Personally I’m not sure the gate keeping you’re observing is all that much of an issue. I think it’s useful to remember many vegans are also public advocates for veganism. It’s important to them that people generally know what they mean when they advocate for veganism.

However, the definition of all words are always in flux. It’s not uncommon to see people call themselves vegan when a more apt description of their lifestyle would be plant based, flexitarian, vegetarian, etc. As such, I think edge cases like your friend take on an outsized importance that goes beyond the morality of your friend eating honey.

Basically, the goal may not be the social exclusion of your friend which is what I think is usually the problematic aspect of gatekeeping.

China has plenty of right wingers and social conservatives living there. They just can’t organize for their beliefs outside of the existing political structures.

“I trust the United States government and so should you!” -Alphane Moon

How’s that relevant? Do you have counter evidence for any of the points I made or are you just desperately trying to prove you’re not a dupe?

I do check out RFE/RL and its sister outlets from time to time. It’s pretty obvious that their agenda aligns 1 for 1 with American foreign policy objectives. To be fair though, the US wouldn’t fund RFE/RL if it didn’t effectively dupe people into believing it was an unbiased source.

I think you mean it’s designed to prevent partisan interference. RFE/RL’s purpose is to support US foreign policy which makes it inherently political. It is undeniably a propaganda outlet and therefore comparable in function to RT. You may trust American propaganda over Russian propaganda but that doesn’t mean the former is not propaganda.

What an absurd response. This is akin to saying RT isn’t Russian state propaganda.

The false negative rate is also quite high. It will miss about 1 in 5 women with cancer. The reality is mammography is just not all that powerful as a screening tool. That’s why the criteria for who gets screened and how often has been tailored to try and ensure the benefits outweigh the risks. Although it is an ongoing debate in the medical community to determine just exactly what those criteria should be.

That’s just not generally true. Mammograms are usually only recommended to women over 40. That’s because the rates of breast cancer in women under 40 are low enough that testing them would cause more harm than good thanks in part to the problem of false positives.

It’s a common problem in diagnostics and it’s why mammograms aren’t recommended to women under 40.

Let’s say you have 10,000 patients. 10 have cancer or a precancerous lesion. Your test may be able to identify all 10 of those patients. However, if it has a false positive rate of 5% that’s around 500 patients who will now get biopsies and potentially surgery that they don’t actually need. Those follow up procedures carry their own risks and harms for those 500 patients. In total, that harm may outweigh the benefit of an earlier diagnosis in those 10 patients who have cancer.

Unfortunately AI models like this one often never make it to the clinic. The model could be impressive enough to identify 100% of cases that will develop breast cancer. However if it has a false positive rate of say 5% it’s use may actually create more harm than it intends to prevent.

Well that’s exactly the problem. If people use AI generated images for commercial purposes they may accidentally infringe on someone else’s copyright. Since AI models are a black box there isn’t really a good way to avoid this.

The problem isn’t just publishing though, it’s academia as well. Scientists are incentivized to publish in “prestigious” closed access journals such as Nature. They are led to believe it’s better for their career than publishing in open access journals such as PLOS One. As such, groundbreaking papers often get paywalled. Universities then feel obligated to pay outrageous subscription fees to access them.

Oof I’ve been there. It’s rough having your worldview turned upside down. The lucky thing for you is that you’re not the first one to go through this.

I’d say before you go anywhere, try to understand why you believed in the Democratic Party in the first place. Books like Manufacturing Consent, podcasts like Citations Needed, or outlets like Fair.org can help. I think developing a critical lens for political media is a key step towards building a new understanding of the world.

Beyond that it’s important to understand that politics can’t be limited to how you vote. Change in the US has largely been a direct consequence of mass movements composed of well coordinated organizations. So, if you’re willing to put in real effort to participate and learn, join a member run political organization like DSA. That is if you’re open to democratic socialist political perspectives :P

Most places in the US developed in a similarly shitty way thanks to the logic of American capitalism. That doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t ethnic and cultural diversity.

I believe so. However, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs still are authorized under section 702 of FISA which is another Bush era law.

I think it’s more a reflection of the media people consume. It’s easy for people to forget Bush’s war crimes when he’s been rehabilitated in part to make Trump look like an exceptional threat.

Bush sued to stop a recount in Florida that would have likely led to Gore winning the 2000 presidential election. A conservative Supreme Court majority sided with Bush and stopped the recount. It makes Trump’s whole “STOP THE COUNT!” look amateurish in comparison. Bush actually was able to stop the count and got away with it.

Gore didn’t want Americans to start questioning the legitimacy of our democracy so he conceded. The rally around the flag effect after 9/11 helped quash any further criticisms of how Bush came to office.

I think their administrations likely had equally bad intentions. The incompetence of Trump’s administration just means they acted more erratically. They were also much worse at getting press on their side and worse at covering up their actions.

They offered him up to be tried in a third country and were open to negotiating. That’s still offering him up. The invasion just ensured that the Taliban and even Al Queda had plenty of new recruits. Bin Laden also remained at large for almost another decade. I’d consider it an abject failure if it wasn’t clear that the Bush administration didn’t really give a damn about their stated objectives.

Instead they just wanted to extend the US’s military influence into Central Asia and make a quick buck of military contracts in the process.