Melody Fwygon

  • 0 Posts
  • 11 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • I use an instance that does not display or parse downvotes or permit them locally.

    So I don’t see the phenomenon. I don’t care about downvotes. I only see the upvotes; which are a far better indicator to me as to how useful a post I made is. If someone posts trash or extremist things; I block them. If they try to argue in bad faith or with far too extremist of a viewpoint, I block them.

    The bot doesn’t always get the most upvotes but it does have it’s uses. As someone who has used the Ground News app in the past; I have a sense of their rating scale and I do find that it helps classify things; although you should always use your own discretion and not just blindly trust the bot.

    But most people who downvote this bot, do so for completely wrong reasons. Usually they’re upset because they disagree with the assessment of the bot, or do not understand it’s scale. Maybe they don’t like their viewpoint’s position being laid bare for all to see.

    Maybe that should be explained more; and there’s posts on Ground News’ website that EXPLAINS how their rating system works. Perhaps the bot should link them.


  • The issue with too many streaming services is largely the same as not enough streaming services

    An average person will have a wide variety of favorite shows. Let’s say there’s 25 of them. For this example; Access to each of these 25 shows are non-negotiable to you and you feel you MUST have access to them.

    If Service A and Service B are the only options; they both get to set the price. So to get access to a “complete” collection of content that you want you’re paying both of them $50 each. It’s most likely that half will be available only on A and the other half on B.

    Now imagine that there are 10 different services. Each service is owned by one of the big ten networks that makes your 25 favorite shows. We will call them by their number from 1 to 10. Now each of your 25 shows have 10 places they could be.

    On average; each network is likely to have 2.5 shows you like. Maybe a few have made some sweet deals with others; but no one place will have even 7.5 of your favorite shows…because these deals are costly and nobody wants to make less money per view.

    Now each service; because they’re struggling to compete with each other will settle on a price of $10 each. But you still end up being forced to subscribe to all ten of them because no single provider has everything you want and no combination of less than all of them can provide complete access to all that you want to watch.

    Even worse; any one of these ten can raise their price arbitrarily because they’re tired of competing and can’t break even. This means your total spend could be up to $500 eventually as they each creep towards demanding more money like a cable provider.





  • At the risk of sounding like an old dragon;

    The world just ain’t like it used to be…these days you can’t get away with half of what you could 10, 20 or even 30 years ago…even if what you did was largely completely harmless.

    As for damages…what damages? Maybe a little cleanup would be necessary, but I doubt any of these ATMs were actually physically harmed by the prank(s). I will admit that it’s a little bit irresponsible for the child to have actually done this internationally; but I suspect it wasn’t the same kid. I doubt one kid could’ve traveled the world to fish-tape ATMs thousands of miles away; and instead this is a rather large “group” of kids doing this for the lulz, and they only caught the one kid and are trying to make an example of him. >_>



  • TL;DR: This article is misleading and sensational. Do not take it at face value.

    The cups were placed in temperate water or sediment and left to leach for up to four weeks.

    This isn’t how the cups were intended to be used. Yes this can be used to model a threat caused by cups littered into our environment; but this article tries to spin this out first to scare you.

    Coffee cups are made of a complex mixture of synthetic materials and chemicals. Manufacturers add processing aids, heat stabilizers, and other substances, many of which are known to be toxic. Even if plant-derived materials are used—such as polylactic acid, a material derived from corn, cassava, or sugarcane that’s used to coat paper cups—cup makers often add a number of other chemicals during processing.

    More scare tactic information; preying on your lack of familiarity with how these things are regulated or tested. Scaremongering continues for two more paragraphs before it abruptly changes tone midway.

    Improving recycling practices would be a logical step in trying to keep harmful chemicals from ending up in nature, but researchers say it’s best to retire disposable paper cups altogether. It’s difficult for most recycling centers to separate the plastic coating from the cup’s paper. In the UK, for instance, a mere handful of recycling centers take paper cups. Many coffee shops will collect them for recycling—but having to drop paper cups off takes the convenience out of a single-use product. Today, only four out of every 100 paper cups are recycled in the UK.

    By now the author hopes you’re scared enough to do as they ask; but if you weren’t convinced; they threw in some other statistics at the end, and even breaks their suggestion by showing how inconvenient and impractical it is to recycle them.

    In 2019, a research group from India filled paper cups with hot water to see if plastic particles or chemicals were released. “What came as a surprise to us was the number of microplastic particles that leached into the hot water within 15 minutes,”

    They’re still not done scaring you though.

    On average, there were 25,000 particles per 100 ml cup. The researchers also found traces of harmful chemicals and heavy metals in the water and plastic lining, respectively.

    They dump some number of particles on you; giving you zero context, and zero information about how dangerous that is. They only mention in passing the “harmful chemicals and heavy metals”, giving no specific concentrations nor giving you any clues as to how much of it is in there.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389420321087

    Unfortunately the above article is pay-walled; and is difficult to access. I doubt the journalists read the full paper. Everything mentioned in the article is accessible from snippets on this exact webpage; which may mean things are being taken out of context.