Nope. It’s up to me to interpret the rules, and that is the conclusion I’ve come to. Just use the terms agreed upon by the WHO and the scientific community more broadly and you’ll be fine.

From what I’ve heard, this misconception comes from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Pretty much any issues that come up after a vaccination are reported to the system. Using that data, the CDC can detect side effects with extremely low rates of occurrence. Since vaccines are administered to the entire population, it is critical to detect these issues because even problems that are unlikely to arise from an individual dose will result in widespread harm.

Unfortunately, people who don’t have an intuitive grasp of statistics have full access to VAERS. They will cry foul when they see thousands of deaths without realizing that those deaths have no relationship to the vaccine nor any particular similarity to each other. They are simply records that are there to ferret out any issues that were not detected in trials. That then goes viral on the Internet without even less context and reaches people like your friend.

Referring to COVID-19 as “xhinese flu” is considered xenophobia. Further use of that term will result in a ban.

The amount of duplication of effort also leads to many packages being lower quality than they could be. I remember when I did package maintenance for the AUR, I didn’t have much motivation to maintain a package that usually had a handful of users. But make that available on flatpak and I can justify spending more time because it benefits far more people.

I bet you also believed HK rioters were protesting without USA senators giving the rioter leaders a visit…

This is denying any agency from Hong Kong residents. There were large crowds reacting to both specific offenses by the Hong Kong government and more general slights. Polls showed that at least their cause had public support. The instigating event was the introduction of a bill to provide for extradition to China. Because China lacks a strong rule of law, that exposes Hong Kong residents to the whims of China. The subsequent crackdowns, tightening of laws, and arrests of dissidents show that the fear of China’s influence was not unwarranted. It also makes the pro-reunification argument in Taiwan much weaker, since China has by its actions made clear that “one country two systems” was always a lie.

That quote is likely a fabrication by the source that reported it, True Pundit. It was credited to an anonymous source and no one else has been able to corroborate or verify their claim. It just got repeated so much by the right wing echo chamber that many people assume it’s true.

All I want long term with a phone is software updates for security and app compatibility. That is in short supply in the current market. When I am next making a decision, I think the Librium with an Android compatibility layer might be best.

Do you feel like there’s also been a brain drain as millions have fled the country?

This is what is happening, in the form of army tankers being prepped to deliver petrol. There is no threat of use of force. That said, crap working conditions for truck drivers in the UK have led to this point. They were plugging the hole with lower income EU citizens, but Brexit closed that source of labor. The UK may have to actually treat its truckers decently for a change to entice people back into the trade.

New Taliban, same as old Taliban. Among the lovely quotes from the article: “Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security.”

This issue was discovered during an internal audit by Denis Kasak, a security researcher at Element.

A major thank you to Denis Kasak. It’s good to know we have talented people like him watching out for the community.

Echo chambers aren’t bad in and of themselves. They can be fine in the context of, say, a safe space for LGBTQ where they don’t have to deal with people who want to debate their very existence. They can also be good for developing ideas where everyone’s already on the same page. But echo chambers are problematic when there is little to no crossover between echo chambers. They produce a fractured, tribalistic society where ideological rivals are dehumanization and reduced to existential-level enemies. That’s happening right now in the United States, and it is a major driver behind the paralysis in our politics.

Yeah, we’re screwed.

I think Israel may somehow be able to survive that slight.

I’ve started using Lemmy, but I’m still mainly on Reddit. I like the open source, open platform, and federated aspects of Lemmy. There’s also the greenfield aspect, because most of the best community names are unclaimed. At the same time, Reddit has a lot of niche interest subreddits that I’ve joined over the past 11 years of me being on there, including a medium sized subreddit that I moderate. I’m not giving that up.

Yeah… whenever an analysis of a data set produces a surprising conclusion, the first explanation you should examine is that some other factor is polluting your results. Real life data is messy and correlation with causation shows up.

I wish this union would put more effort into encouraging their members to get vaccinated. Care homes have the most vulnerable of people. It’s outrageous that people feel entitled to a job around people who could die as a result.

Nope. Borat isn’t about discussion or improving society. He’s about making a spectacle out of bigotry and awkwardness.

When you’re talking about an online community, you should be kind but set clear rules that are enforced in an even-handed way. But beware that if you ban speech that’s deemed bigoted, you’re likely forming yet another echo chamber. The only way to confront bigoted beliefs is for them to be brought out in the open, and even then there will be plenty of failures and half-victories.