Carrolade

Yeah, this seems like a sort of position paper for a medical association. Here it's less about serious harm and more about a general lack of benefits.

To an extent, sure. That's more about keeping a community alive through a dry spell, though.

Digital communities can easily take years to build, that's not unusual at all. There's always lulls in that early period where the community is mostly dead, but there'll usually be 1-2 people just kinda keeping it on life support. Bones of the Moon has been doing that with our poetry sub for instance, if not for them, that sub would have died-died quite awhile ago. But since they (still, even) post there periodically, it winds up popping up on people's new or local feeds every once in awhile and reminding everyone it exists, and once in awhile someone else posts there.

That's the main reason I think people do it. Just kinda getting the community past that early period where most communities die out if left unassisted.

I didn't read past the paywall, but it sounded like it would be missing the point a bit in the coverage of the online discourse. Hardcore online anti-vaxxers are either grifters, conspiracy theorists or Darwinists playing dress-up. A Darwinist will point to underlying health issues because they think people dying of preventable diseases is the proper way for society to function. This is frankly a very common view among edgy 15 year old boys that have taken a bio 1 class (I remember having held it myself for a little bit), and as a result, will always have a large number of online proponents. Unless we suddenly stop having kids entirely or something, then the problem would largely go away over the course of a couple decades. This is likely the largest group of voices, at any rate, as its bolstered by other social Darwinists for whom it isn't just a phase.

The grifter makes money off of all this, so of course they'll automatically discredit any threat to their income.

The conspiracy theorist won't really believe anything anyone with any power or authority says, so they're usually a lost cause to everyone outside their own personal circle.

None of these people (except the conspiracy theorist sometimes, ironically) care all that much about the lives of strangers, most especially the edgy teenager. There's a reason he's always telling people to commit suicide as a casual insult. So ... what'd we expect again...? And how much money are we able/willing to invest into education to combat it?

It wouldn't even all require a critical thinking focus, a small tweak to the bio 1 curriculum where we go into a little more depth on evolution factors would probably make a noticeable difference. Push the taxonomy unit off to bio 2 or something to make room, that's not particularly important unless you're planning on continuing in the sciences anyway.

Eh, I disagree. It's not enough on its own by any stretch, but it remains a very useful part of a multi-pronged approach. I'll also point out that I addressed how almost all satires fail to have any impact on his supporters. Have you seen any Cunk though? It's a distinct style.

It's not about him or thinking he's smart. It's about why they like him and how they perceive the actual issues of the day. When Carrell or Morgan poke fun at something, they usually do it by taking it to other (quasi)logical conclusions that are so (overly) simple a young child can follow their logic. They only reason they can get away with this is because they're clearly being Monty Python levels of serious. This lets them get away with seriously and enthusiastically espousing bad ideas in a way that makes them look even stupider than they are, in a way the rest of us can't manage. They can parody what we cannot. Not effectively anyway.

While true, I'll also say that Cunk has a style and power that is something special. It takes talent to play that character, not everyone can convincingly play the bumbling idiot that effectively. There's a special something that the Diane Morgans and Steve Carells of the world have that even a Stephen Colbert can't pull off because he still comes off as a fancy and smarter-than-you east coast elite to a flyover country person.

I'd argue an attack from Cunk, if seen by his supporters, would be more effective than an attack from almost any other source, because only she (and some Steve Carrell characters) are stupid enough to actually make them see how stupid it all is.

You need to be that level of dumb to parody him (edit: or more accurately, MAGA as a whole) to his own supporters though, even the likes of The Onion is usually too intellectually complex. Otherwise it doesn't work, too much of it goes over their heads. And lets be real, these are some of the stupidest characters we have ever conceived of. Lenny from Of Mice and Men had significant intellectual strengths over the likes of Philomena Cunk and Michael Scott. They need that stupidity to deal with Trump on the level.

I see. Yea that makes sense, thanks.

I figured they were just okay giving out the free advertising to one of their own. But stolen also makes sense.

Honestly someone should just look up the photographer, email him and politely ask him if he was paid or not.

edit: Likely case: They asked him for it and he happily donated it, so long as they kept the watermark, and they were totally cool with that.

Right, but free advertising in every Syrian passport will help his business, which will make money, which can buy food, which is edible.

Giving the photographer the credit for his work is a win-win for everyone involved.

edit: Ooooh do you think the watermark means they stole it and never paid him? I didn't consider that possibility.

Why is that mildly infuriating? Personally I think it's actually kinda cool that they're okay preserving the attribution for the artwork like that. Photographer is probably a Syrian national, so it still honors the nation and all that.

Can rivers eventually carve through solid rock?

Yeah, if anything about it bothered you, that was probably smart. The trilogy is, among other things, a very slow yet steady escalation of horror.

She did write two other trilogies in the same setting following different characters that you may prefer more. Different narrators does change the prose, but she still manages that same fluidity, which is what I always loved so much about it.

Yeah, I take several random samples of the prose from throughout the book, just to get a good sense of the overall style. Though I do always begin with the first paragraph, and on at least one case, that was enough to immediately close and buy the book.

That being the over-the-top, sorta Victorian prose of Jacqueline Carey:

Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo’s child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me. It is hard for me to resent my parents, although I envy them their naïveté...

She then keeps going just like that for three large books, probably totaling something like 2k pages. I loved every page of it.