circuscritic

Is the Biden administration lead by conspiracy theorists as well?

Again, inclusive and circumstantial, but pretty far removed from crackpot conspiracy theories and tinfoil hats.

Direct quote from that NYT article I linked:

In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I. has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses.

They aren’t conspiracy theories, at least, not according to the US Government and Biden’s DoE:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html

Circumstantial evidence, not conclusive either way, but clearly the Biden administration feels the evidence is weighted slightly more on the side you just called a conspiracy theory.

Which again, is all they allege for ebola, but unlike the co-author of that first paper I linked, I don’t have a PhD in virology, so what do I know.

Those are both pretty through examples of indepth investigative reporting, by credentialed and experienced independent journalists and researchers. There’s plenty of threads to pull on once you start reading into it.

It’s also been covered by Ryan Grim, former DC Beauru Chief for The Intercept. I believe he has recorded interviews up with either researchers from those articles, or some other journalists specializing in covering scientific and medical fields, I forget which.

I’ve read the reporting, looked into the journalists and researchers behind it, and find them credible.

If you don’t, it doesn’t affect me any.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/did-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-of-2014-have-a-lab-origin/

https://jacobin.com/2016/07/ebola-west-africa-sierra-leone-bah-zoonotic-health-corruption-imperialism/

I have no idea how this lab will operate, but these types of labs are often used by government agencies whose own countries have prohibited certain types of extremely dangerous and risky research.

There’s actually a lot of good circumstantial evidence that the really big Ebola outbreak some years ago likely originated from a lab in neighboring country, that was being used by US government funded scientists, doing work that they were not legally allowed to do on US soil.

It’s late and I’m tired so I am not going to dig up the reporting on that, but there has been some great coverage on the topic in the few years that it’s worth reading up on.

Whether or not any of that has any relevance to this specific laboratory, or how they’ll operate, I have no idea. Just pointing out that whatever upside can be gained by this type of research, is also accompanied by serious risks.

Are you really using all of human history as a timeframe to say that currency is a relatively recent phenomenon?

Again, I’m not anti-cryptocurrency, but it’s not really a currency anymore than any other commodity in a commodity exchange, or a barter market.

And I don’t care if it’s livestock, or Bitcoin, I’m not accepting either as payment if I sell my home, or car. Not because of principles, but because I don’t know how to convert livestock into cash, and I can’t risk the Bitcoin payment halving in value before I can convert it to cash.

And who was talking extremes? I’m just pointing out the absurdity of the claims that crypto is the replacement for, or salvation from, our current economic system, or the delusion that currency backed by a nation is somehow just as ephemeral as Bitcoin, or ERC20 rug pulls.

You said Bitcoin was designed to free us from the tyranny of big capital, but it’s been entirely co-opted by the same boogeyman. So regardless of the intentionality behind the project, it’s now just another speculative asset.

Except, unlike gold or futures contracts, there’s no tangible real world asset, but there is a hell of a real cost.

Printing currency isn’t destroying the planet…the current economic system is doing that, which is the same economic system that birthed crypto.

Governments issuing currency goes back to a time long before our current consumption at all cost economic system was a thing.

lol

Forever? No, of course not.

But paper currency is backed by a nation state, so I’m betting it’ll be around a bit longer then a purely digital asset without the backing of a nation, and driven entirely by speculation.

I’m not even anti-crypto. It was novel idea when it was actually used entirely as a currency, but that hasn’t been true for quite some time.

This is straight out of Monsanto playbook going back decades. There’s a reason why a lot of countries have either passed laws legally shielding local farmers from accidental cross-pollination, or just banning GM seeds, not for any pseudoscience rational, but because of the way agro business uses natural cross pollination as a vector for lawfare and predatory business practices.

I don’t see the issue here.

I detest what Spotify has been, and is doing, to artists, but this isn’t that.

Spotify jump started a market by infusing it with cash, and then ran out of cash. It sounds similar to when a patron of the arts no longer has the funds available for patronage.

Yes, it sucks for those people who lost their funding, but podcasts are profitable all over without the infusion of cash from Spotify.

I realize that those with a large overhead, or those who are otherwise just unable to adapt, are in a shit situation, but I suspect the rest of them, and those that follow, will adopt the monetization strategies of other successful podcast markets.

Also, who the fuck wants to use the Spotify app for podcasts? Jesus I would never subject myself to that, they’ll be better off for it in no time.

Really this just sounds like YT membership, allowing users to create subscriptions for premium/special content e.g. gambling picks, porn, etc.

If that’s all it was intended to be, it could have been an actually useful and not intrusive monetization strategy…5 years ago.

Even if that’s how the feature gets rolled out now, unless it’s an unmitigated disaster, I don’t see them being capable of not overplaying their hand.

They will assume that because some users are willing to pay for private porn content, or gambling pick subreddits, that of course most users must also be willing to pay for cat photos and memes.

Personally, I am all for it. I am for Reddit making the worst choices possible and speed running their decline. Mostly, I would like a user exodus that results in Lemmy finally getting growth in a lot of their more niche communities that still keep me using Reddit on occasion.

I realize the article was written to make it sound like they lost money on this, but I would be shocked if they had.

To vastly oversimplify it, private equity does a few things to make money on the companies they acquire:

• Significantly reduce staff, and increasing workload
• Strip and sell off individual assets
• Load the company with debt

The last parts are where it goes from amoral to “HOW THE FUCK IS THAT LEGAL?”

The private equity firm will have its own separate entities that provide a variety of services, for example janitorial or administrative.

The new private equity owners will then replace all the current vendors, with their own entities at a expentionally hirer costs. All the while, paying themselves gigantic consulting fees.

Basically those are all just ways to legally embezzle money by extracting all the resources from the company. Once that’s done, they’ll sell the last thing of value: the brand name itself e.g. CNET, VICE, etc.

If there is no money in the brand itself, then they’ll just dissolve the company.

What I’m about to say is coming directly from my own asshole, so if someone actually knows what they’re talking about cares to explain why I’m wrong, I’m open to hearing it.

This feels like an attempt to try extract as much capital as possible before other civil lawsuits and/or regulatory actions are able to do to the same.

Piped apps have been broken at least 6 - 8 times in the past couple of weeks.

It’s the biggest Google effort I’ve seen to crack down on 3rd party YT clients.

I actually used to pay for YT premium, then they removed my discount AND raised the price to over $12/mo.

Sometimes I do miss my algorithm feed, just not enough to watch YT ads, or pay $12 - 15/mo.

Instant Pot didn’t simply go bankrupt. It was busted out by private equity.

$849 and $1,649? Those pricetags are so absurd that this post should be removed on principle alone, nevermind that it’s stealth marketing masquerading as an article.

…you don’t have OOBM on every single networked device and terminal? Have you never heard of the buddy system?

You should probably start writing up an RFP. I’d suggest you also consider doubling up on the company issued phones per user.

If they already have an ATT phone, get them a Verizon one as well, or vice versa.

At my company we’re already way past that. We’re actually starting to import workers to provide human OOBM.

You don’t answer my call? I’ll just text the migrant worker we chained to your leg to flick your ear until you pick up.

Maybe that sounds extreme, but guess who’s company wasn’t impacted by the Crowdstrike outage.

This isn’t a court of law, or the privatized forced mandatory arbitration that has mostly replaced it.

Out of curiosity, in your view, what has Google done to deserve the benefit of the doubt?

lol.

Just search for Purism customer support experiences.

I’m honestly amazed there hasn’t been a fraud, or some other consumer protection type criminal investigation.

All that baggage, and their hardware is also laughably outdated and overpriced.

Which is unfortunate, because the concept is amazing and clearly there’s a sizable market for it.

Here is an example of just ONE flavor of Purism customer experiences:

Announce current gen hardware and current pricing.

Customer pays

Customer receives hardware 5 years later, after being told approx. 362 times that cancellation refunds are down, or unable to be processed.

Customer tries to immediately return the 5 year old laptop that was just delivered and is told “No Returns”

There are other variations that you can read about on various forums.