bsbbtnh
1yr ago
There's a whole industry built around making websites look more active than they actually are. Whether that's paying people pennies per comment, using bots/gpt, or copying threads/comments from elsewhere. You can find thousands (maybe millions, lol) of reposts on reddit where the top comments are the same as top comments from previous threads, or from comments on the url that was posted (like youtube comments).
Making a website appear more active helps bring in and retain new users. I personally think TikTok uses this in order to bring in more content providers; they see their video gets thousands upon thousands of likes and stick around. I think its all inflated. And so many non-sense comments.
I also think that some websites/channels just get too large. If you go on a popular youtube channel and leave a comment, the chances you'll ever get a reply are slim to none, despite there being thousands or millions of people flooding onto that page. Go to a smaller channel and you can have long, thoughtful conversations in the comment section. Same happens on Reddit. The average comment in /r/askreddit will have no replies. Make a comment in themotte ("back in the day") and you were almost guaranteed a reply, no matter what you said. Even in subs that are fairly inactive these days, like theschism, will still result in replies if you make a comment.
I wonder what the critical mass for an online community is? What's the point where you're less likely to get a reply? What's the point where you're less likely to even have someone read your comment?
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Here's the first thing that made me think something was off: https://twitter.com/quanyi_li2/status/1596784472740937728
If I saw an American holding a misspelled sign at a protest, the last thing I would think is that it must be a China. If there's any conspiracy, it'd be more likely that it is a domestic operation that is meant to make the protesters look stupid/uneducated. (I seem to recall, but I may be wrong, that some people holding up signs like "keep your government hands off my medicare" while protesting Obama were actually Democrats, but that was a long time ago, so I may be misremembering).
Don't get me wrong there are plenty of protests in China but a REAL Chinese protest tend to demand local official to step down and national government to intervene. They almost never call for a regime change. Even rarer to call the party leader to step down.
But the policies they are protesting are coming from the top. And even if they weren't, its not like people don't protest the feds when other levels of government are more responsible for the situation. The trucker protest in Canada was generally against covid restrictions, most of which were put in place by provincial governments, and a border vaccine mandate put in place by the US. But they still protested the Canadian federal government.
Those two things simply do not address the problem at hand. Demanding national leader to step down is a western thing because then they can vote in a new leader. It does not work in China. Strong sign of foreign funded operation.
I don't think I've actually seen many protests demanding federal leaders resign, because in the west we CAN vote in a new leader. So if you were protesting in China, it seems like demanding a resignation of the leader would be the only real option, since voting ain't going to do it. I guess in parliamentary systems, since the leader isn't directly elected, calls for leaders to step down are a bit more common, especially since elections are irregular.
the central government has extremely high approval ratings and it's usually the local ones that people have issues with.
But the issue with zero COVID seems to come from the central government. Changing local leadership isn't going to solve things.
Also the police stood aside keeping watch instead of clamping down immediately shows 制度自信. These people are lucky if only the police is investigating i know for a fact that Shanghai facial recognition software is extremely good.
You'd think if this was a foreign operation that the police wouldn't be twiddling their thumbs. "Nah, we only suppress domestic, organic protests. We'll happily allow the CIA to undermine our country, though."
I think this is more evidence in favour of the protests being encouraged, at some level, by the CCP. Maybe as an excuse to change policy. Maybe to expose dissidents (and CIA networks). Maybe to frame anti-lockdown protestors the same way the western governments have. As outsiders we look at these people and think 'heroes'. But in the west, the average person has looked at anti-lockdown protestors as loons. Maybe the average Chinese person looks at these protestors like they are retarded rednecks endangering the lives of everyone around them. Because China is much more, uh, collective than the west (especially America).
They use traditional characters instead of simplified. They also sometimes use pinyin, seemingly unable to recall the "qi" in "Urumqi," the biggest city in Xinjiang, even as they were protesting on Urumqi road. Mainlanders wouldn't do this. This is beyond mere misspelt Tea Party protest signs, I'd say it's akin to protesting against Biden with an English-language sign with Cyrillic characters accidentally slipped in. It's a clear signal of "not from around here."
Would any minorities in China do this? Minorities tend to be more likely to protest, since the majority tends to be well represented.
Didn't China pretty effectively dismantle CIA networks in their country a couple years back? Some conspiracy theories attributed it to Hillary's email server being compromised.
I could see the protests being any combination domestic and foreign, with the CCP leveraging them like politicians in any part of the world would. Could have been organic, and the CIA swooped in to fan the flames, and the CCP is tolerating it in order to gain intelligence on who is all involved and what their motivations are, and also trying to paint the protests as being astroturfed. Every team is in the game.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I've only watched two episodes, but he touches on Sundaland. Looking at episode descriptions, it doesn't look like Doggerland will come up. Apparently there's a show, also called Ancient Apocalypse, from last year, which has an episode on Doggerland. That seems unrelated to Graham Hancock.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The ideal weekend starts with having to do some extroverted activities before the weekend, preferably something I really don't want to do, like going to a very crowded event for a long period which has people I'm vaguely acquainted with and will likely have to make small-talk; like a wedding. Then a weekend with absolutely no plans. If the following few weeks also contain no plans or appointments, it makes my weekend even better, since my mind can be completely free from thinking about the future.
It doesn't matter what I do, as long as what I do is completely uninfluenced from my anxieties of socializing.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
They coped with the virus very well in the first two years, squelching it up until Omicron. Chinese death figures are very low, nearly 1000x times less than the US. Even the Chinese can't lie that much.
China absolutely can lie that much. And with such a large population, it's relatively easier to obfuscate deaths. And the west seemed motivated to INFLATE covid numbers, as well. Lots of deaths with COVID, rather than from COVID. Actual COVID deaths are probably somewhere inbetween.
And you might talk of excess deaths, but consider this; China has a lot more deaths of young people from accidents and such. When you lockdown, you have far fewer young people getting killed by machinery, run over in the street, things like that. China also isn't grappling with a drug epidemic. And the average person has a healthy BMI, even the elderly. China would have weathered COVID well regardless of how it handled things. By locking down and making it look like that drove their success, the west was doomed to follow. Telling overweight westerners to stay at home and do nothing was probably the biggest danger to their health.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
It seems like there's a bit of a Gell-Mann amnesia effect with how people treat 'happenings' in foreign countries. COVID protests in US (or Canada); danger to democracy, but also just a bunch of idiots who know nothing. COVID protests in China? That's DEMOCRACY™ in action, the will of the people.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
*Moreover, making conservative knock-offs of mainstream products has a strong Christian Rock problem. Christian Rock is bad because it affirms the dominance of the secular rock music paradigm.
You know, in the 00s there were a bunch of Christian rock bands that seemed to break into the mainstream without most people thinking of them as Christian rock.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
DayQuil and NyQuil
Thing I hate about most brand name cough medicines is that they are loaded with acetaminophen. That restricts the effective dose I can take. Dayquil and Nyquil have 650mg/30ml of acetaminophen. The max (recommended) dose of acetaminophen per day is 4,000mg. So I can take, max, 6 doses of Dayquil/nyquil per day. And since so many other products (my favourite being NeoCitran) are jammed full of acetaminophen, that makes juggling things even worse. The cold I just got over also came with an unpleasant bout of diarrhea, and adding Pepto Bismol (also loaded with acetaminophen) probably would have killed my liver, lol.
Primary ingredients for Dayquil are acetaminophen, dextromethorphan (cough suppressant) and phenylephrine (decongestant). You can find dextromethorphan (DM) in most store brand cough syrups, without the acetaminophen and other crap. This allows you to take more without having acetaminophen acting as a false limit on the dose.
There's debate over whether phenylephrine (decongestant) actually works; it's just so old that the FDA doesn't really give a shit, especially since cough medicines have used it to replace the 'evil' pseudoephedrine (which addicts use to make meth, because the shit works). So it's better to get just dextromethorphan and buy pseudoephedrine separately. Pseudoephedrine will keep you awake, and probably far better than phenylephrine does. It sucks that drug addicts existing means cough syrups are made to be worse (yet it's ok to load up cough syrups with so much acetaminophen that anybody who abuses it, or just takes too much during a really bad cold, can fuck their liver permanently, and maybe even die). I believe Sudafed (the most well known pseudoephedrine brand) contains a bunch of acetaminophen.
For Nyquil, the main ingredients are (again) acetaminophen, dextromethorphan for cough, and doxylamine as an antihistamine. Doxylamine helps with runny nose and also aids in putting you to sleep. Again, I'd suggest getting these ingredients separately. You can find doxylamine in many different products, from sleep aids to allergy medications. If you can get it without a bunch of other crap, then you can better dose depending on your symptoms.
Some cough syrups also have guaifenesin in with the DM. It's an expectorant that helps loosen up the mucus in your chest so you can clear a cough better. This is great if you have a wet cough, since a suppressant alone can be pretty unpleasant, as you need to cough to clear stuff from your chest.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
And the stock price sure seems to indicate the belief in the latter. More than half of the value gone, YOY, as of the time of this writing.
Tesla was always bound to drop. It's been wildly overvalued for some time. A big benefit for Musk is that there weren't many shares floating around, which propped up the price, and consistently undermined short sellers. This also helped him reach his targets and earn billions.
With the economy the way it is, Tesla's share price was bound to drop. So Elon 'diversifying' by picking up Twitter might be the best thing to happen, even though he wildly overpaid. (Though it seems like a good chunk of people rolled their shares over, so I wonder how much he actually had to pony up to get Twitter). Anyways, cutting costs at Twitter is dead easy. It doesn't take much to run a social media site. Most social media sites seem to just shovel money into a bottomless pit, most of which does nothing to raise revenues or improve the average user's experience. They simply find ways to spend the money that comes in. It's the Wikipedia cancer thing. Revenues go up, expenses go up.
The core product of Twitter won't change. They don't need to spend $5 billion/year 'improving' it. Most of the jobs at Twitter are useless and can be safely cut. Twitter should be able to run for a tenth (or less) of the cost. Their revenue might drop a bit as premium advertisers pull out. But there are going to be plenty of companies who are happy to swoop in. So Twitter should have no problem making a few billion in revenues. It should be making an easy billion in profit each year (and probably more).
The real money maker for Twitter would be to allow shit like allowing people to subscribe to users (for $x/month), allowing people to 'tip' or give a 'super like' (for $x), allowing users to send subscriber-only tweets. Hell, I'd make twitter users pay to be able to take tips and get subscribers (basically make it so only 'verified' people can get paid subscribers/tips). You'll have lefties falling over themselves to pay Elon the monthly membership fee. And I'd have a premium level that includes a bunch of stats and analytics about followers, engagement, etc.
That could easily bring in a billion. The real money maker is all the people who get memberships thinking they'll convince people to subscribe, and then never getting any subscribers.
Social media (and most tech) sites are bloated as fuck and can withstand a lot of cuts. Most can be monetized to a much greater degree than they currently are. I think one of the most inefficient websites is probably YouTube. The amount of video uploaded everyday, 95% of it that will never get more than a couple views. You could eliminate the vast majority of it by introducing a paltry cost to upload, and you'd make money off those who continued. Imagine the billions YouTube spends on storage each year, especially redundancies. 95% of that cost going to scanning and storing videos that literally nobody will ever watch. YouTube could probably be more profitable than the rest of Google if it weren't for that.
We watched Facebook burn billions on their Metaverse. Companies pouring billions of ad dollars into Facebook, to put ads on people's timelines, and Facebook shovels that into a pit, rather than to their shareholders. Facebook's main source of revenue is the same thing it was 10 years ago. They'd be one of the most profitable companies if they just stuck to the timeline, sold ads, and collected the profits. But for some reason they'd rather shovel money into projects that go nowhere. Just like every other social media company. Most spending is a waste and won't produce value.
Social media companies are ripe for being bought out, stripped down, and turned into profit engines. Especially with the billions in losses on the books which add some value.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Reminds me a bit of the reporting about suicides at Foxconn and similar places. It's presented as though it's a major problem, but the suicide rate is lower than in the west. It's just that people in the west tend to not commit suicide at work, nor do they live in employer housing.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Jamal Khashoggi, the 'journalist' who got chopped up by Saudi Arabia, was a mouthpiece for Qatar, pushing propaganda against Saudi Arabia in one of America's top papers. So I wouldn't be surprised if this campaign against Qatar is largely driven by Saudi Arabia. If they are willing to chop up a journalist, I'd imagine they are happy to twist facts and feed them to the media. And western media, particularly Americans (imo), seem to be quite lazy. If you just do their work for them, they'll happily publish it, as long as it doesn't go against their personal biases (and if it reinforces those biases, they'll fall over themselves to oblige).
That's why so many news articles are basically a copy & paste of press releases.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
on the vright side. i took drag of cigaretye. threw up for an hour. took second drag of a cgareettte, violently threw up for an hour. It feels like I've been sick a week. even though its only a day maybe two. So maybe this is cheat code to quit smoking. time seem so long though
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
im having the worst cold/flu of my life (not covid). I swear im border line hallucuinationg for past 25 hours. every hour feels like many. i sweat without blanket. cold with. but temp normal. unproductive cough easily treated with suppressants, thank god/
any tips for feeling better? i've lost my glasses.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Should do a movie where The Rock is dropped into medieval times. He believes his greatest asset is strength, so keeps going to battles. But he just casually points out seemingly common sense things, which inspire great leaps forward. Basically a time travelling Forrest Gump. Then when The Rock comes back to the future, society is extremely technologically advanced, but he's looked down on as a dumb brute.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Fractional reserve banking, de facto, means that when you take a loan the dollars are minted and when you repay a loan the dollars are destroyed.
This isn't really true. It kinda works in reverse. You put $100 in your bank, and the bank has to keep 10% in reserves (though I think right now the US reserve rate is suspended; most countries have no reserve rate). The bank can loan out up to 90% of your deposit. So let's assume they do, they take $90 and loan it to Bill. Bill takes that money and buys a TV from Bob. Bob puts that money in the bank. The bank keeps $9, and can loan out up to $81. And this cycle continues, until there's $1000 out there, all being held in deposit.
Anyways, a bit unrelated. Banks had long lobbied congress to pay interest on the money banks were required to hold in reserves. Congress, either right before, or right at the beginning, of the last financial crisis passed that law. But.. they didn't limit it to required reserves. They allowed any reserves to get interest paid on them.
So the financial crisis rears its head, and what do banks do? They stop loaning out money. The Federal Reserve wants to loosening up the bank's wallet, so the start Quantitative Easing, where they basically buy shit on the open market, with the idea of getting more money into the economy. The hope is that the banks will become flush with cash and loan it out. But banks did something utterly remarkable; they just shoved all that cash into reserves, and started collecting interest on it. So the Federal Reserve did more Quantitative Easing. And banks held that money in reserve. Turns out a couple percent on all this money is far better than the risk of loaning it out during a major recession.
Anyways, that little difference, between giving interest just on required reserves vs all reserves, extended the recovery period and kept interest rates low. And the Fed struggled with Quantitative Tightening (where they sell all the shit back), because every time they'd sell stuff, prices would fall.
So the US could probably (if it already hasn't?) solve a lot of their issues by making one little change to the law, which would make the federal reserve much more effective. Of course you wouldn't want to do that right now (or would you? unleashing trillions held in reserves? lol).
As for your idea, is it much different than just having everyone write a trailing 0 on all their bills and coins? The fear here would be that you undermine long term contracts. If I loan you $100, and expect you to pay back $1/month, and then the next month the government says every dollar is now worth ten, then I've just lost a lot of money. You pay me back $10 (now 'worth' $100) and keep the $90 (which is now $900). Of course the policy change wouldn't be that drastic. But even still, a lot of long term debt is extremely sensitive to a percent of interest. Add a percent to your mortgage of 30 years and that could cost you $20k per $100k you borrow. So if long term lending becomes more risky, less uncertain, banks are going to charge higher rates, or move towards short term lending.
You also create an environment where the average person isn't going to save much money, because the value of $1 now is greater. So people have an incentive to spend, and an incentive to take on debt, and an incentive to hope politicians bail them out.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If someone is smart, not going to Harvard won't impact them too much. Many of these people will land on their feet, and they'll create paths for others to follow. Every smart student that is rejected from these top universities ends up eroding the prestige of those institutions. Every 'dumb' student that gets in also erodes the prestige.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The solution is to take the refugees/migrants with open arms, pass a law that says you'll give them welfare, but that the funds can't raise the deficit, they have to come from funding for foreign aid and similar programs. Each time a boat of refugees come, you get to defund various NGOs.
The NGOs will then have a reason to not dump refugees in your country. And you can do this for every problem that NGOs try to saddle you with. Then NGOs are going to be a bit more cautious, and maybe even push back against other NGOs that try political stunts.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Iron Beam and similar directed energy weapons. They can allegedly shoot down satellites. Apparently China, Russia, Israel, and the US have these weapons. There also may, or may not be, DEWs in space, which can either shoot down other satellites or possibly ground based targets (I can't imagine they'd be too effective shooting the ground, unless they are one time use, or spend a hell of a long time charging; maybe a nuclear powered one could do it?).
The Jewish space laser conspiracies started with simple 'space laser' conspiracies. There was a growing conspiracy around various forest fires being done by DEWs. Lots of videos of California neighbourhoods burned down, but all the trees and stuff being untouched; melted cars; and then there were 'strange' light beams visible on some weather satellites. I just follow conspiracies for fun, so I don't really try to remember all the details.
Then the Space Force came out, talking about how China and Russia had DEWs in space (or targeting space?). And so then the conspiracies around DEWs went into overdrive. I don't know how the Jewish part ended up being added, but I assume Israel. If not Israel, then it's probably just 'The Powers That Be'. You can attribute any conspiracy to the Jews.
Turning the frogs gay was about a chemical (atrazine) that was getting into the water (usually from runoff from farms), and frogs exposed to it would change into females. So it's really the frogs are trans, rather than gay. And if 'they' means the government, then I suppose we could blame them. So 'they are turning the frogs gay' is mostly true.
And space lasers almost certainly exist; whether they are space-based and shooting at other satellites, or ground-based and shooting into space. Don't know about space to ground. I imagine there's a >90% chance that a Jewish person was heavily involved in designing it. And I imagine there's a >50% chance that Israel has some. So Jewish Space Lasers seems mostly true to me, though probably not quite as nefarious as the wording makes it seem.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
It's all part of a cycle. Black people blame white people for their oppression. And then one day they 'notice' that a good chunk of the white people in Hollywood, the media, running the big businesses, in academia, are Jews. Whites gentiles are under-represented, probably moreso than African-Americans.
And once they 'notice' that, then they start to wonder if they are oppressed at all. You get the idea that maybe it's just a 'mental prison'. They believe they can free themselves by simply believing they aren't oppressed. And from there they get to thinking that maybe it is the Jews that are the oppressors. This feeds into black nationalism, which feeds into blacks having their own country, which feeds into the idea that hey, maybe Israel is actually a black country. Maybe blacks are the real Jews.
As this process has played out, time and time again, over the past century, it was largely countered or overshadowed by a larger civil rights movement. But the current civil rights movement isn't asking for equality; it's asking for equity. And to get that equity, it's going to have to come from the Jews, at least partly. Otherwise gentile whites are going to be essentially pushed out of society, and that will almost certainly lead to the Holocaust 2.0.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Zionism (right) vs Bolshevism (left).
Also, Jewish space lasers are as true as turning the frogs gay.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
any payment in pesos is immediately converted to other stores of value more readily capable of holding its value ranging from hard goods such as bricks, to US dollars, to Crypto.
Wouldn't this also drive inflation? Like.. quite significantly. I wonder what the velocity of money is in Argentina. People basically playing hot potato with cash, and probably willing to overpay for something in order to get money off their hands. Then the goods they buy to store value just sit around.
Argentina should peg their peso to gas. But then there'd be rapid deflation as everyone tries to offload their bricks and such, eager to get their hands on pesos. Maybe peg it to bricks... lol.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
According to Politifact;
"The association between COVID-19 and blood clots was recognized early in the pandemic among hospitalized COVID-19 patients," said Yazan Abou-Ismail, a hematologist at University of Utah Health. "These patients experienced blood clots both in deep veins and arteries, which sometimes led to strokes and heart attacks. Although these conditions have mostly been seen in patients with severe COVID-19 illness, people with moderate illness have also developed blood clots."
Abou-Ismail said the incidence of blood clots ranged from 20% to 40% among patients with severe COVID-19 illness, and 3% to 9% among those with mild to moderate COVID-19 illness.
and;
The National Funeral Directors Association, a U.S. professional organization, told PolitiFact that embalmers in its network have noticed similar abnormalities in COVID-related deaths, but among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
"It’s only anecdotal evidence, and there’s no scientific evidence to draw any conclusions," said Jessica Koth, director of public relations for the association.
So it's more than just "one or a few" noticing. Politifact chalks it up to COVID. I seem to remember someone saying something like "COVID-19 is the first airborne vascular disease" when the pandemic first popped off.
Could have sworn my bottle said it did. I'll have to look later, but I got a new batch and tossed the old bottle. So unless they used to, or it was some 'extra super duper strength' thing, you're probably right.
The most infuriating thing, looking at the smart label linked on their website, is the description when clicking on 'Bismuth Subsalicylate'.
Why would they do this? lol
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