vnarek @vnarek@qoto.org

@OrganicNectar96@mstdn.social

If George Floyd didnt want to be killed then why did he put his neck under that cops knee huh?

@realcaseyrollins

100% of american cops who have managed to keep their job for more than a year are bad people, there I said it.

Any cop who is a good person would have arrested dozen of their fellow cops by now for abuse of their position and likely gotten themselves fired long before a year had passed.

So when people say "not all cops are bad" my first instinct is, unless you were just hired a week ago, bullshit, your as bad as the rest of them.

LOL truth

Aaaaannnddd another person murdered in the good ol' USA for a nonviolent crime.

Home of the free and the brave is no longer reality, it is propaganda.

#uspol #GeorgeFloyd

Moderating social media context in an nuanced way may be done with a warning or caution, rather than by deleting the message or banning the individual. #HenryFarrell at #WashingtonPost analyzes fact-checking on POTUS.

> Now, Twitter has done just this. Trump’s tweet has not been removed — but it has been placed behind a notice, identifying it as problematic.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/26/twitter-has-started-fact-checking-trump/

@realcaseyrollins Ahh it would seem there is a big chunk of history there you didnt learn.. I'll give you the cliff notes...

Prior to WWII there were now Jews in Israel (called Palestine at the time). Palestine itself was populated entierly by palestinians and had a nomadic desert society coupled with a handful of urban areas, all populated by Palestinians.

After WWII there were a bunch of displaced Jews from the war who refused to go back to Germany where they used to live. As part of the talks at the newly forming UN (of which palestine was not included) they were given sections of land as their own taken away from Palestine without their permission, which they had no way to defend against.

Immediately the Palestinians of course objected and rallied against having their own sovereign land taken away from them. Other middle-eastern nations generally supported the Palestinians. As such a war for them to keep their homeland effectively began that continues to this day.

Since Israel/Jews were backed by much more powerful nations like the USA despite their much smaller numbers and otherwise lack of resources they had a significant upper hand and quickly fought back the Palestinians.

Over the years the Jews continually took more and more land from them for themselves and kicked out the Palestinians who lived there while the USA and other nations kept supporting the Israli side of the war effort.

Now in modern times most of the Palestinian land has been taken from them and owned by Israel. The Palestinians have been forced to live in very small plots of lands and effectively now survive in falling apart ghettos with little fresh water or education to sustain them and very little ability to fight back.

I have gone from writing impulsive untested spaghetti code to using DDD, CQRS, TDD, and linting to aim towards making maintainable code. I didn't really get it before, but after trying to maintain a huge messy project for a few years I have now come to really appreciate this new style of coding. I can now look at my code and feel confident about changing it and that if I come back to it later I'll have a real chance of maintaining it without want to scrape that's there and rewrite it.

CW long post

Religious practice reduces ‘deaths from despair’

A new study from Harvard University has found that the frequent attendance of religious services dramatically reduces so-called ‘deaths from despair’, such as suicide, and drug or alcohol abuse. This finding seems more relevant than ever given the current pandemic that has resulted in untold job losses and a very uncertain future for many people. Economic slumps are always associated with a rise in ‘deaths from despair’, so if religion acts as a protective against this, then we need to pay attention.

The study followed a large cohort of more than 100,000 health care professionals in the US, over a long period of time (1999 -2016).

The investigators started with the hypothesis that a weakening in traditional social support systems such as marriage and the family, leads to an increasing sense of hopelessness in many, leading in turn to a rise in “deaths of despair”.

One of the leading examples of such a weakened support system is the decline in religious participation, and therefore the investigators wanted to establish the link between despair and the declining attendance of religious services.

They found that nurses and physicians who attend a religious service at least weekly are less likely to die as a result of suicide or drug or alcohol abuse than their peers who do not attend.

The incidence of ‘deaths from despair’ among health professionals is more than double that of the general population, as a result of stress and trauma, but among those who attend a religious service at least once a week it drops by 68pc among women, and 33pc among men.

As the educational attainment of health professionals is higher than the average, despair in them is associated more with factors such as loss in meaning in life, rather than material deprivation.

Religion often fosters a sense of peace and positive outlook to life, it promotes social connectedness and encourages engagement in prosocial activities, such volunteering. “In the context of trauma, such resources may provide healthy stress-coping strategies and revive a sense of meaning in difficult times and thereby counteract various processes associated with despair.”, the study claims.

This is something to be pondered, particularly in the current difficult times when the general populations is experiencing unusual stress and trauma.

Even if churches are closed for public worship, people are still praying. A poll commissioned by the Iona Institute found that in Ireland 18pc said that they are praying more than they usually would.

Another new poll commissioned by Tearfund, a Christian relief and development agency and a member of the Disasters’ Emergency Committee, found that in the UK one in twenty (5pc) adults say they have started praying during the lockdown but they didn’t pray before.

Eighteen percent of UK adults have asked someone else to say a prayer for them and 19% say they have read a religious text during lockdown. Prayer is a vital part of life for the public, and among those who pray a third say that they have prayed since the COVID-19 lockdown because they believe it makes a difference.

There is a solid body of evidence highlighting the benefit of religion for mental health and the new Harvard study confirms that.

Professor Patricia Casey produced for the Iona Institute a paper called “The Psycho-Social Benefits of Religious Practice”, showing how a large number of scientific papers have established that religious practice reduces the risk of depression, suicide, marital breakdown, alcohol and drug abuse, pregnancy among teenagers. It also helps cope with bereavement effects.

Worship is, for those who believe, a source of consolation and hope, strength and motivation. A church is also a place where they can experience the support of a community and are encouraged to engage in activities that are useful to themselves and to others.

This new Harvard study shows that believers often respond better to the struggles of life, and it brings further evidence to fact that both their religious beliefs and the enhanced social connection that worshiping involves, are good for our health. This is something that secularists often forget.

Im a bit of a WWII buff myself and I'm always disappointed no one talks more about Rudolf Hess.. Like the dude was actually adolf hitler's vice president for lack of a better word (deputy fuhrer) and his right hand man since the early days of Nazi Germany.

He wound up defying Hitler, stealing a plane, and flying into enemy territory in an attempt to end hostilities and negotiate a peace. How is such a huge event always left out of talks about WWII...

I'm not saying the guy is a hero, and obviously im glad we toppled the Nazi regime rather than just make peace. But its still a remarkably interesting piece of the story that always seems to get swept under the rug.

#history #WWII

Your racist Facebook uncle may have sent you a link to a trailer for "Plandemic," a conspiracy movie that stars a disgraced virologist called Judy Mikovits who makes a string of claims about her credentials and the coronavirus.

Science Magazine evaluated those claims.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of claims that Mikovits makes about her credentials and the science of coronavirus are provably false.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/fact-checking-judy-mikovits-controversial-virologist-attacking-anthony-fauci-viral

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This equation will change how you see the world (the logistic map)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk