Interesting article from a serious source. The paywall-free quota is 1 article so you should be able to read it. If not, others can post an archive link. Or else consider subscribing if you can afford it. Democracy needs independent journalism as well as independent encyclopedias.
Oh the “I made it the fuck up” is actually a very popular meme, so although it’s aggressive, it was more a tongue-in-cheek reference than a direct attack to you as a person. The meme for reference
Anyway, the lab theory isn’t the most insane theory as it stands, and as you say, it’s not crazy at all to think of technicians being irresponsible. However, it does tend to share a lot of room with the actual conspiracy that COVID was a coordinated man-made attack, and in fact, the two were almost completely undistinguishable for a good chunk of the pandemic. To the point where I thought you definitely meant COVID being lab-grown as a coordinated attack, and not an accident, which I do believe is far more likely.
So yeah, Wikipedia is written by humans who do either have biases or who are too quick to judge situations. But overall, it is still one of the most impartial and reputable sources we have online.
As for Gaza, I definitely don’t think most people who feel icky calling it a genocide would be so hesitant if Israel weren’t a US ally, or allied with western values in general. Like I said, there is virtually no world where other non-allied governments doing the same thing wouldn’t be almost unanimously called a genocide, as shown by the Rohingya genocide, which is almost never questioned as such.
Interesting. All is provisionally forgiven.
On the lab-leak boredom-fest, yes I agree that the intent-vs-accident distinction is crucial and that the intent variant absolutely qualifies as conspirationism given that there’s zero evidence for it either empirical or rational. You’re right that the two were conflated problematically.
BTW it would be hard to be less conspirationist than me. I am about as skeptical as they come. I’m not even down for JFK, i.e. the starter-level conspiracy. Imagine that!
On Gaza, that’s an interesting counterfactual about the Rohingya, I admit that it’s somewhat persuasive. Personally I just hate emotion-charged words which are impossible to falsify because they require insight into other people’s minds. I share Orwell’s take: words should have clear meanings, agreed upon by all, or they should just be avoided (except in poetry). But of course the emotional valency is exactly why most people love the word genocide. Who cares about accuracy, it feels so good! Similar situation for “racist”, “fascist”, “woke” and bunch of others.
BTW I read recently that the framers of the genocide crime did not predict the power it would take on. They thought the other universal crimes (i.e. war crime, crime against humanity, and - especially - aggression) were all at least as bad as genocide. Maybe the fact that it’s a neologism gave it extra power.