Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

The great tea bag escapade; Feisty MAGA politics; Regarding free speech and MAGA

Researchers at UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain) checked out tea bags. They found the bags release lots of microplastics bits into the tea. The UAB newsroom writes:  
The tea bags used for the research were made from the polymers nylon-6, polypropylene and cellulose. The study shows that, when brewing tea, polypropylene releases approximately 1.2 billion particles per milliliter, with an average size of 136.7 nanometers; cellulose releases about 135 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 244 nanometers; while nylon-6 releases 8.18 million particles per milliliter, with an average size of 138.4 nanometers.

MNPLs = micro/nanoplastics
Caco-2, HT29, HT29-MTX = human gut 
cell lines in vitro


The particles were stained and exposed for the first time to different types of human intestinal cells to assess their interaction and possible cellular internalization. The biological interaction experiments showed that mucus-producing intestinal cells had the highest uptake of micro and nanoplastics, with the particles even entering the cell nucleus that houses the genetic material. The result suggests a key role for intestinal mucus in the uptake of these pollutant particles and underscores the need for further research into the effects that chronic exposure can have on human health.
So, it sounds like one might want to use tea bags made out of cellulose, which is found naturally in all kinds of human foods. Plants make cellulose naturally. Cellulose is generally safe to eat in moderation. It occurs naturally in plant-based diets and is used as an additive, apparently in most processed foods.


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Our feisty president-elect is being feisty at the LGBQT concept and community:
Donald Trump made sweeping promises at a far-right event this weekend to end trans rights in several areas, including education, health care, and military service.

Speaking at an event organized by Turning Point USA, Trump also promised to end transgender rights across the board on his first day in office, saying that it will be official policy that “there are only two genders, male and female.” He also said he would sign an executive order to “end child sexual mutilation.”
Trump’s promise to keep “transgender… out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools” likely refers to school curricula, which Republican state lawmakers have been legislating against for several years. Questions about curriculum are usually handled by state and municipal bodies, not the president.
“Child sexual mutilation” is an inflammatory way of referring to surgery associated with gender-affirming care, something that is almost never performed on minors in the U.S. It is not clear what power a president has to ban medical procedures through executive order.
“Child sexual mutilation” is not only inflammatory, it is deeply insulting to (i) the LGBQT concept and community, and (ii) other people who dislike overt displays of bigoted theocratic authoritarianism. But what the heck, MAGA doesn't respect the dignity or rights of people MAGA chooses to hate, attack and oppress.
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NewsGuard is under attack by MAGA because it rates the credibility of some news sources that includes some MAGA sites. Some of the ratings for some MAGA sites are low. MAGA is calling that censorship and threatening to attack. 
When veteran newsmen L. Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill started their news site rating company, they were prepared for the inevitable cries of bias from both sides.

What they didn’t anticipate was that NewsGuard, their company of some 50 employees, would become the target of congressional investigations and accusations from federal regulators that it was at the vanguard of a vast conspiracy to censor conservative views.

Since 2018, NewsGuard has built a business offering advertisers nonpartisan assessments of online publishers — backed by a team of journalists who assess which sites are reputable and which can’t be trusted. It uses a slate of nine standard criteria, such as whether a site corrects errors or discloses its ownership and financing, to produce a zero to 100 percent rating.

Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal and a Republican, and Brill, a left-tending independent who founded Court TV and the American Lawyer magazine, engaged with publishers wanting to understand subpar ratings, sometimes wrangling for hours by phone over the details of a site’s correction policy.

But conservatives now question the company’s premise. Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, accused the company of facilitating a “censorship cartel,” in a November letter to leading tech platforms. Noting that key legal protections depend on tech executives operating “in good faith,” Carr continued: “It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization — the Orwellian named NewsGuard.”

NewsGuard, backed by legal experts, argues that Carr’s letter may violate the First Amendment by threatening the speech rights of private companies.

“The only attempt to censor going on here is by Brendan Carr,” Crovitz said in an interview.
Despite the battering, tech giants didn’t particularly want to play truth police on their platforms. Crovitz and Brill offered them a solution: Pay NewsGuard to sift the real news sites from the propaganda peddlers.

“We’re going to apply common sense to a problem the algorithms haven’t been able to solve,” Brill told “CBS Mornings” that year. “It’s going to be very simple … telling the difference between the Denver Post and the Denver Guardian, which is a hoax site.”

A “censorship cartel”?  “Child sexual mutilation”? One has to admire the toxic, deceptive, divisive rhetoric that America's radical right authoritarians constantly come up with. The MAGA wealth and power movement is 2nd to none when it comes to dark free speech expertise.



And FWIW, there's this: U.S. is ‘becoming a kleptocracy, oligarchy’: Sen. Murphy slams billionaires picked for Trump admin. It isn't often to hear the word kleptocracy used in politics, despite it being a gigantic issue, along with oligarchy and American authoritarianism generally. A peanut grumbled: Trump's inauguration is gonna be an all-you-can-pocket-tax-payer-money buffet. His whole term too!

I love it, a tax money buffet. That's a great way to describe kleptocracy!


And this too: DOJ officially decides not to charge Matt Gaetz in sex-trafficking probe -- The Justice Department has informed lawyers for Rep. Matt Gaetz and multiple witnesses that it will not bring charges against the Florida Republican after a yearslong federal sex-trafficking investigation. -- What a non-surprise. With Merrick Garland in charge, no elite gets whacked.

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