AZ native, son of immigrants, ex-Navy PhD Social Psychology – dissertation on envy and antisemitism Data science, media reliability, bias in academic research
Arizona
Joined July 2014
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The Herald is the one outlet that refuses to retract and continues to promote the fraudster Fai. But I think the Herald is just a guy, not a real media outlet. Still, they/he have thousands of followers: facebook.com/HillsboroHerald…
"If the APA cannot distinguish its scientific mission from its political activism..."
It's deeper – they don't distinguish between science and politics, between descriptions of photosynthesis and their claims about "structural racism", which they don't view as *claims*, but as a simple description of reality just like photosynthesis.
That's the key here. The left is true cult. They not only lost Hume's is-ought distinction, but the distinction between objective reality and political ideology / social theories, as well as any requirement for evidence to back the sweeping claims they make about "systemic/structural racism", "gender", etc.
No one has nailed this yet. No one has fully characterized the cult nature of the left or where our communication has to start. They're not reachable by conventional means – no amount of posts and op-eds will reach them. Everyone from me, heterodox academics, Republican lawmakers, Wright, et al. are struggling to communicate with them.
This is a big, civilizational problem and we need to figure something out because it will be hard to successfully defund these people without first nailing down what this is and fully and clearly articulating it to the public, media, etc.
🚨 NEW: For the @WSJ, @Hartz_PhD and I expose the ideological takeover of the American Psychological Association.
The APA is facing the possible loss of its federal accreditation authority following allegations of widespread antisemitism.
But while the APA's antisemitism problem is serious, it's only a symptom of a much deeper ideological rot.
The organization has become so captured by radical left-wing political activism that its commitment to scientific objectivity competence is now in serious doubt.
We examined the program for this year's major APA Division 39 conference, which drew nearly 800 attendees and held 90 panels over four days.
By our count, roughly 70 of the 90 panels were overtly political, and always left-wing. Topics included abolishing the family, queer anarchist psychoanalysis, dismantling gender assessment guidelines, and white supremacy. One session even concluded with a drag show.
There was at least some hope that the threat of losing federal accreditation might prompt some institutional soul-searching. It didn't.
Instead, APA members just elected Candice Hargons as their next president. Her campaign identifies "systemic intersectional oppression" as the profession's "common enemy" and calls for rejecting the traditional scientific notions of objectivity.
Psychologists wield enormous influence over vulnerable patients, and the people seeking treatment deserve the peace of mind knowing that the care they're receiving care is evidence based and not tainted radical politics.
We believe most would agree that federal accreditation should actually mean something. If the APA cannot distinguish its scientific mission from its political activism, the Education Department should reconsider whether it deserves the government's endorsement as an authority over psychological training.
Read our full essay in the Wall Street Journal below:
🔗wsj.com/opinion/the-inmates-…
I don't know what a mixed sandwich is, but those Apple pods always make people look like Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary.
The Oregon Journalism Project (@OregonJournProj) has now retracted their false story that the video of Somali immigrant and leftist politician Nafisa Fai speaking in front of an upside-down US flag was a deepfake.
The video was real.
Incredibly, they did nothing to determine that it was fake before running their story – they simply ASSERTED that it was fake, and smeared the source – @EndWokeness – as "right-wing".
Their story mysteriously had no content in terms of journalism on the video – they didn't examine the video or the "screenshot" image that Fai gave them. They just bizarrely asserted that the video was fake, based on nothing.
The word of a leftist politician was enough for them. She lied and said the video was doctored, the flag was not upside-down, etc. and that was all this leftist NGO needed.
Axios and at least four local media spread the hoax, along with Congresswoman Maxine Dexter.
I'm nudging @jessesingal on this because, while the MAGA trash influencers like Sortor, Johnson, and that guy in NC are pretty bad, the media is much, much worse. In sheer volume of false claims, and in reach, there's no greater misinfo vector than the likes of Axios, NYT, MSNBC, Washington Post, and the pompous "independent journalism" projects like OJP.
I mean, the activist who started the hoax is the OJP's Penny Rosenberg. She has pronouns in her bio, stopped using X, and fled to Darksky. That's precisely the kind of person who **cannot be a journalist on politics**. Who in their right mind would employ someone so warped and extreme that she has pronouns in her bio and only uses Darksky? There's no possibility of getting impartial and honest reporting from such a person.
If we want high-integrity news reporting, leftists should be extremely underrepresented in journalism, not extremely overrepresented. For now, any news organization should have a strong anti-bias framework that is explicitly cognizant of the leftist bias in US media and acts to mitigate it. Journalists should be trained to not embed their ideology in stories, to balance their story selection, and to always include non-leftist voices in their sourcing, purported "experts", etc. It's incredible to me that any organization could claim to be serious about journalism and not implement an anti-bias framework to mitigate the inevitable leftist bias that will manifest without it. In 2026, that's absurd.
Incredible hoax. Nafisa Fai is a leftist running for office in Oregon.
She gave a speech in front of an upside-down US flag -- everyone at this Somali event did. (She's a Somali immigrant.)
End Wokeness posted the video.
Her campaign said it was a fake video, that the flag was actually right-side-up, and provided a "screenshot" image purportedly from the video.
Leftist media reported that the video was a deepfake. They just asserted that it was fake because a leftist Democratic candidate said it was...
On the contrary, the image the campaign supplied was generated or edited by OpenAI, which anyone can confirm at SynthID.
We have independent confirmation that the flag was upside-down from Google image search because Somali TV Minnesota posted the videos on its FB page (they have a national focus on Somalis, not just MN), before deleting them after End Wokeness exposed them, and a thumbnail is now on Google image search (attached).
The Oregon Journalism Project (@OregonJournProj) started this hoax. They're a group of leftist activists who cosplay as journalists, which describes most journalism in the US today.
Incredibly, they just *asserted* that the video was AI. They didn't report any testing on it whatsoever. They just asserted it. It's amazing what "journalists" can get away with. They literally did nothing, no investigation, no testing. They just acted as PR for a leftist, America-hating politician and planted this hoax about a purported hoax.
From the OJP, the hoax spread. It's been reported by leftist media outlets like @axios, Willamette Week, Lookout Eugene-Springfield, the Hillsboro Herald, and News in the Grove.
Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Dexter fell for it, and called the imagined deepfake but actually real video a "racist, disgusting attack".
The media did no work here. They didn't even bother checking the image that Fai gave them. They spread a hoax based on the word of a leftist and America-hating politician, perhaps *because* she's a leftist, America-hating politician.
She lied to them. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Will the Oregon Journalism Project try to salvage any notion that they're journalists and run a retraction and apology? They only seem to employ radical leftists, which is not going to work for journalism. No one with pronouns in their bios should be employed as a journalist on political topics -- they're members of a cult and cannot possibly be impartial in left-right politics.
Axios deserves special mention. They're an absurdly unreliable outlet that regularly makes false claims, and the nature of those false claims is consistently aligned with a leftist bias. None of these outlets seem to have an anti-bias framework, which is incredible. Their journalists aren't trained to not embed their ideology or to be impartial in their story selection. It still surprises me that this is where we are at this point in history. I thought @JimVandeHei was trying to do something else.
This was a hoax. The video was real, and Oregon Journalism Project has issued a retraction: oregonjournalismproject.org/…
Just did this one. Note the hysterical reaction of the Congresswoman who fell for the hoax: xitter.cf/ValidScience/status/21…
Incredible hoax. Nafisa Fai is a leftist running for office in Oregon.
She gave a speech in front of an upside-down US flag -- everyone at this Somali event did. (She's a Somali immigrant.)
End Wokeness posted the video.
Her campaign said it was a fake video, that the flag was actually right-side-up, and provided a "screenshot" image purportedly from the video.
Leftist media reported that the video was a deepfake. They just asserted that it was fake because a leftist Democratic candidate said it was...
On the contrary, the image the campaign supplied was generated or edited by OpenAI, which anyone can confirm at SynthID.
We have independent confirmation that the flag was upside-down from Google image search because Somali TV Minnesota posted the videos on its FB page (they have a national focus on Somalis, not just MN), before deleting them after End Wokeness exposed them, and a thumbnail is now on Google image search (attached).
The Oregon Journalism Project (@OregonJournProj) started this hoax. They're a group of leftist activists who cosplay as journalists, which describes most journalism in the US today.
Incredibly, they just *asserted* that the video was AI. They didn't report any testing on it whatsoever. They just asserted it. It's amazing what "journalists" can get away with. They literally did nothing, no investigation, no testing. They just acted as PR for a leftist, America-hating politician and planted this hoax about a purported hoax.
From the OJP, the hoax spread. It's been reported by leftist media outlets like @axios, Willamette Week, Lookout Eugene-Springfield, the Hillsboro Herald, and News in the Grove.
Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Dexter fell for it, and called the imagined deepfake but actually real video a "racist, disgusting attack".
The media did no work here. They didn't even bother checking the image that Fai gave them. They spread a hoax based on the word of a leftist and America-hating politician, perhaps *because* she's a leftist, America-hating politician.
She lied to them. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Will the Oregon Journalism Project try to salvage any notion that they're journalists and run a retraction and apology? They only seem to employ radical leftists, which is not going to work for journalism. No one with pronouns in their bios should be employed as a journalist on political topics -- they're members of a cult and cannot possibly be impartial in left-right politics.
Axios deserves special mention. They're an absurdly unreliable outlet that regularly makes false claims, and the nature of those false claims is consistently aligned with a leftist bias. None of these outlets seem to have an anti-bias framework, which is incredible. Their journalists aren't trained to not embed their ideology or to be impartial in their story selection. It still surprises me that this is where we are at this point in history. I thought @JimVandeHei was trying to do something else.
@jessesingal the MAGA influencer trash will need 20+ years and a much higher rate of false claims to achieve parity with your friends, with legacy/leftist media. It will take a looooong time and a ton of hoaxes. This was incredible. The media just asserted that a real video was fake on the basis of an image supplied by a leftist politician, when the image was itself fake according to SynthID.
The origin article for this hoax is from the Oregon Journalism Project here. Note how empty it is. There's no journalism wrt the video, no testing, no evidence that it was fake. All they did was smear the source as "right-wing" and take the word of a leftist Somali immigrant who maxes out the cult leftist intersectionality calculator, who lied to them: oregonjournalismproject.org/…
Note that her image was obviously fake -- no detector needed. The flag portion jutting out in the lower left corner, around the thumbnail of Fai's face, is all wrong. The depicted hanging flag could not be jutting out in that direction, in that manner, unless an object was holding it up. They barely looked at it.
Incredible hoax. Nafisa Fai is a leftist running for office in Oregon.
She gave a speech in front of an upside-down US flag -- everyone at this Somali event did. (She's a Somali immigrant.)
End Wokeness posted the video.
Her campaign said it was a fake video, that the flag was actually right-side-up, and provided a "screenshot" image purportedly from the video.
Leftist media reported that the video was a deepfake. They just asserted that it was fake because a leftist Democratic candidate said it was...
On the contrary, the image the campaign supplied was generated or edited by OpenAI, which anyone can confirm at SynthID.
We have independent confirmation that the flag was upside-down from Google image search because Somali TV Minnesota posted the videos on its FB page (they have a national focus on Somalis, not just MN), before deleting them after End Wokeness exposed them, and a thumbnail is now on Google image search (attached).
The Oregon Journalism Project (@OregonJournProj) started this hoax. They're a group of leftist activists who cosplay as journalists, which describes most journalism in the US today.
Incredibly, they just *asserted* that the video was AI. They didn't report any testing on it whatsoever. They just asserted it. It's amazing what "journalists" can get away with. They literally did nothing, no investigation, no testing. They just acted as PR for a leftist, America-hating politician and planted this hoax about a purported hoax.
From the OJP, the hoax spread. It's been reported by leftist media outlets like @axios, Willamette Week, Lookout Eugene-Springfield, the Hillsboro Herald, and News in the Grove.
Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Dexter fell for it, and called the imagined deepfake but actually real video a "racist, disgusting attack".
The media did no work here. They didn't even bother checking the image that Fai gave them. They spread a hoax based on the word of a leftist and America-hating politician, perhaps *because* she's a leftist, America-hating politician.
She lied to them. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Will the Oregon Journalism Project try to salvage any notion that they're journalists and run a retraction and apology? They only seem to employ radical leftists, which is not going to work for journalism. No one with pronouns in their bios should be employed as a journalist on political topics -- they're members of a cult and cannot possibly be impartial in left-right politics.
Axios deserves special mention. They're an absurdly unreliable outlet that regularly makes false claims, and the nature of those false claims is consistently aligned with a leftist bias. None of these outlets seem to have an anti-bias framework, which is incredible. Their journalists aren't trained to not embed their ideology or to be impartial in their story selection. It still surprises me that this is where we are at this point in history. I thought @JimVandeHei was trying to do something else.
Weird that Fallows locks his profile and declares that he's a former blue-check person. That declaration is so awkward and embarrassing, like Ron Burgundy saying "I'm kind of a big deal", but much worse.
Reminds me of @JamesFallows' books on Japan and their industrial planning model, with MITI and so forth, where they picked winners and losers, focused on industries to protect, coordinated export drives, etc.
In the 80s and early 90s, a lot of Americans thought Japan was going to eclipse us. Crichton's "Rising Sun", which was made into a movie immediately, captured it well. He even had them beating us on *beer*...
It's still insane and incredibly barbaric to take the difference between the most intense pleasure and pain as an index of "welfare", "moral weights", or anything philosophically meaningful.
EA is sheer barbarism. Rand and Aristotle were light-years ahead of this garbage. Hell, the Bible is light-years ahead of this.
For years, leftists have made false claims that chemically sterilizing and surgically mutilating children was "medically necessary" or "lifesaving" care...
... without disclosing that they were talking about chemically sterilizing and mutilating children. (Covering it up with an Orwellian euphemism like "gender affirming care".)
This has been a broad epistemic, scientific, and ethical collapse. It exposed how vulnerable our civilization is to the left, that horrors beyond our previous imagining can happen overnight when leftists add a new extension to their cult ideology, how easy it is for them to indoctrinate kids from Florida to Alaska, to get legacy media (even Fox News) to enforce the new, unfamiliar ideology, and to cover up that thousands of children have now been sterilized for life.
Every study finding "evidence" that medical transition is beneficial is like 53 people sent a questionnaire two years after transition with a 40 percent loss to follow up rate.
Meanwhile, Finland has rigorously tracked the mental health of every single patient who received gender medicalization over decades in the entire country and found that the rate at which patients required mental health treatment more than doubled after transition.
The study is orders of magnitude larger and more methodologically rigorous than anything ever attempted by those claiming transition is medically necessary and lifesaving. And yet trans activists pretend that the vastly stronger study is weaker than their collection of hundreds of laughably weak, underpowered, and self-evidently tendentious studies. Any multiple of zero is zero.
Interesting. I wonder if the >50 figure is just a proxy for catastrophic loss of life, arbitrary at the margins. They have to pick a number and it might be hard to set it much lower because almost anything can kill a dozen people, in the context of a country of 340 million...
It also seems to roughly match up with the $1 billion figure if we bring in the "Value of a Statistical Life" figure that some regulators use, at California prices. I don't remember how it's calculated, but it had to do with wages at high-risk jobs or something. (50 × $20 million = $1 billion)
Who knows? Not me – this is a completely unfamiliar domain, but interesting.