Aesthetics, plus the seductive appeal that pre-modern, pre-liberal-democratic societies (when the governments were authoritarian, the women were submissive, and the men “were men”) have for reactionaries, incels, and cryptofacists.

All true, but that doesn’t disprove my point. The risk was non-zero, so it was still worth investigating.

Yes but the difference is that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that prolonged exposure to RF waves might possibly cause some harmful effects. The WHO didn’t categorize radio frequency radiation as a potential carcinogen based on no evidence at all:

https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf

The possibility of there being a link was not absurd, per se.

To be fair, the evidence about a link between cell phone radiation and cancer has been inconclusive for quite some time. After all, a series of inconclusive or null results doesn’t mean there is categorically no link – it could equally mean that more research is needed.

That said, I do agree that if there were a casual link in this case then it would have made itself apparent by now, given the huge increase in cell phone usage over the past few decades.

Ear buds or IEMs typically have a much higher sensitivity than full sized headphones. The higher the output power of your PC’s headphone out, the louder your earbuds will be at any given volume %.

There isn’t anyway around this except to manually change the volume whenever you use your earbuds.

Same here, although I confess I wasn’t blown away by this one. I often find that while Ghibli films always crush it on the imagination front, the writing can be hit and miss. I understood the autobiographical origin of the plot, but there were several parts that felt underdeveloped or poorly explained. Overall, was good but definitely not up there with Mononoke or Spirited Away, imo

Just don’t take it too seriously, I would say. Not every news piece from the same source is going to be of the same quality or bias.

With each passing week, there are more and more parallels to the aftermath of 9-11. Israel has now even had its own equivalent to the leaked photos of prisoners (held without trial) being degraded, tortured, and sexually assaulted at Abu Grahib.

It’s depressing watching history repeat itself within your own lifetime, even despite the far greater visibility of Israel’s war crimes thanks to the internet.

When I was on in Reddit I used to do it all the time, but writing everything out, organizing it and including citations etc. can be rather time-intensive.

These days, I’ll leave a quick comment on a post if I have enough time, but nothing major.

I used to be a fan of it, but in the past couple of years I’ve seen MBFC rate sources as “highly credible” that are anything but, particularly on issues involving geopolitics. That, plus the inherent unreliability of attempting to fix an entire news outlet to a single point on a simple Left <-> Right spectrum, has rendered it pretty useless, in my opinion.

There days I’m much more of the opinion that it’s best to read a variety of sources, both mainstream and independent, and consider factors like

1. is this information well-sourced?
2. is there any obvious missing context?
3. is this information up to date?
4. what are the likely ideological biases of this writer or publication?
5. What is the quality of the evidence provided to support the claims made in the article?

And so on. It’s much better this way than outsourcing your critical thinking to a third party who may be using a flawed methodology.

30 is way too many. Ideally, you want about 4-5 parties in order to maintain a healthy democracy without getting bogged down.

Either way, the two party corporate duopoly of the US ain’t it.

As someone who has lived in Thailand, I get why Thais were pissed. The hotel, the taxi, the public transport all look like they’re from 30 years ago. Yes, you do still find run-down buildings and tuk-tuks in Bangkok today, but it’s generally a lot more developed and modern than westerners expect on first arrival. Instead of showing the reality, the creators of this ad went out of their way to portray an outdated caricature.

To an outsider it might seem like nitpicking, but Thais are fed up with being presented this way to an international audience.

Being profoundly ignorant on a topic has never stopped him from tweeting about it.

Because he is the owner of the very platform that helped to stir up the recent neofascist riots in the UK that led to POC being attacked and terrorized and properties looted and burned. His tweets are seen by millions of people, and greatly contribute towards online extremism and polarization.

Yup, sorry you’re right - it was World News, not News.

I’m not necessarily fully agreeing with OP’s thesis that MBFC is a pro-Zionist project, but something is very much amiss if UNWatch is considered to be a “highly credible” source.

I myself debunked a highly flawed and biased article from UNWatch that was posted to News@Lemmy.world* last month. The post was removed by the moderator (@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world) after being determined as disinformation. (I can’t link to it, since it has been removed, but if you want to see the details of my critique, check out this screenshot of my comment)

Having seen that first hand, I would absolutely say that MBFC’s credibility rating system is, at the very least, questionable.

• edit: World News

It’s literally just boredom and dissatisfaction driving people to change from one side to another. Thanks to the two-party corporatocracy that the US pretends is a democracy, what other options do they have?

Sure there’s a lot of garbage out there, but YouTube and platforms like Substack allow former corporate journalists who want more freedom to do proper investigative stuff. You just have to be discerning with your sources.

I like Zeteo (Mehdi Hassan, formerly MSNBC), Drop Site News (Jeremy Scahill, formerly TheIntercept) and The Real News Network (Chris Hedges, formerly NYT) the best. Breaking Points also put out some good commentary occasionally.

Good choice – Inter is probably the best, most comfortable UI font IMO. Or Roboto.

There is no rule that says the universe must make sense to human beings. In fact the more we learn about it - subatomic particles, quantum mechanics, the multiverse, etc. the stranger it becomes and the less it appears to operate in ways that are intuitive to our primitive primate brains.

Hell, even space and time might not be fundamental properties, and could themselves be abstractions which emerge from an even deeper underlying reality…

All of which is to say your list should have an extra option:

D. Who The Fuck Knows?