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"We will not ban questionable subreddits," Reddit's then-CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote mere months ago. "You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create."
But in an apparent reversal of that policy, and in an unprecedented effort to clean up its long-suffering image, Reddit has just banned five "questionable subreddits."
The site permanently removed the forums Wednesday afternoon for harassing specific, named individuals, a spokesperson said. Of the five, two were dedicated to fat-shaming, one to transphobia, one to racism and one to harassing members of a progressive video game site.
Unsurprisingly, a vocal contingent of Redditors aren't taking the changes well: "Reddit increases censorship," read one post on r/freespeech, while forums like r/mensrights and r/opieandanthony theorized they would be next.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday June 12 2015, @05:03PM
I find that somewhat saddening as a person of Creationist thought. I'm expected to believe that red blood cells miraculously survived over a 75 million year time span? http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33067582 [bbc.com] There is documented proof that organic matter can be preserved for thousands of years via mummification. That works only if, "kept in cool and dry conditions.". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy [wikipedia.org] Believing that the dinosaurs were wiped out within the last few thousand years and that some remnant of red blood cells were found in a fossil is actually believable. I recently got to thinking about the origin of oil and had a somewhat disturbing thought. Oil is decomposed organic matter. It is probably at least partially made up of decomposed human flesh. So, I guess my car kind of runs on Soylent Green. Kind of a creepy thought.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Informative) by bitrotRnotbitrot on Friday June 12 2015, @07:08PM
You are not expected to believe anything, from TFA:
Co-author Dr Sergio Bertazzo said: "We still need to do more research to confirm what it is that we are imaging in these dinosaur bone fragments.
"If we can confirm that our initial observations are correct, then this could yield fresh insights into how these creatures once lived and evolved."
So essentially there is more work needed but extremely interesting if it holds up.
Have you read the paper?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @08:19PM
I'm expected to believe that
You're approaching this incorrectly. You are not expected to "believe". Facts are meant to be accepted if they are reliable. Possible explanations for these facts are hypothesized and evaluated based on how consistent they are with reality. Hypotheses are revised to better reflect all the facts or discarded in favor of a better one if enough facts contradict it.
actually believable
creepy thought
How believable at first glance or how creepy facts are does not matter. Scientists may approach the observations with extreme skepticism but physical reality does not care what you feel.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by penguinoid on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:57AM
The trouble with Creationists is that they don't do science (make predictions and test predictions vs reality) but rather try to fight evolution. You have to understand, science is not about truth it is about prediction. For example, Newtonian physics is known to be false, but is still used because the predictions remain accurate in a given range. Quantum mechanics or Relativity are almost certainly wrong given that they conflict on the details of gravity -- but neither is going away until a theory arises that makes better predictions. The same goes with evolution -- the details are probably wrong but that just means the mistaken bits get updated to account for the new facts, and it remains the best theory for making predictions about biology. Even were creationism true, evolution is still the way to go when doing science because creationism won't give you a numerical prediction for the genetic variation in the retrovirus fragments embedded in cow DNA vs the retrovirus fragments embedded in horse DNA.
Moreover, if Genesis were literally true, creationists would have much better things to do than try to find holes in evolution -- and in fact could be publishing all that in the most respected scientific journals. Although creationists like to focus on the 7 day creation story, there's nothing to say there because "God did it" doesn't make predictions. The real juicy bits would be in the story of the Flood.
Creationism (literal reading of Genesis) makes the following predictions:
*Living things predicted to look like they were intelligently designed, and then cursed. Predict multiple novel genes in superficially similar species, or perhaps genes copied verbatim among distantly related species as would make sense for a particular species (unless God used an evolutionary algorithm to design everything).
*Predict very low rates of mutation in each gene, corresponding to 6,000 years of mutation.
*Predict genetic evidence of population bottlenecks in all land animals 4000 years ago, down to population size 1 pair for all unclean land animals, and 7 for clean land animals. For humans, population bottleneck down to a population of 1 man and 4 women, one of whom did not pass on her mitochondria. (Genetically, Noah’s children count as the DNA from Noah and his wife, unless they were born of adultery.) Evolution would fail to predict a smaller bottleneck on “unclean” species vs “clean” ones vs species that would survive a Flood.
*Ancient oceans predicted to look like 2000 years of marine life, plus a year’s worth of catastrophic flood sediment, plus 4000 years more. Ancient land predicted to look like 2000 years of all modern land flora and fauna, covered with a year’s worth of catastrophic flood sediment and marine life, plus 4000 more years. Predict bronze and iron implements, and cities, below Flood layer.
*Predict large layer of sediments and fossils in an arrangement consistent with a single catastrophic flooding. In particular, fossils in this layer should consist of a mix of all modern species sorted by Flood. The clearest predictions could probably be concerning microscopic fossils, palynology, since they’re basically dust and should behave more predictably than complex organisms, and exist in large quantities. Would look rather different than evolution’s predicted migration patterns and sorting by age.
*Predict long-lived trees like bristlecone pines can either survive a Flood or all be younger than 4,000 years.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2015, @04:09PM
You do have some valid points. Here is an example of Creationist Scientists at work: http://dinosaurproject.swau.edu/ [swau.edu] Interesting reading: http://origins.swau.edu/papers/dinos/default.html [swau.edu] , but specifically http://origins.swau.edu/papers/geologic/geology [swau.edu]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"