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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Kellamity@sh.itjust.workstoScience Memes@mander.xyzHorrors We've Unleashed
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    19 days ago

    Putting aside questions of ecosystems etc, I think the main reason is that we just can’t - ironic since we seem to be extint-ing all the other animals

    In South America they tried in the 50s and 60s, and more kept cropping up. They breed so quickly, if you miss an area they can just rebound. Then more can come in on ships and stuff

    So you couldn’t really localise it, it would have to be a huge global undertaking. And it would likely require widespread use of pesticides that are at best tricksy and at worst illegal, not to mention environmentally shitty




  • I see your point but again I’d say it’s because of the US’s winner-take-all system, as well as 50 states vs 650 seats

    Farage posed enough of a perceived risk to the Tories that they moved in his direction to avoid losing votes to UKIP. UKIP never would have won more than a handful of seats, let alone a majority, but by splitting the right vote Labour could have beat the Tories in swing seats

    And yes, that could be broadly true of a ‘spoiler’ candidate in the US presidential election, except that:

    1. Only 50 states, and therefore a tiny amount of swing seats compared to the UK

    2. more population per state than per British seat. By a whole huge margin. So its not enough to potentially appeal to 8,000 people to ‘spoil’ a seat

    3. The above leads to funding issues. Not only is there more money generally in the US elections, but because you have to flip a big state not a small constituency, you have to spend way way more to make an impact. You can’t focus a small budget on one tiny area and win a seat

    4. Winner-takes-all means that as long as a campaign thinks it will win a state, and then a presidency, who cares if some counties went to a spoiler candidate?

    I’d love to be wrong, and I do think that there’s probably also a cultural/historical element to the US’s two party dominance. But that said, its just a different system, different processes, different outcomes, different challenges than in the UK


  • There are 650 MPs in the UK, and unlike ind the US it isn’t winner-takes-all; if you win one of the 650 seats you get to be an MP

    In the US presidential election, there are 50 states for a bigger population and even then winning one while losing the others achieves nothing

    In the senate and house elections, which are more analogous to the UK, independent candidates are viable, right? There’s at least a few. But it’s not comparable to the Presidential elections

    FPTP is fucked, but it’s only one element of why the USA is deadlocked into the two major parties being the only contenders. The electoral college, the winner-takes-all nature… all sorts


  • Kellamity@sh.itjust.workstoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldThoughts on the debate?
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    1 month ago

    For anyone who is politically involved and knows the issues, Walz won by having better and more consistent positions; as well as Vance saying some scary fascist level shit

    But I fear that most undecided voters aren’t in that camp, and for those people Vance did well just be being coherent and vaguely normal.

    Vance lied and twisted the truth a bunch, but if you just tuned in without knowing all the facts and context, that wasn’t necessarily clear

    For me though I was pleasantly surprised by Walz actually making a moral case for immigration, you don’t see that nearly enough







  • While this prosecution was completely fucked up and was 100% linked to the criminalisation of abortion (and therefore miscarriages and pregnancy in general), the issue was that following the traumatic premature birth she didn’t immediately remove the baby from the toilet

    Moving north wouldn’t have helped on paper, as the alleged crime of letting your baby drown is still illegal

    That said, possibly a more progressive state might have had the good sense to not prosecute or even treat this as a criminal matter. On the other hand, the DA where this happened was a Democrat according to the article

    A grand jury declined to indict her, so it ended ‘okay’, apart from all the unnecessary additional horrific trauma inflicted on a grieving mother and being a harrowing sign of dark repressive times






  • There was a really good article on this and unfortunately I can’t find it now to share

    But the gist was that Titan exploited a bunch of loopholes, among other things. The paying customers on the sub were in fact ‘marine researchers’ who coincidently made a donation, and things like that

    Some of the people who were at one point involved but left due to safety concerns raised the issue with OSHA (? - or whoever the more specific body was) who repeatedly failed to investigate or take any action

    So for me, whether or not they are able to charge the company, the industry regulators and government bodies overseeing them need to face some questions and judgements too (though it would take a more knowledgeable person than me to know what exactly that looks like)