azekai

You are right, but I don't think it is just the fault of the media, this is how the human brain works. No one is losing their minds with fear at dull but distressingly common causes of death like heart disease and car accidents. It is the rare, dramatic, unexpected kinds of death and violence that govern our thoughts.

People fear flying for psychological reasons of control/helplessness, not for logical statistical reasons. Fear of 'scary' death is like the negative version of the inaccurate and over-optimistic math that causes people to buy lottery tickets.

The US also has a higher bar for what constitutes slander/libel than the UK, which can also have a chilling effect on speech.

The CCP isn't 'responsible' for the people under its boot. It is their lack of responsibility for the people of China that has led to this problem. You act like the socio-demographic situation is not the direct outcome of the policies pursued by the CPP regime.

"Will you be able to arrange for the population to be able to be fed, clothed, housed, and given medical care?"

The government of China does not do any of these things. China, despite their lip-service to historical Communist revolution, has some the worst social programs in the world.

We are? I suspect many of us are trying to trick ourselves as much as everyone else.

Energy use is a factor, but not the only one; this article has a concise list of why desalination isn't an easy answer to solving the earth's water needs... currently, anyway.

https://sciencing.com/advantages-disadvantages-desalination-...

Yikes. If a wild animal wandered by and damaged your source of livelihood, I doubt you would espouse a similar view.

That is... really complicated. 'Just improve their standard of living bro' isn't a real solution. It's like saying we can prevent murder by systemically renouncing violence and becoming a more peaceful society. This is obviously true, but the path forward is not obvious.

I think you are right, but why is the DOE saying something that appears patently false- are they indulging in hyperbole knowing they won't be called out? Are they drinking their own kool-aide?

George Washington Carver is a personal hero of mine. He faced all sorts of hardship and still sought to make the world a better place.

It would be magically convenient for all the people he had blackmailed over the years.

I mean, the macro-organism does, in fact, die. It's an unusual way of recycling biological matter, but not a ticket to immortality. It would be akin to if we humans started budding fetal organisms when we died, which would then split off as the rest of us rotted away.

I think Evolution is the biggest enemy that we as humans must overcome with technology.

I would ask for clarification on this point. Is it that blind, unguided evolution is our biggest enemy? Or how parasitic infections are so well-evolved to exploit our biological weaknesses? Evolution is adaptation to environment over time, the capacity for change. Claiming that evolution as an enemy seems about as useful as raging against the sun or oxygen.

This gives me the heebie-jeebies. I repair machines for a living, and the idea of smashing a complex mechanical system just to vent seems so alien.

"Not to blindly defend Bitcoin, but it seems like a tropical storm would inflict just as much, if not more, financial loss than this decision."

I know you are just theorizing here, but c'mon. By embracing Bitcoin they did as much damage to their nation as if a hurricane had hit? That seems like an incredibly poor choice for the people who are ostensibly in charge of keeping their nation safe and stable.

As a long-time SW fan, I can't do it anymore. Book of Boba Fett was so plodding and awful I am washing my hands of Disney Wars.

This is the conversation we need to have, on an international level.

Well, I feel sorry for them. Fertility issues are no joke.

Protectionism, nothing more.

I didn't downvote, but I think your solution isn't particularly effective. Part of the problem is food is more fundamental than tobacco; nearly everyone finds some kind of sweet treat appealing. Slapping labels on all the poptarts saying they are 'desserts' doesn't fix the fact that we are almost all hardwired to seek out fats and sugars.

Putin taking direct action to invade will result in needless Russian and Ukranian suffering and death. That seems plenty evil; and if he has deluded the majority of the population of Russia into believing that the current war is necessary, that is evil too.

This claim was recently made by one of the Chinese Olympians, but it is not true. VPNs were made illegal in 2017, and since 2021 China has been clamping down hard on their own citizens using VPNs to bypass the great firewall, while looking the other way for foreign nationals. The CCP does not send everyone to jail who uses a VPN, but they have the authority to do so if they see fit.

I had a friend in high school whose romantic feelings were just absurdly powerful. Romeo never pined for Juliet the way my buddy Michael felt for his girlfriend. But at the risk of sounding trite, hormones =/= sacrifice, which is the real, meaningful expression of love. I don't want to lessen the importance of your earlier relationship, but puppy dog love is the easiest and most short-lived of affections.

A general rule of thumb is a movie needs to make back double its budget to recoup after-filming costs, like advertising, ect to start turning a profit. A $363 million return on a $200 million flick is not a good return.

The woman was re-selling a bootleg copy from the 80s, and that German court came down on her like a bag of hammers. So glad we have these kinds of idiotic copyright laws that let huge artists and corporate goons step on the throats of small individuals, seemingly at random.

Also I enjoy how the article brought up Clapton's COVID stance twice, even though that has fuck all to do with the actual matter at hand.

That article strikes me as largely playing a semantic game. From the article:

The classic tale of sterilizing immunity unfolds something like this: A pathogen attempts to infiltrate a body; antibodies, lurking in the vicinity thanks to vaccination or a previous infection, instantly zap it out of existence, so speedily that the microbe can’t even reproduce. No symptoms manifest, and most of the body’s immune cells never get involved, a bit like an intruder smacking up against an electric fence around a building, leaving the security guards inside none the wiser.

and

This is a very neat story. And it is “almost impossible to prove,” Mark Slifka, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Oregon Health & Science University, told me. To show sterilizing immunity, researchers have to demonstrate that an infection never occurred—a big ask, considering that microbiologists can’t even agree on what an infection actually is.

If that is the definition used, yes, you are right. It is also basically useless as a term, as it is 'almost impossible to prove.' If you wish to use another term, we can do that. Instead of sterilizing, I could simply say 'highly effective.' Suffice to say, the mechanisms used by the COVID vaccine and the polio vaccine are very different. At most, the polio vaccine only included 3 strains (or variants)- the Salk vaccine, the first, only targeted type 1, but two more were added later over the course of years.

All of this is to say- the highly effective polio vaccine works because there are very few polio variants and people are immunized against them directly.

The COVID vaccine does not make one immune to the virus, or immune to the spike protein. The presence of the spike protein in the vaccine provokes an autoimmune response in the form of antibodies that will target that spike protein. This is somewhat effective, and a clever 'hack' that allows us a measure of protection. However, different spike proteins can be used by different variant viruses.

I am not antivaccine, and while autoimmune systems can be fairly complex, it is certainly worth discussing. Frankly I find the obfuscation and sloppy, ideological reporting to be frustrating. On all sides I see a lack of rigor and emotional attempts at control.

Probably naive to think we could totally eradicate it within a couple of years, particularly as far as vaccine fearmongering is concerned. Would be nice to see it join Smallpox and Polio though.

We would have to completely redesign our current method of vaccination, then. We do not have a sterilizing vaccine for COVID (like we did for smallpox and polio). The current vaccines all use spike proteins to prepare a body's antibodies against the main infection tool of the COVID virus. This method indirectly prevents the virus from efficiently infecting cells in vaccinated hosts, but it does not and cannot eradicate the virus.

If you are worried about microagressions and subconscious biases then you are already hand-wringing about the wrong things. Being truthful, polite and hardworking are what matter, not specifically how you situate your legs on the bus or what pronouns you use in your shitty bio.

As David Chappelle noted recently, "twitter is not a real place" - and doesn't need to be elevated to the position of society's gatekeeper, but rather demoted to society's cesspool. They proved themselves not up to the task to maintain robust free discourse platform - let them rot in their own bubble.

Agreed. Part of that is the 'hot take' represented by the limited characters of a tweet are inimical to nuance. So much of it is just people taking turns 'dunking' on each other, and it gets increasingly heated and rage inducing. Add to that an inflammatory algorithm, where outrage drives interaction, and of course you have a cesspit.

Part of the good thing about the old internet is when you have to construct a blog to share your thoughts, you have to be driven to actually, y'know, build something. It also has the added benefit of being relatively closed off. Now everyone has easy access to an empty field with which to yell into the void... and it turns out with that low bar and high inter-connectedness comes a lot of yelling.

That is the narrative the CCP pushes. 'It is just like a government run checking score.' But it isn't. Crimes, including political ones, will penalize your social credit score. If your score falls too low, you and your children will become ineligible for government programs and assistance.

The idea of an individual needing a permit to protest is just a garbage idea.