@clacke
> And then there are some uncommon ones like 200 or 400 candy from Ev 1 to Ev 2

Where can I go to make this trade? Even 400 candy seems very cheap for an EV 😋

Thanks for your diligence @jdp23. FWIW you're welcome to quote anything I say about the fediverse, in this thread or elsewhere, to fill in historical details.

While I'm nitpicking about those details, I will also say I appreciate all the work you are doing on improving the fediverse experience. Even though we sometimes understand the history and the problems differently, and favour different solutions. Diversity is a source of resilience.

@clacke

Do you remember when email addresses were a weird, edgy thing to have, and you'd just sign up for one anywhere? That's where we are with the #fediverse right now.

Where email could have gone is to a distributed model, where every organisation, neighborhood etc had its own mailserver, and people could be name@CommunityGroup.nz or name@suburb.nz. Instead we ended up with most email addresses controlled by a handful of corporations.

We won't be fooled again, right?

@TimWardCam
> my email address is controlled by me.

I do this too. But we are outliers, right? I've seen figures that suggest more than half of all email is delivered by Goggle;

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/05/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours/

... and I'm guessing most of the other half is delivered by other big players. They effectively work as a cartel to make it a big headache to run small email providers or host your own.

It would break my heart to see the fediverse go the same way.

Broadly speaking, there are 2 ways to democratise philanthropy;

* the centralised way: increase taxes on wealth accumulation enough that elected governments can spend that money on social good, not billionaires

* the decentralised way: convince the majority of people to stop working for or being customers of corporations, and put their labour and money into the solidarity economy; cooperatives, social enterprises etc

(2/2)

The "Effective altruism" movement misses the point. The problem with philanthropy isn't the way it's targeted. It's the fact that some people have more money than whole states to spend on their idea of doing good. So the fix isn't to make philanthropy more "effective", but to make it more democratic.

(1/2)

#EffectiveAltruism #Philanthropy

Me:
> the default UI, which is like pre-Quitter GNU social

@clacke
> That is a complete misrepresentation of how Pleroma FE looks and what it does

That was my first impression, having used the GNU social UI in the original Identi.ca and the Qvitter UI or Quitter.se (which if I remember rightly is where we first encountered each other?). I had a Pleroma test account a couple of years back and used it a bit. Nothing I saw changed that impression.

@clacke
No accounting for taste 😜

@clacke
> confounding variables
are accounted for

I don't think this means what you think it means.

> the elderly end up more commonly in the hospital, but they have high vaccination rates too

I'll take your word for it.

> it's the unvaccinated that are the majority

This doesn't exclude the small proportion of unvaccinated older people from being a high proportion of the hospitalised unvaccinated. Where we can reliable figures to find out?

(1/2)

Me:
> unvaccinated being predominantly from segments of the population who are more likely to be hospitalised for COVID anyway Eg because they're... indigenous, or have chronic health problems that have led them a 'natural health care' discourse

@clacke
> Communities like immigrant communities with lower trust in government and ideological communities like anthroposophy have lower rates of vaccination

Seems we agree on this point?

(2/2)

@indieterminacy
> For conferences test rather than mask attendees

That seems reasonable. A negative test is still required for air flights yes? So it's also consistent. Which is important, because constantly moving through different COVID response regimes is stressful, and makes compliance with any of them much less likely.

@jens @clacke

@clacke
> I'm talking epidemic data by government agencies, not trials by manufacturers

That does the data more convincing. But is it corrected for confounding variables?

Like the unvaccinated being predominantly from segments of the population who are more likely to be hospitalised for COVID anyway. Eg because they're older, indigenous, or have chronic health problems that have led them a 'natural health care' discourse, including vaccine scepticism.

(2/2)

@clacke
> If you look at hospitalizations, even in countries where 90% are vaccinated, the majority of hospitalizations are the unvaccinated, a vast overrepresentation

This is a much narrower claim than...

> vaccines work

... a ludicrous overgeneralisation that implies preventing infection and thus spread, as promised when they were being heavily promoted.

(1/2)

@alienghic
> the human immune system isn't that great at fighting off coronaviruses and resistance to infection decays pretty quickly

I suspect this is true of viruses in general. Which would explain why;

a) historically there were very few vaccines targeting viruses

b) those that now exist are often promoted as a yearly exercise, like flu vaccines, not a once (or twice) in a lifetime fix

c) drug companies have been enthusiastically pushing for more vaccination against viruses

@clacke

@jens
> it's a bit of a dick move to try and downplay it

Maybe, but you know what else is a dick move? Ignoring the mental health side of post-COVID disability.

A lot of people had their lives turned upside down by the pandemic response. Or had legitimate medical reasons for mask exemptions, and spent months having to justify their masklessness and getting shouted at by people who thought they were doing it for contrarian reasons.

Some of us now carry huge burdens of trauma.

(1/?)

@clacke

@jens
Demanding that they everyone wear masks all though a conference can be catastrophically triggering for such people. Excluding us from participating.

That might be the lesser evil if mass mask wearing was effective at preventing viral spread. But I did a first aid course in 2021, that had a whole module on COVID precautions. It explained that anything less than hospital grade mask protocols makes it pointless to wear a mask, unless you're coughing or sneezing.

(2/?)

@clacke

@jens
In other words, the very majority of mask wearing is health theatre. So pressuring potentially traumatised people to mask up, or constantly justify why they're not, is cruel and unnecessary.

The same applies to most of the other "enhanced safety" measures people are demanding. Most of them (including perpetual vaccine boosters) demonstrably don't work.

Just like Young Sheldon's garage bubble solution. Thus the OP.

(3/3)

@clacke

@clacke
> vaccines work

🤣

Wait...are you serious? Almost everyone I know whose had COVID (again, most of them) had been vaccinated, almost all of them 2 if not 3 times. I got it immediately after getting the first booster.

Now that only reflects on the Pfizer vaccine, which was the only one widely available here. But asking me to supply proof it doesn't work is reversing the burden of proof. As always, the burden of proof belongs on those promoting for-profit medical treatments.

@jens

@clacke
> At least 65 million individuals around the world have long COVID

This is a legitimate problem and needs publicly-funded research and health care. But let's be clear on what it is;

"...the continuation or development of new symptoms 3 months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting for at least 2 months with no other explanation."

https://www.who.int/europe/news-room/fact-sheets/item/post-covid-19-condition

In other words, those numbers include all the cases that resolve themselves within a year.

(2/?)

@notclacke
> I'm lucky to have no long-term consequences after two infections

You're handwaving away two inconvenient facts;

1) you got COVID.

2) It wasn't a big deal.

This is also true of everyone I know who's had COVID, which is most of them. Many of them 2 or more times.

If this anecdata was contradicted by research data, I trust that the public health authorities would be acting accordingly. But they're not.

Can you show me the peer reviewed data you
Implicitly claim they're ignoring?