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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: 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).