Rory Sutherland on the unwritten rule that held businesses together for 150 years.
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The Christian Nationalism viewpoints are pretty damn similar to Sharia law.
There are more Americans every day arguing that being gay should be illegal.
Maybe not slavery, but techno-feudalism isn't much fun either.
The manosphere considers women subservient to men.
They think that serving their husband is their only right.

Trump himself couldn't care less. He was pro-abortion for his whole life, until he needed the votes of the Christian fundamentalists.

"He's not Muslim" is a very low bar for a country that shouts FREEDOM from the rooftops.

By the way, there are lots of Muslims who care about freedom more than you.
That's why they protest their horrible regimes at the risk of death.
I don't see you fight for your freedoms like that.

Most definitely, Bella is respected and liked by most members, including me, because she doesn't engage in the 'factionalism' as much as others.

I'm not getting personal, I'm addressing opinions.

- Addressing someone's opinions means responding to the ideas, arguments, evidence, or conclusions they present. The focus is on what they SAID.
- A personal attack (an ad hominem attack) targets the person's character, intelligence, motives, or identity instead of engaging with their argument.
The focus is on who they ARE.

Fun is what originally attracted me to this site, but what I found was lots of heated discussions, about every subject imaginable. The original use of sharing nude photographs is made impossible for me, because of the site demanding registration for that. The discussion about sexual subjects are not getting much interaction. The things that mostly keep me coming to the site are topics around politics and science.

Of course it is directed at you, I am answering your comments.

I'm referring to this:
bella! 27d ago
This is definitely not questionable, it’s the truth. WAKE UP AMERICA!
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The person in the clip is saying that you cannot trust Zohran Mamdani, because he is a Muslim. He is clearly linking him to 9/11, ONLY because he is Muslim. How would you react if I said that Gidi Markuszower, a Jewish person, shouldn't be trusted with his Dutch House of Representative seat, solely on the basis that he is a Jew, and Israel keeps mass murdering civilians in Palestine? Would you call it antisemitic?

I agree with you that one person's asshole/bully is another person's funny person. There's a lot of Factionalism going on in these forums. People tend to defend other people from their 'faction' and I'm not claiming innocence on that.
I feel differently about the blacklisting. I am here defending a certain world-view. I care about my freedom of speech and blacklisting someone feels to me like taking away their freedom of speech, even if only towards me. I have done that only once ever, and I don't like to do it again.

No, I do not understand where you're coming from. Your country is NOT your family. Your Constitution is written for allowing critique of your country as one of your most important rights. It is the same for the Constitution of my country. As soon as you see your country as immune to criticism, that's when democracy dies.

It's a little bit of a hassle for me to get my ideas printed in a book
and get them in your local library.

I saw it in the list of recent topics.
I understand that the person who started this is no longer active.
That doesn't stop me from venting my opinions. They need to be out there.

A growing share of the world's heat records have been set in recent years,
and many countries have broken all-time national heat records within the last decade
as the climate has warmed.

The current record for the highest global annual average surface temperature is 2024.
It surpassed the previous record set in 2023.

The ranking is currently:
#1: 2024
#2: 2023
#3: 2025 (based on major global temperature datasets available so far)
#4: 2016
#5: 2020

The global instrumental temperature record is generally considered reliable from about 1880 onward. Considering that 145 period, the probability that the five warmest years would all fall in the last 10 years (2015–2024) is 1 in 1,000,000 (= 0.0001%).

I'm just addressing an inconsistency between the TOS and the status quo.
See my long comment.

I'm trying to only start political discussion in the topics that are intended for it. If someone starts a political discussion in a topic that is NOT, then I'm just joining in.

You seem to think that googling something is cheating?
You first need to know something exists, before you can google it.
More people should check their facts, before they put it out there.

I might get a bit exuberant with the arguments sometimes, but as I pointed out before:

That discussion has come up before. People consider an account “fake” when it's full of photos that do not belong to the person who made the account. It's very difficult to determine that, so there is no clear 'who and how', but it has been done in the past, by using the Abuse panel.
My personal definition of an “asshole” is someone who keeps personally attacking a member with extremely vile language and very personal insults that are on and even over the legal limit of even your First Amendment protections. As you know, in the US there is no Absolute Free Speech.

When you read my whole comment, do you come to the conclusion that I want to ban those "fakers and people who act like assholes"? Why do I say "Just one problem"?
Didn't I say: "if the site starts policing more strictly, it's possible that it loses the very thing that makes it great"?

I'm doing the OPPOSITE of what you think I'm doing. I'm addressing the Terms Of Use, which says that people should be polite here. That is NOT the status quo. I'm not in any way polite, I'm very direct, sometimes insulting. Almost everyone her is doing the same or worse. I usually don't deal the first punch, when it gets downright nasty, but I can get nasty too. Maybe you even think that I'm being an 'asshole' sometimes or often, but I actually don't engage in my own definition of continually "personally attacking a member with extremely vile language". I hope you see that. I have called some Americans "traitor" before, if they CLEARLY completely disrespect your own Constitution. I have called someone a 'racist' before, if they CLEARLY make racist remarks. Meanwhile, I have been called much worse, repeatedly, for no reason whatsoever.

At one point, the verbal abuse towards me exceeded every limit of what is described in the TOS. That was the only time ever that I used the Abuse panel. No one agreed that the verbal abuse was out of line, so I’m using that as the standard of what is ‘acceptable’ here. However, that means that the part in the TOS that deals with ‘aggressive behavior’ is in my opinion completely useless. I don’t see it being applied consistently, so I cannot judge what is the standard for the Abuse panel. That’s why I don’t vote, when members report members for deletion. In the case of ‘fakers’, the TOS is saying: “However, administration of this site does not have any authority to make background checks on every member of the site. Therefore any member of this site may be not who they claim to be”. If admin doesn’t have any authority to make background checks on members of the site, then certainly members don’t have it either. Therefore, I don’t vote for Abuse panel claims about fake accounts. I expressed agreement with the person who said they don’t like it. It’s possible that people are doing revenge porn, but as you just argued yourself; it’s very difficult to recognize. That leaves under@ge pornography, which is the responsibility of the site administration. Do you now understand why I don’t vote in the Abuse panel?

I agreed with the person who didn’t like ‘fakers’ and ‘assholes’. However, I clearly said that more strict policing could hurt this site. This is now a place of almost Absolute Free Speech, and I am using THAT privilege. You are doing the same, even if you don’t realize it. You just posted a comment related to the Muslim faith, that if a similar comment was against the Jewish faith, would have been called Antisemitic by everyone here. You CAN criticize a religion, but that is different from expressing dislike and distrust towards a specific person, based ONLY on the fact that they belong to a religion. That’s called ‘prejudice’. I dare you to find one post from me where I do that.
Still, this is done by lots of people all the time, so it’s allowed. Like I said; “This is now a place of almost Absolute Free Speech”. I might be happier with a little more policing,
but I’m all about democracy. It looks like most people here would like an even ‘more Absolute’ Free Speech. That means that there is an inconsistence between the TOS and the status quo. That is calling for rule being applied inconsistently. I don’t like THAT.
It means that some people can break the law without consequences and others are being punished under the same law. That’s when I say; either apply the law consistently OR CHANGE THE LAW (to something that DOES fit the demand of the people).

That's because of money in politics. If they need lots of money from billionaires
to win an election, they might promise to do something for you, but as soon as they try, they get a phone call from their wealthy donor saying:
"Who the hell do you think you are working for?"

If their career only depends on your vote, their "what's in it for me" question
is the same as "what's in it for my voters". Of course, you also need to end their ability
to trade in individual stocks and end the 'revolving door'.

Best Democrat Ad Yet
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That's horrible. The most dangerous animals in my country are probably wasps or bees, with about 4 deaths per year in total.
I would not be swimming in any water that looks like there could be gators in it.
She looks like Phoebe from friends. Sad!

When do some people connect the dots between
"Damn, I have NEVER experienced heat like this!"
.
.
.
.
and
.
.
.
.
Something that scientists have predicted damn accurately, for decades now.

(If the first thing doesn't apply to you right now, it will soon)

When the public wants one thing, and both party elites want something else...
What's the difference?
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Don't agree? Argue why he's wrong.

Thanks for waiting till I was finished editing and editing and editing.
I was made aware that I tend to do that, to the point of annoyance.

Sorry, I couldn't let it be. I changed the last part to:
"I don't see this site rule being applied consistently. If it isn't practical to implement,
than I think it should be changed to represent the status quo.
If you don't like the status quo, then please propose a practical solution."

Sure, I think that this is a great site too.
And this site would indeed be better without fakers and people who act like assholes.
Just one problem: there is no community that polices itself, and if the site starts policing more strictly, it's possible that it loses the very thing that makes it great.

However, the site could be more clear about "to conduct yourself in an adult manner".

"By accessing the site, you agree to conduct yourself in an adult manner. This specifically means being polite to all members in chats and in the discussion forums. Aggressive behavior will not be tolerated by any member. If Site Administration is informed of aggressive behavior, we will check the discussion forums and logs. Please ensure that you provide specific examples and remit for review via private message. Site Administration reserves the right to determine what is deemed aggressive behavior on a case by case basis."

I don't see this site rule being applied consistently. If it isn't practical to implement,
than I think it should be changed to represent the status quo.
If you don't like the status quo, then please propose a practical solution.

If they could deny something THAT explicitly written in the Constitution,
America would be completely dead already.

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But how the fuck can so many Americans and their elected representatives deny this text:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

If you don't agree with it, OK, get the majority that you need to change it in the way that
The Constitution demands of you. Stop cheating democracy!

When you need heart surgery, you don't get a second opinion from a pastry chef.
Your ideas about Covid are not supported by ANY specialists.

What are you talking about with "the same conclusions" related to Covid?
Scientists and academics were very much debating each other on how to best approach the pandemic. But the science around it was just science. Not everything was known for 100% sure at all time, but that doesn't mean that the "I'm just asking questions" crowd ever had any decent points. The main actors in that movement were in it to destroy confidence in science and vaccines. Their motivation can be traced back directly to Christian fundamentalist and big corrupt money.

Are you now calling what scientists do "anecdotal evidence"? The vaccines were tested on over a hundred thousand people, before the general public got their shots. During that process, no one involved knows who gets the vaccine and who gets the placebo, but every little possible side-effect gets documented and investigated. Two cases involved people who died. Production of the related vaccine was immediately stopped. The FDA investigated the deaths. Usually, this takes months. Because of the priority of the Covid vaccines, the FDA reported back in only a few days. The people who died had the placebo, and died of natural causes. That WILL happen, if you test something on 100,000 people. There were no other cases like that. However, afterwards the results were presented, see below. Is that "anecdotal evidence"? Maybe, but it's better evidence than most vaccines and most medicines. They could have tested the vaccines for another few year, but then the pandemic would have been over,
and many more people would have died.

Pfizer–BioNTech (BNT162b2)
Participants randomized: 43,448
Vaccine: 21,720
Placebo: 21,728
Symptomatic COVID-19 (primary endpoint):
Vaccine: 8 cases
Placebo: 162 cases
Estimated efficacy: 95%
COVID-19 deaths: 0 in both groups during the blinded period.

Moderna (mRNA-1273)
Participants randomized: 30,420
Vaccine: 15,210
Placebo: 15,210
Symptomatic COVID-19:
Vaccine: 11 cases
Placebo: 185 cases
Estimated efficacy: 94.1%
Severe COVID-19:
Vaccine: 0 cases
Placebo: 30 cases
COVID-19 deaths:
Vaccine: 0
Placebo: 1

Janssen / Johnson & Johnson (Ad26.COV2.S)
Participants randomized: 43,783
Vaccine: 21,895
Placebo: 21,888
Moderate to severe/critical COVID-19 (≥14 days after vaccination):
Vaccine: 116 cases
Placebo: 348 cases
Estimated efficacy: 66.9%
Severe/critical COVID-19:
Vaccine: 14 cases
Placebo: 60 cases
COVID-19 deaths:
Vaccine: 0
Placebo: 5

Oxford–AstraZeneca (AZD1222)
Participants randomized: 32,451
Vaccine: 21,635
Placebo: 10,816
Symptomatic COVID-19:
Vaccine: 73 cases
Placebo: 130 cases
Estimated efficacy: 74.0%
Severe or critical COVID-19:
Vaccine: 0 cases
Placebo: 8 cases
COVID-19 deaths:
Vaccine: 0
Placebo: 0

Why are there differences in efficacy? Mostly because the vaccines were tested at different times, when different Covid strains were active.
And why did only 6 people die in total? Even though some old and unhealthy people attended as test subjects, these are people who trust the science. If they are old or unhealthy, they would not get themselves into danger of getting Covid, because they know they have about a 50/50 chance of having received a placebo. The test subjects who actually contracted Covid, were very likely to be the healthy young ones, who are more sure that they would survive. Even a test person isn't motivated much to sacrifice their life for science.

"it was get the jab or loose your job"
If your job was literally to care for old and sick people, yes.
Can we expect something of those people? Do you understand patriotism?
Another nice piece of anecdotal evidence: a member of the extended family works in a nursing home. Before the vaccines were available, they were demanded to be very careful and not come to work if they had symptoms. She had symptoms but went to work anyway. An old lady who she liked very much got infected and died. She felt guilty, but her husband is a real science denier, and made her forget that very soon. Literally death on their hands from being ignorant, but they don't care (long).

"yet people still got COVID after vaccination" Yes, but less of them DIED!!!

If you were actually skeptical, you would be open to facts and logic.

I'll show you same patronizing and condescending comments:

Blah blah blah ,you see what you want to see
so yeah bro,keep rocking that academic brain...
Too long in the laboratory and not actually talking to people in real life who have a different view than you really makes you a sheep...
I thought you liked critical thinking. Your side is what exactly?
acting morally superior over everyone here with your chat gpt crap......
Acting like you're so much better than Americans.. Pretty fucking funny to me....
Blindly believing anything is stupidity at it's finest even if you are presented with endless facts and data..
So rigid are you in your thinking that you can't even see someone playing devil's advocate....
I know you have this academic itch going on where you need to show the workings out of your views.... But geez man...
that's gotta be satire from you?
And you think you have a say in how governments are run I guess...
I think you have to put people into boxes to satisfy your own egotistical nature....
And you're so condescending,you need to be right...
I can see what is going on,you just want to feel superior and lecture everyone about how they know nothing about their own country and politics....
You're part of the same system...
you needed a big list to satisfy your academic thirst to show that....
Sheep....baa baa....I think you're pretty ignorant...you understand everything related to the problem....what absolute arrogance on display.....
Explain ..., Explain ...
I think you still have to show how clever you are,with your chat gpt stuff.
...in case you haven't figured it out...
You just want to be right that's all it is,
all I'm trying to say to you is don't believe everything blindly,
Don't be a dick about things .... look between the lines a little.....

"It's your right to express your opinion,and it's my right to say that opinion is crap.."
That's my right too.

You're a much bigger dick than me in these discussions.

Are you actually reacting to my arguments?
You are doing more personal attacks than me.
So who is being condescending?

If all politicians are crooks, does voting even matter?
Do you think that the wealthy aren't voting?
The political system suits them very well.
They always get what is best for them. How about you?

You can have a bigger influence than just voting, if you are an active member of a party. You can then also see what kind of other people are there. Have you ever seen the annual conference of your Conservative Party? What does the crowd look like? Maybe lots of older white well groomed people in expensive suits, looking like they are living a life of comfort? Not necessarily a representative sample of all members or voters, aren't they. Those people get to vote on who is the next MP. After the conference, it's mostly the people who are wearing the nicest suits, who get to talk with the people who were on stage.
Only once, I got to see the crowd of our VVD, which ChatGPT calls the "centre-right liberal party". I call it the "corporate party", because they support lower taxes, a market economy, entrepreneurship, and fiscal restraint. That crowd was filled with people who scream CEO with their whole look. There are lots of normal people member of that party, but they are somehow not showing up in those meetings. Now look at the Socialist Party meetings, and they are much more a representation of the average Dutch person. Only the people on stage might be wearing a suit, and it's clearly not an expensive one. I am a member of that party, and I have been in that crowd several times. People around me were all sociable and outspoken and informed, but not necessarily highly educated. None of them show the attitude: "I'm above you, so don't talk to me!". That's because my party gives easy access to all layers of the representation. Just show up at the right meetings, and you get to present changes or even propose whole chapters for the core values statement, the statement of principles, and every letter in every election program. Then you get to vote on the proposals with all other active members and directly control the politics of the party. The actual politicians are just representatives of what their voters want them to represent. It's nice to see them fight for everything that those active members have decided. I see some of the 'elected officials' of my municipality at least once per month. I'm damn annoyed that you think
of them as crooks, because they're sympathetic and empathic, honest, outspoken, smart, experienced and hard-working people.

So THEN you do trust a specialist?
When you need to get a science question answered, you call a SCIENTIST.

I'm a bio(process)engineer working in biotech pharma.
I worked in the production lab for 10 years, and I am now working in a supporting department, in which we as a team improve processes, equipment and procedures, implement new products, improve quality and safety and reduce costs. I have not produced vaccines, but I worked closely with people who were involved with the development of one of the Covid vaccines. We got almost daily updates of the trail process.

How much do you need to know about cars to buy a car without getting scammed?
Do you need to be an expert, or is a good basic level enough?
Do you have a good basic level on how viruses infect cells, mutate, and spread, virus research, immunology, vaccines, vaccines research, vaccines production, clinical trial processes, adverse event reporting and signal detection, pharmacovigilance, causality assessment, and which statistics are trustworthy and which are not. Every link in the chain of pharmaceutical approval has its problems, but overall they are pretty damn reliable. Billions of people use pharmaceuticals and not many of them die because of a bad product. Are you afraid to take a pill for your headache or get a local anesthetic when you need a tooth pulled? The same process that makes you trust those were used for the Covid vaccines, even though people want to make you believe it was not. All their predictions of what was supposed to happen with Covid and the vaccines turned out to be nonsense, but you pick the smallest things to keep believing failed predictions. Why?

That's not skepticism, that's cynicism or anti-intellectualism.
A Skeptic discovers the truth through objective evidence and the scientific method.

Vaccines are tried and tested science as well.
The pivotal Phase 3 trials for the first COVID-19 vaccines were among the largest vaccine trials ever conducted.
Pfizer-BioNTech: about 43,500 participants in the pivotal Phase 3 trial.
Moderna: about 30,400 participants.
AstraZeneca: over 32,000 participants in its U.S./Chile/Peru Phase 3 trial, with additional participants in UK and Brazil trials.

The typical cancer drugs are tested on much less people before approval:
Phase 1: 20–100 patients
Determines a safe dose and identifies side effects.
Phase 2: 100–300 patients
Looks for signs that the drug works against a specific cancer.
Phase 3: Typically 300–1,000 patients, though some studies enroll several thousand.

If anything you were saying was true, I didn't need to keep correcting you.

"why did everyone come to a conclusion about COVID so quickly"?
BECAUSE THERE WERE MILLIONS OF ILLNESS CASES
ALL OVER THE WORLD!!!
It takes longer to see if your polio vaccine works, because not many people get polio. You need to have a certain percentage of people get the illness in your trial group to determine how effective it is. That can take many many years for a rare illness, but it only took a few months for Covid.
And all of the drug regulatory authorities were on top of the tests to get them through the process. Just the paperwork can take YEARS, but not if everyone prioritizes this one important regulatory approval process.
Normally, pharmaceutical companies are not producing many millions of dollars worth of product, before they actually know that they can make a profit on them. They didn't do that for Covid, because it was a global pandemic killing millions of people. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build production capacity and started making product for many millions of people, to be able to distribute it to as many people as possible, as soon as they got the green light from the FDA and EMA.

I am a dick about this, because this is all VERY BASIC STUFF.

Exactly, politicians who lie, what a strange concept.
Again, they failed to make things better, but the conservatives are the party that broke everything.

Are you denying that you are a right-winger? You show it in everything.

The current Labor Party is NOT democratic socialists at all.
They would even privatize your NHS, if they could get away with it.
When was the last time that they turned a private system into a public one?
They are fully capitalist, not socialist.

"And you think you have a say in how governments are run I guess"
What are you even trying to say here? No, I just don't fall for stupid labeling tricks.

If you understood at all how the Socialist Party in my country is organized, you wouldn't say something that uninformed. We are probably the most grass roots organized party in the world.

"the status quo must be preserved for the rich...." Are YOU saying that?
Do you understand HOW that is done?
- Tax-cuts for the wealthy
- Privatizing public utilities
- Allowing large political donations
- Allowing lobbying
- Reducing transparency
- The wealthy buying up the media and turning it into propaganda
- Tax loopholes and preferential treatment
- Strict laws for the poor, weak laws for the wealthy
- The revolving door
- Weakening labor unions
- Restricting voting access
- Underfunding public education
- Corporate subsidies and bailouts
- Extending patent or copyright protections to increase monopolies
- Awarding government contracts to politically connected companies
- Weak inheritance or estate taxes
- Austerity politics
- Trade and investment rules favoring large multinational firms
- Banking and financial deregulation
- TELLING POOR PEOPLE THAT POLITICS IS NOT FOR THEM

The more they make you believe that voting is useless and all politicians are corrupt or crooks anyway, the more you will look away or vote for fucking fake populists like Nigel Farage, who are doing the bidding of the wealthy even more.

You lot are only capable of thinking binary.
Since when are any pharmaceuticals 100% effective?
Will you turn down chemo therapy, if you have cancer, when they tell you it will only have a 95% of saving your life?

Have you not heard of SARS? That is a Corona virus too. Corona viruses didn't end up transferring to humans with Covid, they have for all of human history. COVID-19 was just another instance of that.

And I know of several people (family of friends) who died of Covid before the vaccinations were available. I don't know anyone who died of Covid after being fully vaccinated. My 4 year old brother had Covid as one of the first people in my country. He survived, but he felt worse than with any flu ever and his condition was affected for months after. I had Covid after I was vaccinated, and it wasn't a big deal. I've had worse colds. This is all just "anecdotal evidence". You can pick and chose which ones confirm your opinions.
I accept statistics from trustworthy public sources, who provide all their data to the public. Who do you trust? Do you trust people who say: "I'm only asking questions!", but never even try to honestly answer them?

The labor party does NOT say they're socialists.
Only stupid right-wingers say that.

And so what? Some people call Trump transparent.
And he calls himself the peace president. Are you fucking kidding me?

I don't care about the labels that politicians give themselves,
I use the correct terms for what they are actually doing.

Your labor party has failed the working class for decades.
That's not a failure of socialism, that's a failure of those politicians.
How about pointing blame at the politicians who did the most damage, instead of the politicians who failed to repair it?

Freedom of speech is implemented by liberals. There have been lots of governments calling themselves 'socialist' that were crushing free speech, but none of them were actually socialist by official definitions. The countries that are actually the most socialist are the Scandinavian countries, and their freedom of speech and freedom of the press is the best in the world.

You DON'T have a socialist government, the labor party has fully turned to neo-liberalism. The only party in your country that can be called 'socialist'
by some stretch of the definition is the Green Party, and they are strongly supportive of civil liberties and freedom of expression.

What did your conservatives do?
Tougher restrictions on protests: The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 gave police broader powers to impose conditions on protests that were deemed excessively noisy or disruptive.
Expanded surveillance powers through the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
Arrested anti-monarchy protesters around the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla under new public order laws.
The National Security Act 2023 introduced new offences aimed at foreign interference and espionage, which journalists and legal scholars expressed concern about, because parts of the legislation could have implications for investigative reporting, although the government said it was directed at hostile states rather than ordinary journalism.

True, but if you lack that competence in a given subject, you're much more susceptible to believing lies or nonsense related to that subject.

If you don't know shit about cars, a used car sales person has a much easier time to sell you a lemon. That doesn't mean that the car mechanic who isn't fooled by cheap trickery is smarter, they just have the necessary knowledge and skills that makes them recognize lies or bullshit.

When mr_blue is talking about Covid to me, it's like a used car salesmen saying:

"This model has the upgraded turbo flux capacitor. It actually makes the engine run smoother by pre-aligning the spark molecules before combustion."

"Don't worry about that knocking sound. This engine has adaptive self-healing pistons. They wear in reverse after about 10,000 miles."

"These tires are filled with premium dealership air. It reduces gravity by about 15%, so you'll save on fuel."

The first variant of Covid was actually suppressed by the vaccines for 75%. Later variants were harder to suppress. Still the vaccines do protect against contracting Covid. But that's not important. They reduce the chance of dying of getting severely ill from Covid by up to 95%.
There are lots of vaccines that don't protect you for 100%, like Influenza, Whooping Cough, RSV, Mpox, Rotavirus, Malaria.
Even the smallpox vaccine was only 95% to 97% effective, but it did completely eradicate smallpox globally in 1980.

Gain of function research is done on multiple virussen. They also closely follow bird flu. It means research to determine what genetic mutation or cross swapping with other virus strains can cause the virus to be more lethal or resistant to treatments. That's not intended to make that happen, that's intended to predict it, warn about it and propose preventative measures for it. That is in Wuhan, because the risk is in that area.
We have similar labs in the Netherlands (Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR)). They study bird flu, because lots of migrating birds use our country as feeding grounds, and we have lots of chickens in open air. We also have the RIVM monitoring for zoonotic transmission and providing national public health guidelines.

It's your basic distrust in governments that make you think that these labs are doing something nefarious. That distrust is useful for right-wingers, because their main goal is making the government smaller and privatizing everything. This is why they want you to believe that the governmnet is evil. Most of the time they are not outright saying that, they are "just asking questions", which you fill in with your indoctrinated brain.

OK, but that doesn't matter much. The UK has the same problem.
Margaret Thatcher did the same things as Ronald Reagan; tax-cuts for the wealthy and harsh spending cuts on everything that is important for the working class people.
I've never seen right-wingers increase freedom for working class people, but the wealthy got lots of freedom to exploit, scam and pollute. Point me out one important freedom for working class people that wasn't achieved by the left or liberals fighting for it and/or wasn't fought against tooth and nail by right-wingers/conservatives.

You really don't understand lefties; freedom is our base motivation.
Our basis is humanism; the idea that everyone has equal value, which is exactly what your Declaration of Independence starts with. That means that there shouldn't be a small group of people who control everyone else, with their money.
What's America based on more and more? Billionaires running the country.
And when one politician promises some good things for normal people, what are you saying? We cannot do that, because the billionaires will leave! Do you want to cuck yourself to billionaires?
Explain how that is a lefty not liking freedom.

I don't have to trust scientists about Covid, because I understand everything related to the problem. Corona viruses have existed for tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years. We can trace back likely Corona outbreaks for hundreds of years, and there is evidence of Neanderthals dying from it and building up resistance to it. Saying that Covid is man-made is nonsense. It's still possible that it was a lab-leak, but there are Corona viruses in nature all around the area that Covid first occurred, in lots of different animals. That's why they are studying it there. No one is studying Corona viruses in the arctic. There are also no scientists studying wild elephants in Canada. I'm not morally superior or that much smarter, I just have some knowledge on several subjects that you don't understand the slightest thing about. You lot know so little, that you don't understand how little you know. Still you are talking very confidently, repeating absolute nonsense, from people who want to distract you with nonsense. You need only a little bit more knowledge to understand how much false ideas they are planting in your head.
When experts were talking about Covid on TV, it all made sense, but when politicians or journalists were trying to explain things, and I recognized all the mistakes. But those were honest mistakes from people who don't have the required knowledge. When your right-wing media was talking about Covid, EVERYTHING WAS WRONG. You didn't know, because you CAN'T know. It requires a level of knowledge. Understand that.

10,000x CHEAPER - Why Every Solar Forecast Since 2015 Has Been Wrong
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To the well-thinking Americans; I'm very sorry that Trump is screwing up your 250 years
of independence celebrations. It's hard to see.

If you prefer opinions over facts and logic, he's your guy.

"Facts" are an accurate description of reality. If everything only came down to belief, then medicine, engineering, and science wouldn't work consistently. A bridge doesn't stay up because people believe it will, it stays up because it follows the laws of physics. Beliefs are personal, facts are constrained by reality.

Yes, you are on a side, a side that denies reality.

"I am pretty sure someone here can call out a lie from your side"
Wow, I cannot remember the last time your side said anything truthful.

"common sense" is untrustworthy, it's based on intuition, not necessarily on reality. You can have a natural logic, but what you are most commonly referring to as "common sense" is just mostly "group think". It depends on culture and era.
What feels "obvious" is often wrong, especially in complex subjects. Knowledge provides accurate facts, and logical reasoning tests whether conclusions actually follow from those facts. Without both, common sense can confidently lead to mistakes.

So the one having to resort to fallacies is the one you need to unbrainwash people?
Why can't you find someone who uses verifiable facts and correct arguments to do that?

My side doesn't need to lie about facts and confuse people with fallacies.
That's a pretty good sign that the brainwashed people are on your side.

Good universities DON'T teach students WHAT to think, they teach them HOW to think. Rather than asking students to accept claims on authority, they teach them how to evaluate evidence, use logic, question assumptions, design experiments, solve problems, and revise their conclusions when better evidence emerges. Your idea shows me that you have no experience with higher education at all, which makes it easy for propagandists to make you believe the nonsense that you are parroting.

The Delft university isn't just repairing cars, they are designing and building cutting-edge solar-powered vehicles and winning prizes with them. And not just solar cars either.

- Brunel Solar Team – Designs and builds world-class solar-powered race cars for the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.
- Forze Hydrogen Racing – Builds hydrogen fuel cell race cars. Their prototypes have achieved impressive acceleration while demonstrating that hydrogen can power high-performance vehicles.
- DUT Racing – Competes in Formula Student by designing and manufacturing electric formula-style race cars from the ground up. The team develops everything from suspension and aerodynamics to battery packs and software.
- Eco-Runner Team Delft – Develops ultra-efficient hydrogen-powered vehicles focused on maximizing distance per unit of energy. They regularly compete in efficiency competitions and have set performance benchmarks.
- Hydro Motion Team – Designs and builds hydrogen-powered boats, exploring zero-emission maritime transport.

I visited the famous Dutch Technical University several times, because a schoolmate went to do research there after our education, while I went into private sector jobs.
They do real science there and students are closely involved. Lots of advancements in science and technology come from universities and then get picked up by private companies making money from these publicly funded advancements.

That's because he fires off 5-10 fallacies per minute
and it is impossible to address all of them in limited time.



[A fallacy is a mistaken belief, misconception, or a flaw in reasoning that undermines the logical validity of an argument. It is an error in logic that makes an argument unsound, even if the conclusion happens to be true. People may use fallacies intentionally or unintentionally, but they can mislead others by making flawed arguments seem valid.]

In most clips he is debating students, not skilled debaters like himself.
And he was known for cutting up his debates in clips where he thought he was winning
and leaving out all the bits where he is losing. He gave himself a 3/0 advantage, and then you comment how difficult is was to debate with him. Sure, professional grifters are indeed hard to beat in a debate, but their ideas are not. That's why he needed all those tricks.

Sometimes Charlie got crushed by students, but he never showed those parts in the clips. The real problems with his argumentation only show up in a careful analysis. Because his pace was always so high, he never showed any weakness, and most people are not trained in recognizing fallacies, he can still look good firing off completely faulty and dishonest arguments. If you get the time to think about it, or an analyst takes you through all the fallacies, Charlie completely unravels.
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Always funny when Jordan Klepper talks with MAGA people.

Tim Minchin - Prejudice
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Great song, great message, great humor.

You grew up in a time when education was much cheaper.
You just admitted that it was affordable. It isn't anymore.
That hurts poor people to help their children grow out of poverty.
Since the income inequality is worse for black people, that affects black people more than white people. And then you will accuse them of not trying hard enough. Do you want them to make something of themselves or not? If so, why make it even harder?
Do you prefer spending money on prisons in stead of on schools?

Liberals and leftists aren't offended by someone talking about racism.
They might be offended by someone expressing racist views though.
You try to pretend that racism isn't true, while your Supreme court just allowed Republicans to gerrymander the shit out of elections, to make the votes of black people completely irrelevant. That's racism, systemic racism.

ChatGPT agrees with you. It says that gas BBQs can produce a lot of CO.
It wouldn't have killed me though, because I have CO detectors in my house.

I think that it's a result of your country only having 2 parties.
It's the politicians in your party that you like most telling you by endorsing a politician that they have similar politics like them, saving you the trouble of investigating everything they said and did. That's not needed in a country with 20+ parties.
You know what your party is all about, so you can safely assume that another politician from your party basically supports the same principles.

In my party, the politicians are interchangeable and expendable. If you want to be a representative, that's what you accept. You can have your own style and you can promote and defend certain strategies, but the ideology and party line are put before you by your constituents, in high detail. You still have a choice in how to represent them best, when you vote in the representative bodies, but vote against the Statement of Principles, the Statutes and the Program, and you get into problems pretty quickly. That's why we don't need endorsements in the party.

Some people of color still achieving success is not disproving the existence of systemic racism. We are talking about it, that's evidence of systemic racism already.

If you are born white and wealthy, the doors will open further, no matter how stupid
you are.

Sure, country folk are probably more prepared then us city folk.
Besides our central heating, we don't have any electric heaters or something. However, in a pinch, we could put the gas BBQ inside.

The El Niño strength in 1876–1878 is among the strongest known, but it has likely been similar or even worse in 1982–1983, 1997–1998 and 2015–2016. How many people die is not just dependent on the temperatures and drought, but also on how flexible humans are at the time. People who can import food and water have a better chance of survival.

Many historians argue that the 1876–1878 death toll was as much a political and economic disaster as it was a climate disaster. The El Niño created the droughts, but the scale of the famine depended heavily on how societies were organized and how governments responded. For example, in places such as India, which was under British Raj, grain continued to be exported even as local populations faced famine. The prevailing economic philosophy favored free markets, so governments were often reluctant to interfere with food prices or halt exports. In some regions, people could not afford food that was still being bought and sold.

One of the biggest differences from today is that people had no concept of El Niño
as a global climate pattern. Today:
- satellites continuously monitor the Pacific,
- thousands of ocean buoys measure temperatures,
- climate models can often forecast El Niño months ahead.
That allows governments to prepare food supplies, water resources, and disaster responses before the worst impacts arrive.

I've heard of it. Isn't it crazy how much distance that can travel.
We get some of that too sometimes, but mostly it means that your car looks very dusty, after it has rained down.

A window unit is not going to cool my whole house.
Aren't window units designed for sliding windows?
No one has those in my country, or at least not in the last 60 years.

Forty years ago, a normal average summer temperature in the Netherlands (measured over June, July, and August in De Bilt) was around 16.2°C. A normal afternoon temperature during the summer months at that time fluctuated between 20°C and 22°C. Sometimes, people had to turn on the central heating, on cold days in the middle of summer.

We never needed air conditioning in my country. Just like people in Hawaii or Aruba don't have a central heating system or underfloor heating, which is almost standard in my country, we never had a need for air conditioning. Even when my house was built, 17 years ago, the climate was still not changing as much as it doing now.

You don't spend thousands of dollars/euros on a system that you use a few days per year. We do still have some high temperature records from decades ago, but those are from extremely fluke weather, that only lasted one or two days back then. And when that happened, people were completely ill prepared and many people died, just like that one freezing weather period in Texas, in Februari 2021. No one in my country would die in their own home in cold weather like that, because our houses are built to withstand cold, not heat.

Why would I then spend thousands of dollars/euros on a complete system? Because they are also useful for heating a home on electricity. For several months in the spring and fall, it's still cold enough to need heating, while there is enough sun coming from my solar panels.

Does that mean you are used to it, or does it still suck a lot?

And you probably all have air-conditioning, right?
Most Dutch people can only open the windows at night.

The summer before last, we invested in electric roller shutters for the remaining 2 windows upstairs. We are now waiting for the electric awning to be installed downstairs on the back garden side. We ordered them on May 27th.
I'm thinking of ordering air-conditioning for the whole house, but it's probably not smart to ask around for quotations in record heat. They will probably not be installed this year, so I can also start this process when we have normal temperatures again.

One key difference is that Trump's endorsements have become increasingly risk-averse. Rather than boosting struggling candidates, he often endorses candidates who are already likely to win, allowing him to claim credit afterward.

By contrast, Mamdani's endorsements are increasingly being treated as a genuine test of political influence: he backs candidates who actually need the support, and if they outperform expectations, it's reasonable to attribute at least part of that success to his endorsement.

I know, I know, so I will add some extra lies on top of that, for your entertainment.

Several heat records were broken in my country today:

1) The high record for 26th of June, in De Bilt (our central measuring location that has been measuring by an exact standard method since 1901), 32.9 °C from 1976, was broken early in the day. The new record could still go up, but it was 36.5 °C at 16:00.

2) Night record: The very first official tropical night ever recorded in June was measured in De Bilt (the temperature did not drop below 20 °C).

3) June record: The all-time monthly record for June in De Bilt had stood at 36.1 °C since June 27, 1947, but that historic record has also been erased from the books today.

Today is the first time that the Dutch meteorological service has issued a 'Code Red' specifically for extreme heat. The warning applies to much of the country, while some northern provinces remain under Orange or Yellow depending on the expected severity. This resulted in several actions:
- The parade on Veterans Day will not take place on Saturday.
- Several festivals, including Defqon.1, the major dance festival in Biddinghuizen,
have been completely cancelled.
- Only travel if absolutely necessary.
- Trains are running less frequently.
- Schools remain closed in multiple locations.
- Other events are taking measures.

You might ask: "Is a 'Code Red' not ridiculous for temperatures that are normal in the summer, in many areas in the world?"

The reason is that heat warnings are not based on temperature alone. They are based on how dangerous the heat is for the local population and infrastructure.

In the Netherlands, a "Code Red" heat warning may be issued at temperatures that people in countries like Spain, Greece, or parts of the Middle East would consider fairly ordinary. That is because several factors are taken into account:
• People are less acclimatized to extreme heat. The Dutch climate is usually mild, so prolonged temperatures above 30°C (86°F) place greater stress on people's bodies than they would in regions where such temperatures are common.
• Buildings are designed to retain heat. Dutch homes are generally built to stay warm during long, cool winters. Many lack air conditioning, making indoor temperatures dangerously high during heatwaves.
• Humidity can make moderate temperatures more stressful. The Netherlands often experiences relatively high humidity, which reduces the body's ability to cool itself through sweating.
• The warning system is impact-based, not temperature-based. Authorities assess the expected effects on public health, vulnerable groups, healthcare services, transportation, infrastructure, and the risk of wildfires or water shortages. The same temperature can have very different consequences in different countries.
• Nighttime temperatures matter. If nights remain warm (so-called "tropical nights"), people cannot recover from the daytime heat, increasing the risk of heat-related illness.

For comparison:
• In southern Spain, 35°C (95°F) may be a normal summer day because buildings, work schedules, and daily life are adapted to it.
• In the Netherlands, several consecutive days of 32–35°C can lead to significantly higher excess mortality, particularly among elderly people and those with underlying health conditions.

So the apparent discrepancy is not because the Dutch authorities think 30–35°C is objectively more extreme than elsewhere. Rather, they assess how dangerous those conditions are in the Dutch context. A heat warning is therefore a warning about expected impacts, not simply about the thermometer reading.