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@charlie_savage My initial reaction is, "wow, what a statistically and scientifically valid way to see what users want" (NOT)

@rmerriam I live in upstate NY, see the thought police in Texas, the whole Uvalde thing, etc., and decide the snow here isn't so bad after all.

@TheMarco I think he has deteriorated a great deal in recent years. Some pre-existing mental health issues, impulse control problems, more money than sense, started to believe his own BS.

Every time someone from the Other Place pops up over here, it's like sitting in a country pub in a snowstorm and seeing someone you really like coming in through the door.

i reckon we will quickly face moderation related challenges with mastodon, as people (including griefers and trolls) decide to join, but because it's an open platform we have the potential to experiment with and pioneer moderation approaches ourselves, instead of relegating it to a black box in a birdsite

Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics

Controverses sur les connaissances et les politiques liées au COVID.
Pour contrer la menace que représentent les médecins et les scientifiques qui contestent la position officielle des autorités sanitaires gouvernementales et intergouvernementales, des partisans de cette orthodoxie ont entrepris de censurer ceux qui défendent des points de vue divergents.

link.springer.com/article/10.1

Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics - Minerva

The emergence of COVID-19 has led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy. To counter the perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities, some supporters of this orthodoxy have moved to censor those who promote dissenting views. The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly accomplished doctors and research scientists from different countries who have been targets of suppression and/or censorship following their publications and statements in relation to COVID-19 that challenge official views. Our findings point to the central role played by media organizations, and especially by information technology companies, in attempting to stifle debate over COVID-19 policy and measures. In the effort to silence alternative voices, widespread use was made not only of censorship, but of tactics of suppression that damaged the reputations and careers of dissenting doctors and scientists, regardless of their academic or medical status and regardless of their stature prior to expressing a contrary position. In place of open and fair discussion, censorship and suppression of scientific dissent has deleterious and far-reaching implications for medicine, science, and public health.

link.springer.com

@daviding @JimSpohrer
I read an article in the press that the mastadon.social instance is struggling with volume and that they are working on optimizations.

Interesting fact of the day: The same effect that cuased light in a prism to split up into different colors is what ultimately caused the first transatlantic telegraphic wire in 1858 to fail.

Morse code is transmitted as on-off signals, effectively square waves. Square waves are in fact made up of many different frequencies. Like in a prism different frequencies move at different speeds through a wire. Therefore as the on-off pulses traveled through the transatlantic telegraph wire the signal spread out like it does in a prism and ultimately the pulses would overlap and be indistinguishable.

The effect was so extreme that it took a message of only 98 words (the first message sent) over 67 minutes to send one way and a whopping 16 hours to confirm the message.

Whitehouse, a doctor with little mathematical understanding, thought he could solve the problem by increasing voltage, which we now know was a futile effort. He increased the voltage to the point he managed to short out the cable entirely and made it useless. However Lord Kelvin had already warned of the problem as was ignored and he came up with the law of squares to describe the problem which later was refined to give us the telegraphers equation. The telegraphers equation is still used today to model feedlines in radio transmitters and receivers.

@Science

@annaschapiro Also a birdsite refugee, and also my first toot :-) I'm a software solution architect in Central NY state and my interest in your field relates to my autistic / ADD adult stepson. Welcome, and good luck to us all.

Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.