No the other way around. Smoking hits you very fast, almost instantly because it’s very fine particles that pass into the bloodstream. Vaping is much slower because it’s vaporized droplets that get absorbed slowly through mucus membrane, and it’s less effective (like 50% effective after 30 min vs. 100% after 5 min). Nicotine salt e-liquid “improves” that a bit to hit faster, to help people stop smoking. You can find articles and papers on this.

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I really prefer the Israeli and the USA disinformation campaigns /s

Fucking neoliberals… decades of neoliberal economic policy, imperialism and media conglomeration allowed this fertile ground in the first place.

The typological fallacy fallacy.

You’re right, if it was an intelligence service they’d want the service to continue while they have a backdoor.

Yeah basically the problem is the apps because mobile browser / mobile websites are less usable than desktop browser. I use NewPipe / PipePipe for youtube on android, hopefully it’ll keep working. Right now I don’t have any ads on android. But I’m only using very few apps. Thankfully the android ecosystem seems to be improving.

Is it? Maybe. I managed to install the apps I need from f-droid and use firefox but it felt more difficult than on PC - where you just need to install an adblocker in your browser.

Don’t worry, probably they are going to jail for protesting. Soon we won’t have any more rabble disturbing the blissful zen of self extinction.

Under a new law, the protesters risk up to six months of jail time.

I’m living mostly ad-free due to adblockers everywhere (except android) but most people don’t know, can’t do it or are brainwashed to think it’s amoral to block ads. If more people would catch on adblocking would be made illegal. And either way my personal choice doesn’t change what content is produced and how society is influenced. Personal responsibility doesn’t solve this just as it doesn’t climate change. Because advertising clearly does work.

Sorry I don’t have any great sources on this. It’s rather speculation because how could you research this scientifically? Even if you could, an experiment like that would actually be unethical! And who would fund this, there is no way to talk in mainstream about advertising without running against massive financial interests. There are some search results but most of those articles look like mental garbage.

My guess is that because we’re constantly being told what to consume our minds work quite differently from what they would without advertising.

Our minds constantly have to resist intrusive advertising and psychological manipulation which means we constantly have to switch between and adversarial mindset and whatever content we were watching / reading. Or we become obedient and just “let the advertising wash through us”. And advertising constantly has to find new ways to activate our emotions.

Just as massive is the effect on content produced, there is a “natural selection” that any content that helps sell advertisement is more successful on the market. It’s not just that you can’t piss off your advertiser but that generally you want the consumer to be in a certain mood - or that content producers who do this naturally are more successful and grow.

Then there are privacy concerns which reduce humans to machines and creates a powerful system that can and is abused for political control (public relations).

How can any of that not have massive societal impacts, since it’s being done on a massive scale and is near ubiquitous? How can anyone assume these effects are not incredibly bad?

You could have a country banning advertising that has a kind of “content tax” that is funded publicly and administered independent from the government through separate elections. And that has strict mandates and distributes the money to news papers, websites, movies and video creators dependent on views - similar to music rights agencies. But none of this is even talked about. We’ve completely lost the ability to even think seriously about how to improve our society. I believe in large part this is due to advertising.

PS: There is a film called “Branded (2012)” about the “horrors of advertising”.

Constantly being brainwashed to consume is one of the great evils of our time. Consumerism is bad for mental health and the environment. But advertising also creates many biases in content creation.

When was the last time you heard anything about bad effects of advertising? Not just superficial “stupid ad” but as a massive corrosive force on society? That is how much freedom of speech we have.

I think this is just one guy not a corporation.

So what is the point of acquiring them if they just dismantle the company? Seems stupid unless it’s funded by the CIA or something.

I guess this is part of the problem with NATO, you loose some independence and autonomy.

A browser AI to detect AI shenanigans on websites would be awesome. Let the AI wars begin!

Sorry that must be really horrible working near someone like that. I’m also sorry there are a lot of shitty comments. It’s quite shocking he only served 2 years.

You could ask an attorney, it’s possibly you could already sue your employer. There are also surely people or groups who have experience with this kind of thing.

Appointed by Joe Biden no less

He’s a hero and political prisoner. This Judge Ana Reyes is completely unhinged comparing this to Jan 6.

“What you did in attacking the sitting president of the United States was an attack on our constitutional democracy,” Reyes said. “We’re talking about someone who … pulled off the biggest heist in IRS history.” The judge compared Littlejohn’s actions to those of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, noting that, “your actions were also a threat to our democracy.”

“It engenders the same fear that January 6 does,” Reyes added. Prosecutors said Littlejohn went through great lengths to steal the tax records undetected, exploiting system loopholes, downloading data to an Apple iPod and uploading the information on a private website he later deleted.

Reyes was also critical of the Justice Department’s decision to only bring one count against Littlejohn.

“The fact that he did what he did and he’s facing one felony count, I have no words for,” the judge said.

(from cnn)

Like the BBC mastadon instance social.bbc

“Liberal finds it surreal that neoliberalism creates fascism”

Such a weird thing! :D