How Much Information is Still Not on the Internet?

You're welcome, and thanks for showing interest! I learned you are probably the first person to ask. Even when I'd start a conversation, people never asked questions. The lack of curiosity is scary.

Speaking of Australia, I spent almost every day of the 6 months I was there (first trip) in Melbourne, at the State Library, looking through microfilm. I learned a lot about children from the UK and Canada who were abused after going to Australia. I've always been a fan of 'populist history' and do believe "Biography is History" and would read individuals post their personal story, usually about their parent.

I'm chronologically obsessed.. Even as a boy, I would always guess the year a film was made as my brother was flipping/testing me, and I was always within a year or two off. Even listening to music, interviews, and it's a great way to see how one changes. But you can definitely catch people in lies, especially an ex-President who describes a big event. Sometimes it changes to be politically correct, to make themselves look better, or usually during the release of a book. Bad memory, possibly, so I tried to stratify as best as I could. I also love zeitgeist, and love random. I never use Twitter, but at times, I'll look up a person, and then click LATEST, for random precision.

Redactions. I tried to get my publisher to advance me money against profits (yeah right!) for a book entitled "Redactions". Media sometimes purposely publish false story and only change it when under pressure. Sometimes to avoid a non-story becoming a story, the victim (usually a celebrity or government worker) would ignore it. I used newspapers.com (and similar sites) and would check out the days before/after, and they probably never thought YouTube would exist. It's so easy to go back and verify.

If I liked an interview in print, I would try to find the audio, and this happened with Jimmy Hoffa, and there's a few times where someone uses words in print that (to be continued... fucking low assed character count)

archive.org
openculture.com

This low character count is another problem. The moderators couldn't imagine a conversation being over twitter limits I guess. Tik-tok with their 20 second limits. I got into the cell phone business in high school and had a store by 2005, so I saw a lot of this shit happening, but it's horrible now... I see many who'll think, "I'm not reading this on this little phone" and put down something important for something "easy". Things that don't require attention, focus.

I lost my train of thought, but if you ask specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them as well.... Of course, I'd look at major events like WWII, and in every country, they were sort of the center of the war, even if they weren't. Part of it is understandable, because the superpowers are talked about, those with influence. I've read so many Canadian writers say how much more they pay attention to our elections, because we're going to drag them with us, to an extent.

I learned that people lie a lot more than I thought.. Sometimes people answer questions to get rid of someone. Orson Welles was one who hyped himself up a lot, and it still didn't work, or maybe it did, and perhaps he would have even less work had he not made shit up, and later blame it on him pretending to know more Italian than he did.

It seems like culture followed the economy. Around 1973, the cost of living has gone up, and has gone up since, and regardless of economic numbers, things will get more difficult.. Working more for less, on average when factoring inflation, and even more factoring in production. I learned to pay attention to terms like "median" and "mean". Stats are used and manipulated. If a billionaire moved to your small town, the average income will rise so high, and the mayor can say, "Under my leadership, ...... My plans worked" as opposed to median.

I think people underestimate the media.. So many times I've heard, "I'm not influenced by commercials"... Companies wouldn't spend millions of dollars for a 30-second commercial if it didn't bring back a ton more. Fucking character count lost my train of thought again. I'll wrap it up.

I looked at US newspapers completely separately. My interest was seeing what cities emphasized what. I even enjoyed checking out the classifieds, and so any time I encountered something, I'd save the clipping, and now the digital form.

The media STILL seems to decide what people discuss. Whatever they talk about, people talk about. Sexual politics is the new thing because that's where they have you by the balls!