Spanish soldiers find bodies in Madrid retirement homes
rte.ie
rte.ie
The UME (Military Emergency Unit) has been disinfecting retirement homes for some days now (about a week IIRC). Initially they were only allowed to do this, disinfestation, and it was the homes' responsibility to "ask for help" on anything else when needed, and some didn't.
The news referred to in the article is that "at least 2" undeclared dead people have been found by the UME and also a number of cases of abandonment. Besides these "at least 2", there have been some other deaths but, generally, they have been declared. (What I know from friends: Most homes have secluded people in their rooms and many are understaffed to check on them frequently enough.)
A related problem seems to be that funeral services are overwhelmed: they don't have enough space to store the bodies, and they do not have protective gear to deal with the bodies correctly (added note, see below comment). This has led to an announcement yesterday that a local ice-skating ring is being arranged to store those bodies temporarily while they wait to be disposed of.
There's both things: They do not have enough space and they do not have protective gear to deal with the bodies correctly. I updated my comment. Thanks.
Culturally I guess most people are buried, not cremated, and usually this takes two, three days or so. I do not really know how common is cremation in general, but I'd guess it's not the most common option -in normal circumstances-.
I'm pretty sure they'll get their due retribution, people are aghast at this criminal behaviour here.
All ideas are worth discusding, even if only to explain why they are not going to be implemented.
I've noticed a lot of censorship on this site
A community is defined by a common set of values and cultural norms, which are a means of censoring those of outgroups in order to maintain a cohesive identity. People censor themselves constantly in order to stay within the boundaries of the law and the norms of public decency.
An online community which has a specific purpose by definition censors content which falls outside that purpose. Hell, the fact that we can't post illegal content is, itself, a form of censorship.
Not everything is, or should be, /b/. Although that site censors as well.
Diluting words of meaning doesn't help maintain free speech. It helps destroy it. If we don't know what free speech is, we can't defend it.
(The fact that you can't post illegal content is a form of censorship. But that's not hackernews censoring you, it's the government. The fact that some content is illegal is literally the definition of censorship.)
Choosing what not to say based on a fear of the consequences of that speech means that society, or whatever group you're communicating with, has exercised some form of influence or social authority over your speech, which is censorship. The oft-expressed axiom that "The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins" is censorship. Who are you, or anyone, to say where my rights begin and end?
>This place tells you "if you want to spread certain ideas on the internet from the comfort of your chair, consider twitter or wordpress". Censorship is when the government tells you "if you want to to spread certain ideas on the internet from the comfort of your chair, please consider the gulag or child porn charges".
And the consensus on Hacker News seems to be that those are perfectly equivalent, that a platform rejecting certain kinds of speech or users being told what sort of speech is acceptable and what isn't inevitably leads to Orwellian fascism. Terms of service and codes of conduct are routinely considered censorship. Amazon banning the sale of Mein Kampf is censorship. Twitter banning anyone for any reason is censorship. Youtube not showing extremist videos in recommendations is censorship. Why is there suddenly a grey area where there never was before?
>Diluting words of meaning doesn't help maintain free speech. It helps destroy it. If we don't know what free speech is, we can't defend it.
Attempting to "thought police" the meaning of words in such a prescriptivist manner is censorship. Who are you to say what words mean? When I use a word, it means precisely what I intend it to mean, no more, no less.
Government censorship is one form of censorship... and the only form of censorship relevant to the first amendment, but "censorship" itself is a much broader and more complex phenomenon.
The only exceptions are outright-deleted comments, and we never do that except when the author asks us to. (Exception to the exception: once or twice a decade, we've had to delete something for legal reasons.)
That being said, sadly chances are that it would get censored even if it did.
The aforementioned idea has been given the discussion it deserves, and has been rejected by the community as not providing anything of intellectual merit worth the effort of discussing further.
Not all ideas are worth discussing at length or of being taken seriously. If what you want is a "free market" of discussion (which Hacker News isn't, anyway) then you should accept that the community will value some ideas more than others.
In a way, the one who has a contrarian (a.k.a. unpopular minority) view has a greater responsibility—not morally, but practically. If you know some truth that most people don't, that has much greater potency than most information, and you're responsible for how you handle it. If you act like a cowboy and just blare it at people, they will seize up and become less receptive, which discredits the truth and leaves its cause worse off than it was before. So the community interest (not to be destroyed by flamewars) and your personal interest (to express something unpopular in a way that can be heard) actually coincide.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
However, comments where people are criticizing their own background (country, in this case) are more complex and are a special case. I wish I could dig up some of the moderation replies I've posted to commenters in this position over the years, but unfortunately my HN Search fu has failed to find any. (Edit: I did find a small one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15732812)
They also have a particular taste. As soon as I read this, I could feel that you were probably writing from that perspective. Such comments have a bittersweet quality. Even though the rhetoric is harsh, one can sense that the speaker has 'paid' for it with lived experience. Of course, coming from a minority inside that country, it gets even more complex. But I bet that if someone were to come along and criticize Spain in an ugly and stupid way, you'd be the first to defend it—because you know it and because that would be the only noble thing to do. As John Lennon said to Rolling Stone: I can diss the Beatles, you don't get to diss the Beatles.
However, all this subtlety is lost on the internet. Your comment isn't what it appears to be, but that doesn't matter, because people will react to it as if it is. If you post like this to HN, you will start a flamewar regardless of how much complexity is behind the message, and this will damage the container just the same as someone posting out of ignorance and prejudice. So we need you not to do it here, to protect the community. You're welcome to share your experience in other, more personal and substantive ways, if you choose.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. These are arcane details, but it's interesting to me that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22673470 picked up on the overtones in your comment. Family members (speaking metaphorically) can hear these things.
The negative reaction to my comment was a bit surprising, considering that citizens of the USA often make similar remarks about their own country, and that these remarks are seen in good light on HN. But it seems that there is a small team of Spanish nationalists around here that will not tolerate such deviations. I do not really care too much about them.
I think this perception is likely affected by cognitive bias, i.e. you noticed some cases of this that stood out for whatever reason, and it formed your perception of HN in general (in this respect). From my perspective, similar remarks about the US are just as much flamebait—even more so, because there are more people who react to comments about the US than about Spain—and we moderate them just as strongly.
I imagine I made the point already, but just to be clear: we need you not to post like the GP comment, not because you owe nationalists better, but because you owe this community better. The container is fragile and we all need to take care of it, so we can keep having a community where interesting things appear. The alternative is scorched earth, which is not interesting.