I work in a USA manufacturing plant that has nine figures worth of EV motor manufacturing lines cancelled, sitting around collecting dust since the new administration changed all the regulations and incentives.

TIL that song is by Queen. I had no idea. So definitely an appropriate song for this discussion!

I did not see a single April fools joke this year

Assuming for the moment that all these criticisms are completely correct and valid, “Provides no new information” or “documentation is methodologically unacceptable” or “selective bias” or “took license” do not mean that a book should therefore be characterized as fictional.

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation is a three-volume nonfiction series . . .<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago?wprov=sfti1

The Gulag Archipelago (Russian: Arkhipelag GULag; literally, “The Gulag Archipelago”) is a three-volume nonfictional literary investigation. . .<

https://grokipedia.com/page/The_Gulag_Archipelago

That’s a very large conclusion to reach from one person’s completely undetailed single statement.

I had probably 10 times as many educational hours dedicated to Hitler and the Holocaust as I did learning about Stalin.

As older generations with direct knowledge die off, the younger generations are forgetting.

Not too long ago I started listening to the audiobook of The Gulag Archipelago, and I had to stop a few chapters in because it was negatively affecting my mental health.

You may have heard about the Soviet Union being bad in the 70s and 80s, but that was an absolute cakewalk compared to the Stalin era.

I find it very unlikely the US could keep a lid on 200 deaths and saying it’s six. Not for more than a week or so. People’s families are going to wonder where their loved ones are. Hospital workers, morgue workers, life insurance companies, flight crews, people are going to talk, and share pictures.

I remember health class around 1993 we were watching a filmstrip from the 70s or early 80s, and the filmstrip told us to do the back blows before performing the Heimlich maneuver. Our health teacher then paused the video and told us NOT to do the back blows, because new research had found that back blows are more likely to push the obstruction further inwards.

I’m glad they had it right in the filmstrip!

I deleted Facebook maybe two years ago. One of the last things I saw was a very obviously AI generated image of six or seven soldiers that had lost the same leg and all had it replaced with a prosthetic at exactly the same point, with some caption about “let’s get some likes for our wounded warriors!” Followed by dozens of comments in support, I assume all were bots.