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nan0's comments

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: Scientists Identified a Poisonous Gas Used by Fed Agents on Portland Protesters

From this article and a one a month back(0). Simonis seems to have some major bias against law enforcement. As they participated on one side of the protest (not as am independent watcher) and even got arrested at the protest.

Regardless of that, what percentage of the gas canisters where HC?

To say that the protesters where completely peaceful and didn't deserve anything is really dishonest. I am not saying that the officers were completely peaceful either.

Straw man from the article made me question the intent of the study.

“The degree to which law enforcement believes Black lives do not matter is shown by their willingness to use known toxic hazardous waste chemicals indiscriminately,” Simonis says. “Now I don’t go around the feds without a gas mask.”

0:https://pamplinmedia.com/scc/103-news/485705-390928-highly-t...

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

Great point, the US should take the high road and allow the free flow of information regardless of the host of that info (friend or foe)

To give some push back:

Currently the US is in an election year and both the left and right are concerned about foreign interference.

Being said Tik Tok is a Chinese based company and following priority Chinese law. Couldn't they propogate direct election interference under the precived guise of being a US private corporation bc of US public's consumption and get away with it?

A counter point could be made for an actual US corporation doing the same thing, but a nation state doing it would be a different issue entirely.

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: Reopening Bars Is Easy. Schools Are Difficult

1. "...moving around a lot" Yes, in some cases, but it's not a great point to make because there are also lot of cases where protesters are huddled together for a long period of time [0], [1].

2. I do agree on this point (based on live feeds I observed), but we wouldn't be getting the full story if we just talked about the protesters and not the tear gassed rioters, indoor looters and police officers who didn't wear masks. [2]

3. I have some differing perspectives on this point:

Most of the attendees that were tested statistically were a younger and less vulnerable population [3], this cost time, effort and money. How would this not have a direct impact on the future testing capabilities and resources that some of those cities needed for more vulnerable populations and rising cases [4]?

More than 3300 people who participated in the protests in Minneapolis got tested and 1.4% (now 1.8%) of them had the virus. This is needs to stated along side of the 7 day average infection rate that week of 3.7% out of 13,000 people. [5]

It's also fair to mention the most populated city in the US and the one that had some of the highest protesting wasn't asking people if they attended the protests when they got tested. [6]

I am sure there were other indirect impacts on virus patients like emergency response time and hospital services during the peaceful protests and non-peaceful protests that.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmealSp7Aw

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z82gf5bk8kM

2: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/6/12/21288340/police-offi... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/05/8701444...

3: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/24/recent-prot...

4: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/us-covid...

5: https://www.twincities.com/2020/06/12/mn-coronavirus-george-... (Published June 12, 2020)

6: https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-contact-tracers-not-aski...

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: Reopening Bars Is Easy. Schools Are Difficult

The article's beginning and very ending was very informative and made clear nuance of the situation of keeping kids/college young adults from school.

The author lost me completely when they started injecting in one sided political perspectives and hindsight bias:

"...opposition to public-health guidance."

Which public-health guidance? Not all of the "opposition" was bad. Example: Any guidance from the W.H.O early on in the pandemic [0]

"Had Trump implored his supporters to wear masks and be patient, case counts might well be dropping across the country. "

Author chooses to show a particular political bias again and fails to mention the other major event that caused a uptick in cases (nationwide protests).

This whole section seems very out of place with the rest of the article, almost like The Atlantic had a requirement to show a left leaning bias to be published...

0: https://www.businessinsider.com/who-changes-timeline-first-c...

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

I think the action taken with /r/thedonald contributed more to what you are warning against (echo chambers) [0].

"Community Guidelines" can mean anything or whatever confirms to the CEOs biases.

From the article "Current CEO (and Reddit co-founder) Steve Huffman stepped in as CEO following Pao's departure. He's had his own tussles with r/The_Donald: in 2016, he admitted to modifying posts from users on r/The_Donald after they repeatedly sent him expletives. "

And

"Others on Twitter have taken issue with Huffman's letter regarding Black Lives Matter as well, with the Twitter account for r/BlackPeopleTwitter quoting Reddit's tweet with an image of a Guardian headline that reads, "Open racism and slurs are fine to post on Reddit, says CEO."

0:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/reddit-...

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: Verizon suspends advertising on Facebook, joins growing boycott

> There would then be a vacuum where other actors to fill > if there's an opportunity, people are going to take it.

Good, we need more platforms (preferably decentralized) to cultivate free thinking and public form. Not a centralized entity that bends to the will of domestic and foreign governments and angry mobs.

nan0 | 5 years ago | on: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

"shooting legs"

No, you can't just shoot someone in the leg to disable them. You have very high chances of hitting main arteries anywhere (arms and legs).

Shooting a human being is not like it is in Hollywood movies. Once an officer pulls out his/her firearm and use it they know it means killing the person. That's why they go through other means of less lethal force before drawing.

Edit: Spelling

nan0 | 6 years ago | on: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

This looks very promising! I read more into this agency and it looks like they are looking to put a price tag on some of their services [0] From the article: "The hope is that by putting a price tag on some of USDS services, that will encourage agencies to develop their own native digital service teams, as the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have already done. That in turn will free up capacity so that more agencies can tap USDS personnel for their own needs."

0: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/06/17/weichert-usds-funding-ma...

Update: Services offered to other government branches, not to end-users.

nan0 | 6 years ago | on: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

"While it’s true that the IRS has experienced budget reductions over the past several years, those cuts hardly explain a failure of an 18-month-old piece of computer hardware. More important, those claims conveniently ignore that the IRS has spent untold billions since the late 1960s on numerous attempts to modernize its IT systems, all centered on trying to replace the ancient IMF system, with minimum success."

I assume you didn't read the whole source

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