Mac Guffin

Cynic. Idealist.

[Samar D Jarrah @SamarDJarrah]

The New York Times headline:

“A missile at a Gaza beach café finds patrons preparing to watch the World Cup.”

This is not a neutral headline. It relies on a series of linguistic choices that shape how readers perceive the event.

• The actor disappears: The headline never says Israel fired the missile. It simply mentions “a missile,” removing the human agent responsible for the strike.

• The missile becomes the subject: The headline says the missile “finds” people, as though the missile itself acted, rather than the people who launched it.

• Killing is replaced by a scene: Instead of saying civilians were killed, the focus shifts to the fact that they were preparing to watch the World Cup.

• No mention of death: The words “killed,” “civilian,” or “victim” never appear, even though they are the central facts of the story.

• A crime becomes a narrative: The event is framed as an ironic human-interest story rather than a direct report that a military strike killed civilians.

These are not merely stylistic choices. They are linguistic decisions that influence how readers assign responsibility and understand the nature of what happened. @nytimes

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@MikeBarnes4 Man, what a voice! ❤️

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@mass_ave They’ve moved everything around since I was there last

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@jennyrozelle Good for you! Isn’t it funny? In real life, this sort of thing annoys people. But if they saw a video of it online, the same people would be transfixed.

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@jennyrozelle Wow. What a surprising dichotomy in presentation. I hope the road ahead is smooth as possible.

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

1/2
I spent a long weekend in a college town with brand new graduates, including my son. It was deeply gratifying to see my child accomplish something I never did myself. But it was also a glimpse into the reality on the ground in America.

https://t.co/QvvP9wRDg2

First, the good news: the kids are alright. While it’s just one school and one group of people, everyone I met was an energetic, empathetic, and intelligent young adult—no zombified chatbot addicts or radicalized anarchists among them. They were, you know, perfectly normal.

For me, this was a bit of a relief. The environment since Trump was elected again has been so acutely toxic, I wondered how far the crazy had penetrated. Anecdotally speaking, not far. These young people were mostly indifferent to politics—they all seemed to understand that it had gone off the rails and just didn’t want anything to do with it.

That seems fair enough.

Their formative years were spent in the Decade of Trump with a short break in the middle. They’ve all watched the country get more and more radicalized. They’ve seen blatant racism and naked corruption in government. They watched an insurrection of the U.S. Capitol. And they watched the Biden administration fail to do anything about it.

They’ve seen the Supreme Court destroy a half-century of women’s rights, make the president a king, and institutionalize racial profiling. They’ve watched the U.S. Congress degenerate into a QAnon chat room fused with the Duma. And they’ve watched the Epstein cover up.

Now these bright young minds are being released into a nation where politics has been captured by a cult of billionaires waging resource wars overseas, raising prices at home, taking away student loan relief, and pushing for AI to take their jobs.

Unfortunately for these graduates, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. There is a perfect storm lining up, just as they try to find ballast.

The President they’re meant to follow is a racist, demented narcissist who just gave himself a $1.776 billion slush fund to reward people who stormed the Capitol, beat cops, or got in legal trouble for him. He essentially pardoned himself and his family of tax fraud. He’s currently blockading oil and fertilizer to half the world after losing a war to Iran. And he’s giving billionaire elites free rein to inflate the AI bubble to historic dimensions—leaving the rest of us behind.

Why would a young adult entering a system which allows all this to happen feel they will be given a fair shake? Why should they care?

When business leaders who represent the apex of American capitalism are people like pathological racist Elon Musk, a sadistic conman about to be the world’s first trillionaire, what are young people supposed to think about the system?

The U.S. is currently under a full-scale assault from within. The federal government has been captured and transformed into a personal grift for Donald Trump—and one more tool in a long techno-fascist world domination plan by the PayPal Mafia. The adults who were supposed to protect our kids, simply didn’t. Both parties failed them, as did their parents and grandparents.

I ask this looking right in the mirror: What have we done?
[cont.]

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

Check out the special 10-episode podcast series, “Mother Loss & Mother’s Day,” at RECORD SCRATCH.

Ten terrific storytellers reflect on life with their wonderful crazy difficult creative beautiful moms.

https://t.co/Tb1oI2lTwD

#MothersDayWeekend

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@jennyrozelle The Apple player is finicky

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@LenHochberg @MikeBarnes4 oLIVia Benson. Duh.

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@dieworkwear Interesting. Thank you. I would enjoy the cream jacket more if it were paired with a cream shirt.

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@jennyrozelle @choppedtudor “Kick up a fuss.” Probably my favorite idiom

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@Here_s_Hoping Have them made into a quilt

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@jennyrozelle Maybe it will bring back some nice souvenirs

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@LegalTeaPodcast Just listened to this episode. What a disappointing situation. Seems like a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to develop a specialty services network to fill this growing need.

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@roundthebend574 The NIPSCo building used to be Hertz?!

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@jennyrozelle Oh duh! I forget that’s a doctorate degree! 🤣

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@SarahLongwell25 Have you tried watching “The Incredibles” w/ your boys?

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

@atrupar When you have no valid argument, simply talk over your guest

[Mac Guffin @KJH62]

I’m a UofA grad and a South Bend native. I had never heard the Bear Down origin story. Thank you for sharing. Wish I had known this years ago.

[University of Arizona @uarizona]

“BUT WHY DO THEY SAY ‘BEAR DOWN’ IF THEY’RE THE WILDCATS?”

Class is in session. Our topic? John Byrd “Button” Salmon. ↓