Barx [none/use name]

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: May 20th, 2024

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  • This article is about one study, by CCDH, who did not publish much of anything about their methodology. CCDH’s CEO was an anti-Corbynite that fed into the false accusations of antisemitism against the left for having solidarity with Palestinians and CCDH continues to prominently focus on antisemitism and trying to blur the line between antisemitism and antizionism. The faction that he supported is currently in power in Labour and are supporters of Israel during this genocide.

    I would not trust them to make good calls on what is an accurate community note vs. not. Community notes are all over the place but on average depict a bazinga liberal position, which is not actually the most accurate one. Having looked at their “study” paper, their first and most promindnt criterion for accuracy was whether community note aligned with fact-checking websites. Fact-checking websites are, to put it bluntly, bullshit, and really just reflect the author’s opinion.

    For example, one of the things they claim is election misinformation is the claim that voting systems are unreliable. They are saying this is an inaccurate or misleading claim. In the US, it is accurate to say that it’s voting systems are unreliable. They are frequently run using voting machines from private companies, black boxes with no real way to verify their results that are actually implemented in most places, and polling stations often only gave 1 or 2, so when they break people are disenfranchised. Every computer security expert audit says you should not trust these systems and should use paper ballots with manual observable recounts. The allegation of misinformation is really about what is perceived to be voter suppression, of people feeling like they shouldn’t vote because it won’t count anyways. This is not actually misinformation, though: the voting machines are unreliable, that is the actual problem in this situation, not the use of repeating a fact in your favor.

    It is salient that at no point do they highlight the naked propaganda for Zionism that has been rampant on social media, including about elections. This was presumably filtered out early on by their selection of what counts as a topic of interest for their analysis.

    Finally, the clear purpose of CCDH is to lobby for having more oversight on social media, including large, centralized moderation teams that have historically been cozy with liberal governments.


  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoScience Memes@mander.xyzMandibles
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    13 days ago

    Ohhh. Well the big parts that grab stuff are mandibles. They aren’t legs but they originate, evolutinarily speaking, from legs. Same with antennae! The parts closer to the head do the eating but sometimes mandibles help with that.

    For venomous arthropods sometimes it’s the mandibles that have the venom (like spiders, where they are called Chelicerae), for some it’s saliva and they use various mouthparts (the water bug uses a proboscus), for some it’s their tail end (like ants), etc etc.







  • You need oxidants to live. Issues stemming from oxidants are about levels of free radicals getting too high in the wrong places for too long.

    Getting good sleep, eating a balanced diet, reducing stress, and getting enough exercise are the best ways to reduce the chances of such a scenario. Realistically, these things are also just a way to maximize wellness and health overall and it is probably not very useful for most people to think of this in terms of oxidation.




  • When we and other known organisms take energy from food we are actually taking molecules with higher-energy electrons, converting them into the high-energy molecules our cellular processes can use to do make cell things happen, and producing very similar molecules with lower-energy electrons. Rather than infinitely accumulating these molecules, our cells dump low-energy electrons onto another molecule that is amenable and thereby convert into a molecule ready to accept high-energy molecules from food (with a bunch of steps in between).

    For us, as aerobes, the electron acceptor at the end of respiration is oxygen.

    Oxygen as an electron receptor is newer than several others. Anaerobes came first. It was only after photosynthesis had produced a ton of atmospheric oxygen that it became a viable option, really. But it O2 is a comparatively good electron acceptor because the process in which it accepts those electrons allows cells to grab quite a bit of energy from that last step. It is fairly “electron needy” compared to earlier electron acceptors.

    So, basically, aerobes get more energy per food unit (sugar molecule) than the vast majority of other creatures. You need it to live because it is an essential part of how your cells get food, namely, how it can recycle molecules at the last step of the respiration cycle.


  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.nettoScience Memes@mander.xyzOxygen
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    2 months ago

    The dietary antioxidant fad is mostly BS. They’re supposedly meant to counteract oxidative stress and specifically free radicals. Both of those things are part of a healthy life and you would die without them. So any real impact is not so simple as “just counteract those bad things”. Dietary antioxidants don’t always lead to higher intracellular antioxidant levels, either.

    Some dietary antioxidants so lead to higher intracellular levels and may help buffer oxidative stress (like from exercise) but there isn’t much evidence that it doesn’t just boil down to “eating your vegetables is good for you”.


  • Governments have frequently laundered the surveillance state as “child protection” laws, pushing for a cozy relationship between companies with data and cops et al. They want the ability to snoop more or less whenever they want and will push in that direction. This kind of relationship is not just for cops, though. The same companies also gladly work with and hire people from intelligence agencies to craft narratives and manipulate sentiment. When a company doesn’t play that role as well as feds want, the hammer comes down (TikTok, Telegram).

    Though really, the actual question is why they are writing this article and why now. The answer is that Durov has been arrested and the author is attempting to justify it by piling on “Telegram is bad” claims while avoiding discussing the actual legal basis and evidence around his arrest. You will also note the sources used in this article are entirely government officials and NGOs in the constellation of NGOs that work directly with the government - or are unsourced stipulations. No academics were cited, nor free speech advocacy groups, or even lawyers.



  • Yes, I recall the speeches Biden has given where he rallies the crowd against the Palestinian scourge!

    Biden - of course, he is senile, so he is just a stand-in for the current Dem leadership - provides unconditional military, diplomatic, and financial support to Israel in their campaign to destroy Gaza. For example, the JDAMs used so extensively to destroy schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, bakeries, refugee camps, etc, are exclusively manufactured by Boeing and Israel “buys” them via US “aid”, which, in reality, is just the US government buying the weapons and giving them to Israel to commit genocide with. The US lashes out at every attempt to reign in Israel via diplomacy, gladly carries water for obvious lies intended to justify the genocide, and props up the Israeli economy through direct investment and trade relationships.

    But sure, as I already mentioned, liberals try to whitewash and deflect from the genocide they know they are supporting. They use euphemisms and start acting erratically when you remind them of what they are celebrating. But everyone knows what unconditional material support for Israel’s genocide means. You know what it means.

    Look, I’m not arguing that the Israelis are doing anything positive

    They are ethnically cleansing Gaza as part of a settler colonial apartheid project that depends on US support.

    I’m merely suggesting that the venn diagram of people who are thankful that Biden dropped out and people who support genocide is not a circle.

    I’ve already described the function of this. Feel free to directly address it rather than hem and haw.


  • Joe Biden has been supporting the genocide of Palestinians for almost a year. It is public knowledge and there is a significant movement against it that these people are now literally trying to suppress.

    “Thank you Joe” is a silly little bit of propaganda meant to derail all thought about both Biden’s obvious senility (as if he stepped down by choice, lol) and gloss over all criticism of Biden, such as his support for a genocide.

    Personally, I think it’s pretty easy to just not support genociding Palestinians by not helping run interference for its primary sponsors. Unfortunately you seem to think this is difficult or, perhaps, complex. I would be happy to help you out if you need any assistance.


  • It was people holding “Thank you Joe” signs hitting people holding a “Stop arming Israel” banner. Anyone holding a “Thank you Joe” sign supports the genocide of Palestinians and this is just a very on-the-nose case of how they are trying to distract from that genocide, as despite their support for it, they are embarrassed to admit it plainly. Like crypyofascists but neoliberal.

    The Summer of Love was a bunch of hippies and hippie-adjascent people engaging in what is basically hedonism in a single city for a summer. Drugs, sex, chilling, etc. This was during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam, so there is a parallel in that this crowd chose self-indulgence and complicity over forming an organized resistance to segregation and imperialism (their opposition to the Vietnam War, such as it was, was primarily based on sympathy for their war criminals rather than their Vietnamese people), but they were not the cryptofascists that went around justifying and fighting for those things. That was people note like William F. Buckley and, as you might expect, the lanyard-wearing political class like those attending the current DNC.

    I’m not sure what you think The Summer of Love is but your comment sounds like a reactionary boomer Facebook comment.