i haven’t played magic in a long time. is that considered balanced? the card seems quite OP…

does anyone have the actual written law? it is hard to argue using summaries or even opinion pieces of musky boy.

all good. i know it can be frustrating, to constantly repeat the same points. therefore tones may slip. if you allow me to give some advice, keep reading. otherwise have a great day, and ignore the rest of this post.

i think it is useful to target the most powerful party: “you claim that …” (the person trying to learn something) becomes “they claim that …” (the company selling something). that way the person (if that person is genuinely trying to learn) is not pushed into a defensive stance.

additionally dont forget that you may be an expert on a certain toppic. but others are not and therefore need much more context to pick up just the right keywords. e.g: what is DEXA and why does a scan for osteopenia matter for body fat? or is +/-5% your personal quality gate or is it a medical standard?

anyway, i hope this shows why ppl may disagree with a post - even if agreeing with the main message. have a great day.

you don’t seem to get my point entirely, so ill try to explain it here. your standpoint seems to be:

• body fat cannot be determined by impedance
• the measurements are that unreliable that the mere presence of the measurement hurts more than it helps

you present these points as expert, not as your opinion. in the comment thread you write: “I’m happy to delve into this subject in as much depth as you may be interested in”. when someone asks you for sources, supporting these points (presumably because they are interested) - you deflect and take a combative stance. it is deflection, as you ask the person trying to learn something, to find proof that your point is wrong. since you (initially) did not provide sources for your points - you seem to take the absence of evidence (from the companies selling these) as evidence, that it can not work and will cause harm.

This line of argumentation makes me second guess your motivation. even though i agree with the overall viewpoint. i am not asking you to prove it is a scam. as you mentioned it is tedious and wasteful to prove every new scam attempt false. so if you shift your argumentation just slightly (which you did in your reply to me), the whole second guessing of motivation won’t occur:

• The companies selling these products don’t provide any proof, that these scales work as advertised
• especially in medicine it is required to proof, that the benefits hugely outweigh the drawbacks
• who is more likely to tell you a falsehood: the person actively trying to sell you something or the one not selling anything?
  • -> be more skeptical of the person with a motivation to mislead you and ask them to provide proof and sources

these points are a very strong argument IMO and don’t require to do any more research. but they seem much more genuine as you don’t appear go back on wanting to discuss the subject and don’t take a combative stance towards the person probably trying to learn something.

man i largely agree with what you are saying and there are tons of useless ‘fitness’ products.

but you cannot claim to be “happy to delve into the subject” and when asked for sources simply deflect. you have to remember, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

so if you want to believabily present yourself as an expert on the subject and have such an absolute standpoint - you need to present some good reasons. otherwise you have to soften your standpoint to something akin to: “there has ben no proof of its reliability”. everything stronger seems disingenuous.

i thought she wants to be more active on bluesky now

link to original artist: https://bsky.app/profile/ironlily.bsky.social/post/3lllqn62cxs2h

ok, that sounds better. does insurance pay for HRT where you are, or what does that cost you? generally i think doing sports should not be behind a paywall (except equipment, which is hard to circumvent).

but in that case, it may be the best thing available to prevent shenanigans like the linked story.

i like that: just sports, not womens- or mens- or trans- or whatever- sports. but by which system do you stop an all males team identifying as women for the duration of a weightlifting competition?

i dont have a good answer. but i was hoping someone in the discussion has.

agreed, testosterone (or other hormones) are a flawed system for categorising competitors. so is weight class, as women generally have a higher body fat ratio. so is any system we can come up with. however what I categorize MYSELF as, is probably the worst system. trans people should, like any other person, be able to do sports. but to have competition we need a better system then people choosing their opponents.

so that is why i am asking what systems you guys suggest.

obviously I care about those too. same as any steroids, PEDs, own-blood doping and whatever drugs, hormones or whatever they invent to increase performance. and stop crying for trans women. the example i mentioned was basically a trans woman with zero treatment. even if he was an obvious troll.

the whole argument is about having a reasonably fair and therefore interesting competition.

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while you are technically correct, most people would consider an iphone american, a samsung korean and a huawei chinese phones. although silicone, transistors, pcbs, etc. are from the same places you mentioned. assembly is likely china for anything requiring soldering…

here are some USB stick brands and where their home base (and most of the money) is:

• samsung - south korea
• sandisk - usa
• kingston - usa
• intenso - germany
• hama - germany
• philips - germany / netherlands
• disk2go (office world group) - switzerland
• toshiba - japan
• adata - taiwan

as you can see, there are many non-american companies selling USB memory. you get to choose where most of the money goes. we both know most of the 30 plus bucks you pay, does not go to the people doing the soldering.

edit: change manufacturers to brands for accuracy

just talked with a coworker about that. europe is heavily relying on microsoft products and investing a lot of money into them. we are certain, that all that money can easily pay for an expert team to develop and maintain a eu-gov linux distro.

i know that certain military branches maintain a hardened version of different linux distros for critical systems. why not take this to the next level and have an expert team maintaining your OS?

sure, that will stop kids from having one account with random access. but the step to alts isnt that hard.

i propose that it will work untill the teens want to see something - then they will quickly create an alt. or they are mischievous like i was and create an alt as soon as the parents leave the room - after all you need to find out what they are hiding…

we would not stop from accessing adult stuff, if we wanted to. so trying to hard prevent them now would be hypocritical too imo. it is our job as parents to prepare them as good as we can.

i dont do pixelfed, so idk what parental control they have. but what kind of system is gonna stop teens from making an account without their parents knowledge? and no, age verification wont work. there is a mysterious thing happening, where teenagers immediately turn 45 for the duration of any “please enter your age” question on the internet.

as someone who has made it through multiple ‘agile transformations’ in large companies: that’s how it usually goes.

however, that is the problem with people being stuck in their way and people afraid of loosing their jobs. PO is usually filled with the previous teamlead (lower management, maybe in charge of 20 ppl). PM & Sales have to start delivering unfinished Products! how else are you going to get customer feedback while you can still cheaply change things? A lot of the middle management has to take something they would perceive as a ‘demotion’ or find new jobs entirely - who would have guessed that with an entirely new model you cannot map each piece 1:1…

Given these and many more problems i have seen many weird things: circles within circles within circles, many tiny waterfalls… some purists would call SAFE a perversion of agile.

the point is: if you want to go agile, you have to change (who would have thought that slapping a different sticker won’t do it?). the change has to start from the top. many companies try to do an ‘agile experiment’: the whole company is still doing what they do. however, one team does agile now - while still having to deliver in and for the old system…

i take you have never heard of the V-model. basically you climb the waterfall back up to verify everything. most things that fly within the atmosphere are done that way. pretty sure NASA would do the same.

north korea does not need to pay its employees and has state sponsored hackers extorting hospitals. idk what revenue streams pakistan has. while the knowledge isn’t hard to get, usually the problem is sourcing enough radioactive materials.