The General News/Current Affairs Thread

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Dr. Zoidberg
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Woman Says She Was ‘Virtually Gang-Raped’ in Facebook's Metaverse

“Within 60 seconds of joining—I was verbally and sexually harassed.”

A woman says that she was “virtually gang-raped” in Facebook’s metaverse, just seconds after she stepped into the new virtual world.
“Within 60 seconds of joining—I was verbally and sexually harassed—3-4 male avatars, with male voices, essentially, but virtually gang-raped my avatar and took photos,” Nina Jane Patel, a 43-year-old London-based mother, wrote in a December Medium post that has only just started to attract online attention. “As I tried to get away, they yelled, ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t love it’ and ‘Go rub yourself off to the photo.’”
“It was surreal,” Patel added. “It was a nightmare.”

Reports of sexual violence are already proving to be a problem in the metaverse. In early December, Verge reported that a beta tester had alleged that a stranger had groped her avatar. “Sexual harassment is no joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense,” the tester wrote. “Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behavior, which made me feel isolated in the Plaza.”

In response, Vivek Sharma, Meta’s vice president of Horizon, told Verge that the incident was “absolutely unfortunate,” and the beta tester didn’t use a safety feature that’s meant to block someone from interacting with you. Sharma said the tester’s report was “good feedback.”
Arwa Mahdawi, a Guardian columnist, slammed the response as “a bit of casual victim blaming.”

“It’s the digital equivalent of telling women that if they don’t want to get harassed while walking down the street, then they should just stay at home,” Mahdawi wrote. “It’s old-fashioned misogyny repackaged for the digital age.”

Last year, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s parent company would be renamed “Meta,” and focus on the supposed digital universe of the future. Within that world, people’s avatars will theoretically be able to do anything they already do in the real world—from hanging out with friends to going to concerts to mundane tasks like grocery shopping.

“We’re sorry to hear this happened. We want everyone in Horizon Venues to have a positive experience, easily find the safety tools that can help in a situation like this—and help us investigate and take action,” Joe Osborne, a Meta spokesperson, told VICE News in an emailed statement. Horizon Venues is meant to be a space to host virtual events, such as concerts.

“Horizon Venues should be safe, and we are committed to building it that way,” Osborne continued. “We will continue to make improvements as we learn more about how people interact in these spaces, especially when it comes to helping people report things easily and reliably.”

Patel, a vice president of research for another metaverse company, said in her Medium post that she didn’t use any safety features because the whole experience happened so quickly. And, after she shared her experience, she said she was met with some unsympathetic commentators, who told her, “Don’t choose a female avatar, it’s a simple fix” and dismissed her as making “a pathetic cry for attention.”

Source: Vice

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That is motherfucking badass. I have never met that woman before but I love her.

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Reminds me of the old lady from Surf Nazis Must Die walking into a gun shop
"I wanna buy a gun. One that'll shoot the head off a honky at 20 paces."
damn now I wanna watch some trashy Trome stuff

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A Man Tore His Lung From Masturbating, Doctors Say

It seems to be the first documented case of masturbation causing this rare but usually not serious injury.

A young man’s session of masturbation inadvertently led to him spending almost a week in the hospital. In a recent case report from Switzerland, doctors detail how a 20-year-old ended up with air leaking into his chest after some seemingly innocent self-love. Fortunately, the injury wasn’t severe and he recuperated just fine.

According to the report, published in the May issue of Radiology Case Reports, the man visited the emergency room with stabbing chest pain and trouble breathing. His face had also gotten swollen, and doctors could hear distinct cracking noises as he breathed in and out. His symptoms had begun while he was “lying in bed and masturbating.”

Chest scans soon revealed that he had something called pneumomediastinum, a condition where air circulating through the respiratory system somehow ends up escaping into the space in the chest between the two lungs (the mediastinum). The man’s air sacs were also damaged, and he required high doses of oxygen. Doctors made the decision to put him in the intensive care unit for observation, and he was given preventative antibiotics and acetaminophen for his pain.

Pneumomediastinum can be caused by physical trauma to the lungs or esophagus. It can also spontaneously arise when a sudden increase in pressure within the chest cavity causes a tear in certain lung membranes, allowing air to leak out. This kind of injury is more likely to happen in young men, and known triggers include an acute asthma attack, strenuous exercise, or violent vomiting.

The man only had a history of mild asthma and denied any other known risk factors. So, near as the doctors could tell, his masturbation had to be the culprit. When the doctors looked through the medical literature, they did find a few reports of this injury likely brought on by sex. But this seems to be the first documented instance of self-love being to blame.

“Since there is no literature on spontaneous pneumomediastinum associated with autoerotic experiences, we consider our case an unusual presentation of this entity,” they wrote.

Scary as its symptoms can be, spontaneous pneumomediastinum is usually a condition that clears up on its own without the need for specialized treatment. Following an overnight stay in the ICU, the man was transferred out with no issues, and he was discharged from the hospital after four days with his chest pains and other symptoms completely gone.

Source: Gizmodo

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This certainly couldn't backfire into an absolute shitshow :olol: My conspiracy theory is that Elon wants to crash Twitter into the ground and any other reason is just a front. He won't care when all of his $43B burns up in a flash.

I joined Twitter back in 2007 and almost instantly hated it. From 2010-2018, I got nonstop spam and attempted account takeovers because I've got such a short handle (@bigb). I used to get account reset emails multiple times a day.

The worst phase was when this rapper from Vegas started promoting himself on there and I got tagged on all his posts. :grr: That and when fans of the Indian version of Big Brother (Bigg Boss) start using #bigb as a hashtag for some stupid fucking reason.

Now-a-days, I like it a lot more. I'm not super excited because I just got my account perfect so it was equal mix memes, indie/retro game news, sports highlights, and batshit leftist rants.

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I just think it's funny a lot of the people mad about this own a Tesla. If the media think he's a monster then they are Dr. Frankenstein. They pushed him as a saint for years knowing the stories about him.

I really don't care. I predict nothing important changes. Maybe he allows Trump back if he runs for president again with the idea world leaders deserve to be on. But I don't think he's going to reinstate Milo and Alex Jones and whoever. He will let Babylon Bee back on though.


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I made an account with Twitter twice. I only used each account on the day it was used and never again because there was no useful information on it. It was just people posting rubbish so I really do not see the point of Twitter much less the appeal.

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Ulta Beauty apologizes for 'Come hang with Kate Spade' perfume promo email, four years after the designer’s suicide by hanging

BOLINGBROOK, Ill. — International cosmetics company Ulta Beauty is apologizing after sending out a promotional email that struck some people as tone-deaf.

On May 1, the company invited email subscribers to "come hang with Kate Spade," talking about a perfume product discount.

Kate Spade, a fashion designer and the founder of the "kate spade" brand, died by suicide in 2018.

At the time, her family said she'd been dealing with depression and anxiety, and Spade's death led to a wave of conversations about mental health.

Many email subscribers who received the promotion tweeted about it, criticizing Ulta, regardless of the reason it was sent.



On Monday, Eileen Ziesemer, a spokeswoman for Ulta Beauty, apologized for the wording of the message.

She sent out this statement about the email:

Ulta Beauty recently sent an email featuring kate spade new york fragrance with an insensitive subject line and for this, we sincerely apologize. Mental health is a very serious, important issue in this country, and not something we would ever take lightly. We apologize to the Spade family, our kate spade new york brand partners and to our guests. Thank you for understanding as we strive to do better.

Subscribers received an apology email from Ulta. Some people tweeted about that email after finding it in their inboxes.



Source: WFAA

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Monkeypox cases among gay, bisexual men reported in Portugal, Britain

Lisbon: Portuguese health authorities confirmed five cases of monkeypox in young men, and Britain announced another two, marking an unusual outbreak in Europe of a disease typically limited to Africa.

Portugal’s General Directorate for Health said it was also investigating 15 suspected cases and that all were identified this month in the area around the capital, Lisbon.

All the Portuguese cases involve men, most of them young, authorities said, on Wednesday, Portugal time. They have skin lesions and were reported to be in stable condition. Authorities did not say if the men had a history of travel to Africa or any links with recent cases in Britain or elsewhere.

British health authorities said on Wednesday they had identified two new cases of monkeypox, one in London and another in south-east England. They said neither case had previously travelled to Africa and that it was possible they were infected in Britain. The cases had no known links to other previously confirmed patients, suggesting there may be multiple chains of monkeypox transmission already happening in the country.

Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser of Britain’s Health Security Agency, said the latest cases, alongside the other infections reported in Europe, “confirms our initial concerns that there could be spread of monkeypox within our communities”.

The agency said recent cases had been seen “predominantly in gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men”, although it noted it was unclear how exactly people had been infected.

Monkeypox has not previously been documented to have spread through sex, but can be transmitted through close contact with infected people, their clothing or bedsheets.

Earlier this week the UK agency reported four cases of monkeypox they said had been spread among gay and bisexual men in London. The agency said the risk to the general population “remains low”.

Health authorities in Spain’s central Madrid region said late on Wednesday that they were assessing 23 possible cases of monkeypox. They noted that all of the suspected cases are young men and that the majority of them had sex with other men.

The disease belongs to a family of viruses that includes smallpox. Most people recover from monkeypox within weeks, but the WHO said that the disease is fatal for up to one in ten people.

Sporadic cases of monkeypox have been seen previously in countries including Britain and the US, but nearly all have been in people who were likely infected during their travels in Africa.

Dr Ibrahim Soce Fall, the World Health Organisation’s assistant director-general for emergency response, said the spread of monkeypox in the UK needed to be investigated to understand how the disease was being transmitted among men who have sex with other men.

Fall said that health officials still need a better understanding of how monkeypox spreads in general, even in the countries where it is endemic.

He noted that while there were more than 6000 reported cases in Congo and about 3000 cases in Nigeria last year, there are still “so many unknowns in terms of the dynamics of transmission.”

Britain previously reported three earlier cases of monkeypox, two involving people who lived in the same household and the third someone who had travelled to Nigeria, where the disease occurs frequently in animals.
The virus has typically spread to people from infected animals like rodents, although human-to-human transmission has been known to occur.

Some British experts said it was soon to conclude that monkeypox had spread through sexual contact, although the outbreak there suggested that possibility.

“The recent cases suggest a potentially novel means of spread,” Neil Mabbott, a disease expert at the University of Edinburgh, said, adding that related viruses were known to spread via sex.

Keith Neal, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Nottingham, said the transmission might not have occurred through sexual activity but just “the close contact associated with sexual intercourse.”

Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, a rash and lesions on the face or genitals resembling those caused by smallpox. A vaccine developed against smallpox has been approved for monkeypox, and several anti-virals also appear to be effective.

Source: WA Today

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Monkey fuckers!

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England has no idea how lucky they are to have their PM just say "Ah, fuck it, I'll go then" compared to our little Trump situation.

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