I can’t say I disagree. There is much to criticise.

Yeah, if history has taught as nothing else, it’s that the guy with the biggest stick usually wins. There are many criticisms of the U.S. military, but no one could accuse it of being weak. That kind of deterrence is invaluable.

100% of people who have one of those stupid anime avatars are insane.

I’m right there with you. This is even more toxic than Reddit.

Monthly active users are 35% lower than July last year when Reddit turned off the external API. Just 42,188 now. Since then there are 45% fewer servers online. Average comments per month are up, which means fewer and fewer people are posting more and more. This is the definition of an online circlejerk. I’m glad you like it this way but normal people do not, and these stats will only get worse in time.

It’s worse than that. The politics is a far left echo chamber which appeals to a small number of chronically online but repels everyone else.

This series is in my top 10. It’s worth it to at least get through the second.

People should realise they are at risk of exposure to higher levels of lead than recommended.

The results of their study, published in Environmental Research in November 2018, found that 94 percent of backyard chicken owners regularly ate eggs. And nearly all the eggs sampled—98 percent of them—contained detectable concentrations of lead. The lead appeared to primarily come from dirt in the chickens’ coops, which is a finding consistent with the few other studies of urban chickens in New York, Belgium, and Australia.

This is because lead in fuel was legal until just a few decades ago. This means that for 70+ years, any houses near roads will have lead contamination in the soil.

About 60 percent of the eggs sold in the United States come from processors who participate in USDA’s grading service, voluntarily paying to have their eggs graded so the eggs can display a “USDA Grade A” or “AA” shield on their cartons. The grade is based on qualities that can be observed in the shell, yolk, and egg white when the egg is inspected with lights and other specialized equipment. Specifics on egg-grading criteria can be found here.

Egg processors who participate are required to spray-wash their eggs with warm water and use a sanitizing rinse and air-drying techniques specified by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).

https://tellus.ars.usda.gov/stories/articles/how-we-store-our-eggs-and-why

FYI multiple studies have found that there is no safety benefit to washing. It just looks nicer, and people think it’s safer.

I suspect you have that sleep mutation which allows you to feel rested after only 4-6 hours. That’s not enough sleep to be well rested even without alcohol.

It’s insufferable. Originally Lemmy looked promising but it’s basically just r/Politics everywhere now. If I wanted r/Politics I would have stayed on Reddit.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the risk of foreign DNA an auto-immune response? If so, with such high foreign DNA, it could explain the many reported cases of myocarditis.

It’s a little tongue in cheek. Kobo has good support for uploading your own ebooks. Z-Library is a user sharing and exchange site with excellent breadth and depth of content, but technically is copyright infringement. The onion site works great.

I have found Kobo and Z-Library to be worth it for sci-fi.

Since you've admitted you accept discrimination on the basis of race, that makes you, quite literally, a racist. I'm sure you think your racism is justified and righteous and good, but all racists think that. You're not special. You're just racist.

Your recount of history is wild. There were absolutely black slaves, but did you know that there have been millions of white slaves too? Slave markets flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, in what is modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 15th and middle of the 19th century. The North African slave markets traded in European slaves which were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and as far afield as the Turkish Abductions in Iceland. Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries.

My own Irish ancestors were also the victims of genocide in the Potato Famine. No one has a hereditary claim on suffering. If you go far enough back in anyone's past you'll find cruelty and subjugation, no matter their skin colour. That you'd try to make it a competition to justify your racism is, I think, quite awful.

I'd like to preface this by saying I have all the vaccines, including four covid vaccines.

Until just a few years ago, I was all-in on the institutions. You see, institutions have been synonymised with science and intellectualism. Fast forward to covid and we had our healthcare professionals lying to us. "Masks are ineffective." "Sorry I lied. You'll die if you don't wear masks in public." "Except if you're a BLM looter, then racism is a public health emergency." Our leaders were locking us in our homes, closing our bank accounts, banning us from social media, shutting down free speech, and effectively forcing us to take very minimally tested vaccines, repeatedly. They gaslit us about the origin of the virus. We learned that the people who were likely responsible for the lab leak were working in collusion with the Chief Medical Adviser/Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation.

Kind of alarming, right? Data suggests trust in institutions took a huge hit under covid. Not because of "misinformation," but because of dishonest and authoritarian actions by leaders.

Then we have science. Data shows that political partisanship is at an all time high in universities. Up to 20% of lecturers identify as communists. There is no equivalent on the right. In fact, the mix of liberal and conservative faculty members in universities in America is so lopsided now, it's as much as 10:1. We can all pretend like this hyper-partisanship doesn't lead to research and educational biases, but we can see that it does, in real time. For example, trans research. It would be hard to name a field receiving more funding today, nor a field less impartial. Many advocates and researchers argue vehemently that transitioning is necessary to save the lives of those with gender dysphoria. Yet there is not a single study, anywhere, which shows this. The closest researchers have come is arguing that "suicidal ideation" is a synonym for "suicide," and because self-reported ideation decreases in some studies, this means transition saves lives. Clearly this is incorrect, but such research is so widely used and misused that the President of the U.S. has endorsed it.   Conversely, there are numerous reports of researchers being barred from testing hypotheses which question this premise, or outright removed from universities. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]  When researchers are prevented from studying all sides of an issue, all that's left is the narrative of those in power.

For me, the question isn't "will the world ever stop being anti-intellectual?" Instead, it really should be, "what are institutions doing to mend the immense harm they have caused to trust?" I am amazed it hasn't happened sooner, and that the backlash isn't even larger.

I'd be okay with your rationalisation if you followed similar logic for "blackness." Do you? Is it okay for me to attack blackness, and call it dirty and bad?

Reddit has been aggressively banning people for many years. People used to cheer it on because it was mostly aimed at conservatives, but they've expanded and created what appears to be a first-strike policy with no appeal. Now it's affecting everyone. I support consistent application of the rules, but their rules are petty, arbitrary, and broad. A famous example is how they ban people for racism, unless it's racism towards white people. That was literally written into the site rules until recently.

I think Reddit is a lost cause. They peaked long ago and now they're coasting on their moat. As other services like Lemmy gain traction, Reddit will continue to decline, and they will continue to aggressively monetise the remaining users. The only thing to lament is the information already stored on the site.

I guess we've found the new home of /r/Politics. Good to know which communities we should block.

That's hilarious! Here's another one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

This one's great too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohm9C4u63qk