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Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

28 Oct

The media can lie by publishing falsehoods. But mostly, they achieve the same effect of subterfuge by omission.

It’s popular to lament our fragmented media ecosystem & its self-reinforcing information silos. But without the right-wing media, who would interview Tony Bobulinski?

Who would be asking salient questions about a presidential candidate two weeks from the election?

I warned that of all the Dem candidates this year, Joe Biden seemed to have been vetted the least. Everyone else went through the gauntlet with harsh (sometimes unfair) hit pieces.

@NYPost

In the old world of media where everyone was constrained by the same few channels, what chance did the truth have of coming out?

A major story got sidelined and the reasons given were hilariously arbitrary. So the @NYPost & independent journalists pick up the story, and it gets

Read 6 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

18 Aug

This is interesting.

If true, it might explain why there are so few deaths and cases in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos despite many connections to Wuhan.

These countries are next to each other & vary in systems of government, state capacity and

nypost.com/2020/08/15/cov…

@tylercowen

in measures taken to address the pandemic. Cambodia for example, didn't go into full lockdown and mask adoption is not widespread.

@tylercowen touched on this Mekong conundrum here: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

If that report is true, the reason for these statistics could be that

people in these Asian countries were already protected due to cross-reactivity from being exposed to years of related coronaviruses.

They might be full of antibodies that blocked viral surface proteins and antigen-specific T cells generated when they were exposed to these

Read 15 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

27 Jul

America is allergic to tyranny and for good reason. There's a history of federal overreach that's more than well-documented (Waco comes to mind), and combined with the ethos that was forged in the birth of this nation, a general distrust of government persists.

Sometimes this comes into conflict with the desire to preserve law and order.

It doesn't matter what your politics are. Most people would acknowledge that there exists a line that, if crossed, they would wholeheartedly endorse the deployment of federal agents domestically.

What we're debating here is exactly where that line is, because it cannot be that this line doesn't exist (which only anarchists would argue).

Surely there are conditions under which you would justify federal action.

Read 12 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

24 Jun

One of the problems with "silence = violence" is that we're no longer allowed to be reserved in judgement whenever a story about a heinous hate crime explodes into the national consciousness.

But if anything, it's what we need more than ever. Slow news. Time to gather facts.

Instead, we must rush to condemn, to publicly display rituals of solidarity, to brandish a hashtag here and there, because to not do so is to risk the passing mob's wrath, to be called out as a racist dismissive of injustice, of oppression.

So here we are with yet another Boy Who Cried Noose story, and worse, barely a reckoning from the media that fanned its flames and called it wrong.

Some blue-checked journalists have even insisted on denying the FBI's investigation and doubling down (*cough cough* Jemele Hill).

Read 5 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

19 May

Draconian lockdown measures and universal mask adoption in East Asia are often attributed to a cultural tendency to be "obedient" or "compliant," in contrast to the free, individualistic Western mindset.

This is an inaccurate, self-aggrandizing narrative.

1 in 7 Hong Kongers took to the streets for half of 2019, waving flags & demanding freedoms. Brawls break out in parliament, as one did today.

The Sunflower Movement saw Taiwanese youth occupy parliament for weeks to protest a trade deal with China and achieved their aims.

South Korea recently saw massive demonstrations that ousted a sitting President for corruption and have toppled authoritarian governments twice.

There's no denying that East Asian societies tend to uphold communitarian values and still bear attitudes shaped by Confucianism,

Read 5 tweets

Melissa Chen

@MsMelChen

20 Apr

I don't quite get this desire for unity and silencing dissent in a time of crisis.

In fact, it is particularly during an unprecedented one which our routines and institutions have not been calibrated for, that we should value open-mindedness about heterodox views.

There was a scene in World War Z I found thought-provoking.

It featured Brad Pitt's character prodding the Mossad agent about why Israel was the only country that was prepared for the Zombie apocalypse.

It was called the 10th Man Rule.

He explained that Israel’s security council had 10 advisors that looked into national security issues.

If the first 9 dismissed an issue as a potential threat, the 10th man was forced to overrule on principle and look into the issue no matter how unlikely the scenario was.

Read 8 tweets

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