Confirming that arrests have been made.

Very easy for police to grab random people out of a music festival and throw them in jail.

These social panic stories, in which unnamed sources make nonfalsifiable claims that result in some number of uninvestigated allegations and a series of possibly unrelated arrests stinks of Satanic Panic or Razorblades In the Halloween Candy or Haitian Immigrants are Eating Our Dogs, or any number of other news stories built on gossip.

“Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”

~ Donald Rumsfeld

Cops love to dramatize exposure to any kind of drug. Case in point, a series of hoax claims about police nearly dying from mere proximity to fentanyl.

Oh cool. We’re doing another needle panic

Britian went through this just three years earlier.

Their experiences were shared on social media, along with photographs of apparent puncture wounds. Groups were formed to warn of the dangers of needle spiking, politicians called for investigations, and by February 2022, over 1,300 reports of needle spiking had been made to police over the previous 6 months (Wynn-Davies, 2022).

…

Many victims claimed they only had a few drinks and were not drunk. However, an Australian study of suspected incidents of drink spiking found that self-reports of alcohol consumption are often unreliable. One 17-year-old girl was taken to hospital after having only one glass of vodka. However, on further questioning, she ‘remembered’ having beer and whisky. The study also analyzed the blood and urine of patients who presented at hospital emergency departments. Of 97 patients, none had traces of a sedative in their systems (Quigley et al., 2009).

There’s the “machines are rigged” explanation, which I’ve been torn on.

But there’s also the far more likely “the city officials simply don’t let you in if they think you’re not going to vote for Trump” which I find much more believable.

On Lemmy, idk. Some definitely exist.

Anywhere else, a lot more

According to Chevy Chase

More seriously, I think erasure is only part of it. Lots of LGBTQ folks deliberately remain in the closet for the sake of family relationships, careers, and local politics.

If you’re bi, it’s just easier.

But that heterosexual camouflage does get confusing to process when you “come out”. Especially with the reactionary attitude that heterosexuality is a choice.

What’s crazy is that the morning bell saw gas prices fall 9% from Friday, largely on the expectation that the Iranian response will be more limited than previously expected.

Even after a month long climb, oil topped off at $70/bbl, well below the $100-$120/bbl peaks of the last decade. This is in no small part because of a steady decline in global demand for oil over the same time period. Contractions in the post-industrial economies combined with industrial efficiency gains and green alternative investments have put a soft ceiling on the price of fossil fuels.

More supply disruptions illustrating the unreliable nature of international fossil fuel trade will likely accelerate demand for localized alternatives. And that means more investment in green and nuclear power, particularly in the big industrial consumers of India and China.

You cannot fit three sets of headphones in your pocket without them fucking up your phone or your wallet.

You absolutely positively 100% cannot fit a VHS player inside your pocket.

The brutal math of selection bias. Ten people read your post. Nine of them shrug and move on. One of them stops to verbally fuck up your shit.

If these three marine sons are going to stand around and let masked vigilantes beat up their dad, that does not speak well for the backbone of the rest of the nation.

Agnes Bertrand Sanz of Oxfam said: “There are moments in history where delay and distraction are not neutral, it is a decision.

“While EU ministers continue to debate and defer, entire families in Gaza are being buried under rubble and people are being killed while trying to get food. Every second of delay costs lives.”

The association agreement, which came into force in 2000, underpins a trading relationship worth €68bn (£58bn) between the 27 EU countries and Israel. The bloc is Israel’s largest market, accounting for about a third of its exports.

At least one.

if they successfully fully take over, those same supporters now become the new threat

Quite a few of the current crop of deputized ICE agents are MAGA goons from four years ago. So long as you’re actively doing the gruesome work of ethnic cleansing, you’ll be given a pass.

A more common strategy than you’d like to think. For instance, in 1918 the state of California declared a War On Squirrels.

In 1937, the Colorado National Guard conducted a campaign to eliminate locusts with flamethrowers.

Then there were much more successful campaigns to eradicate certain apex predators - wolves and bears most commonly

The idea that we shouldn’t be attempting to eradicate whole species that local populations consider hazardous or harmful is a relatively novel one.

Omega Male: The Final One

Crashing F-35s into Iran’s tallest buildings.

And then they came for Uncle Tom, and there was no one left to speak for him.

Bees are collapsing in the U.S. A key to their secrets might vanish.

I fucking hate these nonsense clickbait headlines.