I think it’s fine for kids younger than teenagers. Maybe around 8 and up. By the time they are teenagers, most kids are watching anything and everything, included R-rated movies.
I wonder how I would have turned out if more sheltered growing up. I think I was around 7 when i watched Childs play and Nightmare on Elm Street. Then here you are saying some flames killing a fake looking big rat might be too scary for kids.
I just heard an interesting fan theory, that the scene with Artax and the swamp represents being unable to help a friend or family member through depression. That for the friend it can be perplexing (move or you’ll die!), but it’s so hard to do anything for a depressed person in a slump.
My husband has a close friend who’s currently going through a rough patch. We know our Artax will pull through, but it’s going to be hard going for a while. Meanwhile my husband is trying to at least keep in touch.
It’s all you can do sometimes. When the darkness sets in for me I can’t recognize the light. I’m starting to break out of it somewhat, but there’s a lot of self hate still etched in. It does kind of improve once you’re on the other side.
I watched all that stuff as a kid too, I remember having nightmares for weeks over Children of the Corn. I want to avoid that with my kid and let her choose when to watch that stuff.
Oh, I chose to watch it all. It’s just that my parents allowed it. Lol
Oddly enough, the only thing that I ever remember getting nightmares about was an alien abduction movie called “fire in the Sky” that said it was based on a true story. That one kept me up at night.
I mean, “marshmallow” has a more interesting derivation than most of the other words I’ve seen so far.
Althaea officinalis, the marsh mallow or marshmallow, is a species of flowering plant indigenous to Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, which is used in herbalism and as an ornamental plant. A confection made from the root since ancient Egyptian times evolved into today’s marshmallow treat.
I find this really interesting especially considered I never gave much thought to how they were produced. I guess I assumed they were just sugar and some other common ingredients.
I don’t think modern marshmellows contain any marsh mellow. They are usually just water, sugar and gelatine. They are easy to make at home, fun project if you have kids
(Also, when are teachers supposed to do things like grade work, or kids to have extracurricular activities, 9-5 is draining, add in music or sports and there’s nothing left)
This was my first thought. Teachers definitely need time to assess outside of class time. I would think that assessment or grading would happen while they aren’t teaching. There should be a system where teachers grade outside of teaching time or during “homework/study hall” time. You would teach math for 6 hours and grade math for 2 or some breakdown that makes sense. I don’t want to make teachers work anymore than they already do. The current system doesn’t seem to respect them either way.
Who do you propose else does it? Teachers know their students and can learn from tests etc and help them do better. additionally to the original argument, it’s not just grading that teachers have to do as well, also lesson/course planning, setup for lessons (eg slideshow/lab/printing). There’s just a lot for teachers to do outside of the classroom.
Well most universities have TAs that either just do all grading, assist with grading, or help with lesson plans and it seems to work okay.
In an ideal system, there isn’t a reason that grade school teacher couldn’t have a TA that is also present in the class and familiar with the students.
Well you would have to hire someone to do that, and it’s my understanding that teachers are mostly underpaid and understaffed, so to at a minimum double the number of teachers would be excessively costly, to the point where even imagining it is laughable.
Not that I don’t like the idea, it’s just not feasible.
This whole discussion is complete fantasy to begin with since changing the fundamental scheduling of the public education system would require a complete overhaul anyway.
Well, you assess knowledge by using simplified electronic quizzes to take the busy work out of it, then dive into the “show your work” for those students who are struggling. And students who have mastered the material can work with those who are struggling and serve as a force multiplier. Tutoring others makes them even better students, and those tutored will have more 1:1 time than they could possibly get with a teacher.
Khan Academy has been working with schools in the Bay Area for more than a decade and the results are pretty astounding. Salman Khan’s TED Talk in 2011 is an exciting glimpse of the possible, and by all accounts those who use Khan Academy software and methods are reaping the benefits.
Can you tell me more about how Khan Academy have worked with schools in the Bay Area? I just finished uni and now have my teaching degree. I work in Sweden but I would like to read more about this.
Just because students are at school does not mean they are in a typical class. Our school has athletics right after classes. We got out about 5. Just make other options, perhaps skills, clubs, study hall, etc.
It isn't even just grading work. In my high school classroom I have students ranging from a second grade reading level to post grad. Every reading, worksheet, science lab, project needs to have accommodations and modifications written in to encompass that. That takes time.
Or creating a new lesson. Making a new lesson for a 50 minute period takes at least an hour.
Clearly you and I participated in very different school experiences. In highschool, I got on my bus each day at 7:30 and got back off the bus at 16:00. If you subtract the 30 minute lunch period, that adds up to almost exactly 8 hours each day.
Factoring in the 2 hours of homework that was regularly assigned, I actually have substantially more free-time as a working 9-5 adult (my school did not have “study hall” time). A young me would have done unspeakable things for a chance at abolishing homework!
“There are rumours that Meta would become “Fediverse compatible”. You could follow people on Instagram from your Mastodon account”
Are there examples of this? Or is this just the fear? This all seems like a knee jerk reaction to something we are already avoiding by being on Lemmy/mastodon. The point of having decentralized instances isn’t popularity. It’s to avoid the corporate bullshit, which is inherently less popular.
If any instance becomes large enough to have an undue influence, which Meta would likely have, then they effectively control the entire ecosystem. At that point, it effectively stops being decentralized (See: The 51% Attack, although this wouldn’t happen at a certain number/ratio). When it becomes convenient to them, they can pull the plug, and destroy the rest of the ecosystem that isn’t theirs.
It’s exactly what happened with XMPP and Google Talk.
Clients, no. We have no way (currently) to individually block an instance, nor would it be effective in preventing this problem. Threads users, as a whole, need to be blocked from the Fediverse, so that Threads is not viewed as a way to interact with Mastodon users.
Our particular instances can defederate from Meta, which would stop certain issues - but not the EEE concerns that are usually brought up. It has to be a widespread block.
Yes, because it was a decentralized messaging protocol, like ActivityPub. The problem in the end was not the 'OG' XMPP Users but the new Google Talk users and how Google treated the protocol. This, theoretically, could happen with 'the fediverse', too.
XMPP was and still is a buggy mess, and the reason Google unlinked it was that while it had a fraction of the legit traffic, it was like 80% of trolling and spam and other crap.
And Google killed xmpp? No, xmpp killed xmpp, if you can kill something that’s already dead.
People started using other networks because they got used to
Messages arriving
Messages being readable by the recipient
Media like images actually being shown properly.
With xmpp messages frequently got lost with no error, different clients having different encryption and encoding settings, different ways to encode and decode media… A complete mess.
People using that as an EEE example are clueless, or stupid.
Also, if meta starts federating, it will eventually stop it for the same reason Google stopped talking with other xmpp servers. Because it’ll be the source of most of the crap, but very little legit content.
If Facebook has over 50% of the users of fediverse on their instance and they decide to cut the rest off because we don’t play nice with them it’s not like we just wither away. The fediverse just splits in half where Facebook apologists are on one side and everyone else on the other. Basically where we are right now.
I’m sure there’s enough people that want nothing to do with Facebook to keep our side of the fediverse active enough to be relevant.
I wouldn’t count on 50/50 split. I imagine it would probably be closer to 90/10 if threads is seen as enjoyable.
A lazy search showed currently there are 6.5 million users in the Fediverse. A similar lazy search told that Threads reportedly had 30 million signups in the first 24 hours.
Even that makes me feel like we’d be in a hidden away corner of the Fediverse just based on sheer size.
Is that necessarily a bad thing though? Two things come to mind:
Do I want the kind of user here that’s willing to sign up for Facebook’s new social platform?
Do I want +100 million users here flooding every interesting discussion with thousands of comments to the point that my reply is immediately going to get lost in the flood of new messages?
I wouldn’t be surprised if even now with our 6.5 million users the quality of discussion here is far greater than it is on Threads with their 30 million users. Obviously too little users is a bad thing but I imagine there can also be too many. Back in my reddit days I much more enjoyed the more slow paced niche subs than the popular ones with 10 million subs. Replying to AskReddit thread with 1000 messages is a complete waste of time. No one is going to read it.
Keep in mind that’s just registered users from what I saw. Not active users. I believe in terms of active users it’s about 2 million. Don’t quote me, that was off memory of reading a different thread.
I quote the lawyers: “it depends.” Are you here for a more personal community? Do you love endless masses of discussion? I’m sure there more questions to go along with this.
For me as well, I never really participated much in Reddit due to the sheer size of most discussions. I do enjoy being able to make a comment that isn’t washed into the void instantly, but I don’t know how much that would actually be affected my Threads. There’s a chance that the majority of Threads folks won’t even bat an eye at the rest of the Fediverse.
What I’m more worried about is the fact that this is a massive, for profit, information harvesting corporation is trying to squeeze themselves into a five times smaller system. Why not start their own thing? They hyped up the Metaverse before, why not build off that?
I conclude that they see a way to maximize profits by setting up here. Be it as innocent as that they hope for more traffic from the Fediverse or something like hoping to snuff out competitors, I don’t trust it. On the same level as I don’t trust them with my data.
Except it doesn't work and no corporation does it any more because it doesn't. Look at the two main examples, internet browsers and email. Both of them remain open platforms with viable foss alternatives because google knows that doing this sort of stuff will get them in trouble with anti-trust suits.
While other browsers technically exist, it is foolish to think that web browsers are a thriving diverse ecosystem right now, when 74% of all web-browsing is done using a Chrome-based browser. With their influence, if Google decided to start forcing changes on how websites function on a technical level, they could absolutely do that with little to stop it;- what are websites going to do, alienate a supermajority of their users?- And that is why people are so worried about things like Threads, because once a single company has supermajority control of a market, they can use that control as a weapon to get what they want.
I say this as an avid Firefox user: Firefox is niche. And the only reason Safari has 20% is because it is integrated with apple products, if it weren't for that, Chrome and Chrome-reskins would effectively be the only option.
They already do. If they want an api for their next web project, they just create it. Sure, first they offer to make it a standard but if others disagree, they just make the api and encourage people to use it. This is IE all over again.
I’m curious how many other tools have been silently killed like that or destroyed that we’ll never know about.
I’m still shocked about the mastodon integration… “free” services make users the product so how does allowing anyone without an account to interact with your platform make sense monetarily if you don’t have some nefarious long game in mind.
I could see that it would cause a problem if half the content came from one instance and then that instance de-federated.
People might move to that instance to join the communities that they were previously following which could reduce the content on other instances as they would probably only use one main account.
Here’s another maybe: It might be a good if all of these content consumers moved on to another server. If they don’t understand/appreciate the point of the metaverse, what are they contributing?
In this scenario it doesn’t matter wether they understand the point or not. The communities that they used to follow and contribute to aren’t available to them anymore so they create a new account that can access them.
They can keep both accounts if they want to but they might not want to do that.
Instances had problems with just people signing-up. Imagine Meta’s server farms federate. Everything is smooth and bug free on Threads. “Sign up on Threads” because it’s a convenient and smooth experience. Imagine the smaller instances loosing users. Now when Threads has lots of users they will decide to stop federating. They will take all their user with them.
Meta does not want to "consume the fediverse" , it's not worth it. Threads has been up for a day and it already has 10x the number of active users than mastodon. Mastodon and the fediverse as it currently stands, is a blip compared to instagram and Twitter. They're doing activitypub so they can claim there's a free market and avoid any anti-trust litigation for owning the three largest social media platforms. If that means a relatively small number of people stay on mastodon instead of threads that's a small price to pay.
A 1 foot tall stack holds 1,647,360 bits of data if all 80 columns are used. If only 72 columns are used for data then it’s 1,482,624 bits of data and the remaining columns can be used to number each card so they can be put back in order after the stack is dropped.
IBM standard cards are one 48th of a barleycorn thick. I believe IBM measured from the 1932 Iowa Reference Barleycorn, now kept in the vault inside Mt Rushmore.
Hi! Mental health social worker here- it’s for the patient’s safety, safety of other patients, and worker safety. Many people coming in are there because they’re at risk of harming themselves. Staff have to make sure (1) nothing that could possibly be used as as a weapon on themselves or others is identified and removed and (2) a thorough status of the patients needs documented when they come in. Oftentimes, people come in with injuries or conditions they either don’t mention or don’t realize are issues. If someone has that on their body and it’s not documented at intake then it could later be used as saying they received an injury while staying at the hospital. Many people coming in are depressed but are without a typical sense of reality and just need a safe place to be temporarily but some people coming in are having full psychotic episodes where they’re not in the same reality and information is misconstrued, they’re experiencing paranoia and making statements that people are hurting them, etc. I know that the process of everything must be really difficult especially when you’re there because you’re already going through something difficult but it’s kind of the only way to ensure everyone is safe. Unfortunately, staff can’t go strictly off what someone says or does to determine what intake process they have since there’s a large amount of people coming in who say one thing but you quickly find out a very different thing is going on with them. Hope all the best for you! I don’t work directly in our inpatient hospital but adjacent/work on processing their assessments for the state so still somewhat familiar and I worked in a residential setting with minors previously. If you hear someone in social work state that “anything can become a weapon,” they’re not kidding. I’ve had so many innocuous things become weapons in my time.
Adding that the scrubs part is specific to that location as not all hospitals follow that. Ours allows clothes from home if they meet certain requirements (and are thoroughly checked first). The only time scrubs would be used is if someone didn’t have enough clothes or if they came in like on a hold as you mentioned and nothing was available that was deemed safe. I know there are some places that just use the same outfits for everyone regardless. Our location also doesn’t do mandatory outside time or anything like that. Time spent in different groups, community areas, and outside are all just really encouraged. If someone is avoiding that thing then they process it with a psychiatrist as it’s usually due to something like depressive symptoms getting in the way and we want to address that.
I work with psych patients. It’s mostly to screen if they need to be in/out patient, new prescription, or whatever they need. Our hospital mostly gets people that have detention orders (judge orders them to get help at the facility) which means they can’t leave until they’ve been evaluated by a therapist and a plan to help them is setup. Sometimes it’s people that either chose to stop taking the meds for whatever reason or ran out of their prescription and can’t afford to get more and get brought in for their behavior. There’s patients that come in every 4 or 5 months because their prescriptions only last 90 days.
The scrubs allow patients to have clean clothes that we know don’t have anything they can use to hurt themselves or others. Some patients haven’t slept, eaten, showered in days. Giving them a shower, clean clothes, and food helps a lot.
I had a patient that while anxious and going through somethings, was talking to me, venting, occasional jokes, etc. Calm and polite the whole time. Out of nowhere, they ran towards another patients room, but only got half a meter in. They squared up like they were going to fight me, but immediately went back into their room after I asked them to. Once in the room they starting kicking the bed trying to break off a piece of rail.
By that time security, RN, and 2 other staff members were there to witness the patient wrap a blanket around their neck and try to choke themselves. All this within about 90 seconds. From calm to actively suicidal. I got yelled at for allowing the patient to enter another patients room.
There are patients that scream, threaten to kill you, and are overly aggressive and then break down crying after you tell them to stop yelling.
I’m sorry OP had a horrible experience and mental health doesn’t get appropriate funding. I’d say 95% of ppl are good patients, but the rules are for the 5% that aren’t and we can’t know which ones are gonna be the 5%.
I guess I get what you mean but it was still humiliating to strip naked for strangers and open up if you get my meaning. I still feel humiliated by it.
If you want to hurt yourself, it’s their duty to make it as difficult as possible for you to do a very thorough job of it. Unfortunately, it’s a long line of patients before you, who came up with very creative ways to bring in weapons, that made the staff put you through that humiliating experience. They have seen too many deaths, and suffered injuries themselves.
And remember, if someone jumps a woman on the street and beats the shit out of her or cuts her open, she hopefully gets some kind of support. But if she’s a nurse on the job, her supervisor will react with “what was your failure that caused this to happen?” They can’t really control what goes on in their patients’ heads, so they control the things they can.
I thought I had bodily autonomy? I can get an abortion if I want, not sure why I can’t blow my brains out if I want to under the same principle. Seems a weird reason to incarcerate someone.
And again, I never hurt anyone there or anywhere, I’m not a violent person. Isn’t that what matters, only if you want to hurt others?
If you want to blow your brains out, it’s unfair of you to do it where it will hurt the careers and reputations of others, and traumatize them with the knowledge they failed to help you survive. Not to mention cleaning up the mess you leave behind.
Also, the violent people who do want to harm others are often very good at lying and pretending to be like you. I believe you, but the staff can’t afford to take your word for it. Even if an individual believes you, they would be penalized for not following the protocols, which were written in the blood of those who believed the wrong person.
By the way, I’m glad you live in a place where you can get an abortion. That’s not a given anymore. And I’m sorry you feel so cruel towards yourself. I hope you can become able to be kinder to yourself.
I won’t actually blow my brains out, I plan to go to Oregon or Washington and ask a doctor to euthanize me. Clean, effective, painless. Satisfies everyone. Anyway, I still don’t think it justifies humiliating me, and I don’t just mean the strip search. I got restrained a number of times and dragged into isolation for not following the rules and for an escape attempt.
No, it’s about self harm and suicide as well. Being suicidal is a symptom of depression, not a free choice. In most (all?) countries psychiatric wards are oblieged to protect you from suicide.
It's not just you that they're worried could get stabbed, it could be anyone.
I took some psych courses in University and one of my profs was full of anecdotes about patients he'd cared for, there were people who were perfectly nice and calm and then in a split second something would go unpredictably wrong and they'd be savagely attacking whoever they could get their hands on.
And then a moment later they'd be beside themselves with dismay over having "lost it", apologizing sincerely and profusely. He said it was really hard keeping on your toes in there. He permanently lost his hearing in one ear when one of his patients slapped him out of the blue one time, to both of their surprise. If anything remotely like a weapon was easily accessible it could go very badly.
I'm sorry your experience was unpleasant, and of course I can't remotely speak to it myself - it was your experience, not mine. But it could be that the stuff that was done was for everyone's protection.
I think you may have missed a significant chunk of what I wrote. The prof told me that they couldn't know who was going to try to hurt others. Often the patients themselves didn't know whether they were going to hurt others.
You may not be a nutcase, but you’re definitely lacking understanding for others. How is anyone supposed to know you’re not a nutcase? Only you are able to know that. It’s simply impossible for anyone else except if they knew you for many years.
They have, but the exact same reason applies. How does anyone know someone is wrongly committed, except for the person themselves? It’s hard and not possible without a decent time investment. Before that time is invested though, safety procedures have to be followed.
I’m not, or I try to not be, I promise. But you’ve just threatened to hurt the staff of these facilities. I know that unfortunately you can’t or don’t want to understand. But you’ve now got feelings of vengeance that don’t seem to be entirely justified from an outsider’s perspective. From your own perspective, they are completely justified. This discrepancy is causing the issues.
That's because, despite all of the excuses this person has made for themselves, the point is to humiliate you. They want to make sure you know your place, that they are in charge, and that standing up for yourself is futile.
Patients attack you cause your system treats them like convicts. Treat them like a human and they will react way better
Imagine having to explain such an obvious fact of life to someone who claims to work in mental health, and what that means for the people they're in charge of "helping".. 🤯
Sorry, but I don’t buy this. Many, many years ago I had a loved one in one of these prison-like institutions - I fought hard to get her out of there and into a better place.
Miraculously, her (supposed) “violent tendencies” disappeared the moment we got her out of the prison-like place and into one where she wasn’t treated like a subhuman.
No, no, you see, they must treat patients like subhuman, otherwise how will they know their place?? (/s but only just, since that's exactly how many people running and working in these hell holes actually see the world).
I would literally rather die than go to one of your prisons. I have clinical depression, all my friends know that trying to involuntarily hold me would not end well. Once was enough.
Our schools are generally purposefully underfunded and hardly anyone any Conservative with any real power gives two shits, because indoctrination is more important than education to Conservatives.
There, now that’s a much more correct statement rather than that both-sides bullcrap.
Classic, I’m guilty of this. The best part about cycling in my small city is squeezing into the gaps and not waiting around in the wind for the lights to cycle.
I see it as my reward for biking instead of driving to be both a pedestrian when I want (go through red lights when traffic is clear on safe streets) and a car when I want (take a lane to get around a delivery truck)
When you are riding in and around drivers in 2 ton machines because your city doesn’t have proper bike infrastructure, you take every single opportunity to avoid them. Call me a “bad cyclist” but I’m going to prioritize my safety over a law or someone’s bad driving any day.
That’s not “for absolutely no reason”. Some cyclists make a bad name for the rest.
Edit: Oh my goodness, you guys. I’m not saying hate for cyclists is justified, that I hate all cyclists, or that “all cyclists do x”. Some cyclists ride like they have a death wish. So do some drivers. Anyone, regardless of their vehicle, who is willing to put their life in my hands is someone I want to stay far the fuck away from.
I'm sure there are many reasons to hate on a cyclist, (not that I personally believe this, but) such as when they block a single lane road slowing traffic to a crawl and placing the responsibility of possibly accidentally killing a cyclist in the motorist's hands, though you could argue that's more about the fact that the roads don't have dedicated bike lanes, and that's not the cyclist's fault, but it is still a reason, not that that reason is justified, I like cyclists!
For thousands of years, people walked on roads. That’s what they were for. They were also for horses, donkeys, and carts, but humans were a big part of it. And none of those four things really goes faster than a bike. Cars are new. Taking people and horses off roads is new. Being able to drive the speed limit is a new, temporary condition, and it can be taken away at any time. Blaming this on cyclists is a reaction based on a misunderstanding of what roads are for. Personally, I support legislature to let people walk on the road however they like again.
Truth. Furthermore, accidents involving a bike and a car have mostly happened because of a lack of infrastructure and options for safe travel on bikes. Public residential streets, for example, are for all modes of transportation, not just cars. Car brains are hysterical and don’t like that, and my life has been threatened many times while riding my bike on residential streets. I even had an older woman match my speed, roll down her window, and say “Next time I see you I’m running you over.” Cyclists do absolutely nothing to deserve this, and even if they’re holding up traffic, it’s no excuse for homicide.
Downvoted for saying the truth. Most cyclist I met here are absolutely jerks, they drive not even on the sidelines - no, they fucking drive in the mid of the road and if you try to surpass they move to the left.
For some it’s not their fault they are a bit of a nuisance obviously (those who cycle near the sidewalks, who signal were they are going etc), the cyclist infastructure is non existent here
Bike lanes are car infrastructure. We cyclists are perfectly within our rights to cycle in the middle of the lane at a speed comfortable for us. And it’s safer for us to do that than hug the shoulder and risk getting clipped by an impatient driver. A bike lane gets us out of your way so you can drive the speed limit. It’s for your benefit.
The same hatred from the same haters for public transport too: if everyone else is in public transport there more room for you on the road.
It’s a bizarrely prevalent attitude from a bizarrely large portion of car users.
We had some nice mini-traffic island things separating a cycleway on a road, drivers kept hitting them and damaging their cars. They complained and the council removed them despite it being obvious to anyone that they were doing extremely what they were supposed to do: stopping those idiots from hitting actual cyclists!
I thought this as well but German drivers will dangerously swerve into oncoming traffic to overtake me sometimes when I block a lane. Even if there is a red stop light 50m down the road.
Well, it’s less of them, and at least they’re risking their own lives too. If there’s an accident I want the person responsible coming with me to the hospital. That might not be rational, but it’s how I feel.
Lol it’s not rational but I know how you feel. Sometimes I daydream somebody hits me and wrecks my bike and then feels so bad that they give me loads of money in hopes of me not suing them, and then I use that to buy a better bike. And then I wonder wtf is going wrong in my brain
There’s really no winning as a cyclist when most people are in cars. If you stop at all stop signs, and obey they right-of-way, people will yell at you and/or try to wave you through ahead of your turn dangerously. If you do an Idaho stop (which is the safest way to approach a stop, whether it’s legal or not), people will honk and yell at you and possibly try to run you off the road.
I used to commute by bike a lot during rush hour. If there was a lineup of cars waiting at a red-light, and I just waited in line, people in cars behind me would honk at me as if me preventing them from being one cars-length further ahead in line would somehow affect them. If I filtered forward, like I should, people would actually edge their cars over to try and block me.
I think for the most part, it’s misplaced anger from drivers who don’t want to face the fact that they are the source of danger on roads. The worst bicycle collision is way less severe than a car crash. They also really hate when bicyclists can get anywhere faster than them, which is often the case because it shows them just how much time they waste being traffic.
If it were codified like this as law everywhere, people would accept it better. The rule breaking is what pisses a lot of people off. It would be much more predictable and safer too.
Yeah, the government needs to get behind it (and tell people about it). I’ve come up to stop signs before, and been nearly run over from behind by cars that didn’t expect me to stop.
The evidence provided by Israel alleging that roughly a dozen UNRWA staffers participated in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught is “highly credible,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday, as media outlets published additional details on the implicated employees, including photos from an Israeli dossier. “We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible,” Blinken said during a press conference
I used to have faith that bad people will eventually pay for their crimes. That the weight of their sins will crush them eventually. But these past decades have taught me that the new response to crushing weight of sin is to simply get a stronger spine.
But journalists from Sky News reviewed the so-called dossier and reported “The Israeli intelligence documents make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA.”
Britain’s Channel 4 also obtained the document and determined it “provides no evidence to support its explosive new claim that UNRWA staff were involved with terror attacks on Israel.” The Financial Times, which also reviewed the materials, reported there were specific allegations of direct participation in the October 7 attacks against four Palestinians employed by UNRWA, not 12 as originally asserted.
This was a transparent attempt by Israel to distract from the rulings in the ICJ genocide case and to obliterate a U.N. agency that Israel has long viewed as an impediment to its goal of denying Palestinians the right to return to the homes and territory from which Israel expelled them
The “evidence” was already leaked and contained no proof whatsoever. Waiting must be convenient. Are we going to see the Hamas base under the hospital soon?
And it turned out israel lied almost every single time about almost everything.
But there is a problem with the gut-wrenching narratives that have bolstered the underlying justification for the slaughter of Gaza: They are either complete fabrications or have not been substantiated with a shred of evidence. Many have been thoroughly disproven by major Israeli media outlets.
Reporters on the closely escorted trip entered a shaft next to a school on the periphery of the U.N. compound, descending to the concrete-lined tunnel. Twenty minutes of walking through the stifling hot, narrow and occasionally winding passage brought them underneath UNRWA Headquarters, an army lieutenant-colonel leading the tour said.
So, yeah. I think I’ll wait for the investigation to conclude.
Not only that, but there’s an entire line of presidential succession. It’s part of a broader concept of ‘continuity of government’. Basically, it ensures that there’s always someone formally in charge. You could vaporize half the country including every senior official and there’d still be a legit, sworn in president in a few hours.
There’s basically contingencies upon contingencies. One interesting book on the topic is ‘Raven Rock’ by Garrett M. graff.
The plotline of the show Designated Survivor. Follows Kiefer Southerland as a Sec of HUD that has to take over following a terrorist attack. He basically carries the show, it’s pretty good.
Also of Battlestar Galactica, the documentary about our past, where the secretary of education is made president, but has cancer and survives for all of the seasons.
The ‘new’ Battlestar Galactica is literally set in our past; 150.000 years ago. The characters eventually settle on a new planet that they also call Earth. From the show’s perspective, we are their descendants.
It was nonsense from the start. Grusch had no evidence, not so much as a blurry photo or shaky video. All he had was what someone told him. So someone supposedly told him that not only did the U.S. have multiple crashed UFOs and bodies, but that one of them crashed in Mussolini’s Italy and the Pope helped the U.S. smuggle it out.
And people ate that shit up. And they’re still saying the big revelation is right around the corner, as it has been my entire life.
If it was nonsense, why did the Inspector General find his allegations “credible and urgent”, and forwarded them to Congress, where Grusch and other whistleblowers deposed under oath? And why have several Congressional committees announced that public hearings will be held in the upcoming months?
Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that just because evidence has not been made available to us it means there is none. We don’t get to learn the most highly classified weaponry in the Pentagon, why would non-human technology be released any more widely? If you want more information to be made public, go write a letter to your elected officials telling them this matters to you.
> you need to touch grass, the text you sent just has the same allegations, nothing new nothing concrete
The details are classified. You and I don’t get to see them. The people who do get to see the classified evidence, like some of the congresspeople I mentioned, take it seriously. The whistleblowers have allegedly provided Congress with the names of the people in charge of the reverse-engineering projects and the locations of the materials.
Think again about that: the elected representatives with the best access to the most sensitive information take it seriously.
What alternative explanation do you have for multiple congresspeople from both sides of the aisle being willing to investigate these claims and writing new laws to encourage more whistleblowers to come out?
> why have i never heard of flying saucers in africa?
How much news do you get from Africa, generally? You won’t know things when you don’t look for them.
The fact that Trump never revealed anything about Aliens is all the proof you need. He would never have been able to shut it about it if there was even a grain of truth to it
What makes you think that the alleged programs that have been supposedly kept secret from the Congress for decades were revealed to Trump? It stands to reason that if such programs existed, they would have been hidden from him as well.
But that is precisely the central allegation of the whistleblowers that we are discussing: that certain research programs have been kept hidden from the Congress. And that is why the Congress has already passed bills to encourage whistleblowers to come out and report what they know specifically about UFOs.
Why did they write such specific legislation? Do you think it may be because they already knew about some whistleblowers that wanted to speak?
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; however, there is none.
congresspeople taking it seriously doesn’t mean much. they also take climate denial seriously. they took anti vaccines seriously. they’re just laywers, by and large. they don’t actually know much of anything about science or the probability of aliens visiting or whatever.
as a (former) astronomer, let me tell you that even if there does exist life in the universe outside of our own, even if these lifeforms travel these vast distances fast (somehow, the physics isn’t really clear), even if these supposed spacecraft are manned, the probability of anything visiting earth is infinitesimally small. the universe is just too big and empty. think about it, space has on average a single hydrogen atom per cubic meter. on earth an equivalent volume of air, let’s say, holds 10^25 atoms. and throughout billions of lightyears of this dark, empty vacuum you stumble upon…us? it just doesn’t make any sense when you think about it. sure, the idea of aliens visiting is cool but at the end of the day, it aint happenin
I’m with you that there is no publicly available proof of non-human intelligence. And I agree that the testimony of congresspeople isn’t exactly the best way to ascertain whether something is true.
But I’m not claiming that non-human intelligences are here, I’m merely answering the question posted by the OP: the allegations made by Grusch and other whistleblowers are being investigated by Congress, and that they have shared with Congress testable evidence that has not been made public. That includes program names, names of the people in charge of those programs and the location of some of those retrieved craft.
Everything else is our personal opinion, strongly as we may feel about it. I personally think it is worth investigating these allegations. If the witnesses have lied to Congress under oath, they need to suffer the consequences. But if they haven’t… Well.
I personally think it is worth investigating these allegations
And you hit the nail on the head about why an elected representative won’t say one way or the other unless it’s objectively proven or shown to be false - anything else doesn’t need a response. Further any rep who does claim the matter to have been solved, one way or the other, only opens themselves up to criticism for something they probably didn’t get into politics for in the first place.
When scientists and experts (plural) start getting involved then it’s interesting however, imo, your focus on government being the ultimate truth-finder is flawed
Look at this post: respectful comments answering the question and offering objectively verifiable data are downvoted to hell, while comments laughing at the whole subject in a few words are heavily upvoted. The stigma is massive, and yet the subject continues to get traction in both parties in the US Congress, with several bills having passed and further in the pipeline. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that there are some things that we the public don’t know about it.
your focus on government being the ultimate truth-finder is flawed
Oh, no. What I believe is that certain institutions within our governments are the ultimate truth-keepers, because they have the means to be. Look for example at how little the public is allowed to know about national defense (e.g. the design and capabilities of submarines).
If the elected Congress is able to rat out these alleged secret programs and brings them back under the standard Congressional oversight, then at least you have the possibility of some information being made public.
I don’t know about you, but if there is indeed a non-human intelligence occasionally visiting Earth, I would like to know, even if details about e.g. their technology aren’t made public.
And if all there is to it is some high-ranking officials making stories up and lying to Congress, I also would want them to be put behind bars for wasting the time of our elected representatives.
Yes dude (or dudette) exactly what I’m saying is that it can’t be proven one way or the other until “you have the possibility of some information being made public”.
I am in complete agreement with you. At the same time, information will not be made public unless the public demands it. As long as the public remains docile and continues to laugh at everybody who suggests there may be something here, the public will be kept ignorant.
Because every time the US elite needs to distract the crazies they whip out the UFO circuses and the rubes lap that shit up. Honestly it’s getting embarrassing for all parties involved.
You wanna know why aliens don’t visit this planet?
** Gestures broadly in the direction of entire planet ***
UFO sightings are definitively not a USA only phenomenon.
Look into the Varginha case. TLDR: a UFO landed in Varginha, Brazil and a creature was reportedly spotted. The town’s citizens report that US officials came in and cleaned up, then threatened the locals to keep them quiet. There is an entire documentary on the case called “Moment of Contact” shot and directed by James Fox.
“Credible and urgent” referred to his fear of reprisals after claiming whistle blower status. The Inspector General rightly considers this completely isolated from the legitimacy of the leaked information itself.
My understanding is that it referred to his allegations that some programs are being funded without the necessary Congressional oversight.
Either way, the matter of fact is that Congress is addressing these concerns regarding oversight, not the reprisals suffered by this particular person. See the recently proposed regulation by Gallagher.
I think only mod specific bots were immune. As idiotic as Reddit has been, it might still be running, but, how will it remind those of us that erased all comments and then deleted our accounts? I have a feeling that wasn’t an official bot, so it was probably programed correctly so it won’t spam them with replys to deleted accounts 😢
Oh shit no way, I didn’t know that? Is that the case for most of the random reddit bots? For some reason hearing that the RemindMe bot is dead as well makes me extra sad 😥
Don’t question it, just enjoy it. You are now part of the greater Lemmy world. In five years you can break out the ‘I have been on Lemmy since the bean incident’ and all the originals will sound off with you while the new lemmings won’t get the inside joke.
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