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TheHammer is an exemplary fellow - he has my full-throated endorsement.
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If you want to spend your days jerking off to Japanese furry porn
Pretty sure all these people migrated from Tumblr to Twitter awhile ago and are certainly prevalent there today. Just saying that if you're looking to avoid furry porn, going to Twitter won't help you. Hell, there's a whole movement on Twitter right now that's advocating for the right to fuck their pets, and there's a bunch of drama over them grooming kids on sites like discord, etc. Just one recent example (warning, some pretty crazy shit): https://kiwifarms.net/threads/valerie-hypnotist-sappho-succubus-sappho-vin-r-wolf-f1r3fr0st-v3xarray-r00tlulz.108414/
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@Vader
You are able to appeal a permaban and in fact to approve the appeal of a permaban under our administration.
As an aside, why are these two users still banned even though the ban expired years ago? It seems like the ban should lift once the ban end date passes. These both ended in Nov2019.
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@Vader
I agree that past administrations have had some issues with bans with hate speech have been questionable to say the least, but hate speech is a tricky topic to set rules for (I think we talked about this once)
The reasons given for Mesmer's ban which weren't based on the suspicion of multiaccounting are exactly what I feared the rule would be misused for. One was a clear attempt at satire, the other a perfectly legitimate scientific(biological) debate that touched on race based around the prevalence of a certain gene. That ban was carried out less than half a year ago. It's painfully clear that this is being used to cull people on an ideological basis; if you're right-leaning in any sense and touch on race apparently it means that you 'invite and mimic a cesspool of white supremacist thought'. Never mind that scientific race realism (what I saw as Mesmer's whole shtick) sees white people as mediocre by every metric; it'd make more sense to call such an ideology 'Asian-supremacist' or 'Jewish-supremacist'.
Also, it's ridiculous to uphold previous permabans with no chance of appeal when you admit that the rules have been twisted and misapplied in the past. You could count the number of well-known permabanned users on DDO on one or two hands. This site drops the ban hammer judiciously to say the least, and there's no appeals process in place.
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@Mikal
To be fair most of the active people on DDO are not on this site for a variety of reasons (most stemming from issues with prior mod choices).
Every time I come back to this site I go through my friends list and look for who was banned. I found one today that really highlights what's idiotic about the 'hate speech' rule:
"things like the MAOA gene (warrior gene) and lower self-control ability of Blacks will represent this heritability in functional/genetic form."Blatant declaration that black people are violent and unrestrained by nature.An entire thread dedicated to accusing Nigerian Africans of being intrinsically racist due to, ironically, the color of their skin.One highlight: "Racial quotas should be immediately implemented to force Blacks out of political power, and instead make sure there is sufficient Asian, Jewish and Middle Eastern representation in Nigeria. Every race's voice needs to be heard except for Blacks because they are racist and oppress the other racial minorities in Nigeria."Intended as satire or not, the thread was not obviously presented as such, nor does it change the fact that the majority of the OP’s forum activity teeters on the brink of outright racism.
These were given as reasons for being banned. The second was painfully obvious satire; this mod would have banned Jonathan Swift in a jiffy. The first is a discussion of a specific biological racial disparity, something which I had received previous assurances wouldn't be banned, as I listed a bunch of prior controversial discussion topics that were allowed on DDO. Apparently not. Will I get banned for mentioning the evolutionary history behind sickle cell anemia? How about the earlier onset of puberty among people of African descent, or higher levels of fast twitch muscle fiber? The way the mods talk about this rule it's just there to stop people from calling black users monkeys or screaming the n-word at them, and you're silly for thinking it would be misapplied, but how is this not an example of that?
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@Wylted
The first example reminds me of a talk by Yanis Varoufakis about capitalism and how it is changing/being destroyed. He says to imagine a town full of shops. You walk into this marketplace, but every shop is owned by the same person, and they have the ability to control what you even see on the store shelves - they can make products vanish or reappear at will. Is this still a market in any meaningful sense? Varoufakis dubs this hypothetical system 'technofeudalism', and his thesis is that capitalism is already in the final stages of morphing into this system, wherein digital platforms serve as the personal fiefdoms of tech company overlords and markets are steadily eliminated or marginalized as a means for distributing resources. Target being able to manipulate what you see as the price of the product depending on location just reminds me of that - price signalling is a vital component of any functioning market, and this is a deliberate undermining of that.
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'The Gods of the Copybook Headings' - Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
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I'm an older DDO member, I would definitely frequent the site more if someone like Max or Wylted were elected president. The main reason for this is that any permanent bans based on some of the more ludicrous rules (hate speech, for example) would be vetoed. This site adopted such policies under bsh with zero real ability for the community to curtail such rules going into effect ('feedback' has no teeth to it). As others have pointed out, debate websites thrive on a diversity of opinions, and having a rule in place that could be interpreted in such a way as to ban huge swathes of opinion is a hard-to-overstate dissuading factor when it comes to investing time and energy into a site like this for any heterodox thinker. It sucks that we can't just strike dumb rules overall, but putting a procedural roadblock to enforcing them in place is a good stopgap measure.
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Dadaism just represents a generation of artists that got lazy, realize they couldn't top the artists that worked at their society's zenith, and decided to dissect the concept of 'art' instead. It's just a symptom of a failing society, one that's moved from creation and expansion to internal criticism and decay. Nothing that the West creates with its dying gasp will be remembered centuries now, unless as bizarre curiosities. Nobody will ever treat it as seriously as people do at this moment. It's a blip on a dying culture's cardiogram, not some sort of profound innovation.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
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The historical conditions of the Middle Ages cannot be replicated, and judging by where we ended up they obviously made significant mistakes. I don't prescribe to the idea of 'progress', that holds that we're advancing inexorably towards some sort of utopia. That doesn't meant that I think it's possible to 'turn back the clock'. We simply have to be practical, and realize that our current trajectory is insanely unsustainable.
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@Theweakeredge
What do you want 'proof' for? That offshoring is a thing? That tax dodges are employed by wealthy people? That it's literally the law that a corporation must maximize profits for their shareholders? That the class called 'capital' comprises said shareholders overwhelmingly? That a CEO is employed to maximize the profits flowing to shareholders? That, in the West at least, 'capital' as a class is international (considering capital controls employed in, say, China, the situation is a bit different there)? These are all fairly standard facts that should be known to anyone with a modicum of understanding. But, as Aristotle put it, 'not to know of what things one should
demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education.' If you want to debate politics, history, or economics, asking for 'proof' of easily demonstrable facts (literally read an entry level text book on any of these subjects) doesn't make you look more intelligent. Lazily invoking a thought-terminating cliché like 'conspiracy theory' does you even less credit.
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It seems that you've misunderstood everything that I've said, so I'm not sure where to begin, seeing as I was talking about tax policy and offshoring and you seem to be talking about time travel.
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@Theweakeredge
You must be young. The idea that the uber rich will taxes passed by the American government is quaint. They have a million different ways to hide their money, and make most of it from capital gains anyway. CEOs are the chumps that the vampires at the top hire in order to ensure that the money keeps flowing into their coffers. Income tax hikes would just take a chunk out of the level that's under the 1% and turn the wealth gap into a chasm. The way to really take a pound out of the uber-wealthy's hide would be structural (break up big conglomerates and distribute stock among working class people). But the entire political system is structured to stop something like that from even being seen as a political possibility. And if a country does try something like this then that top echelon, which is fundamentally international at this point, will just pull the necessary strings to destroy that country (either sponsor a 'democracy movement' to overthrow their leader or slaughter their people with sanctions until they bend the knee).
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@TheUnderdog
Ivermectin shows some promise, judging by the trials in Uttar Pradesh. It will be interesting to see the results of more specific trials rolling out in Asia. As to the media screech-fest over adverse effects, it's an entirely manufactured problem. Ivermectin, when taken at the proper dose, is a very safe medication. The poisoning cases are happening because humans are taking veterinary ivermectin. Why are human's taking veterinary ivermectin? Because they can't get safe human doses of ivermectin. And why can't they get safe human doses of ivermectin? Because regulatory bodies in the US are trying to make it difficult for doctors to prescribe it, and the media is stirring up a firestorm over it. The whole 'crisis' would go away if doctors were just encouraged to prescribe proper doses of ivermectin. At worst, it would just be like prescribing a placebo.
Overall, most of vaccine hesitancy has to do with phase 3 trials being skipped. This means that nobody really knows what kind of long term effects it has. Ramming through FDA approval won't change that fact, and trying to mandate vaccination by law will just make people more suspicious. Ivermectin has been prescribed all over the world for decades and its side effects are very well known. If it provides an effective prophylactic effect, the vaccine hesitant ought to be encouraged to take it, as it's pretty clear by the numbers coming out of Israel that the vaccines aren't very effective at fighting new variants (shocker, I know, it's almost like there's a reason that we don't typically vaccinate against coronaviruses). If the big concern du jour is the unvaccinated taking up emergency wards, an effective prophylactic solves that problem. But of course large companies don't hold lucrative patents on Ivermectin, those expired in 25 years ago. Without any moneyed interests to grease beltway pockets, the right thing will seldom get done. So we'll just continue to manufacture an absurd situation where desperate people are taking veterinary medicine and then pull our hair out as if it isn't just another instance of our retarded country shooting itself in the foot.
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@Ramshutu
COVID has a much lower mutation rate than flu; this is why vaccines are still mostly effective against delta, whereas it’s very doubtful whether a vaccine from one season will be effective on the second for flu.What COVID lacks in mutation rate, it makes up for in the sheer volume of people being infected: if it’s 10x less mutable, but infects 10x as many people, the number of mutations is the same.
Curious as to where you got this impression. Coronaviruses and influenza have nucleotide substitution per site per annum numbers that fall within more or less overlapping ranges (0.80 to ~2.5 × 10^-3). Even the outlier flue strains typically don't rise above 3.5 x 10^-3. It's the very fact that both are quickly mutating RNA viruses which makes the idea of zero covid/flu or vaccination-as-a-silver-bullet unserious goals.
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When you get down to it, there's a reason that most of the people who still use this site fit into one of three camps. Some of them are old-school DDO people who do it to keep in touch with the community. This group shrinks all the time due to the nature of the latter two camps. One of these camps contains the... colorful folk who were formerly contained within the religion subforum. They tend to not be able to argue coherently (in the worst cases they can't even form coherent sentences) and instead repeat the same exact diatribes and grievances at each other ad infinitum, as if they're condemned spirits in some Greek tragedy-turned-farce. I'm generalizing, there were always some more lucid people who you can tolerably communicate and a handful of people who were quite brilliant, but the majority are a bit unfortunate (Some of them, I'm sure, are good people). The third are people new to the scene and the general concept of online debating, the genuine 'noobs'.
I think that you need to think of a site like this a bit like a nuclear reactor: you need to get it started with some initial material, then feed it new fissile material in order to keep the reaction going. If you introduce too many dampening elements, like lead rods they will suppress the reaction and slow it down, perhaps even snuffing it out. The people who are completely fixed in their opinions and also incapable of elegantly defending their positions are lead rods. They shut down discussion, lead to a dampening of interest and engagement, and eventually make the site all about their own pet issues and personal conflicts without adding anything of value. New members are like new fuel. With an engaging debate culture, the site can transform them into interesting, open-minded, and knowledgable people who in turn brighten the site further. Without that, their intellectual growth is retarded and they instead either leave (because nobody wants to be shouted out by schizos all day) or they degrade to the point of the sites lowest common denominator and add to its problems.
It's a critical issue to prevent the latter state from coming to pass. And one of the main ways this is done is through moderation policy. It shouldn't just be about enforcing rules, but about cultivating a certain environment. And I think that the ideal environment is summed up by three qualities:
1. Zero ideological bounds on discussion
2. An ideologically diverse user base
3. A user base which is capable of intelligent debate
One and two are tied explicitly together. Restrictions on the first quality choke out the ideological fringes and turn a site into an echo chamber. And a less ideologically diverse user base leads to increased calls for ideological policing, in a vicious feedback cycle. One of the main reasons that I left the site originally was that the moderation team was entirely on the progressive side of things, and I could see the writing on the wall. But, now that more conservative people have joined said team, an opportunity to reintroduce a laissez-faire approach to speech content presents itself. A debate site needs a diverse user base that can defend its ideas intelligently, and people like this thrive in an open environment. In a stifled environment, you end up with ideologically stale dullards, the control rods slam down, and the site begins to circle the drain. If people want basic, milquetoast liberal vs. conservative tripe they can find it anywhere on the internet at a higher quality level than they can here. What made a site like DDO attractive is that you could watch an erudite doctrinaire Marxist debate with anarchocapitalists, antifa people, austere Islamic scholars, and some guy who thought the moon was fake. It was an interesting place to be, and it was made such an interesting place while being moderating by a guy who was consummately moderate himself, yet knew how crucial it was to defend the fringes.
That's my ten cents on moderation, anyway.
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@Vader
Fair point to note. I think then the issue would be with the repetition used here.
I've had the same experience that Mesmer had, where discussing basic conservative viewpoints is construed as 'hate speech' and banned. It's part of why I didn't get as involved in this site; the moderation policy was not the laissez-faire approach taken at DDO.
I think it should read like so:
5) If a user’s content includes unwarranted (or excessively toxic) systemic vulgarity and invectives, which may include off topic personal attacks, moderation shall
- FIRST, request the user cease & desist such behavior.
- IF adequate time passes and A is ignored by the user, OR IF the user complied initially after A but again unapologetically engages in unwarranted (or excessively toxic) systemic vulgarity and invectives, which may include off topic personal attacks, moderation shall issue a 30 day ban and repeat A.
- IF the user continues to defy moderation after the 30 day ban, moderation shall issue a 90 day ban and then repeat A.
- ALL additional infractions after C shall be met with bans according the formula y=6(x2) whereyequals ban time in months andxequals the number of infractions after C.
I don't think anything is lost by this reframing, and it removes any possibility of the ambiguous term 'hate speech' being misapplied to mere ideological disagreements.
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@Vader
5) If a user’s content includes unwarranted (or excessively toxic) systemic vulgarity and invectives, which may include off topic personal attacks and/or hate speech, moderation shall
- FIRST, request the user cease & desist such behavior.
- IF adequate time passes and A is ignored by the user, OR IF the user complied initially after A but again unapologetically engages in unwarranted (or excessively toxic) systemic vulgarity and invectives, which may include off topic personal attacks and/or hate speech, moderation shall issue a 30 day ban and repeat A.
- IF the user continues to defy moderation after the 30 day ban, moderation shall issue a 90 day ban and then repeat A.
- ALL additional infractions after C shall be met with bans according the formula y=6(x2) whereyequals ban time in months andxequals the number of infractions after C.
This is the section that throws up red flags to me. Hate speech is an ill-defined term which has often been used to silence people for political reasons. It seems completely unnecessary here, as vulgarity and invective are both banned. The inclusion of hate speech implies to me that the hate speech which is banned is something aside from invective or vulgarity, otherwise it would be redundant. The problem is that when I think of 'hate speech' that isn't covered under 'invective' or 'vulgarity', all that comes to mind is stuff that shouldn't be banned, and the banning of which acts as the camel's nose under the tent when it comes to censorship. The rest of it seems more reasonable, but that term in the wrong hands could lead to a stifling of free discussion and I don't see why it shouldn't be removed.
TLDR: Either A. Hate speech is covered under 'invective' and 'vulgarity', in which case it is redundant and can be removed to avoid confusion, or B. It represents a new category of thing which is banned, in which case the term presents a dangerous slippery slope to censorship and should be removed to keep the site a place of open discussion.
TLDR: Either A. Hate speech is covered under 'invective' and 'vulgarity', in which case it is redundant and can be removed to avoid confusion, or B. It represents a new category of thing which is banned, in which case the term presents a dangerous slippery slope to censorship and should be removed to keep the site a place of open discussion.
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@whiteflame
In general, I'm having trouble understanding the complaints with #1.Moderation has standards by which it enforces the various rules of the site already. The SPES is both a refinement of that enforcement and a means for regular users on the site to understand how they're enforced and in what instances. Moderation can and will still enforce these things, but the major difference is that the means of enforcement are more transparent than they've ever been. For all those people who are saying that enforcement should be changed, this is where you start, since this is the way you can most easily engage with existing enforcement mechanisms.
I disagree with it because there's a rule which I think is stupid and ultimately harmful. The SPES will herald in a more rigid and uniform enforcement of the rules, including the one which I don't like. I think it's better for the mods to be unrestrained in how they handle the letter of the law because it gives them the ability to selectively enforce rules and avoid the harm which some of them would cause if rigidly enforced. Tying their hands takes away the leeway that they currently have to ameliorate the impact of harmful rules. If we had a coherent set of rules that made sense and limited moderation to harassment/threats and other clear breaches of basic decorum I wouldn't have a problem with an SPES. Instead we have a set of rules which could be construed to allow censorship based on ideological content rather than the abusive nature of posts.
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@Reece101
Because scientists attend universities, an environment which in the present day includes immense social pressure to adopt a certain outlook on life and certain axioms about human nature, though these have shifted wildly since say the 1940s, when most scientists adapted to those social mores. Most scientists in 12th century Baghdad were devout Muslims, and most scientists in 2nd century BC Alexandria were devotees of Serapis. Most Chinese scientists are communists. Scientists are human beings, and human beings tend to bend to the prevailing social ideologies of their given environs.
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Watching this withdrawal, the bitter words of George Kennan in one of his last interviews have been echoing in my head. About how foreign policy debate in this country is completely superficial and lacks any of the understanding necessary to achieve the desired results. It's a good read which shows that this rot is decades old and not a 'new thing' that came in with Biden. These are just the people that he returned to power, the 'adults in the room'. The experts. The people whose actions that Kennan, a legend in foreign policy, the man who devised our strategy to bring down the Soviet Union, lamented thusly:
The article is especially interesting because Kennan predicts an aggressive territorial response by Russia to NATO expansion about 15 years beforehand, at a time when such predictions were typically laughed out of the room.
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I think this mistakes correlation with causation. Q collapsed because Trump being ousted and not being returned to power for months proved conclusively that there was no 'plan' to be trusted. The Q people ran a grift by feeding delusional boomers a fantasy that there were powerful 'good guys' behind the scenes who would take care of everything and solve all of the problems of the world. This naturally appealed to boomer conservatives. a consummately lazy and risk-averse population which loved the idea of a political activism that involved sitting on their fat asses and checking social media all day. The generation that ruined the country wouldn't have to do anything to actually fix it, just sit back and 'enjoy the show'? I couldn't imagine a more appealing message for the target demographic.
At present the previous target demographic is divided into two groups: people who have had a complete break with reality in order to avoid processing the idea that the world sucks, that it's going to get worse, and that it's largely their fault; or the people who are starting to come to terms with the reality that there's no American James Bond hero coming to save them, and that they'll actually have to extract themselves from the permanent couch indents which they inhabit and do politics if they want to affect any real change. I think that first group is slowly but surely shrinking as the psychic toll of reconciling reality to their delusions reaches new heights.
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@MisterChris
1. No. I don't like any system of rules which includes vague and ideologically charged terms like 'hate speech'. If 'hate speech' isn't covered by 'invective' or 'threats' then that just means that you're banning measured stances on politically charged topics that aren't personal attacks or threats.
2. Yes. This would be the best thing to happen to this site.
3. Yes.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
In general the East Asian principle of wearing masks when sick has a lot to be said for it, and I think that their cultural practice of doing so has contributed to the largely successful containment of the virus in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Vietnam. I think that wearing them while not sick is only really warranted with an exceptionally contagious pathogen like COVID-19.I agree, however the W.H.O. and others disagree with regards to people who are not sick.
Everyone, healthy or sick, buying masks during flu season every year would precipitate exactly the sort of supply crisis we're experiencing right now, so isn't feasible policy. This is why the WHO is currently contradicting the CDC and lying about masks protecting the general public. It has everything to modifying consumer behavior, and nothing to do with objective, scientific fact.
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@HistoryBuff
By global standards it's very mild. The idea that we will ever be anywhere near our situation in normal times under these circumstances is completely detached from reality.60% of hospitals could run out of critical supplies within days, that is not mild. That is critical. If those supplies run out you could see the medical system collapse as all the medical staff get sick.
That is mild. The graph was also of current stock, not rate of replenishment, at a time when production was being ramped up. Don't take more information from a data set than it is giving you. Common rookie mistake ;)
It won't be resolved. We can't operate in a fantasy world where there are magical solutions to structural supply issues like this.i'm not pretending there is a magical solution. I'm saying giving medical masks to the general populace when 60% of hospitals are critically short of supplies is nuts.
Not if it reduces pressure on hospitals by flattening the curve of infection rate.
I'm definitely in support of America buying up as much masks as possible, so that average people can wear them (correctly) for great benefit while doctors in other countries figure out their own problems.this is exactly the sort of mentality that is going to cost america in the long run. I understand america 1st. But this kind of mentality is "america only". Basically fuck the entire world, we want you all dead. That does not help. Both because if outbreaks get out of control in those countries (because all the doctors are sick) then it will re-spread to america. but also because all those other countries are not going to want to co-operate with the US if they all see america as evil assholes. Which they will if the US is actively trying to kill their doctors.
The idea that other countries make major geopolitical decisions based on something like mask purchasing tactics in naive, and in the end is just a cope. America is the world's only superpower, that comes with benefits for its citizens.
Our only competitor is also the one precipitating the crisis in the first place by hoarding masks (which they produce the bulk of), so it's not like we're giving them room to make political inroads by exploiting the crisis. I don't want to rest of the world dead, but if it's us or them then I chose us. That's what being a citizen of a country ought to mean.
That's not how supply chains work. That data doesn't mean that one week after that graph is published, those hospitals in the red will be out of masks. If production is being ramped up (combined with aggressive action in the international market), then supplies of masks will continue to flow into hospitals, and those red areas will shrink.that graph doesn't say that those hospitals are getting enough masks though. it says they don't have enough to last the week if they don't get more. You say production has ramped up enough to cover what hospitals need, but i haven't seen any evidence that this is true. Just a graph that says 20% of hospitals are already out of critical supplies and another 40% have less than a week's worth. If there really is enough production to cover all hospitals, then great. But so far you have provided no evidence this is true. And many, many doctors and nurses are saying they don't have enough.
This graph is from April. Have we had catastrophic hospital failures since then? No. The only reason hospitals are closing/laying off staff is because they are being financially choked by bans on elective surgeries, which are their bread and butter.
The article is clearly about facemasks, which are very different from respirators.this is a quote from the article:"There also is the issue that we have a massive global shortage," Ryan said about masks and other medical supplies. "Right now the people most at risk from this virus are frontline health workers who are exposed to the virus every second of every day. The thought of them not having masks is horrific."They are talking about medical masks. they are not talking about masks people make at home.
Doctors also use surgical masks depending on the context, which are available in US drug stores and are being worn fairly widely in the US. When I saw a doctor due to having the flu in February he had a surgical face mask on, not a respirator. In the medical/biotech field, you typically call respirators respirators and surgical masks 'face masks' because they're different things. I've worked in biotech, and nobody ever called a respirator a 'mask' because, well, it's not a mask. The article is talking specifically about 'face masks', so surgical masks or the less effective homemade masks that people are using will fall under that category. Respirators should not be used by the general public.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
here ya goPrevious research also shows that surgical masks can be almost as efficient as N95 respirators at reducing influenza infection among health care personnel. This is because they protect the nose and mouth from larger droplets from coughs and sneezes. It is unknown whether this is true for COVID-19.huh, makes you wonder why masks were never recommended during flu seasons....
In general the East Asian principle of wearing masks when sick has a lot to be said for it, and I think that their cultural practice of doing so has contributed to the largely successful containment of the virus in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Vietnam. I think that wearing them while not sick is only really warranted with an exceptionally contagious pathogen like COVID-19.
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@HistoryBuff
Hard data is hard to find, but the chart in this https://time.com/5823983/coronavirus-ppe-shortage/ shows that a majority of facilities in the US had at least a week's supply.i'm looking at your source and it seems to contradict you. look at that 1st graph. It says 20% of hospitals have no supply of masks. 41% have less than a week's worth. only 11% of respondents had enough supplies to last more than 2 weeks. That seems like an extremely critical shortage.
By global standards it's very mild. The idea that we will ever be anywhere near our situation in normal times under these circumstances is completely detached from reality.
The US has the manufacturing capacity and technical expertise to increase production by switching over product lines, many countries do not.ok, but at present hospitals cannot guarantee they can provide their employees with protective equipment. Until that is resolved it is irresponsible to get people who should be staying inside to buy up the masks they need.
It won't be resolved. We can't operate in a fantasy world where there are magical solutions to structural supply issues like this.
The USA is also the largest consumer market in the world, is immensely wealthy, and so can throw its weight around in the now strangled global PPE market.There is a worldwide shortage of masks. Everyone needs them, everyone is short of them. Are you arguing that america should buy up all the masks in the world so that average people can wear them (incorrectly) for probably no benefit while doctors in other countries die due to not being able to get medical equipment?
I'm definitely in support of America buying up as much masks as possible, so that average people can wear them (correctly) for great benefit while doctors in other countries figure out their own problems.
These smaller, more poor countries are very much reliant on supplies from international organizations like the WHO or UNICEF, and so their unique situation warrants intense rationing. The US, relatively, is in a much better condition, and so can apply a different standard.but your own source says that 61% of hospitals have less than 1 week's worth of supplies. that is a critical shortage. rationing is very much warrented.
That's not how supply chains work. That data doesn't mean that one week after that graph is published, those hospitals in the red will be out of masks. If production is being ramped up (combined with aggressive action in the international market), then supplies of masks will continue to flow into hospitals, and those red areas will shrink. And we are rationing masks already.
There are masks which have much stricter protocols for use and which are meant to protect you by filtering out viral particles. These are typically fitted products, are expensive, and should be retained for medical professionals and first responders. Homemade masks, or even surgical masks, will do nothing to protect you personally from the virus; the weave is not tight enough to filter out the causative agent.I don't believe this article is about homemade masks. It appeared to be about medical masks like n95 masks. I'm not sure if the WHO has an official recommendation about that.
The article is clearly about facemasks, which are very different from respirators.
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@Alec
Inflation doesn't work like that. Governments inflate intentionally to get out of debt sometime (that's what happened in interwar Germany), it doesn't just happen against your will. Japan, for example, has been trying to raise their inflation rate for ages while at the same time being one of the most indebted countries in the world, and hasn't had a huge amount of success. The idea that debt=inflation has long been discredited.
Your plan is also completely insane. Completely open borders, moving the tax burden to sales tax, and an end to welfare would lead to race/class riots and the collapse of civil order. A cut of that level in military spending would render the US geopolitically insolvent. And less births are the last thing that a country with a rapidly inverting population pyramid needs.
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The USD will likely be the reserve currency of the world for at least some time, so we can just keep printing it for the time being. The Yuan is no alternative, despite the economic rise of China. They can't lift capital controls without haemorrhaging capital.
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@Jeff_Goldblum
Assuming that we're correct - that is to say, assuming that our policy process is guided to a great extent by emotion rather than by the logical assessment of threats, how should that affect our appraisal of various public policies?Let's take gun control vs the obesity epidemic. Even though gun violence kills far less than obesity, we focus on the former to a greater degree. Does that make it wrong for people to push for gun control?One could justify a "yes" response by arguing: it is wrong to focus on gun control when there are more serious issues (i.e. obesity epidemic) left unresolved.One could justify a "no" response by arguing: we have to operate within the constraints of our policy system. So, if high-profile gun violence tragedies generate more political momentum than a slow-moving, partially invisible obesity epidemic, we should do the most good possible by capitalizing on gun violence's political momentum, rather than waste our efforts on an issue (obesity) that has no political traction
I don't think that public policy really works this way. We think about politics in this head space where there are conditions, conflicting policies which affect those conditions, and consequences down the lines. People take different stances about the nature of all of those questions, and line up behind different policy prescriptions. But this idea of policy is a fiction, because policy (and government) are human endeavours. This means that not only are the conditions complex, the complexities of the implications and consequences are often incredibly complex (it's well-captured by the idea of fat tails in risk management - https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/fat-tail-risk-what-it-means-and-why-you-should-be-aware-it-2015-11-02). So you can't simply set down policy as a prescription and watch the results as you would in a simulation and model, you have to build a political structure which can flexibly respond to unexpected hiccups in implementation of potentially disastrous, unforeseen consequences.
I feel like in the US we talk about politics in this super simple way of pro-this, anti-that which is completely detached from reality. It is difficult, because of our biases and limited awareness of the world that surrounds us, to even fully understand the past. But a policy prescription is a plan for the future, and so if we want to actually change the world for better we need to pay attention to the effects of policy as it is implemented and change course as conditions demand. Being able to do this is a hallmark of great leaders, and I think that it's far more politically effective to propel people who share one's ideology, and are competent, into influential position than to advocate for policy. I think that decades of policy-focused advocacy, in lieu of movement building, has left America with a terminally corrupt, incompetent, and anti-populist government which implements precisely the opposite policies for which the American people advocate, to disastrous effect. Look at obesity. It's tied to things like food deserts (distribution/capitalism), agricultural policy (capitalism, corruption, environmental degradation, economies of scale), and culture in the worst afflicted areas (literally tied to everything). Gun rights are inextricably tied to not only questions of identity, culture, and crime, but penetrate to the very marrow of political theory (how is force, and its application, structured within the political system?).
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@Jeff_Goldblum
I feel like I pointed a rocket in one direction, lit the fuse, and watched it veer off in an entirely different direction.I'll answer my own question.I think this thought experiment demonstrates that government and society do not process threats consistently. 3,000 dead due to terrorist attacks (9/11) seemingly justifies two wars and a complete overhaul of our homeland security apparatus, while the average American doesn't take coronavirus seriously and is willing to flout social distancing orders as they wish.Another example: every time there's a school shooting, our political system renews its long-standing (and vicious) debate over gun control. Meanwhile, far more Americans die of obesity every year than from gun violence. Yet, because widespread public health problems rack up body counts slowly and quietly, they are overshadowed by the flashy, high-profile tragedies.Basically, our policy process disproportionately focuses on acts of violence and other high-profile crises, neglecting more serious systemic threats to our collective well-being. Or to put it another way, our policy process is guided by emotions rather than a moral framework applied logically and consistently.
This is a good observation, and it is a huge blind spot of humans in general. Even within the school shooting debate, look at the type of guns focused on. 'Long guns', or 'assault rifles' are an object of constant fixation and terror, with numerous frenzied attempts to regulate them. But if you look at countries that do have tight gun control laws, and base policy on a more accurate risk assessment, the most heavily regulated categories of gun are not semi-automatic rifles or even shotguns. It's handguns. This is because semi-automatic rifles are involved in a tiny sliver of overall gun deaths, with handguns being used in the overwhelming majority. The reason for this is simple; handguns are easily concealable and more widely owned. But gun control advocates are fixated on so-called 'assault rifles' because of reasons that have nothing to do with a rational avoidance of risk. Reasons that would probably be more efficaciously explored through Rorschach tests or on the psychoanalyst's couch.
It reminds me a bit of an excerpt from a fantasy novel which I once read, in which an artificial intelligence responded to being asked whether it dreamed:
'I am a calculating machine which has calculated how to think. I do not dream. I have no neuroses, no hidden depths. My consciousness is a growing function of my processing power, not the baroque thing that sprouts from your mind, with its hidden rooms in attics and cellars.'
It's a central problem of applying any utility calculus to human action. Humans aren't machines, however much some of us may want to make them so. We have different perspective, shifting biases, subdued emotional structures that direct and guide not just our actions but the very ways in which we process information and make decisions. Even (or perhaps, especially) the would-be tinkers of mankind, who seek to 'fix' these defects, are hopelessly lost within them. It's as Eric Hoffer once wrote:
'The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.'
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@HistoryBuff
We have a good supply in the US now,do you have any sources that confirm this? I have heard there are critical shortages among medical professionals. If this is not true please provide a source.
Hard data is hard to find, but the chart in this https://time.com/5823983/coronavirus-ppe-shortage/ shows that a majority of facilities in the US had at least a week's supply. The US has the manufacturing capacity and technical expertise to increase production by switching over product lines, many countries do not. The USA is also the largest consumer market in the world, is immensely wealthy, and so can throw its weight around in the now strangled global PPE market. Compare that to a country like Nepal, which was experiencing even heavier shortages, has no manufacturing capability for up to standard PPE, and lacks the socioeconomic heft to throw their weight around in a market in which demand has skyrocket to unprecedented levels.
These smaller, more poor countries are very much reliant on supplies from international organizations like the WHO or UNICEF, and so their unique situation warrants intense rationing. The US, relatively, is in a much better condition, and so can apply a different standard.
in the article linked, they aren't saying people shouldn't wear masks. They said there isn't conclusive proof they help and that when medical professionals are critically short, they need to get priority access to them. I have seen lots of people lately using masks wrong and touching their face anyway. I don't find it hard to believe that they may not be very effective for the average person who can't/won't use them properly.
The idea that home-made masks are there to protect you, and that you can 'invalidate' your protection in some way by touching the mask, is a common misconception. The utility that they hold is in slowing down the breath which you expel, which limits the distance that anything which you exhale will eventually travel. This, combined with social distancing, limits person-person spread through airborne particles. This is by far the most common form of transmission; transmission via fomite (which is why you shouldn't touch your face) is much less common. The only way to wear the mask 'wrong' in this context is to not have it fully cover your nose and mouth. If you breath in your nose and out your mouth, you could even leave your nose out, if you have a physically intense job and it is hot.
There are masks which have much stricter protocols for use and which are meant to protect you by filtering out viral particles. These are typically fitted products, are expensive, and should be retained for medical professionals and first responders. Homemade masks, or even surgical masks, will do nothing to protect you personally from the virus; the weave is not tight enough to filter out the causative agent.
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IMO they're lying for the same reason the CDC lied earlier this year: to prevent runs on PPE by the civilian population. We have a good supply in the US now, but the WHO is advising countries all around the world and some of them are experiencing shortages. If they told people that masks worked everyone would go out and buy them in those countries.
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I'm all for burning down chain stores but people who violently attack civilians should be shot.
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They beat the shit out of a guy in Dallas. Some nerd who tried to defend his shop from looters with a sword. Things are getting crazy.
Warning: graphic
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Instead of arguing that mods can abuse Yes2, argue why the general user with a grudge won't abuse Yes1.The latter is far more likely if we take reputation and past events into account.
Yes1 is impossible to abuse. I don't know what kind of weird unpalatable things you've been saying in PMs to people you don't trust, but that's on you. You've shared something personal with someone who you misplaced your trust in, and they might share it. That's life. What you're fighting for is your right to accuse them of lying while they are powerless to present evidence in favor of themselves. You want to suppress the truth so you can calumniate someone who personally betrayed you. That isn't good or noble.
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I support making PMs fully shareable because I think that moderators could abuse their power. People should be able to prove their case in public, to hold the powerful accountable. How would the public know if moderation was framing someone? You would only hear the prosecutor's side of the story under Yes2.
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Diversity is so beautiful, we should embrace it.
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Make it a policy in CoC to speak English.
Racist
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@PressF4Respect
There's no need to be so jealous that my effulgent prose has inspired such ardent emulation. Work hard enough, and you can reach the same heights!
頑張れ
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@Vader
Tying insurance to employment is in itself bad for middle class people, and bad for poor people, and that even predates obamacare. The only people our current system benefits are insurance companies and corporate medicine. It's also incredibly fragile, as we're seeing right now.
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I will vote Trump if Biden is the nominee, but I won't go out of my way to promote him. It's just the lesser of two evils.
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This isn't going to move the dial for most black people. At most, they'll roll their eyes. The bigger story, and what could actually hurt Biden, is him failing to deliver real results to this constituency.
Most white people have this retarded idea of what black people are like that is completely divorced from reality. Biden is actually right; black people are not going to vote for Trump en masse. If anything, they will stay home if Biden pisses them off enough. And so will Trump's base if he fails to deliver what his campaign promised.
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@n8nrgmi
Obamacare is a horrible insurance plan that benefits insurance companies more than anyone else; poor people in general are not in love with it. Biden has promised to veto M4A, so he's actually explicitly told this woman that he won't make her healthcare any better.
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My vote:
- Ratify the new Code of Conduct?
Yes! - Allow sharing of Private Messages?
Yes1, the truth will set us free. - Change the Voting Policy to expand S&G to include other excessive legibility issues?
Yes, but S&G shouldn't exist as a point. - Require a reason when submitting a report?
No1
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@ILikePie5
BTW, we're contemplating wasting trillions on this, but still no wall. Still no infrastructure bill. Still no mandatory e-verify.The wall is being built as we speak. Infrastructure bill is Congress and E Verify is Congress. Guess the problem lies with Congress. Wait not Congress as a whole, Democrats who were wanting to impeach him since Day 1.
Wall is being reinforced where it exists, not necessarily being built in areas where it does not. Mostly upgraded from anti-vehicle fencing. Trump had a Republican House and Senate for two years. Why no wall? Why no e-verify? Why no infrastructure? Thing is, the game was rigged from the start. They don't care about you, or your wages, or your community, or your family. They care about getting their backs patted at AIPAC's next shindig and getting buckets full of money from the oligarchs who benefit from cheap labor. They spend trillions on foreign wars but scream bloody murder about spending a few billion on a wall to defend our own borders. In their mind, the military budget exists to defend the interests of a small, wealthy country in the Levant, not to defend the territorial integrity of the United States.
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@ILikePie5
There's really no response to that as you clearly don't know what either of those words mean. An attack on an embassy is a provocation. A non-escalatory response would be to deploy troops to defend the embassy or launch some strikes on proxy groups. If taking out a key regional political figure with a drone strike isn't an escalatory response then the term has no meaning.As I mentioned earlier, Iran has been escalating its attacks. It started with the Oil Tankers. Trump didn’t do much. Then Iran shot down a US Military drone. Trump did nothing. Then Iran killed an American contractor and stormed the embassy. If that’s not escalation then I don’t know what is. What Trump did was retaliate, something the Obama Administration couldn’t do.
This isn't escalation, it's the status quo. Escalation means to take a step UP. Iran and we have been engaged in proxy conflicts and skirmishes in the Middle East since before you were born. Neither group has targetted a leader of the other.
But he is Obama who'd destabilize an entire region of the Middle East and waste trillions of dollars because Israel yanked on his leash.You’re an anti-Semite for not supporting a Jewish State and instead succumbing to the Iranian cries for Death to Israel.
Okay snowflake. You're right, not wanting to watch Americans bleed out in some Middle Eastern shithole for a country that manipulates our elections and spies on us makes me a RACIST.
Tell me one thing. Do you agree that Soleimani should’ve died for what he did?
Dumb question. If you're applying an absolute moral standard, all military leaders deserve to die. Soleimani fought a war. In fighting a war, you invite death. He who lives by the sword, you know the rest of the story. Assassination is never about justice, it's about results. The results here are bad, so it shouldn't have been done.
I'll shoot it right back at you: objectively, who deserves to die more? Mohammad bin Salman, or Qasem Soleimani? I'd say as far as atrocities committed, Salman takes the cake and then some. But he's our ally and Soleimani is dead. There's no justice in the world, kid. Just conflicting interests and a lot of blood.
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