So let me get this straight, you want to commit mass murder, but you also don’t want to get hit? Idk, man, seems a little hypocritical.

It’s not blocked as much as it’s made more and more difficult, because they can’t hard block it (yet). So, the best advice, if you actually want advice and not just to bitch on the internet (it’s fine if that’s all you want, btw), is to organize. Organization is the single most powerful tool in political efforts, full stop. Examine the problem that affects voters in a given area and organize with the explicit goal of helping voters overcome those barriers. I’m not just talking about getting people to the polls, I’m talking demanding local policy changes, getting after state legislators, yelling at anyone who will (and many who won’t) listen, organize and run local campaigns for city council or county supervisor. Those races can actually be competitive in deep red/blue areas, especially if locals know a particular person on their team is a shithead. Those positions also hold a shocking amount of power, and open up political communication channels that would otherwise be inaccessible. Idk if you’re a communist, and I don’t care, the American communists of the 1800s didn’t just sit back and wait for the US to collapse, they got out there and faced likely being murdered to try and organize slaves to break up an unjust system. Get outside and stomp some grass if you want to see something different, bitching on the internet won’t change anything.

While gerrymandering and voter suppression aren’t nothing, the system is just completely incapable of responding to signals it never receives. If you don’t vote, the system is not incentivized or designed to promote people who have your political interests in mind. There’s a lot of critical reforms that need to happen, none of them as urgent as ranked choice voting, but as little as your vote means for a federal election:

• It means A LOT MORE for local elections, and these people have a shocking amount of power for how much people care about local races.

• It’s still at least some signal to the system that can be interpreted or responded to. It can’t hurt. Throw your vote away on RFK or the Libertarian Party if you want. Hell, I voted for Jorgensen last election. But I’m telling you that not voting when you could is almost always going to lead to the worst possible outcome for people who share your political interests.

Good to know our government can still get shit done when it’s something fucking stupid.

The one about cows is no joke. Hitting a cow in a sedan at highway speeds is more or less the same as hitting a brick wall.

Edit: actually, given the choice, take the brick wall, because at least a simple masonry wall will crush and crumble and absorb some of the impact. The cow will just gain a sudden increase in its net velocity at your expense.

The US government saving big money on fleet expenses by all travelling in the same clown car.

And lies, don’t forget the lies

Dude, you don’t deserve to be criticized for being a Jew, but you absolutely deserve a tomato for supporting a genocidal ethnostate.

Been there. Senior dev told me not to write comments, but write self-documenting code instead.

Ehhhhh… On one hand, I think that most novel diseases will probably play out like COVID has. It’s hard, but all they have to do is be fucking competent and message people consistently enough that it’s hard(er) for grifters to wiggle in. On the other, the worst case scenario is the accidental (or otherwise) release of something that’s already adapted to us that we’ve stopped being immunized for/ infected by. There’s still two countries, IIRC, that publicly admit to having smallpox samples, and that’s the US and Russia (because of course it is). What’s more is that the gene sequence is publicly available, and synthesizing the smallpox DNA sequence from scratch is something that’s well within the scope of a state level actors with a decent life sciences program. If, for whatever reason, smallpox got out, we are NOT ready for it. The US DOES have a stockpile of smallpox vaccines and some domestic production capacity for them, but that stuff is hard (slow) to ramp up. Smallpox is both highly transmissible and highly virulent (virulence is how sick it makes you), and the number of people who have immunity against it these days is probably the lowest it’s been in recorded history. A lot of people will just flat out die in the interim.

A really good point I heard is: this was likely a state actor attack, so how many others just like this are out there, undiscovered?

All answers to the FP boil down to one of three Fs.

We’re first, we’re few, or we’re fucked.

I’ve met this bird. It only prioritizes issues as urgent; when interacted with, it’ll say “yes, this is part of MVP”

Something similar happened to Quora when they started offering to pay people just to produce questions, not good questions, not answers, just questions. Quora was already kinda tenuous and growing its tolerance for fascists, but that move dropped a cinder block on the enshittification gas pedal. Quota’s basically been completely unusable since then and it’s only gotten worse.

Edit: wrote Quota instead of Quora, but I like the typo’s energy, so I’m leaving it.

I identify as a time radical. We should switch the entire world onto GMT; +/- not a goddamn thing. Is it perfect? I think so, but all those people who might be confused will probably find it a lot less confusing than trying to make sense of the difference between timezones.

Yeah. I’m in favor of universal healthcare, but at this point I think it’d be more likely that California wraps up High Speed Rail construction next year. I have no idea why so many people are so willing to defend our completely broken-ass system; dealing with the insurance company is arguably worse than dealing with the DMV. At least you know the DMV aren’t trying to fuck you to pay for a new mega yacht, they’re just fucking you because those are the rules.

Yeah, all the insurers are pushing for vertical integration of pharmacies and using their mail order pharmacy. Check out Dr.Glaucomflecken on Youtube, he does short, witty, educational dives into this bullshit. We tried using the mail order pharmacy for my kids’ ADHD meds and it was fucking terrible. Federal law prohibits filling refills until we’re out or very nearly out, and they have one distribution center on the opposite coast from us, and they’re having standard shipping to ship these meds. You do the math on that one.

Like much of big corporate America, they want the fat payouts without putting in the legwork to actually make a better product that people will choose on their own, so they just hamper competition and make shit worse for everyone to make line go up a little faster.

There’s one study I’m aware of that has tires as being responsible for up to 40% of oceanic microplastics

I’ve actually had good luck at a local Indian market. Also, places that are specifically tea retailers or online markets will be more likely to have it.

Plastic tea bags are really disappointing. It’s not enough that plastic is everywhere thanks to tire dust, I have to drink it, too? Cool.

At home, I use loose leaf and a metal strainer. Makes less waste, and there’s no plastic.