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Inu

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Remember when simply considering certain possibilities was condemned as proposing conspiracy theories?

"The Lancet letter (also referred to as Calisher et al. 2020) was a statement made in support of scientists and medical professionals in China fighting the outbreak of COVID-19, and condemning theories suggesting that the virus does not have a natural origin, which it referred to as "conspiracy theories".[1][2] The letter was published in The Lancet on February 19, 2020, and signed by 27 prominent scientists, gaining a further 20,000 signatures in a Change.org petition.[3][4] The letter generated significant controversy over the alleged conflicts of interest of its authors, and the chilling effect it had on scientists proposing that the COVID-19 lab leak theory be investigated."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)

According to Eurostat Portugal "recorded an excess mortality rate of 23.9 %" in June 2022. "Other countries with rates over 15 % were Spain (16.7 %) and Estonia (16.2 %)." Overall: "Following a peak of 26.5 % in November 2021, in June 2022 excess mortality in the EU decreased slightly compared to the previous month, to 6.2 %." Bulgaria, Czechia, Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia recorded little or no excess deaths.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Your greatest enjoyment in life... So the most upvoted post chose the flow state in order to momentarily forget the existence of suffering that is life and the second most upvoted post chose Netflix and aimlessly driving around in the car. I wonder if this indicates something about the state of modern society.

This is how the article summarizes the report:

So what exactly had those 248 pages said? What had David Sabatini been found guilty of that merited this kind of punishment? Chiefly, failing to disclose his consensual relationship with Knouse. On top of that, the report found that Sabatini, in his day-to-day administration of the lab, violated the Whitehead’s Anti-Harassment Policy, since his “behavior created a sexualized undercurrent in the lab.” Sabatini’s relationship with Knouse exacerbated things, given his “indirect influence” over her, which violated the Anti-Harassment Policy and ran afoul of the “spirit” if not the letter of another of the institute's policies. True, he didn’t supervise Knouse. He didn’t work directly with her. He never threatened her or proposed a quid pro quo. And he certainly didn’t have the power to fire her. But, according to the report, he had “experience, stature, and age” over her. Knouse’s apparent desire to continue their relationship only served to confirm his influence: “That she felt the need to act ‘fun’ to impress Sabatini underscores how Sabatini’s words and actions profoundly impacted her,” the lawyers wrote. Nor did the lawyers care for the happy hours and whiskey tastings that Sabatini sometimes hosted in his office, which betrayed his “apparent ‘friendliness’ and general propensity to have ‘fun.’” (Knouse, in her counterclaim, says the events were “drunken,” and “conversations quite frequently veered to the sexual.”) “While we have not found any evidence that Sabatini discriminates against or fails to support females in his lab, we find that Sabatini’s propensity to praise or gravitate toward those in the lab that mirror his desired personality traits, scientific success, or view of ‘science above all else,’ creates additional obstacles for female lab members,” the report concluded.

Not sure I understand what is damning about his behavior based on this summary.

Yeah, I thought this too. My impression is he doesn't want to be associated with this video anymore. If I had to speculate I'd say VH seems like a person with a clear moral code who has outgrown the idea of having filmed people against their will. The video has also recently been used to make Oblivion NPC memes with a million views. I think he's tired of it, but that's mostly just speculation.

Years ago on zeit.de, the online version of the German newspaper, you could sort the user comments by upvotes. But the most upvoted comments often happened to be quite critical of the articles or what might be called the political mainstream. Then at some point the button for sorting by upvotes was removed, and has been absent ever since. I felt somewhat reminded of this sudden disappearence.

Wittgenstein's take:

I was walking about in Cambridge and passed a bookshop, and in the window were portraits of Russell, Freud and Einstein. A little further on, in a music shop, I saw portraits of Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. Comparing these portraits I felt intensely the terrible degeneration that had come over the human spirit in the course of only a hundred years.

Sometimes I get the impression that people who spend most of their day staring at screens seem significantly more sceptical of the idea on average than people who spend a lot of their time in aircraft traversing the skies.

I mean Greenwald has also asserted that no Parler user was involved in the insurrection, which is a straight-up lie.

He did not make this assertion in the article. Quote:

Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube. As Recode reported, while some protesters participated in both Parler and Gab, many of the calls to attend the Capitol were from YouTube videos, while many of the key planners “have continued to use mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.”

Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows.

Does this actually work?