"Australia’s social media ban for kids is now in effect. ... And, of course, it’s not working. Kids are always going to figure out ways to get around the ban:

It took 13-year-old Isobel less than five minutes to outsmart Australia’s “world-leading” social media ban for children.

A notification from Snapchat, one of the ten platforms affected, had lit up her screen, warning she’d be booted off when the law kicked in this week – if she couldn’t prove she was over 16.

“I got a photo of my mum, and I stuck it in front of the camera and it just let me through. It said thanks for verifying your age,” Isobel claims. “I’ve heard someone used Beyoncé’s face,” she adds.

“I texted her,” she gestures to her mum Mel, “and I was like, ‘Hey Mummy, I got past the social media ban’ and she was just like, ‘Oh, you monkey’.”

"Or how about this “hack”:

Either way, Adams and her friends don’t plan to go quietly. When one app asked them to submit a selfie for an age verification system, they used a photo of a golden retriever they found on Google.

It worked, she said.

"So let’s review what Australia’s politicians have actually accomplished here: They’ve alienated parents who don’t appreciate the government deciding how to raise their kids. They’ve taught an entire generation of young people that adults don’t trust them and that circumventing authority is both necessary and easy. They’ve cut off legitimate support networks for vulnerable kids while doing nothing about the actual harms that those same kids face. Indeed, they’ve actually pushed kids towards more dangerous places online while making it more difficult for them to learn to use the internet appropriately. And they’ve created a system so trivially easy to bypass that a golden retriever can pass age verification."

~ Mike Masnick from his post 'Australia’s Social Media Ban Goes Into Effect As Pretty Much Everyone Realises It’s A Total Mess'

Alex Epstein is one of today’s most effective Objectivist intellectuals. His ideas are clear, fact-based, and well-integrated. His communication skills are second to none.

How did he achieve such mastery? In large part by learning to write objectively—that is, in plain, simple language, with relevant facts and concrete examples to support his claims.

Writing is the most organized form of thinking. Clear, concretized, essentialized writing is the measure of—and the means to—an organized, highly effective mind.

Would you like to improve your writing?

Here is Alex’s advice:

Whenever a young writer asks me how to improve, one of my top recommendations is “Find a good editor to give you feedback”—followed by “This is very hard to do, because most really good editors won’t be available to you.”

Fortunately, if you are a promising writer and want to get a lot better, you have a great option in trying to write for The Objective Standard, edited by my friend Craig Biddle.

Craig helped me a lot with my writing early in my career when I needed it the most.

He would kindly but firmly point out when my arguments were half-baked, my sentences were sloppy, or my theme was conflicted.

Like any good editor, he was always a strong advocate for the audience, telling me when my writing was clear and motivating—and when it was not.

Also, just as importantly, Craig was a great source of encouragement to me early in my career. He always supplemented any criticism of my writing with a general enthusiasm about my potential. This is particularly valuable early on, when writing is hard and encouragement is scarce.

I hope that more young writers take advantage of the opportunity to write for The Objective Standard—and that supporters of TOS are aware of the contribution they’re making to a new generation of compelling Objectivist writers.

If you’d like to write for TOS and work with me, contact Thomas Walker-Werth at thomas@theobjectivestandard.com, and he will help get you started.

Also, if you’d like to pursue a career as an intellectual, check out the programs, courses, and conferences at Objective Standard Institute (OSI), where we systematically teach the philosophic ideas, thinking methods, and writing skills we apply at TOS.

If you’d like to discuss the possibility of launching an intellectual career with OSI, contact Angel Werth at angel@objectivestandard.org.

And if you know any young writers or budding intellectuals who might be interested in working with TOS or OSI, please forward this information to them. You might help launch the next Alex Epstein.

—Craig Biddle
Editor in Chief, The Objective Standard
Executive Director, Objective Standard Institute

While Google may have dodged the bullet of a breakup, living under the constant threat of regulators is a price no innovator should have to pay

The post Branding Google a Criminal Is a Defeat for the American Spirit appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

In the very first large study of long-term mortality by vaccination status—assessing the impact of COVID-19 mRNA vaccination among French adults aged 18 to 59—French scientists found there was "no increased risk of 4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated against COVID-19, further supporting the safety of the mRNA vaccines that are being widely used worldwide."

Their research with 22.7 million vaccinated individuals and 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals found that "vaccinated individuals had a 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19, and no increased risk of all-cause mortality over a median follow-up of 45 months."  

This is the largest study of this kind in the world, and the results are significant. (There was a large Japanese study during the Omicron wave, which earlier vaccines had some trouble covering. This did see an increase in mortality in the over-70s which didn't discriminate towards vaccinated or non-vaccinated.). 

Blogger with the unfortunate name of Snarky Gherkin summarises the French results:

This study used real-world national health data... not surveys, not estimates, not “my cousin’s friend is a nurse on Rumble", not laminated placards of nocebo hysteria. 

They followed 22.7 million vaccinated adults and 5.9 million unvaccinated adults aged 18–59, median follow-up 45 months (nearly 4 years). 

They matched the groups on age, sex, region and over 41 health conditions (so it was adjusted for comorbidities). 

Then they looked at hard endpoints such as all-cause mortality, COVID-related mortality and long-term mortality trends.
The Findings...

• Vaccinated people had 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19.
• 25% lower risk of death from ANY cause.
• No increase in mortality for 4 years after vaccination.
• Results held even after excluding COVID deaths.

What this means... if vaccines were causing secret waves of heart attacks, cancers, turbo-autoimmune-disasters… we would absolutely see it here. 

Instead, vaccinated people (on average) lived longer. 

The authors did note that vaccinated groups had slightly more cardiometabolic issues,
yet still had better outcomes. (That’s the opposite of “healthier people bias.”) 

This is one of the strongest long-term safety signals ever conducted and released.
Link here, have a read. 

Summary: 

mRNA vaccines weren’t the problem.
The virus was.

Feel free to question the summer-upper. And/or read the full research.