The Grumpy Old Man Thread (or, Why Today Sucks)

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by elphenor

Talking Heads record was in every college kids apartment/dorm I've ever been into but beyond that crowd

I'm not talking about the wrong generationers here in Nirvana Tshirts

I mean especially when I lived in Cali there was hardly a 20 something I met that wouldn't rep The Smiths

my metalhead friend is even like oh yes let me tell you my favorite Smiths album

I'd say that the Smiths are not that ubiquitous despite being well known and that the Talking Heads is about on the same plane.

[Lisnaholic]

My grumpy old man moments are mainly about language use, and how the retreat from accuracy can easily slide into a retreat from truth.

Some recent examples from American news coverage:-

Michael Flynn famously resigned about a year ago. Without checking, I suspect Trump of having said, "I had to fire MF," and I've certainly heard this version of events repeated by cable news anchors. I would've thought that there is sufficient difference between resigning and being fired for people to maintain a distinction between the two actions.

Another one to lay at the door of Trump is his use of the slur, "fake news." Pre-Trump, this term was used for false stories deliberately fabricated in order to trick people into believing lies. It's now being used for any inaccuracy in reporting, or, in Trump's hands, any news he doesn't like. We should be careful not to follow his example and so lose another useful distinction - that between fake news/hoaxes and misguided or ill-informed reporting.

Since the Parkland massacre, I've heard the AR-15 gun refered to as a "weapon of mass destruction." Surely this is a term that's used to refer to bombs and similar powerful ordinance. Wasn't Iraq invaded because Saddam Hussein was thought to be stockpiling weapons of mass destruction? I always assumed that meant more than just a few rifles.
Not sure off-hand what the correct term for a rapid-fire gun is, but perhaps "assault weapon" is a good way to go, before yet another clear distinction in meaning is blurred by the misuse of language.

Well, thank you for bearing with me while I soapbox, but I guess you enter this thread at your peril, right?

[Frownland]

After being choked out by the death of newspapers, the news media has started to prioritize clickbait headlines and panderingly biased language over journalism in order to survive. I personally believe that journalism is alive and well within the people simply due to the increased access in recording, but I don't expect accurate reporting from news outlets anymore because it's become entertainment.

RE: Flynn it could go either way. It's not uncommon for people to resign in anticipation of being fired or it could have been a firing along the lines of "we very strongly advise you to resign." It really just sounds like cheap typical Trump bluster where he's playing his favourite game of Trump v media because it's less harmful to his status than letting people stick on and focus on issues/scandals/war crimes/etc.

AR-15, the term semi-automatic works. Assault weapon is an ambiguous political term (I believe that this is intentionally so to muddy the conversation) since virtually every gun is an assault weapon. Assault is a gun's sole function.