If I did that where I live a mob of MAGA hats would descend on my home within a week, if my neighbor doesn’t shoot me first.

I unfortunately have to spend a considerable amount of time around racist Americans and you are very wrong.

I get that it offers a bunch of features that you can’t get anywhere else, but I just can’t shake the uneasy feeling that it’s all a trojan horse for something more sinister. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and see it suddenly explode in controversy after someone exposes something not quite kosher going on under the surface.

It’s just too good to be true.

Exactly! It’s really disheartening to me to see so many youtubers who are otherwise insightful be so uncritically supportive of Ground News because they “like what they’re trying to do.”

This is partly why I don’t trust Ground News. They’re putting way too much money into advertising for me to believe they’re genuinely interested in providing an unbiased factual categorization of news sources.

I also simply don’t believe it’s possible to be unbiased, so anyone claiming to be is immediately suspect to me.

Even if they have a covid-related autoimmune disease?

900 people is a fairly small sample size for a study like this, and the data is entirely self-reported. Given that long covid is suspected to be autoimmune-related and the 17.9% that reported worsening symptoms after vaccination, it seems premature to recommend everyone with long covid immediately get the vaccine.

I’m not a medical professional and you probably aren’t either, so we shouldn’t be taking one study and running with the shaky conclusions it draws. Let the scientific community do their work.

I honestly think we are in agreement on most of the details here, but though I reject the US propaganda stating that a massacre of tens of thousands of peaceful protestors took place I remain skeptical of the Chinese state’s claims that the PLA was entirely unarmed prior to June 4th, that only around 300 people died (most of which were soldiers), and that the student protestors were the instigators in every case of violence.

First and foremost, however, I take issue with the ongoing censorship of all discussion of the events surrounding the protests in Tiananmen Square. I’m sympathetic to the goal of combating disinformation, but the simple fact that we could not be having this discussion if we were in China is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to overcome the US propaganda surrounding these events. If the only counter-narrative Americans have access to is the official narrative presented by the CCP it’s nearly impossible to get through to them with the truth.

Saying this as an American myself who had great difficulty trying to unravel what actually happened in Tiananmen Square and who still has a lot of skepticism towards the very simplistic narratives I keep seeing parroted around by those on either side of the issue.

Western media has an incentive to exaggerate, China has an incentive to downplay. Perhaps the truth which lies somewhere in between would be easier to arrive at if China didn’t heavily censor all discussion of the events.

I think about what happened in Tiananmen Square with equal revulsion as I do for, say, the battle at Blair Mountain, and I approach the topics with equal caution in determining the details. You seem to have no such caution with regard to the Chinese state narrative of what occurred in Tiananmen Square.

You can acknowledge that the narrative presented by western media about these events is exaggerated without going full tilt into denial.

Something did happen in Tiananmen Square. People were killed. The government of China does censor discussion of the events.

These are facts, and when you try to deny them it only reveals that you are more concerned with protecting your worldview than with adhering to the truth.

Maoist/Trotskyist fucks

And therefore they deserve repression? When you justify the action and then deny it in the same breath it makes the denial seem suspect. I admit I don’t know what - if anything - transpired between the CCP and the aforementioned student groups, but you’re not doing the CCP any favors by responding to allegations in this childish manner.

Reminds me of this:

Not sure if this is real, but you know you’ve won at life when you can submit something looking like this and still get hired.

It might help people to see some local journalistic coverage of Cuban elections. Seeing the kinds of things Cubans say publicly about and during the elections can give people a more intuitive understanding of what Cuban democracy is actually like for the people participating in it, as well as start to reveal the outlines of the overton window there.

Journalism is my preferred medium for understanding the political landscape of other countries; for an example I like to watch friendlyjordies on youtube for a peek into Australian politics. I’m not sure if it would be very easy to find English translated Cuban sources though.

If you’re going to be venturing out into coyote country alone you should at least be able to differentiate them from dogs. Not safe for you or the coyotes.

we know now that it was the Bolsheviks, and their adherance to strong theoretical study and working class organization that led to successful revolution.

To give an example, I disagree on this. Now, if you were to approach this discussion under the pretense that my disagreement is based on poor understanding of history or of theory, that would be pretentious, and therefore unproductive if you actually want to change my mind. Instead, keep an open mind and be willing to entertain an alternative perspective.

In my opinion, the Bolsheviks were oppurtunists who co-opted the revolutionary fervor in order to centralize power and influence in the movement under their control. They did indeed use Marxist theory to guide and justify their actions, but that doesn’t make it right. I understand that Marxist theory advocates for the centralization of power and control, I just disagree with it, which is a view more in line with Trotskyites than Marxist-Leninists.

I’m not trying to say that you are particularly arrogant or pretentious, but Marx and especially Lenin certainly were, and that is reflected in their work.

You can try acknowledging that people have actual differences of opinion instead of referring to different ideological tendencies as a result of poor understanding. Doesn’t really help your cause to always come across as pretentious and arrogant, even to people who would otherwise be your allies.

To me, the details of the arrest report scream parallel construction. A full setup and Luigi being a patsy suggests that every detail was chosen by whoever perpetrated the conspiracy, and there are a lot of details that strike me as very bizarre choices for them to make. I find it difficult to believe that the NYPD are simultaneously competent enough to find a believable patsy and execute an elaborate setup within a few days, but incompetent enough to accidentally turn the patsy into a relatable folk hero.

I have the same issue with the idea that this is a setup as I do with a lot of other popular conspiracy theories, I just don’t see any possible motive that makes sense. This entire situation has been a total PR nightmare for everyone who could possibly have been involved in the alleged conspiracy. That Luigi intended/expected to be caught seems to me the simplest and most likely explanation for the set of facts we have available. If I were to speculate further, I’d guess Luigi didn’t expect to get as far as he did and was weighing his options while on the run, and basically just decided to turn himself in and chose a public place for his own safety.

If you are trans then your existence is ammo to transphobes. That’s kinda just… how it works.

I remember the discourse surrounding the man vs. bear thing was less than ideal. Lots of people seemed to feel personally offended that any woman would choose the bear.