some_random

wtf would that discussion even look like?

Strictly speaking, the point of the article is to drive clicks for ad revenue and the title was optimized to do just that.

Chicago has a long and well documented history of corruption and machine politics.

No one really cared when we were at full employment, the problem is that CS is the new liberal arts degree and it looks like it might only be getting worse.

You're welcome to own nothing and be happy, you don't get to force that "freedom" on others.

Haha, I get where you're coming from but I still disagree. It's a question of the baseline risk, if COVID occurred naturally then there's a much higher chance of similar pandemics happening again and risky research like GoF makes sense. But if it was a lab leak, then it's harder to justify. There are other parts to if of course, if you think that covert bioweapon research is common then it probably doesn't matter.

Can we really? Can we really have a discussion if suggesting that COVID-19 may have come from a lab leak at a top tier virology lab doing cutting edge GoF research gets one labeled a racist?

It's because The Experts (specifically those in the public space) made it clear that they Had Spoken and that COVID had come from a wet market. From there, any dissent was met with incredible vitriol that still lasts to this day.

This is the exact reason that the Lab Leak vs Natural Origin question around COVID-19 matters. If it was a Lab Leak, then we should probably be scaling these labs down and restricting what they can research. But if COVID really did come from a wet market, then the risk is probably worth it.

No, I certainly don't think so. The problem is that fighting people pushing the surveillance panopticon by lying about their motivations doesn't work.

The balaclava thing is stupid, but you're missing the point that they're already doing something illegal. If you think anti-ebike law is stupid then that law should be repealed, not ignored.

Finding these people is not the hard part, they're walking around everywhere. The police either don't care or aren't allowed to enforce the law.

Schools decided to try this experiment in post-liberal ethics where violence is simultaneously never justified under any circumstance including self defense, while also failing to punish the worst offenders in a meaningful way. This is one of many results of that experiment.

YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok (especially) are becoming stricter and stricter about the kinds of content they allow to exist and spread on their platforms. Right now I think an alternative is non-viable but it's increasingly possible that won't be the case in the near future.