Moondira

Reading the recent book of poems by Margaret Atwood.

Yep, a smoker alright.

I read that the toxins in cig smoke lowers I Q.

S Y S T E M I C

Nobody said that about cancer patients who can't be vaccinated.

Removing Pron will save the day!!!!! And whip those lazy workers into shape!!!! ok we got it!! Thanks for your astute feedback.

The laziest people are armchair analysts, slouching down in that comfy chair while enlightening us all.

Lavender

Mass hysteria is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that informs at least some aspects of Hanlon's Razor. My personal experience, both of my internal deliberations and of my interactions with others, is that incompetence is in greater supply than malice. You're framing the argument wrong -- who said anything about "malice" (which is the intention or desire to do evil; desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another)? Much of the lying we all participate in does not involve malice, and is simply a way to save face or to escape disfavor by others, and in some cases we aren't even fully conscious of the lie -- it has nothing to do with malicious intent -- with ill-will, malevolence, or a desire to harm others. While I may judge some lies less harshly than others depending on motivation, nonetheless such behavior is considered lying, and it does cause harm. And in this case, grave harm if even one person viewing this bs on the forum delays their vaccine because they believe vaccination is harming others to the degree this person claims.

Yeah, I lost a good friend most likely due to the bizarre reasoning you describe. She smoked like a fiend and drank like 20 cups of coffee a day, and ate poorly. Her teeth actually fell out, indicating malnutrition. I cautioned her about health effects, but to no avail. She cited some woman in a group who was elderly and smoked 2 packs a day and never tended to her health in other matters, still alive and energetic. We lost touch over the years, and last time I checked on her I discovered her obituary and a hospice she spent her last days at. She was way too young to die. I don't know what killed her for sure, of course, but I wish she'd have taken better care of herself -- I imagine it could have helped.

I can vouch for Arielle's honesty after being involved with her for the last 12 years virtually , I know her pretty well and although we don't agree on this subject and afew others ( I myself have thankfully had both vaccines, with slight flu like symptoms for 24 hrs) the last thing you can say about is that Arielle is dishonest. Expand It's quite possible Arielle's story is both true and wrong. There's a household in my extended family who exhibit all manner of health troubles with medications, procedures, foods, etc. You could not have a conversation with any of these people without learning of some new malady, or wrinkle in an old one. If you spent enough time with them, you'd wonder if their actual affliction was a belief system so strong that it produced psychogenic effects. This was most pronounced when everyone was together, bolstering each other's stories. I base my assessment on patterns I've witnessed with said person over the span of months (well, it's turning into years now) It's based on her interactions with others and how she debates or brings backup information to support her viewpoints when her evidence is lacking or not believed. These observations, along with the improbable occurrence of one person actually knowing so many others in their immediate RL vicinity with severe vaccine reactions, lead me to suspect she's not being honest and is fabricating all these cases she claims had severe reactions to the vaccine. The fact that there is such a thing as mass hysteria within groups of people is valid and an interesting phenomenon, yes, but we have not seen evidence that her family or community were engaging in this dynamic. Mass hysteria with such severe effects is actually rare. I would think it much more likely that her fundamentalist family (fearing government, authority, and science) never received the vaccine at all.

I just don’t get a sense that you’re being completely honest. I mean, all these people you know had bad reactions to the vaccine? I know a lot of people, check out a lot of forums, and I haven’t encountered even one bad reaction. The worst reactions I’ve seen were only mild flu symptoms.

I had sort of come to that conclusion too, that less photos of black gays and lesbians are simply out there. For the longest time we wouldn't see gays and lesbians represented on film or TV. If you don't see yourself represented in the stories a culture tells about themselves you get the impression you are not important or don't even exist in the mainstream eyes. After all, you don't see yourself anywhere. I remember an elderly lesbian gleefully describing how much it meant for her to see a movie where lesbians were part of the storyline, as in her time growing up there were almost none, and if they did exist they portrayed the lesbian as a very sick or evil character. She was so surprised at the increasing lesbian movies to choose from in more recent years, and joked about how in the beginning of lesbian-themed cinema they'd be thrilled even to view a poorly-made lesbian movie, and seldom commented on its low-quality, as it was more important to just have a movie where they were visible and in a positive manner no matter how poorly made. I can remember when gay people started showing up in commercials in recent years, and feeling amazed as I had never seen this type of person in a commercial advertising anything! And this has progressed to the point where many hardly notice if the commercial shows a gay or lesbian couple buying a house, a car, or whatever. And of course the above applies to people of color as well. So I'm imagining it's this lack of representation in Search that has the OP concerned that something prejudicial might be going on, related to Blacks not showing up as much as Whites do. I have no idea myself what's happening in this specific case, as I know nothing about how internet searches operate, but I do understand the concern when a marginalized group shows less numbers on any media platform than they should when population numbers are taken into account and there is a significant disparity. My first guess is that less gay and lesbian people of color actually post photos of themselves online, and perhaps this should be the avenue to investigate the reason for seeing less of them in searches.

I can't figure out how to make that mistake. How do you do it?

Ok, I've put my research hat on. And do you know that when I searched for "lesbians kissing" that out of hundreds of photos there was only one black couple! Something is amiss....evil lurks and controls our world........

Noooo....I like to see the sky! 😉

That has changed over the years. Don't know the stats, but I remember reading discussions on it.

Good you are keeping a watchful eye. I'm happy to report I didn't have such a result -- there were loads of gay men of color kissing on the first page. Could it be browser related? I used Firestorm for the search.

I just read we pay 4 times what Canada does! Yet here we are at the bottom of industrialized nations in terms of results.

Nobody said if Bezos spent some money on our food insecurity problem that it would be solved entirely. Where do you get such a notion? Wouldn't it be advantageous to help some hungry people even if all of them could not be helped? This would be entirely possible. There are many existing programs to help those in need. Food banks are in every city. With all his wealth he could easily hire a team to manage distribution. And there are so many other programs in addition to food banks which have the potential to make life better with the additional funding he could provide.

I don't take issue with your analytical nature at all. I'd have to hate myself if I didn't like analytical natures What I take issue with is applying theories where they don't belong just because we read about said theories. It's a Psychology student or new Psychologist mistake as they learn about psychological defenses and patterns in humans, including patterns we deem illogical. We have to know any individual person we're analyzing much better before assuming our theories are correct regarding their specific case. Just knowing a few patterns and applying them without more in-depth knowledge of the person is disrespectful, as projecting onto others always is. Also, I like Kahenman's theories about how we can fool ourselves. I just think he values the 'left-brain' too much, and devalues the 'right brain' more than he should.

Didn't they also say that Hilary Clinton was going to win by a landslide? Those types of surveys have the same success rate as I do in Dark Souls. "People that don't trust the government have been brainwashed" makes me wonder if you're so crazy as to believe the government- the same people that to this day conduct experiments on unwitting humans- have solely your best interests at heart. Some politicians might, but generally speaking, there's such a thing as healthy distrust of the government. As you know, elections & predictions regarding them are lost by only a few points. Even if the PEW research is off by quite a bit more than a few measly points this would still mean the majority of those in the U.S. do want single-payer health care now. So your comparison is invalid. If you don't like PEW research (I don't see why, as it is highly respected) you can pick any other reputable survey -- they all say the same -- America is beginning to accept the notion of single-payer health care. To your second paragraph where you are accusing me of being "so crazy as to believe the government- the same people that to this day conduct experiments on unwitting humans- have solely your best interests at heart", again, your comparisons are off the wall crazy. Why would I believe that because an entity did some things wrong that all things they did would be wrong? Do you still eat and shop at a grocery store although there has been food poisonings and even deaths due to bad food in said stores? Sure, one should have a healthy distrust of government, as you say. But that does not mean I do or should distrust government completely. How illogical would that be? It does seem to be the mindset of the alt-right in America, but I do try to think a bit more clearly than they do with their 'all or nothing' approach to most everything.

That is quite the Twitter feed I was hoping these crazies were mainly confined to the U.S. border, but I see that's not the case.

This thread has gone off the rails. @Arielle Popstar It's simply unconscionable that you live in a retirement community to take care of your mother, and you put her and all the other residents in the community in danger via your vaccine paranoia!

And the problem with you is that you like to view all businesses as being on the same level where in reality many small businesses barely survive and most actually will go out of business within 5 years and less if you had your way. Government favours the big businesses whereas the small ones get shafted throwing small entrepreneurs to the dogs where they are in a worse position then those poor you claim to be standing up for. The pandemic lockdowns really bore that out. How does this apply to, say, the more recent regulations we now have which require the listing of ingredients such as peanuts, which kill some allergic children? Are we supposed to allow the small business to kill children because their business might be more likely to fail? There are 31.7 million small businesses in the United States. This number accounts for over 99% of all firms operating in America, so don't really get where you're coming from with the distinction between small and big businesses.