Have an upvote, I like respectful comments such as yours. Disclaimer: am not from the US, can't comment on the finer details of US policy and internal politics.

I agree with you in principle that nobody should be forced to be vaccinated against their will - right to bodily integrity and all that. Having that said, in my country, even during waves of peak corona infections, the percentage of people with natural immunity is in the one-digit. Plus, apparently there is no scientific consensus about how long natural antibodies remain active. There have been many counts of people having been infected a year ago and being re-infected now. So, by all estimates, relying purely on natural immunity would be a very, very slow process. Rapid vaccination is really the only way for the lockdown(s) to end and life to be restored to normal without incurring significant casualties in risk-groups. Yes, for normal people the fatality rate is quite low. But I've also spoken to a number of perfectly healthy people who became extraordinary ill for weeks due to corona. So, it's not definitely not a black death, but to say that "it's just a flu" is also not entirely correct.

I'm no fan of Big Pharma but all their work on the covid-vaccines have been under a huge magnifying glass. I have a lot of confidence in the medical and scientific agencies of my country and I trust them if their professional opinion is that the long-term risks of the approved vaccines are negligible. Another point of concern in my country is that due to anti-vaxxers, the regular vaccination rate has dropped to 92-something%, down from around 98% ten years ago. Due to this, diseases such as the measles have popped up again in certain neighborhoods. And I'm very upset about people concretely endangering the wider public through this because of some vague unscientific notion that the government wants to insert nanoprobes made by the Gates Foundation.

Anyway, I digress. Point is that people should be encouraged to get vaccinated, and one of the ways to do that is to loosen restrictions for those who have become certifiably immune.

Lol, that is quite a list you have compiled. Is this... a problem for you or something? Yes, popular products are often copied by other companies.

Like Rambler said, these are used for camping, hiking etc. I do think there are some wacky things being pushed related to gender norms, gender identity and such, but this is not an example of that.

The alternative to this product is that women would always have to pull their pants down and squat in the woods, and there is some risk being seen doing that, especially in an area where trees and bushes are more sparse. This is helpful for modest women who are nervous about being seen. With this, they only need to face away from the trail and do not need to pull down their pants.

I don't think Reddit is broken by design, something which is apparent from the existence of [RAMBLE] (which uses basically the same general structure). I think the main issue is the general commercialization of the internet and the existence of the attention economy. Good article.

Yeah, supporting this is a good way to ensure that many fellow working class people are made into second class citizens, including many blacks since they are aware of Tuskegee Syphilis experiments and other historical experiments on blacks. Maybe blacks will be exempt from requirements for this reason, but that would probably just increase racial divisions since people of all races have been subjected to unethical medical experiments. Everyone has a right to be suspicious of the government and big pharma and make choices about their own body.

No one knows the long term effects of mRNA vaccines in humans. Not enough time has passed. Anyone who says that they know people will not experience complications from this new type of vaccine five years down the line is lying because it is impossible to know at this point. And the Johnson & Johnson/Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines are not mRNA but they are produced by the same company that knew Asbestos was in their baby powder for decades.

You have only presented choices where freedom is limited as if they are the only choices. How about people who want the vaccine choose to take it, people who don't want it don't take it, and herd immunity is achieved through a combination of vaccinations and infections? Maybe it will make some nervous, but they are free to take extra precautions. They can even wear a gas mask if they like.

This virus is worse than the flu, but relatively speaking, it's not that bad. Many people just get some minor symptoms or no symptoms and that's it. If this was something really serious like the black death, there would not be such a big effort to convince or coerce people to take vaccines. Nearly everyone would be desperate for them.

It's actually not too bad. English is my second language and I'd say it's fairly easy to learn. You don't learn languages by memorization anyway, so these kinds of quirks actually do not impede language learning in any way whatsoever.

At first I thought this was sarcasm and you dropped the /s but after reading Imperator agree with you, now I am not sure. Do you actually think it is possible for something to be a fair trade in exchange for the return of your freedom?

I can see the argument that it's in a companies right to discriminate against people for their personal health choices because it's THEIR company, though by that same "my company, my rules" logic, discrimination for other reasons should be fine too. I'm not really concerned with this.

But if the government starts encouraging or even requiring companies to do this, that is crossing a line into state coercion, and many state and city governments have already crossed a line with lockdown orders.

Not according to me getting into my workplace. Glasses, hat, mask . Sometimes have to pull my mask down just a tad to reveal the very top of my nose , the bridge, near the eyes.

Its scary .

Mozilla has a long history of being an arse:

https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html

I like the horror story ones: Darkness Prevails, Horrorbabble, Manfred Arcane and Lighthouse Horror. Pretty much any cat-focused channel is worthwhile. Recently discovered jumping spider vids.

I'm active on:

8kun

https://8kun.top/index.html

poal

https://poal.co/hot

saidit

https://saidit.net/

mewe

https://mewe.com/

ruqqus

https://ruqqus.com/

So long as masks are de rigueur, facial recognition is pretty much a nonissue. Add some sunglasses with a hat, and the tech is dead in the water.

Any time you have to download an app to use something, you should be concerned. Apps and anonymity tend not to coexist.

This is one of the reasons why I don't give anyone learning English a hard time. It's a difficult language.

There is a YouTube channel that I can't recall the name of now. A Russian couple learning English and they vlog only in English as a means of practice. Pretty interesting, they just share what their life is like in Russia. Show the supermarkets, talk about prices and cost of living, etc.

I think it's a neat way to learn a new language, and they're pretty fluent right now but lack confidence and words like those shown in the book would definitely cause their brain to short circuit, lol.

Pretty common in the backpacking, off grid, van life, etc world.

Standing up to pee is great. I don't blame women for wanting to be able to do that. Still a goofy product, but it's popular and gets the job done I guess.

Its a common Trope since 1982 scifi movies and stories.

"ZOOM... ENHANCE!"

such as a scene in Blade Runner

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zoom-and-enhance

DOZENS of companies make these for women to stand up to pee:

• SheWee
• GoGirl FUD
• Whiz Freedom
• Gotta Tinkle
• Peecock
• Pee-Zee
• Peequality
• The Stand Up
• The Travel Jane
• PeeBuddy
• Ms Whiz
• Mr. Limpy
• Mr. Fenis
• The P-Mate
• KleanGo
• Travel John
• Lady J
• P-EZ
• LadyP
• The pStyle ® Reusable
• Pibella
• Freshette
• Chickpea
• AquaEve
• TinkleBelle

... and about 10 more.

Good writeup. Reddit is and has been cancerous for a while.

archive.is doesn't like Tor for some reason, so here's an archive.org link (clear net only)

just easier money laundering

What's the threat scenario of some random company acquiring your face? I think of privacy as a safety feature, so if I can't think of a threat, I have a harder time caring.

That and my passion is archiving, so innately deleting data is somewhat uncomfortable for me.

I wonder how the cartels feel about this. By now they must have prepared legal outlets for their product which are ready to go live on day 1, so it legalization will probably not hurt their bottom line.

No dad, it's leukemia.

Never too late.

Element.io is fantastic

My concern is more private use. I get my face scanned to enter my workplace, and the (biometrics) company state that they retain that for up to 3 years beyond end of employment.

To me, that's up to 3 years too long.

And I don't "mind" it, so long as that information was stored locally and could be purged by HR when an employee ls no longer employed, as part of an after-employment checklist. For example, if you have a company with 700 active employees, then on your LAN you have the biometric hardware/software operating and it contains no more than 700 faces, and doesn't face anything public, as it's only used to allow/deny entry to the building. Doesn't need a web facing control panel, no need to store that data 'in the cloud', etc.

But, that's not how things are done. The biometric company could be bought up by another. It could be hacked. It could be secretly funded by any alphabet agency or sharing data with them.

If it was private use, open source, localized installs across companies and company owned worksites... no problem.

As far as public stuff goes? I'm kind of with you. I have cameras. I use them. Moreso when I lived in the city. Shortly after installation I thought all the hoodlums were casing cars on the street because they were walking in the street instead of on my sidewalk. Turns out they noticed the cameras and thought they were out of view of them if they just walk in the middle of the road. Nope, I still see ya buddy.