@TheGhostScientist i cant judge the American situation, but thats absolutely not true here in Europe

i do recall that we don't use saline placebos during testing, but thats for the pretty simple reason that it isnt really ethical

if a placebo for a regular old treatment fails to show results, you stop adminstering the placebo and switch to real medicine

but a vaccine placebo leaves people exposed for many years, and cant really be reversed if they _do_ catch an infection

again, i dont know or care much about the American situation, but i know thats emphatically not true for Europe

do you speak dutch?

oof

ill try and see if i can get you some english-language stuff then

whats the exact claim you'd like proof for?

yeet

ill give you the initiative

oh, i think you got me wrong

i dont know or care if my information applies to America or not, just like i dont know or care if it applies to China or Indonesia or whatever other faraway country you'd like to name, but i do know that vaccines as they are adminstered on this side of the Atlantic absolutely _are_ subjected to rigorous testing

again

thats gonna be rather hard if you dont speak dutch, but ill try

i'd like to be clear on the fact that i am not necessarily pro-vaccine--i just think that its silly that so many Americans like to think that their (admittedly terrible) legislation on the subject is somehow universal

do you have a similar position on the rest of modern medicine?

i see

what course of action would you recommend one who is in need of medical services in one way or another to take, then?

oh, on that we can agree

opioids _can_ be warranted in very extreme circumstances (i have a mate who fell out of a flat once and broke every bone in his body)

the problem with them is more that they are prescribed for every remotely annoying little ache

opioids also arent really addictive if they're used for extreme pain relief only

that only happens if they're used frivolously (aka, in 99% of the cases)

the friend i talked about earlier was under morphine 24/7 the first few months after the accident, but had no withdrawals whatsoever when they took him off of it

but you gotta keep in mind that falling five stories is not exactly a typical case

yeah, that was the idea

im kind of afraid that the current backlash against frivolous prescription of opioids, which is absolutely justified, will lead to opioids also being withheld when they are necessary

perhaps

the very purpose of pain is to tell the body 'oi m8, something's amiss here, you better patch that up asap', so i dont think you can hold it against people that they dont like it

but as a society, the western world has definitely developed an unhealthy ideal of pain avoidance

what do you recommend as an alternative for toothpaste, by the way?

alright, im just going to say the following: a 'communist government' is a contradictio in terminis

communism as it was proposed by Marx and Engels is basically anarchism with a collectivist slant

@Stryker that is a kind of misleading statistic, though

much of that pollution is caused by the manufacture of consumption goods

ugh

thats a persistent myth

NASA didnt 'lose the tech', NASA lost the ability to replicate pieces of technology that are by all means ridiculously outdated, just like volkswagen cant churn out a 1969 beetle any more, and moog doesnt have the tools to build a 1969 system 55

@Normal Man aye

science is a method of acquiring and perfecting knowledge, not that knowledge itself

that science is willing to change when it finds itself proven wrong should be taken as a token of its reliability (and the other way around: when the academic establishment maintains a position in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence, thats usually a sign that something is being covered up or suppressed)

short-term climate changes, like the pleistocene alternations of glacials and interglacials, are usually the straightforward result of solar cycles

long-term ones, like the Cretaceous hothouse, usually have similar causes, but then set off a feedback loop: the changing circumstances affect the biological production of co2, which then leads to changes that last longer and are much more dramatic

human-made climate change is similarly concerning not necessarily because we as a species are having such an insurmountable effect, but because we are setting feedback loops in motion (like the acidification of the oceans) that can lead to absolutely disastrous consequences in just a couple decades

here in the netherlands, which as you might know is partially under sea level, we are already making serious plans to abandon the western half of the country, because our waterworks just cant handle the rising sea levels

aye

the climate problem's role in the refugee crisis is underappreciated

lol

its saying _less_ oblate though <:thonkdonk:392836776852717578>

aye

so do i.[citation needed]

i have so far not gotten the impression that chad's leadership style is very rooted in consensus