varx - social alt @varx@cybre.space

hoo boy, when quarantine ends, me and my friends are gonna slap necks like giraffes warring over territory, big wind-ups, terrifying energy

@kittenlikeasmallcat It's aspirational because we actually beat the Nazis.

Honestly, though, this makes a good point.

@lazarski

The important caveat to the headline about police being more likely to react violently to left wing protests is that ACLED has only been collecting U.S. data for about one year, so a more accurate headline would probably be "Police Three times as likely to use force against Black Lives Matter protesters than anti-lockdown and pro-Trump protesters."

So it's not clear how much of this is left-right prejudice by the police vs. racist prejudice by the police.

Given the history of the policing (https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the-police/), it would not be *at all* surprising if the police are indeed also much more likely to respond violently to workers protests, peace protests, etc., but the ACLED data don't quantify the answer to this question.

This NPR piece suggests that oil-producers would have had a rough year, even without the pandemic. This is *very interesting*. It would be a mistake to celebrate, though: this is a signal that it's time to fight harder.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/31/951470056/the-oil-industry-had-a-rough-year-even-if-you-ignore-the-pandemic

Oh, you're a native speaker of English? Name every possible pronunciation of the letter E

Hey, Linux-users, what services do you use for automated cloud backups of your hard drives?

(please boost)

I'm trying to figure out a cost-effective and stable system with deduplication.

Santa is just the fruiting body the real Christmas stretches for miles under the permafrost

what idiot called it vaccination and not a cowpoke

So, I'm interested in hosting an online chat space, and I'd like opinions.

My understanding is that the current go-to options for a lot of people are Discord and Slack, but I have a pretty strong preference to promote the use open source tools, plus it's just cool to be able to run a chat server out of our basement.

for context: Constellation Games is a sci-fi first contact story about a dork whose immediate thought when the aliens show up is that he wants to play their videogames

Over the course of the story he comes to realize that the real treasure is the fully automated luxury gay space anarchism we made along the way

really puts the semen in horsemen

All buildings should creak from pressure changes like a submarine. Doesn't seem fair that only submariners get to experience this dread. We all deserve it.

Artwork by Wenqing Yan aka Yuumei
https://www.artstation.com/yuumei

Apple's approach to privacy made a lot more sense to me when I realized Google's most important business model is tracking user data. So promoting "privacy" is a good way for Apple to deny resources to their competition.

"smartphone" but with "smart" meaning "hurt" or "sting"

@courtney this bit of the article really calls that summary into question. The research screened 1500+ asymptomatic people and PCR found *any* covid in 19. Of those 19, 6 were also detected by the rapid test. Of the remaining 13 positive PCR, *12* of the had C.T. >30. That's at the very far end of PCR detection possibilities, I've never seen a C.T. value greater than 25 in previous covid PCR papers.

Lower CT means it was easier to detect (greater quantity of viral genetic material in the sample) and is highly correlated with both symptom severity and infectivity.

The "flip a coin" metaphor is also a problem, it seems to imply that the test will give false positives (say someone is infected when they're not), but the rapid antigen tests have specificity >99.9% according to the CDC, which means essentially no false positive results.

Definitely PCR is more effective, it's more sensitive to later-stage and asymptomatic cases. But there's a place for a cheaper test too.