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The first British case of a rare flesh-eating sexually transmitted infection has been diagnosed in Southport – England's golf capital and home of The Register's financial and HR office.
The Lancashire Evening Post reports that a woman between the age of 15 and 25 was found in the Merseyside town to be suffering from Donovanosis. That's nothing to do with 1980s Aussie crooner and Neighbours superstar Jason, but rather a sexually transmitted infection that in its later stages can cause genital ulcers that eventually rupture and eat the surrounding flesh.
[...] The diagnosis, made within the last 12 months, is the first in the UK for a disease that is normally only seen in Papua New Guinea, southern Africa, Brazil, and southeast India. Researchers with pharmacy site chemist-4-u.com found out about the case after making a freedom-of-information submission while compiling a study on STIs in the UK.
While "good news" is a relative term when discussing an infection that causes your genitals to be consumed by flesh-eating ulcers, anyone afflicted with the condition will be pleased to know that Donavanosis can be treated with a course of antibiotics and that, when caught early, the flesh-eating part can be avoided.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @08:41AM (18 children)
The reported woman, according to the article, could also be as old as 25. She might even *gasp* be actively selecting brown-skinned foreigners for her fucking urges, with a grown-up's disdain for a risk that is actually very low.
The fact is: from the article, you simply don't know one way or the other. TFA is purposefully crafted as to incite the racist "Nigger dicks are making our girls sick" crowd. And there's at least two ACs in this thread who are either dumb (racist?) enough to go along, or who are actual trolls/shills, trying to stir up that sentiment even further.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @09:31AM (5 children)
FTFY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @11:49AM (4 children)
All of this implies she got it direct from the source. Maybe she got it from a partner in Ireland who got it from a partner in Holland who got it from ...
I met a German girl in England who was going to school in France.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @12:58PM (3 children)
Only if you choose to make huge assumptions into what is written in TFS. There is nothing there that makes such an implication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @02:18PM (1 child)
There is nothing in TFS that implies the patient had direct contact with anyone from one of the countries mentioned (either in one of the countries, in the UK, or when traveling to another country). Nor is there mention if she was a virgin, or even a rape victim.
See how easy that is? Any assumptions or conclusions are speculation at best.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @02:26PM
I think that you have just made my point.
(Score: 2, Informative) by RandomFactor on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:35PM
Without making any speculation on such things, I would point out that this statement "There is nothing there that makes such an implication" would typically be accurate no matter what the reality of the situation.
Sanitization of news that doesn't align with the preferred views of the day is one of the reasons for the rise of alternative media.
In this case however I would be surprised if that was in play at all. More likely very little more information was provided in the FOI request due to privacy requirements around medical information. Think pages of single line items like "Patient, female, 15-25 years, Southport region. Donovanosis" and everything else is just related information used to build that one line item into an article.
This is borne out at the end of TFA where they state:
"Chemist-4-u.com contacted hospital trusts nationwide to find out how many diagnosis of STIs there had been, the age of people diagnosed, what sex and what region of the country they live in "
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 25 2018, @01:41PM (11 children)
What is with the overuse of the word "shill" recently? I've seen it in more and more posts, speculating about nefarious "shills" here. I've even been accused of it myself (about truly random things too, which I clearly don't support).
People complain about misuse of the word "troll," but are people misunderstanding "shill" now too? To be clear, a "shill" is someone who usually is PAID to spread information covertly, pretending to be an unbiased observer but actually paid directly or indirectly by the people (or product or view or whatever) he/she is supporting. Originally it comes from magic shows, gambling street-performing acts, and such where "plants" in the audience would pretend to be innocent bystanders but were actually paid (particularly to suck people in).
With that said, I find it hard to believe that there are any significant shills here on SoylentNews. While I like a lot about this place, I have no illusions that the audience here is quite small. No organization is going to pay someone to try to influence the bunch of misfits here, most of whom tend to already have very strong opinions (and are unlikely to be swayed by obvious appeals without substance).
So can we just stop this talk about shills? It's just useless and unnecessarily combative. There are plenty of obvious TROLLS here, but shills? For what? And let's be clear: a shill is NOT just a vigorous supporter of something. A shill is an insincere supporter generally paid to show support. I'd eat my hat if there are active shills in that sense regularly appearing on this site.
And who exactly would a "shill" be supporting in this thread? Are you claiming the alt-right community or someone is paying jerks to post racist crap?? There are too many folks who already believe in racist crap anyway. Why do they need shills?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @03:37PM
Do you think the alt-truth creates by itself?
SEO, don't ignore the power of site diversity when it comes to creating trending derogatory memes.
Don't worry, they'll not shill only S/N. But again they won't ignore it
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday August 25 2018, @05:18PM (4 children)
I think it's fairly well accepted now that there are large scale paid efforts at swaying the political opinions of web surfers. I personally think soylent, although small, is about large enough to attract the occasional post from those types. They may be searching for sites discussing certain issues based on keyword searches or article links and don't forget bots can crawl the web making shill posts everywhere also.
As far as I'm concerned, if someone talks like a shill and won't engage in a reasoned argument -- they just keep parroting their propaganda, it matters little whether they were paid to do it or not. The whole point of shilling is that what the paid shills say starts to rub off on the wider populace and is echoed, so even if it's just the echoes we see here, it still deserves calling out!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday August 26 2018, @07:37AM (2 children)
We also have a policy of not censoring comments or removing any that are obvious political trolling, This is extremely attractive to those who want to abuse the system. Most social media sites today are attempting to bring in controls by removing the worst offenders. This goes against everything that we have striven for here, but sadly I can now fully appreciate why it is becoming necessary.
The editors, like all our staff, are volunteers and they give many hours of their time willingly. But we are losing editors simply because they are disillusioned by the abuses of the site by a very small but disruptive minority. If the community doesn't moderate it then what should we do to allow reasonable discussion to continue? Don't underestimate the effects of political trolling on this site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @07:26PM (1 child)
You say this on a site that carries a story "from the religion-of-piece dept." and another story on how "Trolls Will Save the World" ending with the remark "you knew I wouldn't let that kinda SJW nonsense slide without comment." Both were submitted by a member of your staff and both were sourced from Milo Yiannopoulos, whose tour of Australia was called "Troll Academy."
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/04/25/2331205 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/08/21/0259223 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday August 28 2018, @10:11AM
In part I agree with you. Today, I wouldn't personally release either of those stories, but they date back to 2016 and 2017. Today I know who Milo Yiannopoulos is, we have seen an exponential increase in trolling everywhere - including on this site, and we have covered this argument from both sides so many times in the intervening period.
One of the reasons why such stories are unwelcome now is that they say nothing new. There is nothing to generate an intelligent discussion. We have all, no matter where we live, seen the polarisation of large numbers of people in the USA into 2 opposing camps, both of which are ill-prepared or unable to do what they were voted into power to do i.e. serve the American people, and not just those who voted for them or, worse still, funded them. There is also a huge silent majority - both in the USA and on this site - who are dismayed at this state of affairs but do not make their own feelings known. If they simply moderated the comments appropriately much of the trolling on this site would not be seen.
Is this site perfect? No, of course not. In retrospect we can find stories that could be done better now, or should simply never have reached the front page in the first place. We have made mistakes. As, I am sure, have you. No-one is infallible. But we are at least learning as we go and hopefully, will not make the same mistakes again. If the best that you can do is find stories from 16 months ago or longer, than I think that we are heading in the right direction and I am content with the progress that we are making.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 27 2018, @12:36AM
"Occasional post" from them? Maybe. I could believe it. But I see the word used a lot more frequently, sometimes accusing established posters here.
My point isn't that it never happens here, but rather that this is a bizarre and very uninfluential target for this sort of stuff. And this community is full of people who already have strong opinions, less likely to be swayed by meaningless rhetoric (unless they already agree with it, in which case again shilling is pointless).
Point being: only an idiot would pay people to shill here over tens of thousands of more prominent forums. Thinking there is a good chance there are lots of active shills here is bordering on tinfoil hat mindset.
And therefore I see >95% of accusations of "shilling" as combative and non-productive... And often nonsensical (as in this case).
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:21PM (3 children)
When I first noticed shill being used a lot was back during the 16 election on 4chan/pol/. David Brock got a bunch of money from some rich DNC supports to form Correct the Record, like the day after this happened suddenly 50% of the posts on the front page were pro-Hillary anti-Trump. This is what I think caused /pol/, a pretty anti-establishment place, to swing so drastically pro-Trump. The shilling stopped the day after the election but ever since calling people shills has been pretty popular.
I don't see much chance of shilling being done here at soylent, because as far as I know nobody has paid any right wing trolls to do any shilling. I assume Russia/China paid for some on both sides to stir up division and Israel has always paid to shill pro-Israel things. CTR is defunct (now ShareBlue) but I doubt SN would be a place they would care about.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:53PM (1 child)
The vast majority of the accusations of 'shilling' I've seen are just an ad hominem technique used against people to simultaneously discount their opinion and virtue signal.
Doesn't actually change any minds, few readers accept random shill accusations at face value since they are so common (though like minded folks will go along with them); the net result I see is mostly just fostering divisiveness.
Frankly that's Russia's job, why do it for them?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @10:57PM
Who are you shilling for, meta-shill?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday August 26 2018, @12:36PM
How would you know? Why do you only list examples of countries other than the US and Europe? There's plenty of it going on here. The alleged actions of Cambridge Analytica / Emerdata / SCL Group could be considered one high profile example. The elites see the web as a battleground (the "cyber") for public opinion. It's not just political shilling of course. There's corporate shilling to promote products and lifestyles as well.
A couple of phrases I see around here and on other sites, that are just as likely to be the echoes of those brainwashed by the shills as the shills themselves are "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" and, a corporate one, "Self-driving cars only need to be better than the average driver [to improve safety]". I'll call anyone out posting either as a shill, unless they're willing to fully engage in a serious, reasoned argument with me about these things.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:56PM
what a shill.