For a bit.

Public institutions need and deserve public funding.

It’s possible there was a lab leak, and relevant labs should be investigated for the same reason we investigate all plane crashes, it either leads to finding gaps in processes or confirms whether or not a systemic issue was a factor. The probability has decreased as COVID has been further researched and shows more markers of a ‘natural’ development, but it’s generally beneficial to have a comprehensive audit when processes are in question.

That’s not what these people are arguing. They’re arguing that it’s China’s fault and not Trump’s. That’s it. For that to be the case it ‘must’ be a lab leak, and so they’re retroactively finding justification for how that is possible. That they’re running parallel to a reasonable line of logic for a portion of their argument does not validate their argument.

I think we’re long past trying to be prescriptive about the phrase “conspiracy theory”.

There are real conspiracies, but conspiracy theories tend to start from a place of “X must have been at fault” and work backwards from there. Which leads to endless loops of whataboutisms and excuses to try and excuse the existence of the theory at all costs instead of being interested in what actually happened.

It’ll be like the good old days before the FDA when the warning sign that food was contaminated was people dying and companies regularly put additives like sawdust in food because it made their profits better.

We tried self-regulation of all these industries. That’s why we created government regulation.

The longer it takes to find the lab origin link the higher the probability of zoonotic origin. /s

The problem with conspiracy theories is they’re non-falsifiable. That something is possible is not evidence that it is probable, that something is probable is not evidence that it happened.

Maybe a lab had something go wrong. Maybe that was because they were careless. Maybe that’s because Trump withdrew funding and oversight from the programs that helped labs like this. That should all be investigated. There’s a difference between asking for a due diligence after action report and assigning blame because “it had to be someone’s fault.”

Mathematically worse.

This is/was letting a contract expire. It’s not something that was brought up to the level of congress. Up until the last few years of supreme court decisions agencies were founded with broad powers in their domains, including discontinuing sub-programs.

That’s how it’ supposed to work. None of this has been brought to a vote, which would give Democrats the opportunity to oppose it. For “some reason” congressional Republicans are continuing their prior strategy while being a majority and having the leadership of just, not doing things.

It’s formatted weird on the Steam page but I have this text at the top.

“TotalSpend” is the total amount of external funds applied to your account. This value is used to determine if an account is a “Limited User Account”.

“OldSpend” is the amount of external funds applied before Friday, April 17, 2015 18:00:00 UTC. If your account was linked to Perfect World for CS:GO or Dota 2,

“PWSpend” will be the approximate USD value of funds applied from Perfect World, otherwise that value will be zero. If your account has applied external funds in Steam China,

“ChinaSpend” will report that total, in RMB.

Weirdly I also have a row for “PackageOnlySpend” that doesn’t have a definition.

This is not a law.

deleted by creator

When watching the plumber work it’s unhelpful to complain that they aren’t fixing the electrical.

If you want to be part of a team attempting vast sweeping changes with no oversight or nuance maybe DOGE is still hiring.

Granted that’s not in Japan.

The last supported Samsung device was the S4.

Because ordering someone to develop something is more complicated and nuanced than saying what they’re currently doing is unacceptable and they need to do something else. Courts are a reactive body. Legislature is who would need to push for open kernels/hardware/firmware.

GrapheneOS

The phone OS that only runs on Pixel devices. That’ll teach Google.

A lot of the last half of the New Testament (the books that are “A letter to [the churtch at] <place>” ) spends a decent amount of time on “don’t trust someone just because they say they are holy” and “please stop trying to police other people’s faith and behavior”.

Nothing will make you more frustrated with self-righteous Christians, especially Republican/right-wing christians, than reading the Bible.

It can be both.

Fair, apparently at some point I conflated GNSS and Galileo.

5-10h battery life. Their goal list includes 20h idle time and recording video. It seems to be using some nonstandard SIM and only has GNSS, not GPS. Which is probably fine functionally but apparently they weren’t able to source a GPS chip to use the US system that met whatever their standards are? Large list of negatives for something the price of a shiny new foldable, or several non-foldable smartphones.

They also seem to be doing the usual dance of “Made in USA!!!*”

* what you think of when you think “electronic components” sourced from Asian countries, mostly we’re talking about assembly and that this is where it’s put in the consumer packaging.

To detrumpify / reiterate, because reading what Trump says always feels like a stroke even if you’re not experiencing one:

How “Germany” treated Jews, showing signs of love like:

• Gave them ‘help’
• Liked them
• Winking
• Gave extra bread sometimes
• Gave extra meals sometimes

How Hamas treated hostages:

• Not as well as Nazis

Good lord. Apparently Auschwitz was a hot bed of *checks notes* undesired winking? /s

This is the problem with the whole modern day fascism apologist movement.

“They haven’t completed the checklist, so they don’t count yet.”

Here you go. https://lemmy.world/post/27631215

They’re also demonizing and deporting immigrants without due process, attacking LGBT+ groups, stripping government programs, trying for aggressive short-term financial gains, and many other things that happened during the downfall of the Wiemar Republic.