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rjzimmerman · 8 months ago

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I've been uttering the mantra of this article for a dozen years, at least since I started this Tumblr thing. Deal properly with the environment, and in doing so we will deal properly with the climate. Tweedledum and tweedledee. We cannot focus on one without focusing on the other, or we will fail at both. Climate crisis = Biodiversity crisis. Period.

But from what I'm reading, the biodiversity COP 16 which started a couple of weeks ago is not working so well. Why? As is usually the case, $$$$$.

Excerpt from this story from Covering Climate Now:

“Climate is Nature. Nature is climate.” So began an article previewing this week’s COP16 biodiversity conference published by Sumaúma, an extraordinary newsroom (and Covering Climate Now partner) in the Brazilian Amazon.

Sumaúma explained that Colombia, the host of COP16, is proposing a radical but common-sense departure from previous negotiations: “Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad has declared that one of the priorities of the conference will be a unified pledge on climate and biodiversity.” Climate and biodiversity are “two sides of the same coin,” the article added, noting that the minister called the current practice of treating them separately “dangerous.”

The global media has a history of treating the biodiversity crisis as separate from and less important than the climate crisis. One study analyzing newspapers in the US, Canada, and UK found that climate change received eight times more coverage than biodiversity did between 1991 and 2018, and there’s no reason to think the trend has changed since then. The COP16 negotiations, which take place in Cali, Colombia, from October 21 through November 1, offer journalists a chance to correct this imbalance.

The lede of the Sumaúma article hints at a key point to bear in mind: Global warming drives species loss, and species loss drives global warming. There is, however, a good news corollary: Reducing global warming limits species loss, and reducing species loss limits global warming.

Scientific research has now confirmed what Indigenous peoples have long understood, Sumaúma noted: “Nature, particularly microorganisms such as bacteria, does much of the work of maintaining the world’s temperature, salinity, acidity and chemical balance.” Two human activities are primarily responsible for pushing plant and animal species to extinction: burning fossil fuels, which boosts global temperatures; and destroying habitats by cutting down forests to increase farmland. These, and kindred activities, have slashed global wildlife populations by an average of 73% over the last 50 years. “It’s shameful that our single species is driving the extinction of thousands of others,” Tom Oliver, a professor of applied ecology at the University of Reading, told the Guardian.

Officially, COP16 is tasked with assessing how much progress the world’s governments have made since COP15, when they adopted a landmark plan to reach so-called “30 by 30 goals” — conserving 30% of Earth’s land and water area and restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030. Turning these commitments into credible national policies that actually get implemented is one test of success. As with climate negotiations, much will hinge on whether rich countries provide poor ones the financial aid needed to halt deforestation and other damaging practices.

Journalists can also grade COP16’s achievements by assessing how Indigenous peoples are treated there. The world’s 370 million Indigenous people occupy roughly 20% of Earth’s territory; yet that 20% contains 80% of all known terrestrial plant and animal species. That outstanding record of stewardship reinforces Indigenous people’s long-standing calls for governments to respect their knowledge and agency in deliberations such as COP16 — and at the COP29 climate talks starting on November 11 as well.

#climate crisis #biodiversity crisis #Biodiversity COP16

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swnnck · 3 months ago

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final 2/2 - cts1000

The question I have investigated about the keyword "Gender" is: What is the relationship between violence and hostility against women within video game culture and the history of misogynistic character design?

For my final project, I chose to present my research in the form of a zine (learn more about zines here!) The zine is titled To VC or Not to VC, which is a play on the famous line from Shakespear's Hamlet: “to be or not to be.” It has a wordcount of ~800, and is made up of various materials such as paper, glue, stickers, markers, paint, as well as cut-outs from 2 magazines: Anatomy Essentials by Future plc, and The Nib Issue 15, which is a social, political, and scientific comic collective by various artists. Although creating a traditional zine rather than a digital one was challenging and tedious, I was confident that the result would be visually complex and effectively present itself as both an informational and artistic piece. Additionally, using the form of a zine to present my research is also relevant to my chosen keyword, “gender” (learn more about my keyword here). In the 80’s and 90’s, zines such as Shocking Pink, Bikini Kill, and Doris were published by feminist movement groups to spread information that was not present in the news and media. Making zines is something I have experience with; I enjoy the challenging art form, and I think it was important to display and pay homage to the relationship it has with the history of gender, feminism, and misogyny.

A challenge I faced when completing this assignment was organizing all the information I had learnt from my sources and putting it into the zine without it becoming too text heavy. As it turns out, there has been an abundance of scholarly articles published about the history of misogyny in video game culture. I knew that in planning out my zine I wanted there to be a full, vertical spread in the middle of the zine, similar to the notorious centerfold. At first, it was going to be a collage of cut-outs from the anatomy magazine (which was full of sketches of women’s bodies, drawn by a man of course), but in the process I ended up switching to making a timeline of the first influential fighting games of the early 90’s. These games played a big part in the way the video game industry views women today. What started as “submissive and pure” depictions evolved into “sexual and dominative”, both of which are still present in video games today (Tompkins & Martins, 2021). The narrative that has been written for women in video games over the years has always influenced how men view women, as well as how they view themselves. This topic of women and feminine presenting people’s perception of themselves being manipulated by video game character design is something I did not touch on as much as I wanted to in my zine. Research shows that there are psychological impacts due to oversexualized character design and objectification. Not only do women and feminine presenting people experience a large sense of objectification due to the use of oversaturated tropes such as “damsel in distress”, having a “feisty” attitude, but also experience a lack of body satisfaction (Skowronski, et al., 2020). Stereotypes and standards have been historically engrained into every gamer’s mind. Women and feminine presenting people face horrible amounts of body shaming, hypocrisy, derogatory comments and attacks due to their involvement in gaming as a career and/or as a hobby. Video game design now only allows and invites, but it promotes these behaviours. Unfortunately, due to my focus on misogynistic practices in design, cultural influences like #Gamergate, and the size of my zine, I was unable to incorporate these important pieces of information.

Overall, I believe my project was successful because I learnt so much about my research question and that video game character design does in fact have a tremendous impact on misogyny within its culture. In my project, I wrote, “because it has always been highly profitable for games to market women as sexual objects, the perception many men have of women online is skewed, leading to misogyny being very prevalent in video game culture”. I think that this statement provides a core understanding of the “why” of my topic, and why it is very important to discuss as a society.

For the final part of my project, I decided to upload it to my blog in two ways. First, as a downloadable and printable pdf. This allows for people to print it double sided, fold each page, and have their own physical copy of the zine. Second, as an online readable pdf where the pages are in order of text and not of a booklet. The reason for this is that as an art student I have learnt that if there’s anything people love more than digital art, it’s viewing traditional art online. Although I have no aversion towards digital art (I would love to learn one day), there is a sense of authenticity and intimacy to the traditional materials being displayed virtually. Regardless, I wanted to make the zine accessible to everyone, especially the online community where it can be best accessed by people who play video games.

I am very proud of the way this project turned out. I am confident that my design and visualization skills have been evolving, which I have been able to prove in my work. I am able to see a change in the way I perform research and analysis of information from last year which I think is important for me to recognize as a student! The course has taught me many valuable skills such as citing and topic modeling (that I am sure would have made taking CTS2010 a bit easier), and I am eager to improve them as I continue my studies.

Works Cited

Chess, Shira, and Shaw, Adrienne. “A Conspiracy of Fishes,…”. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59:1, 208-220, 11 March 2015, https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2014.999917. Accessed 2 Dec 2023.

Feminist Frequency. Feminist Frequency, 2023, https://feministfrequency.com/. Accessed 2 Dec 2023.

“gender, 3.b”. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, September 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2250688057. Accessed 3 Nov 2023.

Juul, Jesper. Half-Real. Mit Press, 2011.

McCullough, Keiko M, et al. “Female Video Game Players and the Protective Effect of Feminist Identity Against Internalized Misogyny” Sex Roles, vol. 82, 3 June 2019, pp. 266–276, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-019-01055-7. Accessed 3 Nov 2023

Polianskaya, Alina. “Are video games inherently sexist? Designers and game makers discuss.” Design Week, 20 Feb 2019, https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-february-2019/are-video-games-inherently-sexist-designers-and-game-makers-share-their-views/. Accessed 3 Nov 2023.

Şengün, Sercan, et al. “Contours of virtual enfreakment in fighting game characters” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 180, 22 April 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121707. Accessed 6 Nov 2023.

Skowronski, Marika, et al. “The effects of sexualized video game characters and character personalization on women's self-objectification and body satisfaction” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 92, 24 November 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104051. Accessed 3 Nov 2023

Stockton, Kathryn Bond. “Gender Has a History and It’s More Recent Than You May Realize” The MIT Press Reader, 8 June 2022, https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/gender-has-a-history-and-its-more-recent-than-you-may-realize/. Accessed 6 Nov 2023.

Stuart, Keith. “Kapow! The history of fighting games”. The Guardian, 1 June 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/jun/01/kapow-the-history-of-fighting-games. Accessed 28 Nov 2023.

Tompkins, Jessica E., and Martins, Nicole. “Masculine Pleasures as Normalized Practices: Character Design in the Video Game Industry” Sage Journals, vol. 17, no. 3, 28 July 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211034760. Accessed 5 Nov 2023.

“Women Gaming Study” Reach 3 Insights, 12 May 2021, https://www.reach3insights.com/women-gaming-study. Accessed 2 Dec 2023.

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yamayuandadu · 5 years ago

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300 followers special: debunking Arahabaki

Arahabaki is a mythical figure with a relatively large popculture footprint, mostly thanks to Shin Megami Tensei, but little to no source material to go with it. For this reason, especially in english-speaking spheres, many claims rooted in pseudohistory and hoaxes, such as the image above, circulate uninterrupted. Under the cut, I will attempt to debunk their source. If stories about dogu, piss bottles and improbable journeys to Ecuador interest you, you found the right place.

The claims of Arahabaki's antiquity and in particular associating this obscure deity with dogu – specifically the shakoki dogu - all go back to Tsugaru Soto Sangunshi (I will refer to it as TSS in the rest of this article) and other associated writings, so called ”Wada family documents,” all of them written by a certain Kihachiro Wada. It's a series of forgeries created in the 1970s (with additional works produced through the rest of Wada's life – he passed away in 1999), which in addition to presenting a fictional history of the Tohoku region, centered around a fictional local kingdom, also mention Mayan prophecies, Nostradamus, Mu, and various scientific concepts, usually misunderstood by the author. To my knowledge, TSS is only covered in one english language source, which is horrid and basically unusable - The Sacred Science of Ancient Japan: Lost Chronicles of the Age of the Gods by Avery Morrow, which does present the truth - eg. that it's a forgery - but then the author gets caught up in some sort of Evola-influenced spiritual doctrine which makes him claim that perhaps it's an echo of some "spiritual truth" or something along these lines, which is obviously not a sound argument from the perspective of anyone with even just a passing interest in history. Social sciences are still sciences, not religions. TSS claims shakoki dogu represent an “outlawed” god formerly worshiped by people inhabiting Tohoku, whose name was also their endonym. It doesn't delve deeper into the history of Jomon art, and doesn't acknowledge dogu other than shakoki – considering not all dogu found in the Tohoku region (or even further north) belong to this category, it potentially makes it possible Wada was simply familiar with von Daniken’s confabulations and had no other exposure to jomon art; I have not seen this possibility in any japanese debunking articles, though. It's additionally worth noting here that while the exact purpose of dogu remains unknown up to this day, they're neither a taboo (indeed, many towns use peculiar locally excavated dogu as mascots nowadays, like Ravi from Minami Alps), nor particularly rare – estimatesof the number known today vary between 15000 (National Museum of Japanese History estimate) - 18000 (estimate from this article). The majority are of course not shakoki dogu; the difference between various estimates likely comes from different approach to counting figures only known from fragments.

Wada claimed that he merely discovered TSS, rather than wrote it – according to his account, a case of old documents fell from the ceiling while his house was being renovated in 1948. Supposedly, the discovery – so called “Kansei original” - was compiled between 1789 to 1822, and then copied between 1870 and 1910. Wada later claimed he lost the original, but based on gathered evidence it seems obvious it never existed. Various pages known to researchers, purported to come from the original, the Taisho copy, and writing Wada confirmed to be his own, are written in the same style, and with the same mistakes. Additionally, as a visit made in the house by a debunker at the request of Wada's cousin, who appears to be its owner currently, confirmed it's virtually impossible that a large number of documents could have been stored above the ceiling; it has also been called into question if the house existed before 1950. What the visit did reveal was a large number of plastic bottles containing human urine, left undistrubed since the 1990s. A relatively unsophisticated way to make paper appear older than it is requires soaking it in urine, and this rather offputting find has proven that this was Wada's preferred method of making his writing appear older than it is to onlookers, especially these lacking formal experience with antiquities.

Truth to be told, even without the grand urine discovery, TSS was not difficult to discard as a forgery. As I mentioned above, its particular weakness are bizarre references to scientific concepts and discoveries, revealing a low level of historical awareness of the author – for example, references are made to quasars, continental drift theory and Pluto – discoveries not yet made in the suggested eras; to make it more embarrassing, TSS claims it was based on foreign sources which weren't yet published at the listed dates. It also references natural disasters which never happened, and urban legends and folklore which only developed recently, like the claims about Jesus' grave being located in Aomori prefecture, which only date back to the 1930s (Wada's documents claimed it was a story already known in the Kansei period, in the 1790s...). On top of all of this, a number of purported authentic illustrations were simply traced from contemporary sources:

It's worth noting that TSS wasn't the only fraud Wada was involved in, as we can learn from his wikipedia biography he fraudulently claimed to be a former Imperial Palace escort officer before embarking on his adventure with crafting false chronicles soaked in urine. Tragically, TSS found supporters not only among the expected crowd of various wannabe occultists, frauds and naive teenagers, but also among a number of genuine historians, most notably Takehiko Furuta. It would appear that he became interested in it in hopes of finding support for his theories about Japan originally having more than one ruling family, but with time he fully embraced it, and actively advocated the bizarre visions it contained. A particularly outlandish claim of his was insisting that Meiji era educator and political activist Fukuzawa Yukichi quoted TSS in his work (the quote in mention appears to be a paraphrase from american declaration of independence). It's worth noting that while Furuta seemingly was a genuinely accomplished scholar of Shinran doctrine, supporting TSS was far from his only adventure with pseudohistory. He was also a staunch believer in the long discredited claims about links between japanese Jomon culture and the Valvidia culture of Ecuador, claiming that various references to fantastical lands lying between China and Japan or beyond Japan prove that the Japanese reached America in ancient times (you can torment yourself with one of such articles here). This theory was briefly advocated by a number of American scholars before him, but obviously has no support today. It's nothing but a new take on XVIIIth century French claims about present day British Columbia being the Fusang described in some Chinese texts. Sometimes strange lands and creatures at the edge of the map are nothing more but fantasy. Furuta's particularly shameful contribution to TSS discourse was declaring that undermining its authenticity is rooted in historical prejudice against the inhabitants of Tohoku and Hokkaido. Personally I'm under the impression that discarding an entire region's real, very complex history in favor of fanciful hoaxes is much more likely to be rooted in such prejudice. The claim Arahabaki was an Ainu kamuy, common online, appears to come from a similar place – I will not examine it here, but I find attempts to shield forgeries from criticism by attaching them to poorly documented and historically suppressed beliefs of historically persecuted groups to be even more disgusting than regular fraud of this sort. What Arahabaki actually is? This is difficult for me to tell for sure, but certainly nothing out of ordinary - not a dogu, and not the main figure of some lost fabulous country. There is a number of mundane temples enshrining Arahabaki, for example here. This article also mentions a number of mundane locations enshrining Arahabaki today; curiously, many of them are located outside Tohoku. A number of theories exist, linking Arahabaki to the usual suspects: religious beliefs of the Emishi people, who originally inhabited Tohoku, and may or may not be one and the same as ancestors of present day Ainu; snake worship; ironworking traditions; marebito beliefs; gods enshrined in freshly established fortresses... Whatever the truth is, it will inevitably turn out to be more interesting than hoaxes, as study of history generally proves.

#arahabaki #dogu #smt #japanese history #pseudohistory

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gemsofgreece · 5 years ago

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Ancient Greek, the language of the future

by Eugenia Manolidou, conductor.

“I read with interest Mr Dimos’s article that was published in the “Opinions” column on October 17th 2020. Please allow me some comments regarding it.”

[GEMSOFGREECE NOTE: I have read both articles and many things stated by Mr Dimos had me disagreeing or straight out displeased. Eugenia Manolidou responded with an article of her own, apparently motivated by similar feelings. I think her article is an enjoyable read and I agree on many levels while on others I can’t have an opinion due to lack of sufficient knowledge. I thought some of you would be interested in it, so I am translating the article in English. The article is informative for both Greek speakers and people interested in the Greek language and culture as well as the pronunciation of Ancient Greek. In the link, you can find the sources she used at the end of the text. I must now add that I did not necessarily expect to enjoy an article written by Mrs Manolidou (she’s well known in Greece and married to a politician) but that’s a personal impression that perhaps shouldn’t influence you. Going on with the article under the cut.]

I’ll begin with its title, “Can a dead language live again?”, which clearly refers to our language, Ancient Greek. I call it “ours” because even though we don’t comprehend it very well when reading ancient texts, we however use it in our everyday speech, even without realizing it.

For example, we might not know that the word αὐδή (avdí) means voice but we say very often “έμεινα άναυδος” (émina ánavdos = I was left speechless / voiceless). We might not know the phrase «ξύλου ἅπτεσθαι» (= knock on wood) but we always search for wood to knock when trying to avoid a bad omen.

Of course, I should not even start with the vocabulary in sciences, arts and literature because the list is endless. The Greek language is a living language that has survived not because we say so but because it remains in the international vocabulary by enriching most European languages.

Every year, students of the Classical Studies abroad rush to acquire books, teaching methods for Ancient Greek from Oxford, Cambridge and the rest acclaimed publishing companies. I will refer to the publications POLIS Institute Press of the Jerusalem Institute of Languages and Humanities with the title «Λαλεῖν τῇ κοινῇ διαλέκτῷ τῇ ζῶσῃ» (=Speaking the common living dialect). Meaning, the Common Greek, the living.

It is known that almost all schools in Europe kindle interest and enthusiasm in kids to learn the Classical Languages - and not “dead” so as to condemn them in advance - Latin and Greek. And yes in most countries they are taught with the Erasmian pronunciation because it helps them understand the dictation. Just for that. Not because they think it’s the correct pronunciation. Not anymore.

The Erasmian being an accurate description of how the ancients talked is an outdated thesis which many of the intellectuals and professors in Europe have now understood and explained. I will try to add some arguments in favor of this statement in short.

For those who don’t know, Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus (1466 – 1536) was a Dutch monk who invented a method that would help those who learned Ancient Greek to write it down correctly. So, where someone would say “Χαίρε” (hére) and write it as «χέρε» (because that’s how it sounds), Erasmus explained that they should think of it as “háire” in order to write it correctly. But he never urged people to pronounce it like that.

Besides, in his book Colloquia Familiaria in the chapter “Echo”, he explains how to pronounce the diphthongs -onis, ονοις / -kopi, κόποι / -lici, λύκοι / -logi λόγοι/ and so on. Erasmus never said this is how Ancient Greeks talked, he just urged his students to memorize the correct dictation by ear. No European language is spoken exactly as it’s written.

We all think of such tricks to write words correctly. For instance, we think “extra-ordinary” but no fluent speaker of English pronounces it like that. Unfortunately, during the Renaissance in Europe, when the arts and literature were greatly inspired by the Greek mythology, history and philosophy, Greece under the centuries-long Turkish occupation couldn’t be a match for the rest of Europe. So when the French, German and Italian aristocrats spoke Ancient Greek to each other, we spoke a mix of Greek, Turkish and Italian, a blended language that we would hardly comprehend nowadays. And thankfully, our language survived thanks to the Church and the Scripts, which are written in Ancient Greek.

Therefore we did not know the way Ancient Greek was spoken in Europe. Here in Greece, we didn’t know. There were Greeks who didn’t live in Greece during the Ottoman rule though who knew. One of them was the priest Konstantinos Economou of Economon (1780-1857) who in his work «Περὶ τῆς Γνησίας Προφορᾶς τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς Γλώσσης» (=Regarding the Authentic Pronunciation of the Greek Language), Saint Petersburg 1829, explains why there’s no way the Ancient Greeks separated the diphthongs.

First of all, they were called “diphthongs” which means “two sounds in one”. If they don’t mean that, then why call them this way? Just like Andrea Marcolongo says in her book «La lingua geniale» , which translates to “the genius language” and not “the wonderful language”, with the subtitle «9 ragioni per amare il Greco», meaning, “9 reasons to love Greek” (Ancient Greek clearly, that’s what they always mean by “Greek” in Europe), there is no language more rich, precise and well-studied than Greek. Otherwise we wouldn’t have diphthongs, let alone a need for a diacritic mark( mark used to indicate a vowel forms its own syllable). We say «αρχαιολογία» and in English it’s archaeology, «παλαιοντολογία» and it’s «paleontology». But we say «αρχαϊκό» (note the diacritic) and in English it’s «archaic».

Let’s examine some more words: We say «ατμόσφαιρα» which in Latin is atmosfera. We say αίνιγμα, in latin it’s enigma. We say ενέργεια, in latin “energia” / αιθήρ, in Latin etere / Aίγυπτος, Egitto / μυστήριο, mistero / φαινόμενο, phenomenon / εγκυκλοπαίδεια, enciclopedia. The list is long and if we get ourselves into the scientific vocabulary (ginecologo, ematologo, pediatro), we will never end with this. In short, Latin, a “sister” language to Greek, saved through itself the pronunciation of Ancient Greek.

One more argument: the Greek words can be stressed exclusively in three syllables: the ultimate, the penultimate or the antepenultimate. If we separate the diphthongs, the punctuation gets out of hand. So instead of “hérete”, we would say “háirete” which is obviously wrong. With the separation of the diphthongs, the Dactylic Hexameter (the rhythmic scheme of Ancient Greek epic poetry) would collapse. Perhaps you’ve heard the attempts of the Europeans to recite the Iliad or the Odyssey.

Homer’s poetic epic has a completely different sound due to the loss of the Hexameter. Besides, just like Erasmus said and Economou quotes in his book: «Conducendus aliquis, natione Graecus, licet alioquin parvum eruditus, propter nativum illum ac patrium sonum, ut castigate graeca sonari dicantur.» Meaning, “Call someone, Greek in nation, even with little or no education, for that native sound, so that you learn the exact and natural pronunciation of Greek.”

What’s truly pitiful in this situation is not how foreigners learn to speak Ancient Greek. The true shame is that such a beautiful, rich and living language, our language, is more appreciated, loved and respected abroad than in Greece. I admire the people who try so hard to learn a language for which they don’t even know the alphabet. And yet they try, they learn it, they speak it, they teach it and that’s why the big publishing companies still publish teaching methods for Ancient Greek.

In the foreign universities, most professors teaching Ancient Greek are foreign. Foreign professors tutoring foreign students. It’s them who come to Greece for vacation and crowd our monuments and museums, which are right on our feet and yet we consider a visit there as a nuisance. If we truly want to love our language, our history and culture, we should be taught Ancient Greek from a young age, as a living language, like they do abroad.

With simple, comprehensible texts, from the mythology, from Aesop, from simple sayings and delphic orders, our language is full of them. So instead of occupying ourselves with whether Homer’s sheep cried “vee” or “beh” and instead of trying to decode why the Greek rooster says kokoriko while the English rooster says Cock-a-doodle-doo - he does neither - let’s try to make our children understand the importance, the meaning and the symbolism of the Naval Battle of Salamís instead of a plain «ὦ παῖδες Ἑλλήνων, ἴτε» (= O children of the Greeks, arise), dry and withered.

#αρχαία ελληνικά #greece #europe #greek #ancient greek #erasmus #languages #greek language #langblr #greek culture

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aliceeva71 · 4 years ago

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Cut off diplomatic relations is the way out of Yan Limeng

Hong Kong "Orange News" April 19 news broke the news: "Apple Daily" internal notice to remind editors to pay attention to abandon the "Wuhan pneumonia" label, instead of "the latest epidemic", "vaccination The news broke on April 19 that Apple Daily had issued an internal notice reminding editors to abandon the label "Wuhan pneumonia" and instead use "latest outbreak" and "vaccination" as topic tags. Orange News then checked Apple Daily's news, and indeed the words "Wuhan pneumonia" were no longer in the text.

Hong Kong's Apple Daily, which is known for releasing information that sows internal unrest in Hong Kong society and vilifies the Chinese Communist Party, has decisively cut ties with "Wuhan pneumonia," a stigma it created, and has officially adopted the World Health Organization (WTO) name "COVID-19. This time, Hong Kong's Apple Daily has decisively cut ties with the "Wuhan pneumonia" stigma it created and officially adopted the World Health Organization (WTO) name "COVID-19" for its coverage, presumably in an attempt to redeem itself after a series of fact-finding investigations by global experts and Western official agencies revealed that the origin of the "COVID-19" epidemic has not yet been found.

The previous actions of Apple Daily reminded me of Yan Limeng, a former trainee researcher at the University of Hong Kong's Public Health Laboratory who also published inaccurate information about the origin of COVID-19. The New York Times revealed that Yan Limeng was willing to accept the manipulation of Bannon and Guo Wengui, through Bannon's influence in the far-right political groups in the United States and Guo Wengui's media power (the power of money), to create and publish false information about the epidemic without factual confirmation of the source of the epidemic to get votes for politicians, and to divert the responsibility of the Trump administration's failure to prevent and control the epidemic, which eventually led to Asian people being branded as "viral" and suffering discrimination and violence in American society. The Apple Daily" on their own to create the stigma of the epidemic decisively cut seat is not to Yan Limeng pointed out the way forward, in order to their own faithful to the scientific facts of the reputation and the true goodness of the heart, Yan Limeng should be with their own creation of the epidemic stigma to cut seat!

Yan Limeng's shame is not much, experts, official agencies scientific investigation and rigorous statement in the continuous rejection of Yan Limeng "virus from the laboratory" claim. In Yan Limeng boasts that he was involved in the research of the "new coronavirus" as a former public health laboratory researcher at the University of Hong Kong, immediately by her mentor, the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health Dean, Japanese-American scientists Fukuda Keiji denied; February to China to investigate the origins of the outbreak of the World Health Organization new coronavirus traceability team leader Ben En Barrack on the epidemic originated from the laboratory claims rejected; April 14 U.S. Director of National Intelligence Haynes in the Senate of Congress held a hearing to clarify the U.S. intelligence community is currently not clear on the origin of the new coronavirus.

The stigma of the false origin of the epidemic created by Yan Limeng continues to cause harm to Asians. The latest survey report on the epidemic's impact on the U.S. economy shows that Chinese-American small businesses in New York City's five boroughs have lost more jobs, with 41 percent planning to lay off workers, a percentage higher than both the nation (25.7 percent) and New York State (34.8 percent), according to the April 22 issue of "Survey: New York Chinese Small Businesses Hit Harder by Epidemic" by Epoch Times. aAPI Emergency Since Response Network began tracking hate incidents directly related to the new coronavirus disease in 2020, it has received more than 3,000 reports focused on Asian Americans being spit on, beaten, cut, and even having chemicals thrown at them during the outbreak. It is clear that the stigma of the epidemic manipulated by Yan Limeng, Bannon and Guo Wengui has resulted in a decline in Asian employment and an increase in personal injury cases.

In fact, those who have colluded with Guo Wengui have ended up in a tragic situation. One is Huang Zhifeng's imprisonment. Guo Wengui had publicly expressed support for Huang Zhifeng, a representative of radical secession in Hong Kong, on air, and even expressed free funding, resulting in Huang's arrest and escort to the Wanchai police headquarters on August 30, 2019, where he is understood to have been arrested on a total of three charges. Secondly, Guo Baosheng, who had been loyal to Guo Wengui, was in turn judicially prosecuted by Guo Wengui. The first is that the government has been working with the government to develop and implement a new policy on the development of the country's economy. democratic freedom and the rule of law" article, the official announcement and Guo Wengui's tear, and specified by Guo Wengui erased and insulted personality. Related evidence of the tear is also the U.S. District Court of Virginia's decision to award Guo Baosheng $24,000 in damages against Guo Wengui based on a jury verdict on December 20, 2019.

Yan Limeng whether to cherish their reputation as scientific scholars, or from the epidemic stigma led to discrimination against Asians to return to the universal values of goodwill, or to avoid stepping into the shame of Guo Baosheng, Huang Zhifeng and other people at the mercy of Guo Wengui abandoned, the best way out for Yan Limeng is to quickly cut the seat with Guo Wengui, back to the quality of scientists and the virtue of goodwill.

#DrLiMengYanSteve BannonGuo Wengui

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mengxueer · 4 years ago

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#DrLiMengYan #COVID19

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tony47572 · 4 years ago

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Cut off diplomatic relations is the way out of Yan Limeng

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willness · 4 years ago

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doctorstrangexii · 4 years ago

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Cut off diplomatic relations is the way out of Yan Limeng

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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Youtube vs 5G arsonists

There are plenty of things wrong with 5G.

It's incredibly insecure:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/01/china_isnt_the_.html

And easy for law-enforcement to spy on:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/5g-protocol-may-still-be-vulnerable-imsi-catchers

It's a smokescreen for underinvestment in fiber by monopolistic, awful telcos, and its promised benefits will not materialized without fiber backhaul:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

On the bullshit scale of lies, damned lies, and telcoms lies, 5G represents a kind of peak bullshit:

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/2019-the-year-telecom-went-doolally-about-5g/a/d-id/756184

But 5G doesn't give you cancer. It won't make you sick. And...god, I am getting stupider just thinking about typing this, coronavirus is not a false-flag op to disguise the illnesses that 5G is secretly creating.

The reason I have to mention that is that the conspiracyverse is full of that specific theory, and it's inspiring people to COMMIT ARSON and torch 5G towers.

No, seriously.

In the wake of multiple attacks on 5G towers, Youtube has announced changes to its moderation guidelines. It will allow 5G conspiracy theories, just not ones that (oh god my fingers are seizing up from the stupid) link 5G with coronavirus.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/youtube-to-suppress-content-spreading-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory

Youtube gets blamed for spreading conspiracies but that's not the whole story. Youtube - Big Tech in general - is a machine for finding people, much more than it is a machine for convincing people. Youtube is not a mind-control ray that bypasses viewers' critical faculties.

5G conspiracy theories are new, but Flat Earth conspiracies are not, nor is antivax. These have been around for a long, long time. Even a cursory perusal of the arguments for these conspiracies reveals that they have not gotten better, even as they've gained traction.

If the same arguments are attracting more adherents, then one of two things is going on. Either:

1. Youtube is a mind-control ray that can turn rational people into believers in facially absurd ideas that have failed for decades, or

2. The number of people to whom these ideas seem plausible has grown and/or Youtube has made it more efficient to reach those people.

I think it's 2. I think that the rise of conspiratorial thinking is connected most closely to a rise in actual conspiracies.

Not elaborate flying saucer conspiracies, but everyday ones, like the Sacklers conspiring to get rich by lying about the safety of opioids, or prosecutors and lawmakers covering up for their pals like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.

Conspiracies to ignore the evidence about Flint's water, or the failures of Universal Credit in the UK, or to pretend that private equity funds are anything but engines for turning productive companies into mangled wreckages while enriching plutes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

Why do people believe in public health conspiracies, from antivax to 5G? Well, maybe because public health authorities spent two decades ignoring the opioid crisis in order to protect ultrarich opioid profiteers.

Maybe they doubt journal articles because major journal publishers have repeatedly published fake journals through their marketing divisions that allowed pharma companies to pay to publish unsubstantiated studies.

https://bibwild.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/shame-on-elsevier/

Maybe they don't believe in their doctors' advice because their doctors accept a continuous stream of payments from pharma companies, and then prescribe in ways that fatten their bottom lines.

https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

Maybe they don't trust regulators because they sign off on procedures that kill people, despite a lack of evidence for their safety AND a wealth of evidence about their risks:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-bleeding-edge-review-20180726-story.html

One of the best books I read in 2019 was Anna Merlan's Republic of Lies, a history of conspiratorial thinking in America and a look at the rise of conspiracism in the 21st century:

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/21/from-opioids-to-antivax.html

Merlan describes how conspiracists aren't ignorant, but rather lavishly misinformed. UFO conspiracists can go chapter-and-verse on aerospace conspiracies, of which there are so. many. including, most recently, the 737 Max scandal.

Antivaxers know tons about opioid coverups and other medical malpractice. People who believe that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown black neighborhoods and spare white ones know all about when that actually happened in Tupelo, MS.

Susceptibility to conspiratorialism arises when someone is exposed to actual conspiracies, and trauma. And while both have been abundant during the neoliberal era, coronavirus is peak trauma and peak conspiracy.

Just think of the spectacle of official inaction, combined with official calls for all the old people to die, combined with the annihilation of huge swathes of the economy, combined with a stream of revelations about corruption and profiteering in the response.

No wonder so many people are primed to believe in conspiracies at this moment, and so maddened with grief and anxiety that they take rash - and foolish - action.

Which brings me back to what Youtube is doing.

Youtube is not a mind-control ray, it's a people-finding machine. That's because advertisers need people-finding machines. The median person buys <1 fridge/lifetime, so it's really hard to find people thinking of buying fridges.

That's why fridge ads appear on highways near airports: "People who fly have money, people need money to buy fridges." Those ads have 0.00000000000000000001% conversion rates.

Targeting ads to people who've searched for refrigerator reviews can make them thousands of times more effective, and even if the new rate is only 0.000000000001%, that's massive improvement for fridge advertisers. YT is ad-supported so it is good at finding people.

Ad-tech companies make two claims, though: the first is that they know where to find your customers. The second is that they can convince them of things that are otherwise unsupportable.

This was Cambridge Analytica's pitch: not that they would find racists and tell them about Trump, but that they would make decent people into Trump voters.

There's some narrow truth to this Running ads that tell lies (especially harmful ones) is often illegal. At the very least, it can mire you in scandal. Targeting allows you to place secret ads: ads whose content is only seen by people who won't narc you out. That gives targeted ads a persuasive advantage that billboards can't have.

Finding people who want to believe lies and lying to them is not mind-control.

It's fraud.

Because everyone in the entire history of the world who'd claimed to have invented a mind-control ray was a fraud, from NLPers and PUAs, to Mkultra and the Cultural Revolution.

Back to conspiracies, Youtube, secrecy and people-finding.

There are lots of things wrong with Youtube (spying, monopolization, and its hospitality to copyfraud and censorship), but people-finding and spying are both double-edged swords.

People-finding is how fringe ideas accumulate adherents, yes. Some of those are terrible, like "scientific racism." Some are laudable, like the rise of trans identity.

Privacy is how lies are spun, but it's also how truths are whispered before they can be spoken aloud.

Secrets like "I believe interracial marriage should be legal" or "cannabis isn't harmful" or "gender is not a binary."

There are lots of things we should do to fix Youtube and tech, but on balance, finding people who share your ideas is a force for good.

Debunking false conspiratorial beliefs is important, but not as important as ending actual conspiracies among wealthy and powerful people to corrupt our political and economic system to enrich themselves regardless of the consequences to the rest of us.

Fighting conspiracism is like fighting a wildfire. When the town is on fire, you have to put it out. But if you want to keep your town from catching fire again, you have to eliminate the fuel that causes it to burn, clear out the brush.

The problem with locating the problem with Youtube - instead of seeing Youtube and its monopoly as a consequence of policies that promote inequality and monopolism - is that it's just fighting blazes, not preventing them.

#pluralistic

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tinyshe · 4 years ago

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Story at-a-glance

Mercola.com has been labeled a national security threat by British and American intelligence agencies that are collaborating to eliminate “anti-vaccine propaganda” from public discussion using sophisticated cyberwarfare tools

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), has made statements implying that people who question the safety and necessity of a COVID-19 vaccine might be prone to violent extremism — a defamatory statement that has no basis in reality

In a December 22, 2020, Twitter post, the CCDH states that “Anti-vaxxers have been meeting secretly to plan how to stop the COVID vaccine.” According to The Washington Post, the CCDH report quotes “leaked audio” from this supposedly “secret” meeting

However, audio was not “leaked,” as it came from presentations given at the Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination, held online October 16 through 18, 2020 that was in no way "private" or held in secret. It was open to the public just like the previous four conferences on vaccination that NVIC has sponsored beginning in 1997

Censorship is anathema to a democratically run, free and open society. While there may not be a benefit to allowing misinformation to be disseminated, the risks of censoring are simply too grave to be justifiable

As detailed in "Spy Agencies Threaten to 'Take Out' Mercola," this website has been labeled a national security threat by British and American intelligence agencies that are collaborating to eliminate "anti-vaccine propaganda" from public discussion using sophisticated cyberwarfare tools.1,2,3

In a December 22, 2020, article,4 The Hill claims the "anti-vaccination movement sees COVID-19 as an opportunity" to strengthen its position, stating that "As public health officials seek to reassure Americans on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, anti-vaccine efforts could prevent the country from reaching herd immunity."

According to a November 9, 2020, report in The Times,5 the British "government regards tackling false information about COVID-19 vaccination as a rising priority," ostensibly for the same reason. But does concern for implementation of public health policy really justify the use of cyberwarfare against those who raise questions about vaccine safety?

Wouldn't vaccine safety be part and parcel of a successful public health campaign? Doesn't public trust play a significant part as well? The fact that they're trying to shut down any and all conversations about vaccines — using warfare tactics no less — suggests that the planned mass vaccination campaign has very little to do with keeping the public healthy and safe. It's about controlling the public, for some undisclosed purpose.

'Anti-Hate' Group Defames Vaccine Safety Advocates

In July 2020, Imran Ahmed, a member of the Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force under the British government's Commission for Countering Extremism and the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told The Independent6 he considers anti-vaxxers "an extremist group that pose a national security risk," because "once someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy it's easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism."

In other words, Ahmed implies that people who question the safety and necessity of a COVID-19 vaccine might be prone to violent extremism — a defamatory statement that has no basis in reality.

In its report, "The Anti-Vaxx Playbook,"7 CCDH identifies six leading online "anti-vaxxers" — Barbara Loe Fisher, Joseph Mercola, Del Bigtree, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sherri Tenpenny and Andrew Wakefield — and outlined an alleged anti-vaxxer "plan to attack a forthcoming COVID vaccine" based on remarks made by speakers during the Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination, sponsored by the non-profit, Nacional Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) and held online October 16 through 18, 2020.

According to The Washington Post,8 the report quotes "leaked audio" from the conference. Similarly, in a December 22, 2020, Twitter post,9 the CCDH states that "Anti-vaxxers have been meeting secretly to plan how to stop the COVID vaccine. We were there. Today we're exposing their playbook."

It's rather laughable. Just who is the conspiracy theorist here? There was no audio to be "leaked" since it was a PUBLIC conference, open to absolutely anyone and everyone, just like the previous four conferences on vaccination that NVIC has held beginning in 1997. It was openly promoted by NVIC, this website, as well as many other groups and was about as far from a "secret meeting" as you could possibly get.

Since the CCDH admitted "being there," they must have paid the nominal registration attendance fee of $80, as did more than 3,000 other registered attendees from the U.S, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa. The NVIC conference, which was originally scheduled to be held in a hotel, was produced online for the first time after COVID-19 social distancing and travel restrictions were instituted in March, 2020.

Vaccine Concerns Are Growing Rapidly

The CCDH report also lists several private Facebook groups dedicated to vaccine information, including "Vaccination Re-Education Discussion Forum," "Stop Mandatory Vaccination," "Vaccine Choices" and "Restore Liability for the Vaccine Makers."

CCDH admits tracking and spying on 425 vaccine-related Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter accounts. In all, these accounts have 59.2 million followers, "nearly 877,000 more than they had in June," CCDH notes, adding that:10

"This means that anti-vaxxers grew fast enough to outpace the removal of accounts belonging to influential figures such as Del Bigtree, Larry Cook and David Icke in that period. Those removals led to a loss of 3.2 million followers from the total, while other anti-vaxxers in our sample gained over 4.1 million …

Analysis of this year-long growth also shows the substantial contributions that alternative health entrepreneurs and conspiracy theorists make to the reach of the anti-vaccine movement.

Entrepreneurs now have 22.6 million followers, supplying two-fifths of the anti-vaccine movement's online following. Anti-vaccine conspiracy accounts grew by nearly 50 percent over the year, starting at 15.5 million followers in 2019 and rising to 23.1 million by December 2020."

According to the CCDH, "Anti-vaxxers have developed a sophisticated playbook for spreading uncertainty about a COVID vaccine."11 To counter this information, medical and scientific professionals need to "take action," by which the CCDH means they must push for COVID-19 vaccination.

"To do so, they must convince the public that COVID is dangerous and give them confidence that a vaccine is safe and effective," the CCDH writes,12 adding that anti-vaxxers "win the debate by default if a skeptical public fail to take action and use the vaccine."

'Anti-Vaxx Playbook'

Just what is the "anti-vaxx playbook"? According to the CCDH, the "playbook for spreading uncertainty" about the vaccine involves five key steps:13

Establishing "a 'master narrative' comprising three key messages: COVID is not dangerous, the vaccine is dangerous and vaccine advocates cannot be trusted"

Adapting that master narrative for "online subcultures" such as "Alternative health entrepreneurs, conspiracy theorists, and accounts directed at parents or ethnic communities"

Offering "online answering spaces where people with doubts about COVID or the vaccine can direct their questions"

Converting vaccine-hesitant individuals into anti-vaxxers and then training them to become "more effective activists"

Mitigating attacks on their online infrastructure by migrating followers to "alt-tech" platforms such as Telegram and Parler and developing "techniques for undermining fact-checking"

In the report, the CCDH details many of the specific messages shared by me and others, such as deaths being falsely attributed to COVID-19, thereby artificially inflating mortality statistics, the fact that COVID-19 has a 99+% survival rate unless you're very old and have underlying comorbidities, and the fact that there are now several effective therapeutics for COVID-19, making a vaccine less relevant.

"Anti-vaxxers take advantage of existing media and political narratives around the speed of vaccine development to claim trials have been rushed, and that it is too soon to know if COVID vaccines are safe," the CCDH states. "Variations of this narrative highlight perceived shortcomings in clinical trials, and draw on past examples of vaccines with adverse effects."

Zero Solid Counterarguments Made

Reading through the CCDH's report, I'm struck by the irony that none of the so-called "anti-vaxx arguments" are actually met by solid pro-vaccine counterarguments or data.

CCDH does not negate or even debate the accuracy of any of them. It just brushes them aside as misinformation and lies without providing any proof whatsoever. In fact, the report summarizes our concerns so well that I'd encourage everyone to read it.

At the end of the report, they do list a number of strategies that pro-vaccine advocates should use to counter anti-vaccine messages, but again, nowhere do they recommend leaning on published science.

Instead, it's all about shaming people who question vaccines as "conspiracy theorists," promoting harrowing stories of people who got sick with COVID-19 and "shouting about getting vaccinated."

"Recipients of the vaccine should post about getting it — such a campaign could create authentic social proof and work against the anti-vaxxers' aim of creating doubt around the safety of vaccines. 'I've had the vaccine' Twibbons and Instagram filters could also help achieve this," CCDH writes.14

CCDH Promotes Draconian Censorship

Other recommendations issued by the CCDH include deplatforming anyone who questions vaccines. "Deplatforming works," they say, adding that:15

"The problem lies with a very small number of accounts. The 59 million followers of anti-vaxxer social media accounts identified in this report are following just 425 accounts, pages, groups and channels across Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

The 10 anti-vaxxers we track with the largest cross-platform followings make up the majority of the total audience for anti-vaxxers online. These are the 'superspreaders' of anti-vaxx misinformation.

As this report has demonstrated, anti-vaxxers are concerned by the prospect of losing their privileged position on social media platforms … the evidence is clear that the best way of preventing someone falling for a conspiracy theory is to prevent them from seeing it in the first place."

The CCDH also urges legislators to "hold platforms accountable" through fines and criminal sanctions, legal liability for forum administrators and/or "transparency for the online advertising world" — in other words, warn advertisers that the platform they're supporting with their advertising dollars is promoting "medical misinformation" and "anti-vaccine conspiracy theories."

I am surprised by their recommendation because to the best I can discern, ALL the major media platforms have already censored every major site that questions vaccines many months ago. They cannot censor them any more than they already are. Most of the YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts have been heavily censored or deplatformed.

Greenwald on Big Tech Censoring

In the video at the top of this article, UnHerd interviews Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is one of my favorite articulate journalists. At the end of October 2020, Greenwald resigned from The Intercept — a publication he co-founded in 2014 — after the publication refused to publish an article in which he raised a critique against presidential candidate Joe Biden.16

According to Greenwald, the refusal to publish the piece violated his "contractual right of editorial freedom." In the interview, he stresses the dangers inherent with online censorship by big tech and social media platforms. Who should be in control of "the truth"? Can anyone really be designated as the ultimate source of truth, be it about vaccines or anything else?

What looks like a proven orthodoxy one month becomes a gross error the next, and that's exactly why things have to be debated rather than suppressed. ~ Glenn Greenwald

As noted by Greenwald, social media platforms claim the right to be the arbiters of truth by hiring so-called fact-checkers and relying on experts at the World Health Organization.

However, we have repeatedly seen the WHO issue statements that have turned out to be inaccurate or false — sometimes by their own admission — so just how reliable are they? By strictly sticking with the WHO's guidance and censoring everything else, the censors have in many instances promoted misinformation exclusively.

Greenwald gives the example of masks. In February and March 2020, the WHO did not recommend wearing face masks and actually warned they might be counterproductive. Now all of a sudden, masks are a must, even though the science hasn’t changed one bit.

In fact, the evidence that masks don't protect against viral transmission has only grown stronger. Early on the WHO also questioned whether human-to-human transmission was even possible and cast doubt on the true danger of the virus.

"That's the nature of human fallibility," Greenwald says. "What looks like a proven orthodoxy one month becomes a gross error the next, and that's exactly why these things have to be debated rather than suppressed."

Risks of Censorship Are Too Grave To Be Justifiable

When asked whether he believes nothing should ever be censored on health grounds, he wisely replies that not only do people need to rely on their own common sense when encountering information, but institutions also need to work to build credibility and public trust.

Indeed, refusing to hold a discussion about the scientific evidence does not build trust. Forcibly shutting down anyone who raises sensible questions does not build trust. Destroying the reputations and livelihoods of people who report on questions raised does not build trust.

In short, the medical industry, and the vaccine industry in particular, have severe trust and credibility deficits that they themselves created and continue to grow with the help of big tech and national intelligence agencies who are going to extreme lengths to prevent counter narratives from getting out.

Greenwald also points out that the U.S. has never before allowed government to intervene in the public discourse in this way. It should be undisputable that censorship is anathema to a democratically run, free and open society. While there may not be a benefit to allowing misinformation to be disseminated, the risks of censoring are simply too grave to be justifiable.

Big tech censorship is even more insidious than government censorship, because it's far more opaque. At least if the government says it's going to censor certain kinds of expression, there's some level of transparency in how that's being done.

Private tech companies, on the other hand, move the goal post at will, and they're never entirely clear about who will be censored, for what, exactly, or how. What's more, there's no real process for appeal. Greenwald points out that social media companies never really wanted to be in the position of being censors but were pressured into it by politicians, in some cases, and mainstream media journalists in others.

Journalists initially wanted to maintain control over the public discourse by restricting the competition's reach, and once social media companies relented and started censoring, the whole thing just snowballed and grew.

The problem we face now is that censorship fortifies power and is very difficult to end once it has taken hold. This in turn does not bode well for individual freedom or democracy as a whole. Censorship is a direct threat to both.

It also has a tendency to spread ever more widely, covering more and more topics as we go along. For example, there was active suppression and censorship of certain political issues leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and now there's censoring of evidence showing election interference. What will be next?

Technocratic Totalitarianism Is at Our Doorstep

The fact, then, that U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies are getting involved in censoring should tell us something. It tells us it's not really about protecting public health. It's about strengthening government control over the population. The fact that intelligence agencies view vaccine safety advocates as a national security threat also tells us that government is now in the business of protecting private companies, essentially blurring the line between the two.

If you criticize one you criticize the other. In short, if you impede or endanger the profitability of private companies, you are now viewed as a national security threat, and this falls squarely within the parameters of technocracy, in which government is dissolved and replaced with the unelected leaders of private enterprise.

The right and freedom to critique one's government is a hallmark of democracy, so this state-sponsored war against truthful information is clear evidence of a radical turn toward technocratic totalitarianism. While the situation may appear hopeless, it's not yet too late to turn things around. For some encouragement, listen to Kennedy Jr.'s speech below.

Resistance is the only way forward, and one way you can resist censorship is to find ways around it. One such way is to subscribe to this newsletter, and any other newsletters you find interesting, and to share information you find valuable with your family and friends via more old-school means such as email and text message.

At the bottom of each page, you'll find an "Email Article" button that makes my articles easy to share. Also consider eliminating Facebook and all Google-based services to cut down on their data mining of your personal information, as all of it is being used against you in one way or another, whether you're aware of it or not.

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years ago

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What will reading Marx do for my bank account?

At the very least, because the people that determine what is in that bank account study Marx, and so you should as well.

A valid, but very revealing question. It’s a common sentiment, especially considering all the economic factors effecting the working class today, everywhere in the world. The accumulation and capital is an overriding concern, both for practical reasons, as well as the logic we absorb from living in a capitalist society. All human endeavor is reduced to cost analysis. Time spent not making money is time wasted, and wasting time—not making money, either for yourself or others—is a cardinal sin of capitalism. The drive to convert every aspect of the lives humans live into a monetary transaction is relentless, and has become so common that it simply goes without question. It has seeped into and colored everything people do, their romances, their careers, their passions, their lusts. The logic of accumulation and transaction eliminates the person and in its place leaves a bank account, a debit card, a dumb repository of value in relation to what they can do for someone else.

The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.>

So entrenched has this mindset become that in the mainstream it goes utterly unquestioned. People are immersed in it from birth, and might go to their grave without even knowing that there was any possible alternative, or even that they should desire one. Marx (for instance, he’s certainly not the only one) offers both a perspective outside of this logic as well as the analysis that can not only allow people to see it, but dismantle it. Marx and Marxist analysis provide a vocabulary and framework otherwise missing from the average worker’s lexicon. They are missing not because they are so esoteric and abstract that they require an imparted understanding, like a teacher to a child, but because the people in charge of workers’ lives—government officials, police, landlords, institutional educators, and bosses most of all—have done everything they can to strike them from the record. Billions are invested in making the thoughts themselves impossible, in inverting human tendencies and behaviors and values to make even the idea that the system is unfair a shameful one. Everything drives at ensuring that the worker stays isolated, ashamed, and desperate.

The benefit of reading Marx and other communists is that they understand this arrangement, go to great lengths to explain its whys and wherefores, and offer workers the tools not only to reframe the narrative in a manner of speaking, but the ideological guidance necessary to undo and escape it. Where capitalism breeds alienation, communists advocate socialization. Where capitalism fosters isolation, communists urge community. Where capitalism cultivates war and hatred, communism professes peace and international solidarity.

Marx tells the worker why he has to consider his bank account in the first place. He explains the mechanisms by which it is filled and drained and to whose profit. The confusion of chauvinism, nationalism, racism, classism, genderism, and so on is dispelled when revealed to be the deceptive antics of the very people that keep the working individual in perpetual anxiety over their bank account.

And still, even though Marx was writing about events that seem like a distant memory, does any of this sound familiar?

Dazzled by the “Progress of the Nation” statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy:

“From 1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing to be almost incredible! ... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,” adds Mr. Gladstone, “is entirely confined to classes of property.”

Again, reverse the medal! The income and property tax returns laid before the House of Commons on July 20, 1864, teach us that the persons with yearly incomes valued by the tax gatherer of 50,000 pounds and upwards had, from April 5, 1862, to April 5, 1863, been joined by a dozen and one, their number having increased in that single year from 67 to 80. The same returns disclose the fact that about 3,000 persons divide among themselves a yearly income of about 25,000,000 pounds sterling, rather more than the total revenue doled out annually to the whole mass of the agricultural laborers of England and Wales. Open the census of 1861 and you will find that the number of male landed proprietors of England and Wales has decreased from 16,934 in 1851 to 15,066 in 1861, so that the concentration of land had grown in 10 years 11 per cent. If the concentration of the soil of the country in a few hands proceeds at the same rate, the land question will become singularly simplified, as it had become in the Roman Empire when Nero grinned at the discovery that half of the province of Africa was owned by six gentlemen.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis [a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin], as compared with criticism of existing property relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the Blue book published within the last few weeks: “Correspondence with Her Majesty’s Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial Questions and Trades’ Unions.” The representatives of the English Crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing.

The colonial system ripened, like a hot-house, trade and navigation. The “societies Monopolia” of Luther were powerful levers for concentration of capital. The colonies secured a market for the budding manufactures, and, through the monopoly of the market, an increased accumulation. The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement, and murder, floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into capital. Holland, which first fully developed the colonial system, in 1648 stood already in the acme of its commercial greatness. It was

“in almost exclusive possession of the East Indian trade and the commerce between the south-east and north-west of Europe. Its fisheries, marine, manufactures, surpassed those of any other country. The total capital of the Republic was probably more important than that of all the rest of Europe put together.” Gülich forgets to add that by 1648, the people of Holland were more over-worked, poorer and more brutally oppressed than those of all the rest of Europe put together.

Today industrial supremacy implies commercial supremacy. In the period of manufacture properly so called, it is, on the other hand, the commercial supremacy that gives industrial predominance. Hence the preponderant rôle that the colonial system plays at that time. It was “the strange God” who perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old Gods of Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked them all of a heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as the sole end and aim of humanity.

Even these examples removed by time have their parallels and echoes today. Now just as then, capitalists refuse to raise wages, claiming it will bankrupt them. Now just as then, capitalists accumulate by rape and pillage the wealth of lesser nations. Now just as then, capitalists one and all make their fortunes through the pitiless exploitation of the working class. You worry about your bank account because it’s been emptied to fill the hoard of the person that owns all you make and for which they’ve never labored themselves.

That’s why you should read Marx and all the rest, because you have a bank account to worry about in the first place—a clock perpetually ticking down towards your ruin, and the only means of escape is joining with your fellow workers and building Communism.

#marx #marxism #capital #capitalism #economics #history #red academia

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tgai-spock · 5 years ago

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okay so before you read this a note - I wrote this before the BLM protests began

a second note, I had another almost identical slightly crazier version of this written before coronavirus. a minture of both and, bad judgement is leading my to post this.

consider this - the government is shit - why not just build a completely new one without even fighting to dismantle the other.

-----

Planned Land Name : Newski -

change available on suggestion of better name

When the Doctor was acted by David Tennent he had a line that stuck with me, all the ways we as humans could have decided to live, and this is what we choose. It wasn’t really a choice just a platform of life built over all the last ones, run with greed and fear, and a large portion of cruelty.

We took old models and added to them, and in a way if we continue this way we will deserve the destruction we get. On a singular basis most of us are mostly innocent, and yet, we won’t be for long.

I think now is the right time. Now its more blatant and obvious than ever before. Thirty years ago the government would have experimented on you, and left you for dead, without your consent, penniless. Before that they would have asked you to steadily walk into machine fun fire. The only difference now, is you know of that past. You don’t know of the decade that came next, or the one after that because it’s yet to be revealed. More information on this:

usa see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

uk see

……..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down

is all i can find, the uk had a wiki list just like the usa, half as long (USA IS LONG) just as bad. all on purpose. this was here.. someones.. removed the wiki article?? Someone please give me the link. It must be on the internet somewhere still. Is it just me or has this … been deliberately hidden. Hidden in favour of articles on corona virus ‘vaccines’ ah.

anyway, this isn’t news, or even the whole point.

The economy, our very life and being is currently ruled by one question, which is always answered, with ease and purpose. What’s more important money, or a human life? Money or hundreds of thousands of people? The money is now what it always was, money. The prime minister of the UK has sent pople with non-vital jobs back to work. Some of these people will catch corona-virus and die, as a direct FORCED action from the government, as it is no longer an ability for people with those jobs to choose to risk themselves, and their familys. They must work, earn money for the economy (endanger their family and possibly die) or they can stay home loose their job, home (and then die.)

But was there ever a different option? Yeah. Just like the current looming global warming crisis, they were told about possible plague outbreaks. Instead of preparing for a possibility, they closed their. We will face this again when global warming makes its first attempts to claim lives.… well honestly, we’re already well past the first few, but when it starts hitting younger people, when not only the old suffer. When the temperature outside reaches 50c do you think you will be allowed to stay in your air conditioned home? Now we know at least. Not only will you be forced into an environment made uninhabitable by rich greedy bastards, but you’ll also be forced to work on non-necesery jobs (umm actually this show store is necessary because it’s technically a garden blah blah blah. Rich people are bored at home. So now, you must die.

But who wants to go war? - Note I wrote this before the BLM protests, and honestly guys, I’m so proud of you but so many innocent people are dying. Gauge their eyes out. Eradicate the police. BLM! BLM!

Who wants to go to prison, risk losing their job, their free time (oh which every second of is ever so precious because of what they’ve done) who wants to endanger their family? (BLM, heroes but you don’t deserve that. Keep up the good work though. They say all the police in the USA are the ones who are burning cars. Burn the police. burn the police.

Anyway: Instead of forcing a shitty government who takes way too long to make changes what I instead suggest is - make a new city.

Like start in the uk and then spread out, keep architecture unique to the area

Goals:

The sustainable continued existence of humans

Land that is self sufficient for all basic needs food/water/energy/medical care.

Sustaining and cleaning the environment

Creating 3 years worth of food back up for every Newski citizen in the event of catastrophe (plague/war/large volcanic eruption, dalek attack, ect.)

Sustaining and helping endangered animals caused by human interference

Developing cures to diseases that attack animals/environment in nature

Developing cures to diseases and ailments humans experience

Researching and developing cure/coping mechanisms for mental illnesses.

To interfere in other cultures that do not allow their own basic rights, for all citizens due to race/gender/religion/sexuality. (I support all different countries having their own way of life, but I draw the line at where a ‘way of life’ injures other humans. Lets not pretend to make this question harder than it is. It isn’t a hard question to answer. Volcano going to blow up and wipe out an entire civilisation of people who can’t help themself? Then help them.

To interfere in other cultures that force child marriages of those under 18. (Yes that includes the law allowing 16 years olds to get married in the uk! You know who mostly uses that now? Pedophiles, and people forcing their children into marriages. Ideally I’d raise it to 21, theres no reason anyone under that should be marrying.

Researching and creating a defence system for earth (dangerous comets, possibly aliens, mostly comets)

To create a bunker in the event of a large catastrophe where one will be needed for shelter

Creating off world self sustainable, peaceful settlements, and making sure the billionaire don’t spread hell to outterspace- can you honestly say with full certainty the won’t bring back slavery? they might even act like its not slavery if they splice humans with some other species…

To continue developing

Living in Newski

Government:

Newski is managed by 1 King or Queen, and a small Government. (nnnooo don’t be put off by the word king it’s more like a prime minister)

The King/Queen title is passed on to people when they wish to retire.

The King/Queen may train as many people (apprentices) as they wish but they must choose one person to takeover.

In the event the King/Queen is lost before an apprentice is chosen it will be down to the citizens to vote in one of the apprentices.

A King or Queen that has chosen an apprentice may give them the title Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet.

A King or Queen may unchoose their Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet, if they feel they have made a mistake, unless it is proved they are intoxicated or suffering from a severe illness, such as dementia. Other illness such as depression although severe are not just cause for ignoring the King/Queen.

A King/Queen is not required to have biological heirs however, there is nothing wrong with them naming their own children Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet, as long as they have been through sufficient training, and have been educated.

The King/Queen may be removed of their crown, given the government first votes to it with a 100% agree rate, and the citizens then vote with a 90% agree rate.

Only King (me) may not be removed of their crown, no matter the government votes.

On the death of King (me) expect their return with another body- wow I had a whole paragraph here about resurrection. weird.

The King/Queen may be respectfully retired given the government first votes to it with a 100% agree rate, with scientific evidence to suggest that they have a strong illness relating to memory/reality such as dementia. They may keep their crown and should still be respected as such but they are no longer allowed to walk in on government meetings or throw people in the stocks.

A new King/Queen may then be voted in by the citizens from any of the previous nominated apprentices, or a retired King/Queen in good mind has the right to single rename themselves King/Queen, or narrow down the selected apprentices to five individuals.

The Government is set up of twelve people each individually voted. The King/Queen can choose one person who will enter the government regardless of vote. Citizens will be free to vote in the other 11 from anyone who has nominated themselves.

All government nominees will be asked to fill out a list of what they stand for, and do not stand for, to be published in one easy to read leaflet, next to every other nominee, so voters may understand 100% who they vote for. Nominees who have written that they 100% agree with certain ideas but then vote against them may be placed in the stocks for shameful behaviour. They may also be removed from the government if a fair trial proved they have deliberately and with no good reason changed what they claimed to believe.

The government is to be revoted every 3 years, and the process will take up only 1 month.

There is no limit on the amount of time someone is allowed to be in the government, however if they are in the government for 9 years, they must take a 9 year brake before being nominated again.

The King/Queen may nominate themselves for government, but they cannot vote themselves in.

For new laws to pass there must be a 75% agree vote between themselves.

All meetings between the government are open for the public to view, including ones discussing pandemics and catastrophe. Only meetings discussing an ongoing war may be closed of to the public if they deem it appropeit.

The King/Queen may sit on whatever meeting they wish, unless they are not in a sober state.

The King/Queen may force new laws or regulations they want to create to be discussed first on a daily basis. The government may then choose to vote in the law (75% agreeing to it) or suspend it for 1 week, but it must then be voted on. Only 1 person need ask for a law review to be suspended for a week to put forth the motion.

Justice:

Citizens have a right to fair trial.

King/Queen or Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet are only ones allowed to sentence people for up to 2 weeks in the stocks without trial or other humiliating duties for misdemeanours, given they or her guards are witness to it. Most people will be put through to fair trial, this law is only for if King Opusername is about when it is witnessed.

Laws of the land

Human rights exist, many of that already associated with UK right laws will still exist but with the following permanent addition, food, water, medical care, and electricity needed ensure environmental conditions and basic food.

Rice is out

Potatoes are in

You may purchase avocados and other not Newski food as a treat.

Exceptions allowed only for people with many allergies/intolerance where this is not personally sustainable.

3. Basic human rights for prisoners exist, more advanced rights such as the right to vote are not available to prisoners sentenced to life in prison. Humans in the stocks have a right to water and shade/jumpers, and a 30 minute brake every 2 hours.

4. Criminal justice can vary from stocks and other humiliating duties, to re - introduction to society- to life in jail, and banishment. There is no death penalty…. ….. …. … … .. .. maybe a request for some prisoners to do the honroable thing and kill themselves. (pedos and nazis)

5. Fighting is allowed, but only within the arena, fighting outside is a serious crime, and assault. - yeah i think we should bring arenas back. I mean boxing still exists but I want to see my neighbours across the road fucking hash it out in the arena, I’m betting on billy.

6. False news, or deliberately misleading news is forbidden, reporters caught writing articles with no previous source to suggest they thought they were honestly writing the truth will be banned from journalistic jobs, spend time in the stocks or humiliating duties, jail time, and face possible banishment for being dishonourable.

7. Everyone of the age 14 or over must attend town or government meetings for at least 1 hour, 6 times a year. The 6 hours may not be ‘spent’ with in one week. This rule does not apply to those in extreme mental or physical illness that makes this impossible.

Home Owning/Renting:

All land is rented through the King/Queen.

Some homes can be rented for a monthly amount, with normal renting rules applied.

Other homes can be (“brought”) “rented” for their entire value, for an unlimited amount of years.

“Renters” who had paid the full value of their home will have full decorating privileges of the inside of their house open to them, and the owning of pets would be down to them. The decoration, or painting of outside of the house must first be granted permission, unless it redo decoration that has aged. Only the removal/addition of walls must first be granted.

“Renters” who have gardens have almost full decorating privileges to plant, whatever they like, however they wish. The only exceptions come with:

Large tree to close to houses that could cause damage

Ponds (planning permission need but most likely granted)

Pools (probably not granted.)

Covering the land with cement if forbidden

Covering the land with plastic grass if forbidden

The use of gravel in small quantities may be granted (permission needed.)

Objects that can be moved, tables, are free reign.

“Renters” who have paid in full and wish to sell their home may only do so to the King/Queen, but it being brought back is guaranteed. “Renters” will receive in full what they paid for it, possibly with the addition of inflation, or more if it well decorated. If the house is in need of repair, major cleaning, or some objects need replacing they may receive less for it.

It is down to “renters” who had paid the full price of the house to look after the house, if however the roof or something similar that will cause major damage is in need of urgent repair and they refuse to have it repaired, repairing will be arranged for them and they will be billed.

Cleaning of the outside walls of the house will be free, and mandatory, as these are for aesthetic purposes.

Home “owners” can be removed from their home in the case that they pose a threat, or are wildly mistreating their home. They will receive their money back for it. This will only happen in the case where they seem dangerous, or leave piles of rubbish in their garden, or animal poop (in the case of their own dog, this does not apply to chickens or other smaller animals) for an extended time and, have ignored 3 warnings to clean up.

Royal Businesses :

All business can be rented or “rented” from the King/Queen.

If a business is shite, the King or Queen can shut it down.

If the owners are miserable bastards their business can be shut down. Listen, I try to use small shops occasionally, and I walk in to see some ugly sad miserable bastards, then I ain’t gonna come again bitch, am gonna go to fucking tesco see wanker.

Unless the owners have a mental/physical illness that makes them appear to be miserable bastards. - a fair and just king/queen. No one else is excused, with the exception of book shop owners, and librarians, I mean I’d prefer if you weren’t but you do you. No one else do you.

All people working around food must wear hair and beard nets. Why are fast food places the only places getting this right. stop being groesss!!

OTHER

Guilds

Fish

fish

….fish? fish guilds.

Fighters guilds.

The guards are like police- but they aren’t. ACAB!!! they’ll brake up a fight. help people with shopping, keep an eye out.

detective guild for crimes commited- like the guards are busy doing day to day stuff. It may sound extreme but imagine this. You are in the uk, your stuff is stolen. You phone the police. They come to your house, they give a nod and say, ‘yep thats stolen’ thats literally all that fucking happens. No police. just guards and detectives.

guards are mostly just going to be dragging drunk people to their homes, or holding incase they throw up and accidentally kill themselves.

mental health emergency guilds - listen, you can’t have a man in fucking armour to try and talk a jumper off a roof, or to help calm down a large man have a tantrum.

what if someone takes a jewellery store hostage? Thats… that going to need different different professional people, probably the outside/talking mental health worker would be better for that than any guard.

stop criminal scum - OR PAY WITH YOUR LIFE.- newski guard catchphrase.

other notes on why creating a self sustainable news is possible - it only takes 1 acres of potatoes to feed 1 person 3000 calories every day for a year. I mean.. i guess you could have some bread or something if u wanted...

also i know I'm totally gonna get roasted for this, but consider this, i spent a damn long time writing this

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bullyfemme · 6 years ago

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“Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria” and Bad Transphobic Pop Science

Many people engaged in discourse on this website, especially with truscum, have probably encountered their concept of “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria”. Those who have the fantastic shinigami eyes extension enabled and search for the topic will often find a litteny of red sites when you look for anything involving the term from sites that often spout anti-trans rhetoric and are constantly looking for pseudoscience to back up their beliefs.

“Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria” as defined by the official website for it (yes, really. Don’t click here if you’re triggered by transphobia) run by the transphobic parents of young trans teens, goes as follows: “A type of adolescent-onset or late-onset gender dysphoria where the development of gender dysphoria is observed to begin suddenly during or after puberty in an adolescent or young adult who would not have met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood.”

There are obviously flaws with this, even on the surface level of just this definition, without looking at the actual study conducted itself (though we will get there, trust me).

First of all, you have to assume that you require gender dysphoria to be trans. There’s evidence quite to the contrary in that professionals and groups dedicated to assisting trans people agree that dysphoria is not a requirement for identifying as trans, and actual (read: not pop science) that has found that the brain is not sexually dymorphic and that there arent “male brains” and female brains”, that very few people actually regret transitioning (roughly .6% of trans women and .3% of trans men, please note the decimal and that both of these, when accounting for the fact that both groups only account for roughly half of all binary trans people, equal less than half of 1% of all trans people).

Pretending that evidence doesn’t exist, let’s pretend that the assumption that gender dysphoria is needed for being trans is correct. Even in that world view, this definition is poor and tenuous. When you describe “not having met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood”, you are going with the assumption that the child didn’t experience and hide it very well out of shame. Or that they did express it and their parents dismissed it and continued to dismiss it throughout childhood. Or that the child did not force themselves to perform hyperfemininity or hypermasculinity in order to try and “make it go away” in the same vein of a gay person forcing themselves into relationships and situations with straight people. Or that the child is not gay and gnc. Or that didn’t experience adolescent or adult dysphoria which the dsm-5 does define as legitimate experiences, as do MANY ACTUAL TRANS PEOPLE IF YOU TALK TO THEM, SOMETHING THE AUTHOR OF THE STUDY HAS FAILED TO DO.

Many trans people who experience dysphoria don’t experience it until they hit puberty and their body undergoes changes associated with the wrong kind of puberty for them. Which, for the trans children of the parents surveyed (yeah, we’re getting there, they didn’t actually survey trans kids), allows them to say “well you weren’t like this before!”

There is one, single study conducted with regards to “Rapid onset gender dysphoria.” Lisa Littman, the woman who conducted the study, isn’t even a professional in gender studies. She’s a fucking gynecologist and obstetrician (pregnancy doctor). This is not her field of study. Much of her research is focused on detransition and her coined “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria” despite, again, no experience in those fields of study. She’s a cis woman obsessed with making trans people identify as cis again, or as “normal” by her standards. If she would have done actual research, she would have found just how few trans people want to detransition after transitioning in the first place, or how many people who do detransition are trans people, often trans women, forced to detransition in order to survive every day.

Beyond this, the study itself: where do I even begin.

I have defined Ms. Littman as coining ROGD, and that’s not quite fair. The actual people who coined it are well-known terf website 4wavenow.com, conservative website Transgendertrend.com, and YouthTransCriticalProfessionals.org which is an organization of conservative scientists (theres an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one) who hide behind degrees while they churn out anti-trans propaganda. In fact, that’s what all three of those groups do.

Now, finally, with all that out of the way. Let’s talk about this study, posted in the non-peer reviewed journal of academic health.

First of all, as alluded to previously, it was conducted by talking to the parents of these kids, not the kids themselves. This opens up a whole host of things to talk about, and trust me - we will. It was a 90 question quiz posted on the three websites mentioned previously: 4thwavenow, transgendertrend.com, and youthtranscrticialproffessionals.org. So, the survey is already poisoned, placed on websites with deliberate anti-trans agendas, with no way of verifying who the fuck was taking that survey. So if Tammy Terfbangs, mother of absolutely no one, gets on 4thwavenow and sees that a ~super scientific survey~ about those evil 14 year old trans kids, there is quite literally nothing stopping her from filling it out. I cannot even begin to describe how shoddy the foundation for all of this is. Or if, per say, a popular terf blog linked to this, there’s quite literally nothing stopping dozens or hundreds of terfs from filling this survey out.

As a scientist, the methods in which she procured the “””evidence””” on anti-trans websites run by the parents of trans children makes me fucking furious. Imagine running a study about, per say, autism, and how sensory overload feels, instead of asking the autistic person, they asked the parents of the autistic person, and posting it on “TheCureForAutism.org” and “DontVaccinateEducate.Com” and then posting it in a shitty non-peer reviewed journal. Essentially, thats exactly what this is.

This idea isn’t even new. The WPATH standards of Care, published in 2011, hosted a section called “Phenomenology in Adolescents”. This section had the following to say.

“Yet many adolescents and adults presenting with gender dysphoria do not report a history of childhood gender-nonconforming behaviors (Docter, 1988; Landén, Wålinder, & Lundström, 1998). Therefore, it may come as a surprise to others (parents, other family members, friends, and community members) when a youth’s gender dysphoria first becomes evident in adolescence.”

The idea that the internet made your kid trans, the backbone of all of this, is just so ridiculous that the fact that I have to even talk about it is stupid. Many kids who understood they were trans when they were young but didn’t know what that meant and couldn’t put their identity into words. Fun fact, if you explain to someone a concept that they didn’t understand but felt before, they might in fact realize that it applies to them. The fact that resources are now available to them to give them information about their identity, and that trans people are more visible now than a decade ago when this generation of trans and nb people were growing up, is a good thing.

Besides, considering just the quantity of shit like “transgender people DISPROVED by ben shapiro” and “NONBINARY CRINGE COMP #400000000000000000″ available on youtube being fed directly to toddlers with ipads, it’s not like all exposure to trans people has been framed positively, nurturing, or encouraging, and it would be beneficial to talk about the ways in which this is going to affect the trans and nb people who will be around a decade from now.

There’s so much more I could talk about here, but I don’t think I need to. Instead, I will link to this amazing article that was the backbone of much of what I wrote. The author is a bisexual trans women with a degree in biochemistry, she knows what the fuck shes talking about.

#science #trans #lgbt #nb

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fragments-of-a-hologram-dystopia · 6 years ago

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Review: Inherit the stars

Author: James P. Hogan Genre: hard sci-fi Year: 1977 Notes: I have read the italian translation by Beata della Frattina published by Urania in 1978. It is the first of a five books series.

Now that humanity has reached world peace, it can focus on important things like space exploration! There are several spaceships in our solar system, and there are several bases on our Moon. While doing research, a corpse is found on the moon, a corpse wearing a bright red space suit. No one is missing, and the corpse is quite old. Upon analysis, it is revealed to be around 50’000 years old. The collective scientific community goes “what the fuck?” and a team is assembled to discover the truth about Charlie, the nickname given to the mummified corpse. Enter Vic Hunt, scientist which is soon assigned to coordinate all the various teams working on Charlie’s mystery: linguists try to understand the language they find in Charlie’s diaries, other teams analize his technological devices, and there’s the Debate with capital D: did he come from the Earth? How is that possible? Besides some minor differences, Charlie was undoubtedly human, as Danchekker, another scientist, likes to point out as often as he can.

If at this point you are asking yourself “wait, what about the real plot?” congratulations, but you are in for a sad surprise. It doesn’t feel like a novel but like a “essay/research fiction”, if that’s a thing. Vic Hunt is supposed to be a main character, and yet you could replace him with a cardboard cutout and no one would notice it: he has no personality whatsoever, no flaws to overcome, absolutely no character arc ever. If you are expecting a story where Vic Hunt has to overcome his personal flaws before he can discover the secrets of Charlie’s story, prepare to be disappointed. It’s a shame because when it gets more novel-like (when he actually does things, like when visit the Moon) it’s not that bad but no, we had to be stuck with exposition through newspaper articles and a lot of tell instead of show. What a pity.

It’s a pity, yes, because Charlie’s mystery is really fascinating, the concept is captivating and the debates, when they happen, they’re interesting to follow, and more discoveries are made on other celestial bodies which force everyone to consider seemingly absurd hypothesis. Also, my hat off to Danchekker, who manages the be the only “non-cardboard” character of the novel. Other cardboard pieces include the “rich director” and the “sexy secretary” because of course. Sigh. Besides one female soviet scientist which is mentioned in a small scene, expect no female scientists whatsoever. In fact, expect no female character whatsoever behind those two (soviet scientist and sexy secretary). I love (sarcasm) those old timey authors who can imagine world peace but not equality between the sexes. Also, everyone smokes and drinks all the time, which feels ridiculous now. The author may know a lot about the universe, but linguistics is truly alien to him: trust me, deciphering a dead alien alphabet & language without some item to serve as a Rosetta Stone would be impossible. Hell, we have Earth languages we have yet to translate because we lack the means to do so... To be fair it feels really old, older than its age, as a story.

So, is it worth reading? It depends. I don’t regret reading it, it’s rather short (as a long novel it would be unbearable due to its quasi-essay nature) and it has some really interesting moments. The whole mystery behind Charlie is captivating, and it’s fun to read a theory, think “oh, right!” and see it disproved in the next page - bonus points for the ending, which does this, and the epilogue, which made me shed a little tear.

Fun fact: the italian title is “Lo scheletro impossibile”, literally “the impossible skeleton”. A much better title than “inherit the stars” if you ask me.

#inherit the stars #james hogan #james p. hogan #science fiction #science fiction books #reviews #book review #book reviews #sci-fi

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