fear

How did he get approval to do experimental surgery on primates for this?

1. Don't use Tiktok (and other low quality social media like Twitter) and encourage people you know to do the same. Suggest alternatives like federated sites, and help people navigate it if you can.

2. Firmly correct disinformation when you see it. If you have a topic of interest you find yourself repeatedly addressing, keep a short copy/paste response with easily digestible sources to make the process quick and painless.

3. Engage as little as possible with disinformation, since any kind of engagement is exactly what they're looking for. When you stumble upon it, state a brief sourced correction and quickly leave. If someone beat you to it, simply leave and avoid in the future.

4. Teach your friends and family about the dangers of misinformation, and the importance of vetting sources. Peer reviewed journal = great. Random youtuber/tiktoker = needs sources to confirm validity.

5. Try to be as polite as possible when addressing disinformation because aggression can cause people to dig their heels in and push them further into the false narrative.

6. Learn terms to describe the spread of disinformation that are easy for people to grasp. Learning and teaching others about things like "good/bad faith arguments" so you can spot and effectively counter trolls, recognizing "irony poisoning" that is a driving force behind the normalization of extremist views, and understanding how "woke" actually means "tolerant and respectful of the differences between human beings" can all help people to see what's happening and protect against disinformation.

7. If you're motivated enough, start your own publication that provides accurate, well sourced information on your topics of interest, or join an already established publication as a freelance contributor.

8. Don't give up. Don't let anyone convince you that the fight is already over and that we're doomed to live out 1984. The real fight hasn't even begun, because so many people are too caught up in their own stressful lives to realize there's a full blown culture war going on here. Once more people open their eyes to it, sanity will prevail. These points here are exactly how you can begin opening people's eyes.

Pretty sure you could substitute "autism" with any topic at all and the point would be accurate.

True. Back when I rented it was a good situation because my rent was dirt cheap and I was able to save money. Seems those days are long gone with rentals sometimes being double or triple what a mortgage payment would be.

Renting isn't the greatest decision, either. You're throwing money at a landlord and gaining zero equity. People often do it because it's that or homelessness. These systems are in place to take advantage of people who aren't the best decision makers. Just because they can be taken advantage of... should they be? Or should we be better than this and revamp how we house people so that it isn't a massive scam with the opportunity for extra side scams like we see here?

If the landlord wasn't a massive dick, they both could have benefited from this situation. She'd have the renovated bathroom she wanted, and the landlord knew his property was being taken care of without even needing to lift a finger. Instead he got greedy, and rather than blame the greedy jerk people want to jump on the "stupid" victim. Except it's not her fault her landlord was a prick.

I'm not arguing this point. Even though I disagree with how she chose to spend her money, I can still acknowledge that it's not her fault the landlord took advantage of her and kicked her out to charge higher rent to the next person.

Except shaming obesity doesn't solve that problem, either. You're kind of proving my point here without even realizing it.

A proper comparison here would be more like a leased vehicle than a rental car. It's not the "stupidest thing ever" for this tenant to believe she would be living there for 1 or more years and wouldn't suddenly be evicted. Your exaggeration only benefits predators, and your pity is hardly a reward to anyone.

Everyone is so busy insulting the tenant doing the upgrades when it's the landlord who behaved badly. If all we do is collectively blame victims when they get taken advantage of, society will crumble. This woman wasn't stupid, she just didn't have her guard up in preparation for the massive asshole who had power over her. There's a difference.

When you are trusting, you're called stupid. When you trust no one, you're called unreasonably cynical. They're two sides of the same victim blaming coin. Start blaming the actual problem: predators.

Trump is a full blown cult of personality at this point, no one else will do. Maybe that's a good thing since he doesn't seem to have much time left.

Are you really pretending there's no difference between assisting a country in defending itself from an aggressor, and starting your own war as the aggressor?