, but it’s not caught on with the people I want to follow.

LinkedIn should be best of all. But I’ve never seen much value for my purposes.

I never signed up for Snapchat. Hikers are mostly on Instagram. Gymnastics coaches mostly on Twitter.

I’ll try Bluesky. But I’m worried it will never grow big enough.

If desperate, I’ll create a browser bookmark folder and open all these social media sites simultaneously to check the latest news in Gymnastics and Hiking. OR … could I use an A.I. client to do that for me?

Brainstorming … 😀

My Favourite Podcasts 2024

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, GOP USA, government, gymnastics, internet, mediaLeave a comment

Looking back on my favourite podcasts 2020 — things have changed.

If interested, search for any of these in your favourite Podcast Player.

These are podcasts I rarely skip:

Next most essential in 2024:

Sadly, most of The Economist podcasts went behind a paywall. I’ll probably buy those again, one day.

For some reason I’ve grown less interested in the TWIT network podcasts. Too much filler, not enough content.

I subscribe to perhaps 70 additional podcasts, but listen to them far less than 50% of the time.

I AM definitely listening to podcasts less than ever. I prefer audio books most of the time.

WOW – Don’t Look Up

On By Rick McIn bad news, climate change, economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, humour, media, moviesLeave a comment

I rejoined Netflix mainly to watch Don’t Look Up.

Brilliant.

Be sure to watch the credits. There are 3 endings.

Satire that reminded me of both Swift’s A Modest Proposal and Wag the Dog.

Something between a star-studded Hollywood blockbuster and an amateur YouTube documentary. Very original editing.

You’ve never seen DiCaprio like this. He had a lot of input on the script.

The cast is great. Best is Jonah Hill who plays a Don Jr. idiot appointed by his mother as the insanely unqualified  Chief of Staff.

The Republican tribe is urged to NOT LOOK UP at the planet busting comet. And deny what they can see with their own eyes. 😀 It parallels the American idiocracy of covid denial, for example. Apathy, incompetence and self-interest.

Denial of science.

It’s certain ReTrumplicans will hate this film.

This movie came from my burgeoning terror about the climate crisis and the fact that we live in a society that tends to place it as the fourth or fifth news story, or in some cases even deny that it’s happening, and how horrifying that is, but at the same time preposterously funny.[10]— Adam McKay, writer, director, and producer of Don’t Look Up

My favourite podcasts 2020

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, economics, education, media, product endorsements1 Comment

During COVID-19 many of us have more time to listen to audio. Here are some of my favourites.

Search for them by name on your preferred podcasting platform, if interested.

Online audiocasts are as old as the internet.

But we have the silly, unintuitive name podcast because Steve Jobs called the Apple device an iPod.

BBC journalist Ben Hammersley first suggested the name “Podcast” (a portmanteau, a combination of “iPod” and “broadcast“) it in early February 2004.

I try to call the audio only version “audiocasts“. Leo Laporte still uses the term “netcast” for both audio only and video podcasts.

Dave Winer is most often credited as the inventor as he decided to include new audio functionality in RSS 0.92.  Dave demonstrated it worked on January 11, 2001 by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his Scripting News weblog.

 

Social Media – Good or Bad?

On By Rick McIn Facebook, human rights, internet, media, things getting worseLeave a comment

When the internet — and then social media — got popular I was convinced it would make the world better.

Better informed.

The poor and powerless would have a voice. A blog. A podcast.

Seems I was wrong. 

Social media was supposed to be the ultimate free speech platform, a place where the world would come together to swap information and share opinions. It would be the battleground of ideas. …

Twitter has become a playground for bots and trolls. Facebook is filled with misinformation, a place where foreign governments can set up groups to spread fake news. …

At the same time, users have retreated into their own bubbles. …

Social Media has had its Day

 

World Press Freedom Day

On By Rick McIn internet, media, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Notoriously poor and cheap, I normally take advantage of FREE — ad supported — news on the internet.

Obviously that’s not sustainable over the long term.

For years I’ve donated to ad free Wikipedia.

For years I’ve paid for Economist.

And for the second time I’m paying for the Washington Post. They hold Trump to account better than any other site.

Today May 3rd is World Press Freedom Day. WaPo is only $25 / year today.

1939 American NAZI rally New York

On By Rick McIn ethics, government, mediaLeave a comment

It’s an unlikely Oscar contender.

Marshall Curry’s “A Night at the Garden” has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

The film, entirely comprised of archival footage, shows a 1939 rally of American Nazis at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

The rally drew 20,000 people on the eve of World War II.

“The lesson of the film,” Curry told InsideEdition.com, is that “we are vulnerable to leaders who will stir us up against each other.”

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

FOX News refused to air an advertisement for the documentary. Other networks did.

I believe FOX National News has a pro-Trump bias. They believe this rally is somewhat similar to Trump’s.

Like American NAZI’s, Trump uses the phrase ‘America First’.

Click PLAY or watch the entire film on YouTube.

“Fake News” vs bad reporting

On By Rick McIn mediaLeave a comment

The news stories I saw on the Pulse Nightclub massacre were speculation. Mostly wrong.

Much of the bad reporting came out of the early FBI interview with the killer’s widow.

Pulse gunman’s widow found not guilty

During the course of the trial, the truth came out:

The shooter tried to kill tourists at the Disney theme park, but because there was a security presence, he opted to shoot up a nightclub, which he apparently did not know was a gay nightclub.

The shooter was not repressing homosexual feelings, as the media alleged, and had never been there before, which also refuted the media’s prior reporting.

Accuracy in Media