Why not unfollow all who present material that you find egregious or banal?
Try and connect with people who are more interesting or more sympatico with respect to interests/fields/profession?
177 karma · joined August 18, 2021
> and series of essentially untested messenger RNA vaccines
In fact, mRNA vaccines have been in various clinical trials for decades. The following paper provides an overview and it was published before COVID existed:
Current RNA-based Therapeutics in Clinical Trials
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31566126/
(Or on Sci-Hub: https://sci-hub.st/10.2174/1566523219666190719100526 )
If the article's author misinforms so blatantly on a point which is trivial to check, I can only imagine how much misinformation resides in the rest of his piece.
[EDIT: typo]
While true, that 10% allocation of parliamentary seats to independents/small parties allows for a great deal of negotiation on policy. The smaller parties, particularly if the hold a sufficient level of balance-of-power, can see some/many of their own policies reflected in the eventual policies which pass through parliament.
[Edit: clarification]
Australia's top 3 parties achieved ~65% of the vote. That leaves about 1/3rd to minor parties and independents. Surely that's a great deal better than having just 2 parties with any real power.
https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/row-intensi...
According to this article, the LNP coalition were the cause of the subsequent abandonment of FTTP:
https://delimiter.com.au/2013/09/07/fttp-dream-coalition-vic...
It is? Not any way that I read the grandparent comment. Regardless, I would dispute that, unless you're saying the people with 'diverse views' are somehow prevented from contributing to Wikipedia?[0]
> Outside of the hard sciences, and even there with caveats, there are not objective truths, and the point is that wikipedia is not a place where all interpretations get the same consideration.
I'd also dispute this. There are literally thousands of academic disciplines alone, which are incorporated into Wikipedia[1]. As long as there are citations to credible information sources[2], there's no reason not to consider them as much 'objective truths' as the citation sources themselves are are.
[0] Assuming they have requisite levels of credible evidence to back their contributions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_academic_discipline...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
Absolutely, which is why I used the term of 'giving freedom to the code' - in perpetuity.
> With BSD (and other attribution licenses) it depends on the developer's goodwill whether the user can get the source code or not.
Concur, which again, is why I used the term of 'giving freedom to the developer' - to do with the code what she/he wants.
Wikipedia shouldn't be a bastion of free speech, in the same way that a text-book shouldn't be the bastion of 'all forms of crazy and unsportable ideas'. Anything that doesn't have requisite levels of credible evidence should be removed from Wikipedia or at least appropriately marked with caveats.
If you want a bastion of free speech, consider the Internet as a whole as your only viability.
I can't agree.
This video from a few weeks ago about the W Boson mass discrepancy is about as deep as a lay audience can hope to surmount:
GPL (and other share-and-share-alike licences) gives freedom to the software.
BSD (and other attribution or public domain licences) gives freedom to the developer.
Both give similar freedom to the users. In fact, they establish no restrictions on users or usage.
Usenet didn't (in general, IIRC) have centralised moderation. Usenet had the famous killfiles, which you maintained and which elided the posts of people you found to be a nuisance.
In terms of signal-to-noise ratio and the content focus, you're right. HN is the closest thing to the 80s Usenet community that I've found on the Internet of the current day.
However, Usenet was never social media. You didn't connect with people like you do on social media and 'follow' them. On Usenet you joined discussion fora, which sometimes included the same people across multiple fora, so you would get a sense of the poster and their calibre and quality.
This has nothing to do with the original point of this thread, which I'll repeat is that Eva Bartlett cannot be trusted as a source of credible information:
> Bartlett describes herself as an "independent writer and rights activist."[3] She writes commentary pieces for RT's website.Critics contend that her advocacy amounts to participation in a disinformation campaign whereby the aim is to lessen the responsibility of the Assad regime for the acts of indiscriminate killing during the war.
> In late 2016, Bartlett gained controversy over a video that went viral, in which said that Syrians "overwhelmingly support" Bashar al-Assad, as evidenced by the results of the 2014 election.[13][14] The election was seen as illegitimate by a number of countries and international organizations,[15][16][17] while Russia has endorsed Assad's mandate. Further, she has characterized the White Helmets as being part of a Western propaganda campaign, alleging that rescues by that organization are hoaxes whereby they "recycle" the same children in footage of staged rescues,[13][14][18] and that "no one in eastern Aleppo has heard of [the White Helmets]".[13] In the same video, Bartlett falsely claimed that the al-Quds Hospital bombing in April 2016, where 55 died, never occurred, saying it was rebel propaganda.[4][19] Bartlett's claims were amplified by Russian-controlled outlets such as RT, Sputnik News and In The Now.[20][13] The claims were found to be false by Channel 4 News and Snopes.[1][3][4][5] The broader "same girl" internet meme has been categorized as a derivation of the "crisis actor" conspiracy theories
> "HB 20’s critics have blasted it for infringing on the First Amendment rights of private companies. “Texas’s law violates the First Amendment because it compels social media companies to publish speech they don’t want to publish. Worse, the theory of the First Amendment that Texas is advancing in this case would give government broad power to censor and distort public discourse,” said Scott Wilkens, senior staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute, in a statement following the decision."
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/11/23067002/texas-netchoice-...
It's fair that Twitter should be held accountable per US legislation, which is covered by Section 230:
> Section 230 is a section of Title 47 of the United States Code enacted as part of the United States Communications Decency Act, that generally provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party content.
It is no strawman argument but fundamental to the argument about free speech.
Forcing a publisher (Twitter) to publish content is as bad as forcing a publisher to not publish content. Free speech demands that Twitter be allowed to publish what it wants.
You presented a Youtube video by a pro-Russian activist who has been repeatedly caught out lying.
I presented an actual journalist and credible domain expert who has not.
That's my definition of what constitutes 'journalism'.
Fundamentally, if you find Anne Applebaum unpalatable, there are a hundred others who are reporting truthfully from Ukraine, and not pushing Putin's propaganda.
If you want to find 'the opposing view' about Ukraine, find a credible journalist or news source from the Russian free press and present their views. That's if you can find any remaining free press in Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_freedom_in_Russia
> As of 2022, Russia ranked 155 out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.[1] In the 2017 Freedom House Freedom of the Press report Russia scored 83 (100 being the worst), mostly because of new laws introduced in 2014 that further extended the state control over mass media.[2] Freedom House characterized the situation as even worse in Crimea where, after the 2014 annexation by Russia, both Russian jurisdiction and extrajudicial means are (according to Freedom House) routinely applied to limit freedom of expression.
[EDIT: typo]
Most any journalist which works for a quality newspaper (which doesn't toe a national or governmental line) would qualify as a better source of information than this person.
But, you asked for one, so here's one:
https://www.theatlantic.com/author/anne-applebaum/
[EDIT: typo]
It's that she has a history of fabrication and lies, as noted in the linked Wikipedia article's citations.
With such a history of non-credibility, whatever she now spouts is suspect and tainted.
> Bartlett describes herself as an "independent writer and rights activist."[3] She writes commentary pieces for RT's website.Critics contend that her advocacy amounts to participation in a disinformation campaign whereby the aim is to lessen the responsibility of the Assad regime for the acts of indiscriminate killing during the war.
> In late 2016, Bartlett gained controversy over a video that went viral, in which said that Syrians "overwhelmingly support" Bashar al-Assad, as evidenced by the results of the 2014 election.[13][14] The election was seen as illegitimate by a number of countries and international organizations,[15][16][17] while Russia has endorsed Assad's mandate. Further, she has characterized the White Helmets as being part of a Western propaganda campaign, alleging that rescues by that organization are hoaxes whereby they "recycle" the same children in footage of staged rescues,[13][14][18] and that "no one in eastern Aleppo has heard of [the White Helmets]".[13] In the same video, Bartlett falsely claimed that the al-Quds Hospital bombing in April 2016, where 55 died, never occurred, saying it was rebel propaganda.[4][19] Bartlett's claims were amplified by Russian-controlled outlets such as RT, Sputnik News and In The Now.[20][13] The claims were found to be false by Channel 4 News and Snopes.[1][3][4][5] The broader "same girl" internet meme has been categorized as a derivation of the "crisis actor" conspiracy theories
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Bartlett
This person is a Russian troll.
Please do some basic fact- and credibility-checking before posting Kremlin propaganda.
I guess this must be a Your-Mileage-May-Vary situation.
I've never used Twitter as anything more than just (rarely) reading it as a micro-blogging web-page, never published anything on it, never interacted with anyone on it and have always encouraged everyone I know to also avoid using it.
Perhaps if you and others did the same, then we wouldn't need to be having this discussion.
We have to work hard to make sure that the Internet and only the Internet remains the public space, and to never give such power to any entities like Twitter - commercial or otherwise.
> It is privately owned, but it acts as a public square. For the same reasons that we defend the right to Free Speech at the public level, we should push the platforms that act as public squares to guarantee Free Speech.
I disagree.
Free speech means that no government has the right to tell content publishers - in this instance Twitter - what to and what not to publish, modulo the standard legal exclusions of child abuse material and incitement. (This viewpoint changes if we're discussing a common-carrier or a natural monopoly, where universal service obligations are necessary).
On the Internet, it's the Internet itself which is the public square. The content publishers like Twitter are merely commercial operators of 'printing presses' which make their material available to information consumers/citizens within that public square.
Content publishers should have every right to censor/reject/moderate any content submitted to them. If the content submitter doesn't like this, then they too can spin up their own content publishing platform on the Internet and publish what they desire.
So, with that in mind, I'd suggest using Godot (https://godotengine.org), with the reasoning being:
- small, fast, multiplatform
- python-like scripting
- gentle learning curve (for a serious games engine)
- completely FOSS
There are now thousands of 'how-to' videos available which would take a complete beginner from nothing to a functioning game in a few weeks. A great way to get into coding.
[Edit for formatting.]
Social media cannot censor you. Social media, or any content publishing platform, can only moderate content. Only a government - which has the power to legislate arrests or fines - has the power to censor you. Demanding that the content publisher publish the content you have submitted is akin to demanding the New York Times publish your letter to the editor. Both are unreasonable requests.
Unless a content platform is an absolute natural monopoly, there should be no reason to legislate that it must publish all content submitted to it. Forcing a content publisher to publish all content is akin to forcing it to not publish content; both are a removal of freedom from the content publisher.
If your posts submitted to a content publisher are removed, consider spinning up your own content publishing platform - many are available free online, or even pay for the printing of your views in pamphlets or books. If your government does not imprison you for your views, then you are not being censored.
MBA: Mostly bloody awful
Something happened to management culture decades ago and now being a Master of Business Administration, especially from Harvard, is rather on the nose. MBA, it's being said, can also stand for 'Mediocre but Arrogant', or 'Management by Accident'.
1) I've not seen credible evidence that he retained internal documents from the Republicans, only releasing material from the Democrats. Do you have any citations for this?
2) Regardless of the above, that's still a fairly parochial perspective. The rest of the world doesn't revolve around internal US politics.
For anyone who's not read this already, I've found the following to be the most eye-opening analysis of how Assange came to be framed as a more divisive figure than he actually is:
> «A murderous system is being created before our very eyes» A made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden, pressure from the UK not to drop the case, a biased judge, detention in a maximum security prison, psychological torture – and soon extradition to the U.S., where he could face up to 175 years in prison for exposing war crimes. For the first time, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, speaks in detail about the explosive findings of his investigation into the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...