> She has only a handful of collars left. "I really am desperate," she says. "That's the most scary thing in my life right now — is not finding anybody that can make those collars."
How do you fact check whether someone can find something?
Their inability to find something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means that she personally can’t find them.
And the collars didn’t necessarily work either. They were shipped, not installed/tested. So the problem doesn’t seem to have been solved.
> How do you fact check whether someone can find something?
Looking at the top google hits and previous stories on your subject[0] seems like the bare minimum fact checking to do?
> And the collars didn’t necessarily work either. They were shipped, not installed/tested. So the problem doesn’t seem to have been solved.
Seems pretty logical that they'd have to be refined given they're made and shipped from china with no access to the iron lung or ability to travel back and forth personally. That's something the NPR journo could actually have assisted with.
> That's something the NPR journo could actually have assisted with.
That's not the job of the journalist! Are we to expect our journalists to solve the problems they report on? Should every story also turn the journalist into an advocate - be it legal, healthcare, employment, etc. - that works on their behalf?
I think there's room for critique here though the "assumption of bad faith" runs rampant in this discourse already. Yet critiquing the reporter for not acting as their personal local news network "Problem Solvers" segment isn't the real issue here.
I disagree. That Twitter thread is a terrible look for the people participating, but NPR comes out of it looking fine. They reported the situation from Martha’s perspective. If Martha is worried about being able to find collars why would it matter that some completely unrelated people on Twitter think they already solved the problem? Makes no sense.
The textilist seems to be accusing NPR of not mentioning her, but Martha herself said she couldn't find anyone to make them. Was @RealSexyCyborg in contact with NPR? Or Martha? If anything, it seems the article itself is meant to encourage someone to provide the help that @RealSexyCyborg admits she needed someone else to do. How many others were contacted by Martha but couldn't produce the product at the end? Does each require an explicit mention?
Then the accusation that this effort was omitted because she wasn't a white tech bro is out of left field and frankly, very unlikely. NPR regularly goes out of its way to provide viewpoints and credit well outside the "white tech bro" sphere.
I don't know what research was done but it looks like @RealSexyCyborg had made some and shipped them in 2019... as well as making a YouTube video about it.
Seeing as this is a 2021 story, either Martha did not receive the parts, the parts needed a revision or they did no research.
If the parts needed a revision, you would expect the story to say something like 'an entrepreneur has been working with Martha to create replacements but they are having trouble with final fitment.'
The article:
She has only a handful of collars left. "I really am desperate," she says. "That's the most scary thing in my life right now — is not finding anybody that can make those collars."
Makes it sound like noone has tried to do anything. So that leaves someone who has tried to help with the feeling that they are being ignored either by malicious or incompetent.
I don't think that Twitter thread presents a good look for anyone.
There is no timeline or context given here. So I don't know who this person is, and what direct interaction they have or haven't had with person in that article. All I can see is that this is a YouTuber, with ~2k Twitter followers and the tagline "It's all about merit until merit has tits". Who is "working on it", but hasn't shipped the parts yet. And who feels that NPR (who probably doesn't know she exists) deliberately cut her out because she's "not a straight white American tech bro".
To me, that thread is Twitter in a nutshell. Off the charts narcism and self-promotion, revolving around race/gender-charged drama. There may be some information that I'm missing here. But if you're starting from a place of NPR being too right-wing or bigoted, then I've seen enough.
Twitter is a shifty way to present information and to talk.I looked around and found out that she sent some collars in 2019. She also made a YouTube video of what she was doing at the time https://youtu.be/4VKZTmTP7oY the video shows up if you search 'Martha Iron Lung' so it's not like it is hidden...
You nailed it. Twitter is filled with a lot of interesting content, but the dominant "trending" topics are basically navel-gazing activists masquerading as journalists obsessing about their own identity (if they are in a favored group) or desperately using some sacred cow identity group as a tool to gain status with their peers.
I deleted my account after I simply asked a question one day in a thread with a prominent startup founder who happened to be a Black woman. Someone else on her thread had stated that she was worried about encouraging her daughter to learn to code because she felt that nobody would hire her "due to the extreme racism that was obviously prevalent in tech." I simply stated that my company was trying hard to hire folks like her daughter, and asked what we could do to make people like her feel welcome and understand that it wasn't a problem at our company. Then the veil was pulled back on the performance. The questioner didn't really have a question. She simply posed it as a performance, and then I was mobbed with statements telling me that I needed to "Listen and let Black women speak." These narcissists aren't interested in solutions, only in gaining status in their silly, secular imitation of evangelical fundamentalist churches. Replace "Satan" with "toxic whiteness" and you have Dana Carvey's church lady on SNL in the 90's.
> But if you're starting from a place of NPR being too right-wing or bigoted, then I've seen enough.
I agree with your assessment of Twitter being mostly self-promotion and race/gender-charged drama, but no-one said "right-wing." I don't think an accusation that any media outlet cuts out facts that don't fit their narrative can be dismissed out of hand these days, unfortunately. I don't have a strong opinion about NPR, but I can see how Naomi _might_ not fit in the narratives they try to push. But I acknowledge that I'm being a bit intellectually dishonest, I'm not bringing any evidence to bear here either.
