141 karma · joined June 14, 2022
> The company said this type of content was not allowed on its platform, and it said its commission from digital gifts was significantly less than 70%. But it declined to confirm the exact amount.
Did they find the people responsible for this outrageous grift?
Is it safe to use TikTok again without the danger of seeing poors?
I read an industry article mid-COVID that claimed the biggest barrier to offshore right now was the lack of ships to install them - alleviated somewhat by the introduction of floating offshore rigs, like these:
So yeah, it's gotta be way cheaper to drop a couple of those in the ocean than truck towers out to middle-of-nowheresville or digging a foundation at the bottom of the ocean or whatever.
At least 38% of them are off the streets now, which is all that really matters.
Based on the overwhelming and scientifically-proven (and 4/10 doctor-recommended!) success of this program, it should be implemented everywhere, but at $750-$1,000 per gun, because more == better.
A non-physician is over here commenting on medications they've never prescribed!
Anyway, congrats, I guess. https://xkcd.com/1053/
> Evidence from 14 trials on the use of masks vs. no masks was disappointing: it showed no effect in either healthcare workers or in community settings. We could also find no evidence of a difference between the N95 and other types of masks but the trials comparing the two had not been carried in aerosol-generating procedures.
Perhaps The Science™ did change a bit, particularly with regard to public policy, but I don't think anyone except the headline-skimming public and adults who still pull their shirt up over their nose when someone farts expected masks to do much of anything. It was always a kind of improvisational measure, as Science™ of course already knew the correct answer to be D) None of the above.
The 2003 SARS studies in particular have been used in wilderness/disaster medicine as evidence for a lecture that goes something like this: "Stateside, you'll mostly always have enough top-notch equipment to go around, but should you find yourself in a clinic in sub-Saharan Africa, rural SE Asia, etc. during a disease outbreak, a surgical mask is probably better than nothing. Sure, you're fucked without a PAPR, and if there are no surgical masks available, perhaps wrapping a bandana or some gauze around your face (and/or saying a prayer) will keep you from dying, who knows. Good luck; have fun!"
The difference between "things that sometimes work for certain patients/scenarios" and "things that we can prove work well enough to justify forcing on an entire population" is also relevant, and why I say I don't think <strike>Science</strike> Medicine has learned much from this - the answer has always been "use the correct mask for the situation", and these masks have never been the correct mask.
This[1], for example, is one of those best-effort hacks one keeps in their toolbox, and anyone using it knows it's sub-par. No ortho would be surprised that their cell phone vibrator diagnosis didn't match the X-ray (and likely, neither would their patient) - but after six months of "Cell Phones Are X-Ray Machines" articles, the public is gonna be upset when they finally realize they aren't.
> You mean, like the CEMB has?
No, this one: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/student-life/d...
[1] https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(13)00261-5/pdf
Moreover, it seems "political" here is used as "up for debate" rather than notions of "disingenuous persuasion" - your question almost reads "How could anyone possibly disagree with the idea that rape is bad?" Meta-politicization?
Even the word "consent" itself is politicized because most wokes, for whatever reason, can only seem to discuss it by echoing bullet points from a Planned Parenthood lobby handout.
(If you don't believe me, toss 'em the standard-issue "Check Your Comprehension" question from the end of the first lecture on medical consent: "a 14-year old falls and breaks her leg, but her parents aren't around. Can she consent to treatment? How does this change if she's pregnant?" More often than not, they'll double down on their lack of understanding by losing their shit and calling you a pedophile or somesuch, because they only understand this concept in relation to sex.)
To anyone even passingly familiar with 21st-century US politics, the meaning is almost certainly clear ("Rape Bad"), but it ultimately provides nothing of value - no substance, no meat - and therefore, no murder of the concept it's ostensibly employed to kill - unless you've already been initiated into 21st-century US politics, and thus already aware that "no" is the English word for "no", that "yes" (English: "yes") is a different thing altogether, and that doing Yes when No (and sometimes even No when Yes) is a Bad Thing that one should not do.
If Ben Shapiro published an episode titled "Sometimes No means Yes", I think we could all guess what the subject is, approximately how the episode might unfold, even without knowing the guest or specifics of the interview. There's virtually no other reason for him to choose a title like that except to be political.
He might even surprise us, launching into a completely-innocent and factual deep dive on etymology, words and concepts lost to time, expressions in Hebrew and Latin and Greek that changed meaning over the centuries, anecdotes of kings and generals giving their blessing without giving their blessing, and so on. But the subtext would still be clear - or at least presumed - precisely because it's political.
Prior to it becoming a hashtag, I most frequently heard this expression in relation to Authority, alongisde "the rules are the rules" - another essentially-useless expression whose primary use is to quash any further discussion of the subject at hand.
More insidiously, it provides no practical guidance for the "grey areas" in which most cases of sexual assault/rape occur. Damn near everybody knows it's wrong, bad, illegal, stupid, gross, etc. to force themselves on someone in an alley at knifepoint, and virtually nobody who's not insane and/or on drugs does this.
If "no means no" (and surely it does), and she doesn't say "no", what can we conclude? Anything useful? Remember, this is not up for discussion unless you are pro-rape, and only a pro-rapist would attempt to introduce nuance here - so which rhyming slogan should the drunk college kids remember in this case? What of the TA or adjunct who graduated last year, staying late to help a current senior - perhaps one who very enthusiastically consents?
NO [clap emoji] MEANS [clap emoji] NO. Thank you, Beckeigh, very cool.
In short, it's useless for explaining consent to people who might genuinely not understand consent (and thus useless for solving the problem), but it is an ideal way to get murmurs of agreement at brunch and/or trigger The Left and/or The Right.
After all, who could possibly disagree? ("It says so in the name!") Who could add to the perfection of this phrase? Shh! The answer does not come through intellect, but through meditating on the sound "no" until the Buddha himself appears, wearing a yellowed campaign button bearing a mysterious and dire message about a BUSH of some kind.
Most of all, it's political because it prevents discussion (and understanding) - unless, it is said, you're a card-carrying member of some pro-rape political party or something.
What possible benefit could there be to anyone in "golly gee, who could possibly know?" vs. "It's because you're selling cannabis to Iran, stupid"?
My guess is that it's because most people aren't selling cannabis to Iran, and the Real Problem is the liability they [Stripe, et al] would be exposed to if they admitted their billion-dollar system (and/or call center employees) can't distinguish between Cuba and a cubano.
Medicine vs. Quackery didn't really differentiate in the mind of the public until sometime between antibiotics and advances in trauma care (and CPR, to a lesser extent) in the mid-21st century. Things like antibiotics, X-rays, naloxone, tourniquets, hip replacements, "actually" work. Like work work, in a way that is visible and relatable in simple mechanical terms. Nothing like the Ghosts In The Blood and The Mysteries of The Poppy Seed of our ancestors.
Unfortunately, there's simply not a whole lot to do about a whole lot of things, other than essentially rest, eat well, stay hydrated (no alcohol), smoke fewer cigarettes, and maybe something to ease the discomfortable symptoms. This can be barely acceptable for a physician to say, let alone a press secretary, let alone one from The Bad Team.
Headaches[1] and anesthesia[2], as counterexamples, are not as straightforward. Note the number of ridiculous* headache treatments across time and space, as well as the number of "Science Has Solved Anesthesia!" articles[3] (it has but a first significant piece to the puzzle).
But these really only affect the individual and don't spread like a communicable disease (or ransomware, Big Homo, witchcraft, etc.), so they're also bad examples in a way. Humanity gets really weird when we can't see (and/or shoot) The Problem - Spooky Actions At A Distance or something, idk. Things also get controversial in the area of what the AHA classifies as IIB or III[A] recommendations[9], where there are different shades of "doesn't work", only one of which is really harmful.
Anyway, all of this is to say that there's a certain common-sense value to certain things [4,5,6,7,8], if only the appearance of doing something to appease a scared and generally-ignorant public.
The measures themselves are also mostly common-sense, and designed in parallel ("Swiss Cheese Model") with the knowledge that they won't all be followed all the time, and are targeted and measured over large aggregates (states, counties, 100k people, weeks, months). Nobody is necessarily harmed by someone not wearing a mask, because its benefit is probabilistic by design.
But there's always that group of people, usually with exceptionally little knowledge of the subject area at hand, who insist that, e.g., construction workers must wear gloves and safety goggles while eating lunch (the sign does say "PPE must be worn at all times"!), that life jackets must be worn even on shore, and so on, who are so self-assured/righteous in their ignorance that not only are they unafraid, but feel compelled to push their ignorance on everyone else, because they misunderstand things so badly.
This seems to be the real crime, which made everything more authoritarian than it needed to be. Consent is predicated on being informed, and it's no surprise people felt all kinds of ways about having to make major life changes based on flimsy evidence, especially all of the overly-simple, factually-incorrect (but probably well-meaning) statements made - again, mostly not by Scientists writing Science -but blue checkmarks, journalists, the Tumblrati, etc.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5353082/ [2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004259117 [3] https://www.futurity.org/general-anesthesia-sleep-brains-neu... [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/ [5] https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 [6] https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2019/02/breakthrough-resea... [7] https://acumenmd.com/blog/seriously-use-a-parachute/ [8] https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/cer-2021-0171 [9] https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/File:Classofrecommendation...
Then, it was "maybe if we all cover our mouths [with literally whatever] and don't cough all over everything in every store every day, there will be an overall reduction in spread of germs". [Blue: Masks Save Us From COVID! Red: They just said Masks Don't Work! Blue: Yes they do! Science changes! (The Science had not changed) Red: Well, it's not protecting you, the wearer. Blue: Masks protect us all! Red: No they don't! Blue: Science Denier!, etc, etc.]
Another source of Works vs. Doesn't Work - anecdotes (and perhaps more) from subway passengers, allergy patients, etc. tend to indicate they feel better when wearing a surgical mask, which I don't find astonishing. I saw many comments asserting the effectiveness of surgical masks against inhalation (of a virus) based on these "idk I think my allergies were kinda better this year" observations.
On the other hand, no foreman would allow their workers to tear down drywall or fiberglass or whatever (read: dust) with a simple cloth or surgical mask - OSHA mostly requires N95's (+/- the exhale vent). These construction-type N95s are great to protect the wearer, but are obviously less effective (but better than nothing) against protecting passers-by from the wearer.
The scenario for which "Masks Work" is basically a hands-free covering-your-mouth-when-you-cough, but without that last half of the sentence, it's easy to see how many of the trades workers called bullshit - "I can't hang drywall or sand my boat without an N95, but I have to wear this shitty mask when I walk from my house to my mailbox?"
"Masks Work! Learn the Science™!", etc, etc.
The sad thing is that this is like a 15-minute conversation - tops - as part of hospital and jobsite orientation. Tons of new hires with only a HS Diploma/GED go through this talk every week with relatively little confusion. The Science/use cases haven't significantly evolved beyond the old PPE powerpoints, which I assume were deemed "too technical" by some PR person, leading to the kind of Science that fits on a bumper sticker.
It reminds me of a high school algebra teacher cheering on this girl that was struggling with quadratic equations or something; she was up at the chalkboard and suddenly had an epiphany, saying something like "oh! I get it! now I just plug in X and divide!", to which he jokingly responded "We plug in toasters, not variables", and it was like her eyes glazed over and her brain imploded. "Toasters?! Where did the toasters come from!?" There was just no coming back from that brief moment of confusion, at least that day, for that problem.
Which "masks"? "Work" by what metric? Under what circumstances? Or, is it as the True Believers and Most Faithfully Devoted to Science might have it: that all masks are effective against all things in all situations (or at least certainly have some kind of effect)?
With regard to <masks>, The Science™ really has never been controversial and has not changed significantly since the start of the pandemic, but they used "masks won't work [to keep you from inhaling it] (so don't buy them all)" early on to ease supply chain problems, followed by "masks do work [like covering your mouth when you cough]", resulting in what might have been the dumbest two years of public discourse in the history of humanity, inclusive of The Burning Years, as at least it might be said that they genuinely didn't know whether or not witches floated.
There was never any ambiguity or confusion among Science™ or Medicine™ or Public Health Policy™ here - only among the loud and clueless - 1000% the result of mismanaged communications and a thousand know-nothings echoing calls (largely along Red and Blue lines) to Do The Thing or Not Do The Thing.
Perhaps we need to create a new degree program for, among other things, interpreting and reporting on press releases such that extremely basic facts and terms of art aren't mixed up. (See also: Fig 1a. "Journalists' Guide to Aircraft" and Fig 1b. "Journalists' Guide to Firearms", Fig 2. Any news article with Quantum, Hacking, or Crypto- in the title)
It's perfectly reasonable, therefore, that Hera (and/or Zeus) should have birthed Hephaestus on her own as revenge for (now-trans?) Zeus birthing Athena on his own from his forehead, without Hera (but with the help of Hephaestus, who had already become a skilled midwife just in time for his older sister's birth).
Athena, similarly gifted, is thought to sometimes arrive to the battle with Medusa already wearing her severed head ("aegis not in inventory", "serpentine aegis-cloak"): https://collections.mfa.org/objects/154107 https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/P23.7.html
The First Olive Tree (that never dies, like the flame) has multiple origin stories - at least three Greek myths per se (Acropolis, via Athena/Poseidon, Zeus/Olympus via Herecles, Delos via Apollo/Artemis), plus general Hyperborian propaganda that they'd brought it from their (far superior) homeland - and of course claims on the other side of the Mediterranean.
An apocryphal tale links Athena's Olive Tree to Washington's Cherry Tree, most recently during a ceremony held on Washington's birthday when repairing damage from WWII bombing, to commemorate the bonds between The Old World and New or somesuch.
Unfortunately, I can't find a good source for that, beyond the same generic sentence about 1952, but perhaps that's because it was actually Lincoln's Cherry Tree all along? :thinking_face: :thinking_face: :thinking_face:
(For, on the eve of Washington's Crossing, Poseidon appeared to supply him with the finest cherry rowboats, replacing the crude oaken ones of the rebel forces and ensuring the first victory of the war. Athena gave 13 cherry trees to Lincoln and 13 apple trees to some guy named John, sending them westward to populate The New World with at least two candy flavors. Romulus, infant wolf-boy and founder of Rome, obviously wanting to one-up the Greeks, gifted America her Freedom by chopping both trees into splinters and neatly bundling the sticks together. The French, attempting to one-up the gods, gifted America a 1776-foot-tall automaton, but it was much too tall and noisy to be walking around NYC. In her rage, The Statue of Liberty squished the man who designed the bridges too short between her toes, to which Rudy Giuliani responded by tossing her batteries into the ocean and imprisoning her on Ellis Island forever. Okay, okay, I'm done.)
Anyway, is it just me, or did we all call it the "mandala effect" back in high school?
Time-tested and infallible - even more-so than the Pope, if it can be believed.
It all started in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, in the spring of 1634, when, as luck (or Providence) would have it, ...
I tire of hearing excuses like "our judges can't adjudicate simple matters in fewer than three generations [because they are busy and have A Hard Job]", or "we can't have healthcare because the sous chef du jour did not include it on the menu, and we must respect the venerable and time-honored tradition of the sous chef du jour in designing the menu"
Just once, I'd rather hear them say "Obama of Nantucket relayed a vision in which 12 great dragons appeared, all pissed about the price of oil, the upcoming NATO summit, the Franklin County Republican primaries, and the wearing of pocket squares with striped suits. On healthcare, saith the Orange Dragon: put an onion in your sock and go to MedExpress if you get sick, and you'll probably be fine."
Even if nothing substantive changed, at least the comments sections and over-the-shoulder graphics on the news would be cooler, anyway.
I slowly forgot about it once they required the Messenger app (which had its own data/privacy issues). I seem to recall that coinciding with a WhatsApp exodus among friends with family overseas, but I forget the deal. Anyway, it just ceased to be relevant one day, and we just text or use any of the 93024832048932 other apps now.
It's not a bad platform for viewing ads, though, I guess.
The only problem with that is how many times I’ve watched a vegan/vegetarian order a meat-dipped meat pizza slice with extra cheese after six hours of drinking."
Blaming it on <immigrants> is really quite a stretch. I've never heard of a refugee with a private island flying other refugees there to do drugs and kids, but I don't always get all of the news so I'm willing to be proven wrong here.