Actually, by now it’s stuff I learned last week, or the week before that… But I still find it worth knowing!

You’re going to bullshit yourself regardless, so you might as well put it to good use!

Hidden Brain: Outsmarting Yourself

This was the second of a two-part series on cognitive dissonance: how you try to convince yourself that a decision you made was the right one, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Pretty much all humans do this, so even if you’re well aware of that tendency, you might still do it. But the awareness can at least help you harness it for good.

Some really interesting examples here of how to harness cognitive dissonance for good, including in the realm of public health. Hmm…

The federal government is killing local news by trying to help local news

The Paul Wells podcast: How Bill C-18 is threatening a local news empire

Thanks to Michael Geist, I’ve been aware of Bill C-18, the law that (essentially) says that Facebook and Google must pay news organizations for linking to their content, for years. And that it has resulted in Facebook (Meta now, I guess) doing exactly what they clearly said they would do if this bill passed, which is to stop linking to news. With Google now likely to do similarly.

What I learned from this Paul Wells podcast is how this has specifically hurt an organization that I had never heard of before. Village Media has been very successful at going into markets that have lost their traditional local news outlets. Village Media has filled that void, supplying communities with local news, all online. They have staff journalists, with benefits—not just a bunch of freelancers! They are profitable, and growing, and had been planning to expand into several new markets this year.

Until, until…

Continue reading “Stuff I learned from podcasts this week” →