Racism, misogyny prompt American Ornithological Society renaming of birds
mo_ztt ✅ @ mo_ztt @lemmy.world Posts 40Comments 673Joined 2 yr. ago
mo_ztt ✅ @ mo_ztt @lemmy.world
Posts
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They spend literally billions of dollars a year on arranging for propaganda in order to create this outcome. It's sad that it works so well yeah, but they're pretty good at it and they have effectively all the money and talent in the world to make it happen.
I'll agree that the Democrats are a conservative party. There's a tiny section of it that consists of a handful of actual left wingers and their names come up in the press because they're so unique and out of step with the general DC zeitgeist.
At the same time, I think the point the article is trying to make -- that the Democrats at least are trying in their conservative way to do something that benefits some segment of the population some of the time, while the Republicans are simply and unapologetically trying to get their hands on whatever they can steal, and if the empire crumbles while they're doing it then oh well -- is something that should be said a lot more often in the mainstream press. I have a hard time seeing how anyone could argue with a straight face that it's not true.
Not quite, a lot of military problems actually can be bullied away. TL;DR it's because they don't give a shit
Holy shit man
When Democrats have control of Congress and the White House they pass all sorts of legislation to advance the public good, aid workers, care for the poor and disabled, strengthen public education, and provide for the needs of ordinary people. Occasionally they overreach or their programs don’t work or even backfire; they then fix them or try something different.
When rightwingers run our government, though, they pass laws like Taft-Hartley that gutted union rights, rip up voting rights, make it easier for fossil fuel companies to pollute and timber companies to clear-cut, and dial back people’s access to welfare and healthcare programs. And, of course, start wars (Grenada, Iraq/Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq) and pass tax cuts for their billionaire patrons.
Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, and Biden all proposed and put into law sweeping programs to build America and enhance the public good ranging from Social Security, the right to unionize, the minimum wage, Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid and greater funding for education.
Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush, and Trump all went for tax cuts for billionaires and worked to gut or privatize the agencies, infrastructure, and programs Democrats had set up.
There’s a reason for this.
— Leftwing governments believe in democracy, and so try to accomplish what’s best for the majority of people while protecting the rights of the minority; rightwing governments practice autocracy on behalf of the morbidly rich. Sometimes, like the old USSR or modern Venezuela, repressive and authoritarian rightwing governments pretend to be left-wing, but the police state aspects of their governance give the game away.
— Rightwingers don’t see democracy as a benefit or even an ideal; they see it as an impediment to further comforting the already-comfortable while enriching themselves in the process. Instead of building up disaster preparedness through strengthening, for example, FEMA, they work to redirect those government dollars back to their friends through things like $600 billion a year in oil industry subsidies and over $20 trillion (cumulatively) in Republican tax cuts to billionaires since 1981.
The result — when rightwingers are in charge — is government that’s not paying attention to real threats and, when they come, responds with profound incompetence or cynical exploitation
I do have some disagreements around the edges of this but God damn it's refreshing to see someone in mainstream media set their sights on what's actually going on, and then go straight for the throat and keep digging.
You and I have different definitions of "wild animal." That's okay, we can agree to disagree, I'm comfortable with my view.
Wat
There are a lot of people who've interacted with cats they don't know. Between the cat, animal control, the hotel, and the local health department, I like how you've chosen me as the one in this situation that clearly did something wrong lol.
I think some of the old stuff was good because it had a spark. It wasn't that it had elves, it was that it was something genuinely unique that the author was driven to create regardless of anything else.
A lot of current-day fantasy is just elves. There's no spark. Even Harry Potter to me is, basically, just some pretty competently written fiction with magic in it. It's not the real deal.
I don't really know you, but to me it's possible that you want the real deal. If that's true you might want to check out:
- "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem
- "The Last Defender of Camelot" by Roger Zelazny
- "Skeleton Crew" by Stephen King
- "Lord of Light" also by Roger Zelazny
- "The Last Unicorn" by Peter Beagle
They may or may not have fantasy elements, although most of them aren't set in the real world. But they have the real deal.
Hm, yeah, this is a good point. This was at least 10 years ago so I think I'm probably safe but I agree with the principle in general.
Little buddy was suffering. Nobody wants to see that and I had nothing else going on that night anyway. On the other hand, if it turns out he's an asshole, then I feel comfortable saying he's not my problem.
Hence why I share with you, so you can be wiser than myself
I was driving through Maryland, it was getting late, and I saw a hotel that was $45 per night. I literally thought to myself, "WTF, I just need a bed, how much could really go wrong if I stay here."
The room opened straight to the parking lot, and there were cats everywhere outside crying. I said hello to one of them, he was clearly in bad shape and so I went and got some cat food and invited him in and gave him some food. He bit me so I put him back outside and went to sleep.
I was most of the way on the drive home when I noticed I had red welts in a little line down my arm. You fucker, you have to be kidding me.
I basically stripped in the parking lot of my place, went in and took a long shower first thing, and put into the garbage all the clothes I'd had with me, suitcase, shoes, my backpack after taking the computer and notebook out. I put them all in a trash bag in the parking lot and then threw it in a dumpster that wasn't near any residence. Then I vacuumed my car and took a long shower again.
Fuckin bedbugs. I had no bedbugs carried back to my place after that and that's how I like it. $45 for the hotel cost me maybe $300 worth of stuff that I decided to get rid of.
There are lots of things that glow under ultraviolet light. It's honestly hard for me to see why they would decide to spray a compound including one of the most toxic heavy metals in the world unless it was deliberately to poison people.
Wait, I'm confused. Can you tell me though which of the sides is "my people?" Then I'll know whether it's justified.
/s :-(
Yeah, email is unsafe, agreed. I addressed that below, saying I thought they just wanted to separate their real-world identity from their un-private emails. If you're trying to use Proton to keep your un-private emails private, you're gonna have a bad time and you should use some good end-to-end solution that isn't email instead.
Ah makes sense, I read only the title, my bad
Librewolf?
I've been using that for a while since I ditched Chrome, and anecdotally it seems like it hits a pretty good sweet spot of "privacy-protecting to such an extent that I notice little annoyances as I browse the web, but they're all trivial and easily bearable, which probably means it's doing quite a lot to try to protect me."
Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but I found this series to be incredibly helpful at understanding principles of design to make something attractive and functional.
Also, I can highly recommend using one of those "we spy on all your users and replay their visits for you so you can see how they actually interact with the site" tools. Luckyorange seems like it's gotten bad recently but maybe Mouseflow or similar. You'll learn more about how to improve the site based on observing 5 actual people interacting with it than from hundreds of hours theorizing and working on this perfect vision in your head.
If someone is looking for end to end encrypted communication, I agree, they are probably better suited by another protocol. SMTP is really good at what it’s designed to do.
I agree with this. I'll pretty much leave it at that.
I'm not trying to argue or anything, but I think you should read this for a quite good overview of the issues involved with trying to secure SMTP email. You can also read any number of expert opinions saying the same thing, if you don't believe me or that article.
If you’re communicating with someone you know who’s also running their own email server, there is no problem with using email.
So, basically, never. I've run several SMTP servers in my time. I'm having trouble thinking of an example of when I might have been communicating from one of them to someone else who also ran their own secure SMTP server. If you're trying to set up a secure end-to-end communication channel with one specific person which involves work on both your ends, it'd be way easier and more secure to use some other transport protocol at that point.
Email is a good protocol
It is. 100%. Sorry if I gave the impression I didn't think it was. For all its age and some amount of minor stone-age baggage it brought with it, SMTP is genuinely quite well-designed and still serves its purpose 43+ years later, which is incredibly impressive. That purpose is, insecure but reliable and interoperable communication.
it runs over TLS.
Yeah, so does your HTTP connection with Proton. That doesn't mean the end-result system keeps your messages secure, any more than using HTTPS means Proton is secure.
You can read the article I linked to above, but basically the short version is that email is by the design of the protocol subject to being stored or transmitted unencrypted at various intermediate places as it's being sent around, in ways that are by the design of the protocol impossible to prevent.
You're not required to agree with me; you can think what you want, but that's how I see it.
This has some explanation. TL;DR get ready to be underwhelmed. This was based on some earlier efforts e.g. one in Sweden that changed bird names containing "neger" (negro), "kaffer" (a racial slur), or "zigenarfågel" (gypsy bird), but the stuff they've been able to find in North America is, well:
Maybe there were more they didn't mention but my guess is that there's a reason they're writing the story while dancing around what names are actually being changed.