The article describes how Central ND News, a fake local newspaper, was used as a propaganda tool by the oil company Energy Transfer during its legal battle with Greenpeace over the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Though disguised as a regular newspaper, the publication focused on discrediting protesters and praising the pipeline company, promoting old stories as if they were current news. Greenpeace argued in court that this was a calculated attempt to sway jurors, but the trial proceeded—and ended with a North Dakota jury awarding Energy Transfer over $660 million in damages from Greenpeace.

This case is framed as part of a broader trend of “pink slime journalism”—a term coined to describe partisan outlets that masquerade as legitimate local news. These outlets, often backed by right-wing donors or corporations, publish algorithm-generated or biased content in favor of their sponsors. The company behind Central ND News, Metric Media, is tied to a history of misleading media operations. This kind of pseudo-journalism is now more widespread than actual local newspapers in the U.S., posing a growing threat to journalism, democratic discourse, and free speech.

The piece also notes that Democrats have their own version—Courier Newsroom—though the main focus is on right-wing abuses and their implications for activism, protest rights, and public trust in media

https://jacobin.com/2025/03/pink-slime-journalism-greenpeace-big-oil/

“Eat the rich”
Seen in Zürich, Switzerland

A cool guide on how a flight makes money
https://redd.it/1k19ukq
@coolguides

i for one am shocked

https://archive.is/20250412100554/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/04/12/air-pollution-paris-health-cars/

▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 30%

​

https://jorts.horse/@ecosurrealism/114349814534801646

”A structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of explosives."

— Peter Kropotkin

"Abolish the Police 1312"
Seen in Jakarta, Indonesia

Starting with Galton’s Hereditary Genius, we have gradually made intelligence statistical, with norms. Indeed, the usual IQ tests are so statistical that the questions are designed in such a way that a curve of scores forms a normal distribution with a mean of 100. When the tests were first applied to women, they scored higher than men, with a mean of about 105, so the questions had to be modified to make them harder for women. They were adjusted until the mean score for females was also 100.

IQ tests are excellent at evaluating the ability of a numerate and technical child, possessing a new kind of literacy, to prosper in our times. At the top end, genius is forced onto a linear scale and hence off the map. Galton aimed to measure genius but in fact he expelled it from our culture. It is part of the deep, ultimately Socratic notion of genius, that when it is measured on scales that stem from Galton, and were refined in 1917 by the United States army for evaluating recruits, true genius – I don’t hesitate to use that phrase – will be living somewhere else. It will blithely refuse to interact with questionnaires, institutions, experts and knowledge, rejecting classification. Ah, as you see, I have just bought into the Romantic notion of genius.

Ian Hacking, Making Up People: Clinical Classifications (2006)

There could be billions more people on Earth than previously thought
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/population-earth-world-billions-un-estimate-b2721808.html

https://redd.it/1jw694g
@r_interestingasfuck

TIL that the death of a Pope used to be confirmed by tapping a silver hammer on his head and calling out his baptismal name three times. Nowadays, an electrocardiogram is used instead. [source, comments]

A cool guide to the political make-up of voting cardinals
https://redd.it/1k4edin
@coolguides