We gotta do something about the way dog owners behave. No other pet owner is just bringin the pet wherever the fuck they go all the time but for some reason with dog owners they think its fine if they bring their dog to the gym and taco bell and whatever. And you invite a dog owner to your house where youve got your own pets youve got your dog and your cats and whatever it is you have and this dog owner shows up at your door like “oh i brought my dog i hope thats okay hes so sweet youll love him” and it is always the most untrained poorly behaved agressive animal that has ever lived. And we all have to pretend like its acceptable behaviour well im sick of it
Okay, this might be an unpopular opinion, but if you want to combat the spread of misinformation then you have to let go of any belief that people not talking about an issue means that they don’t care. The only way to reduce the spread of misinformation and disinformation is to research claims before you spread them, and there is so much information constantly being thrown at people through social media and the 24 hour news cycle that it’s impossible to fact check every claim. The same can be said about AI generated images, if you look closely then you can notice certain tells that something is AI generated but no one really has the time to analyze every single image that crosses their path.
If we expect people to talk about and spread information on every social/political/economic issue that occurs then the result will be that people will spread misinformation/disinformation because they will not have the time or mental capacity to research every single thing that happens on Earth just to make sure that they aren’t being fed incorrect information.
Only researching claims that set off a red flag or seem incorrect doesn’t actually do much to prevent misinformation, because there are plenty of claims that will seem correct on the surface or that will align with your view of the world that you won’t think to research. You have to research every claim if you want to avoid misinformation, and you can’t research every claim made by someone online.
The only solution is to accept that some people aren’t going to talk about certain issues, not because they don’t care, but because they have chosen to focus on other issues for the time being and don’t want to talk about an issue that they don’t know much about. And we really need to stop treating that like a bad thing. If you spread yourself too thin then you’re not going to accomplish anything. It’s actually good to have people devoting themselves to learning about and fighting a specific issue, that’s how progress is made.
Footage emerged from Gazan journalist Nooh Al-Shagboni of the heroes of the Civil Defense rescuing a number of children, women, and youth from under the rubble of a home bombed by the IOF in Gaza.
A 37-day-old baby named Salam (peace), born during the first days of the war amidst the bombing, was rescued after a four-hour-long operation, reborn from under the rubble after all thought she had been martyred.
Salam was the firstborn child of her mother and father, who both ascended to martyrdom as a result of the bombing.
UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance company in the US, is allegedly using a deeply flawed AI algorithm to override doctors’ judgments and wrongfully deny critical health coverage to elderly patients. This has resulted in patients being kicked out of rehabilitation programs and care facilities far too early, forcing them to drain their life savings to obtain needed care that should be covered under their government-funded Medicare Advantage Plan.
It’s not just flawed, it’s flawed in UnitedHealthcare’s favor.
That’s not a flaw… that’s fraud.
I work in healthcare, and let me tell you, NO ONE denies care as much, as often or as blatantly badly as UHC. Not a one. It’s known in the industry to be one of the worst insurance carriers around. DO NOT sign up for UHC this or any other open enrollment period. (I work in rehab and the things they deny are basic and hugely important to quality of life)
I’m reblogging this again because I realized that I didn’t include something important. If you have a plan with UHC (or any carrier, honestly) and you are denied something that you and your care team believe you need, ask your doctor to ask for a “peer to peer” review. This is a process in which the doctor speaks to another doctor in the company. It cannot be handled by AI and cannot be just denied without review by an actual doctor.
So I want to say something here that’s worth mentioning:
The internet as we know it today is completely un-navigatable without an adblocker of some form. It’s likewise completely unsafe. While an adblocker won’t prevent user-end actions that lead to viral compromise, the situation is so fucking dire that even the fucking feds recommend you use an adblocker.
I was/still am an IT professional for longer than some of you reading this have been alive. Putting an Adblocker on a clients computer, regardless of if it’s consumer grade or corporate, is the first thing I do. Most ad blockers allow you to white list websites in order to avoid having to deal with shit like what Youtube is doing.
Youtube is preying upon consumer ignorance of white listing in an effort to generate revenue via Youtube Premium. It’s fucking dumb as hell, and it’s going to directly lead to another wave of compromised systems across the board.
Do not be misinformed. Ad blockers absolutely are a necessary part of the modern internet usage. Please read the wiki on your adblocker of choice (I recommend Ublock Origin) and read up on whitelisting. Don’t fall for this fucking scam Youtube is pulling, and most certainly don’t stop using your Ad Blocker.
I actually don’t think that Premium is the goal here—I think the goal is to get as much user data as possible regardless of whether or not they’re paying customers. I have a very good reason for believing this.
See, I have Premium, and I have for like four years. I am exactly what you would assume they want all users of the platform to be. I pay monthly for access to a handful of features that I find useful, and they don’t serve me ads at all.
I still make sure to block all tracking cookies whenever possible, because I’m not using the Internet strictly for YouTube, and I’m not in the business of allowing myself to be tracked all across the web when I can avoid it.
A couple weeks ago, YouTube stopped working for me entirely. After having it running in the background more or less all day while I was drawing, it suddenly stopped loading anything but the skeleton.css stylesheet, which looks like this:
Nothing here is clickable, it’s literally just a bunch of static graphical elements. I couldn’t access my account, settings, anything. I was completely locked out of the service.
I did some digging, and found out that this is one of the things that happens when the anti-adblock protocol catches up to uBlock Origin and shuts down people who refuse to remove that protection. But…I have Premium. The platform doesn’t serve me ads at all. There is absolutely no reason for them to block my access to the platform.
Still, I tried turning uBlock Origin off, and it didn’t change anything. Weird.
Eventually I got ahold of someone in tech support, and I was told to do the following:
Stop using Firefox, reinstall Chrome, and only use that to access YouTube. This is because that is apparently the only browser that is “truly compatible” with the platform, and if I’m using another one then they can’t promise that it will work. (This is a lie, and after a half hour of back and forth with the agent she admitted it, linking me to a page showing all compatible browsers, among which Firefox is prominently listed.)
Completely uninstall any adblockers I have on any browser that I use, because having them at all could cause YouTube to block my access. I was not told to whitelist YouTube, I was told to completely uninstall the extensions on any and all browsers, and then try to access the platform again. This kind of explains the fact that turning UBO off didn’t work—the implication here is that my account was flagged as having an adblocker active, even on an alternative browser, and the account itself would be blocked until they were removed.
I was told that unless I completed both of these steps—and these were the first troubleshooting steps offered to me, as a note—then we wouldn’t be able to move forward with the tech support process. Literally, if I did not do these things, the agent would not even attempt to provide any more help. I basically told her that was unacceptable, and we went back and forth for a while longer. She told me that adblockers are not a form of Internet security, so removing mine would not leave me vulnerable to anything, and told me to install Chrome an additional four times. I told her that I was not going to install Chrome. She told me that we couldn’t move forward unless I carried out every step she instructed me to do in order to fix the problem.
I told her that I was sorry if I seemed nasty, but it seemed like she had no intentions of actually offering any help and was just following a script telling her to make me install Chrome—and that she needed a better script. Her response was “I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you,” and that ended the conversation.
Again, one more reminder, I have Premium. I am not being served ads at all. That didn’t matter, I was still instructed to uninstall those extensions outright, and refused assistance or access to a platform I pay for unless I agreed to do so.
Want to know how I got the platform to load again?
I manually turned off JUST the tracking cookie blocker.
They don’t care about users’ money, they care about users’ data. They care about knowing what you are doing and where you’re doing it, even when that information isn’t being used to serve ads.
Anyway I cleared my cache/cookies, updated the extension, logged out, restarted Firefox, manually turned the tracking blocker back on, and logged back in. It’s worked fine since then.
[ID: Tweet dated November 28, 2023 from @/DrKarimWafa that reads, “Gaza is now at risk of extreme famine and disease. / People cannot find any painkillers or antibiotics which are the most basic forms of medicine. / Many poor families are only able to have one meal a day consisting of boiled water with lentils. / Don’t stop talking about Gaza.” End ID.]
The aromantic struggle between “Yes! I do want more queer rep! I want all the gay/lesbian/polycule relationships with all the genders this show can offer! ” and “well actually I think these two people shouldn’t get together. I think their friendship is endearing how it is and well written platonic relationships or relationships that can be read as queer platonic are good and necessary and they give me happy butterflies!”
