Personally I’m not sure the gate keeping you’re observing is all that much of an issue. I think it’s useful to remember many vegans are also public advocates for veganism. It’s important to them that people generally know what they mean when they advocate for veganism.

However, the definition of all words are always in flux. It’s not uncommon to see people call themselves vegan when a more apt description of their lifestyle would be plant based, flexitarian, vegetarian, etc. As such, I think edge cases like your friend take on an outsized importance that goes beyond the morality of your friend eating honey.

Basically, the goal may not be the social exclusion of your friend which is what I think is usually the problematic aspect of gatekeeping.

She would likely gain voters because she would be distinguishing herself from Biden who remains deeply unpopular.

I kind of suspect things were always too big and complex for one person to address but the rampant individualism of our society obscures that history.

“I trust the United States government and so should you!” -Alphane Moon

How’s that relevant? Do you have counter evidence for any of the points I made or are you just desperately trying to prove you’re not a dupe?

I do check out RFE/RL and its sister outlets from time to time. It’s pretty obvious that their agenda aligns 1 for 1 with American foreign policy objectives. To be fair though, the US wouldn’t fund RFE/RL if it didn’t effectively dupe people into believing it was an unbiased source.

I think you mean it’s designed to prevent partisan interference. RFE/RL’s purpose is to support US foreign policy which makes it inherently political. It is undeniably a propaganda outlet and therefore comparable in function to RT. You may trust American propaganda over Russian propaganda but that doesn’t mean the former is not propaganda.

What an absurd response. This is akin to saying RT isn’t Russian state propaganda.

I doubt the person you’re replying to would disagree that the advent of capitalism is in fact what brought liberal democracy into existence. The point though is that such progress is unsustainable under a capitalist system and that it will result in various crises, war, and fascism. Therefore we do need to find a way to move past capitalism if we want even the possibility of creating a better world.

Growth isn’t a problem when it’s sustainable. However, there are natural limits to how far and how fast technological development and resource extraction will allow us to grow the economy.

Additionally, competition within capitalism forces the wealthy to seek out any and all means of growth. If they do not they actually risk all of their wealth becoming devalued. This drives innovation but it also is the driver of imperialism, exploitation, environmental degradation, all of which grow the economy.

When growth because less attainable due to various natural constrains, the wealthy start to cannibalize the systems that keep society stable. Again, they can’t help themselves. If they don’t their class position is threatened as some other capital owner beats them to the limited profits that come from privatization and austerity.

This usually results in mass unrest across all the various classes in society. That includes some of the middle classes who also rely on exploitation to maintain their standard of living. In response to threat of social unrest, the wealthy usually align themselves with right wing authoritarians that claim to be able to bring order to the chaos and renew growth through imperial expansion. This kind of politics is often supported by some of the downwardly mobile middle classes. That’s how we get fascism.

The false negative rate is also quite high. It will miss about 1 in 5 women with cancer. The reality is mammography is just not all that powerful as a screening tool. That’s why the criteria for who gets screened and how often has been tailored to try and ensure the benefits outweigh the risks. Although it is an ongoing debate in the medical community to determine just exactly what those criteria should be.

That’s just not generally true. Mammograms are usually only recommended to women over 40. That’s because the rates of breast cancer in women under 40 are low enough that testing them would cause more harm than good thanks in part to the problem of false positives.

It’s a common problem in diagnostics and it’s why mammograms aren’t recommended to women under 40.

Let’s say you have 10,000 patients. 10 have cancer or a precancerous lesion. Your test may be able to identify all 10 of those patients. However, if it has a false positive rate of 5% that’s around 500 patients who will now get biopsies and potentially surgery that they don’t actually need. Those follow up procedures carry their own risks and harms for those 500 patients. In total, that harm may outweigh the benefit of an earlier diagnosis in those 10 patients who have cancer.

Unfortunately AI models like this one often never make it to the clinic. The model could be impressive enough to identify 100% of cases that will develop breast cancer. However if it has a false positive rate of say 5% it’s use may actually create more harm than it intends to prevent.

she had absolutely nothing to do with […] any regime changes

That’s certainly not true if you if you know anything about recent Balkan history.

Between 1993 and 2001, Alexander was USAID’s deputy for the Europe region, focusing on immediate post-conflict reconstruction in the Balkans.

USAID financially supported anti-government organizations in the Balkans in order to foment regime change during her tenure. This isn’t a secret either. That information is publicly available. If she was working at USAID during that time at best she was only tangentially involved.

The Carter Center is literally run by a woman who worked for much of her career at USAID, an agency that has directly supported regime change efforts in Latin America.

You don’t have to white wash Carter’s foreign policy to criticize Maduro.

Carter’s own national security advisor tried to legitimize Pol Pot for fuck’s sake. That’s not to mention Carter continued support for the Indonesian dictator as he carried out a genocide in East Timor. Oh and we shouldn’t forget the Carter administration started the program which funded and armed the right wing islamist progenitors of the Taliban in Afghanistan. More relevant to Latin America, Carter’s support for the El Savadoran military dictatorship was critical for its stability as it committed unspeakable atrocities.

Don’t be confused by Carter’s outward humanitarianism in his post presidency. He was not an aberration when it comes to US foreign policy and I wouldn’t expect the Carter center to be either. It’s literally run these days by a woman who spent much of her career working for USAID.

AMLO is explicitly rejecting the idea that there is evidence of fraud which is what the article is about. The title is accurate even if AMLO is not taking sides.

What are you talking about? It’s not the opposite at all. The short article just states that AMLO said that there was no evidence of fraud and that he’ll wait until the full vote tallies are released before commenting. That’s basically exactly what the title says.

Biden supporters aren’t really left wing though. The left is barely a thing in the US.