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Joined 15 days ago
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Cake day: October 3rd, 2024

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  • Well, the AP there doing an amazing job of promoting Russia’s interests.

    Instead of ten bullet points showing how and why Swann is factually wrong about Zelenskyy and the Ukraine war, they go off on a rant with barely concealed nationalist overtones about how his work was “funded” and people were “paid to promote it”. Well, stop the fucking press. Journalists influenced by governments and money! Headline fucking news.

    If he’s wrong he’s wrong. Doesn’t matter who paid him, who he paid, who else agrees, who else those who agree also agree with… It matters if he’s wrong. If he is, just say it.

    Trying to play cold-war era patriotism just plays directly into the hands of the conspiracy theorists who will, as we speak be saying “notice how they couldn’t actually deny any of his claims…”



  • I think that not really feeling it viscerally about it is part of the problem, yeah.

    But my take, for what it’s worh, is that ever since Covid people have just got a good feeling of righteousness by simply repeating the standard mainstream messaging. There was a very strong narrative that the mainstream was right and questioning it amounted to dangerous conspiracy theory (which, to be fair, it often did). So now a certain class of people (slightly left of centre, middle class urbanites) have this Pavlovian response to any questioning of the mainstream narrative, that they simply must repeat it because of that good feeling they got supporting it during Covid.

    Unfortunately, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and a couple of coincidental conspiracy-bashings doesn’t change the fact that the mainstream media are fundamentally bought and paid for by their corporate advertisers and CEOs of their hedge-fund owners on the board.

    The American press’s reporting on Gaza has been nothing short of actively complicit. And that’s not even a rhetorical flourish, it’s the view of no small number of international human rights lawyers.



  • I don’t agree that the Dems need to change policy to win. Sure they could pick up some votes from the left but would sacrifice votes from other areas to achieve that.

    What makes you think that, given the evidence to the contrary?

    At the end of the day, those protesting will need to decide, Trump or not Trump.

    Again, why are thousand of voters responsible for keeping Trump out, but not the Democrats?

    Or, a slightly different question, why do you pin your hopes on these thousands and not on the Democrats? Do you think they’re more likely to change their minds? Do you think people are actually going to vote in favour of a party committed to facilitating genocide, often of their distant relations, than the Democrats are to change policy.

    Don’t you think that’s an absolutely devastating indictment of democracy? That no amount of voting block pressure can actually get a party to change policy.

    work from the inside on changing policy.

    I don’t understand what this means. Voters vote. They don’t control party policy “from the inside”, they just vote on stuff.

    If they don’t, and they help Trump get elected, things will be infinitely worse for the Palestinians.

    And again, blaming the electorate for being moral, not blaming the Democrats for refusing to listen.


  • The clarity of your plan was not in question.

    I asked a very simple question about that plan. Why do you think you can change the minds of all these people who currently are not going to vote, but you don’t think you can change the minds of the Democrat strategists?

    You seem to be implying that getting Democrats to actually change policy to help them win is a lost cause, but then have this tremendous optimism toward changing the minds of thousands of people, many of whom are withholding their vote in protest against genocide. I asked why.

    I did not ask “could you repeat your plan”. This is a discussion forum, it should have been obvious you might expect some scrunity of an argument put forth on it. If your intention is to ignore “naysayers” then might I suggest a discussion forum is not the best place for you to be posting. Maybe a blog, or Substack?




  • Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks

    But https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996207/

    In this study, we also analyzed antibiotic prescription rates according to age. The highest prevalence rates were observed in patients aged 71 years (80.3%) followed by 4-year-old children (60.7%).

    Since 71 year olds wouldn’t show any long term effects, that leaves the four year old group.

    as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly.

    Of course you do, I’ve no doubt you’re very diligent. Because now we know they have serious negative consequences. 40 years ago, however, the people this article is about would have merely been told they were “safe and effective”. That’s exactly the point I’m making.

    You now have to take precaution with a medicine because of new information about its safety that wasn’t known at the time it was developed.

    Same is true for every other factor mentioned in the report. Human innovation is absolutely suffuce with things we thought were safe and effective at the time, but later turn out to be quite unsafe.

    Yet taking this unequivocal fact and applying it to a rational scepticism about new medicines has, since 2020, become ‘misinformation’.







  • None of it is ‘clear’, and of course we don’t ‘know’. The question is what on earth you have on your list of reasons to give Antony Blinken the benefit of the doubt.

    I’d love to know what it is about his record in office that inspires such trust.

    Honestly, the level of fawning obsequiousness to the government these days is like something from Mccarthy’s America, I thought we’d moved on as a society.

    The point isn’t whether he actually did approve bombing aid trucks. The point is that he, like any government official, should be terrified of the response if he did, because it’s only that fear that reigns in the abuse of power.

    Do you think Antony Blinken is going to be terrified of “oh, we don’t have absolutely conclusive proof he actually said those exact words so we’ll just drop it”?