The US for years kept the screwworm from spreading back into Panama by maintaining a virtual wall of sterile flies across the Darién Gap, which was a cheap way to protect all of North America.

But then stupid MAGA politics came along, put idiots in charge, and they decided that they’d rather try to protect the Mexico-US border and not give Mexico and Panama the incidental benefit, rather than protecting a smaller border that happened to help other countries. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/we-once-rid-the-us-of-this-nasty-parasite-now-it-could-be-coming-back/ar-AA1DKRSV has some information about how it became a problem again.

The terminology in Aus / NZ is pet (owned by people) vs stray (socialised around people but not owned) vs feral (not socialised to people).

Generally speaking, pets & strays like people - they’ve been handled as a kittens. Pets can become strays and vice versa. But feral cats (past being a kitten) will never become stray / pet (and vice versa) - it is only the next generation that can be raised differently.

While the article is defining feral cats as any cat that isn’t a pet, in reality the vast majority of what it is talking about are truly feral cats - nothing like a house cat.

With the added complication that it’s unlikely that Mangione actually killed anyone - someone killed someone in favour with the Magats, so by their logic, someone has to be killed to send a message.

Like how likely is the story that someone (who looked nothing like the surveillance photos released at the time) was called in by restaurant staff, and despite having allegedly travelled a long distance from the scene of the crime, and many opportunities to destroy everything, had a manifesto confessing to the crime, and the murder weapon still on him? Despite him having no prior inclination towards that sort of thing even?

Hopefully any jury has good critical thinking skills and can see through an obvious set up.

Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan described it as “obsolete” and said it “completely misrepresents Amazon’s current water usage strategy”.

Interesting that they don’t say in which direction it misrepresents (is it saying it is too high or too low). Maybe they are hoping the reader will infer from what they are saying that they’re using less now, without them having to say that.

They are not wrong that Israel is radicalised. However, peace is a process, and what will lead to an enduring peace is actually more important than what is just.

If Israel was actually willing to reconcile and treat Palestinians as equals, the South African model of truth & reconciliation (including amnesty for abuses in exchange for full disclosure of what happened), it wouldn’t be just for the victims, but it would allow both sides to move on peacefully.

The real problem is that Netanyahu, Smoltrich, Ben Gvir etc… don’t actually want peace, so even a neutral truth & reconciliation is currently unlikely to happen without their backers (especially the US) forcing them.

I think detecting that something bad is happening, finding out how, and stopping it prevents other people from being affected. Otherwise contamination incidents could go on for years, and the cumulative exposure to affected individuals would be higher, and the number of individuals affected would also be higher.

GENEVA CONVENTION relative to the treatment of Prisoners of War of 12 August 1949 Article 52 Unless he be a volunteer, no prisoner of war may be employed on labour which is of an unhealthy or dangerous nature. No prisoner of war shall be assigned to labour which would be looked upon as humiliating for a member of the Detaining Power’s own forces. The removal of mines or similar devices shall be considered as dangerous labour.

Sometimes I wonder if they are trying to get a high score by committing every possible war crime.

Apparently the xitter tweet was a eulogy for Yahya Sinwar.

Now Yahya Sinwar was a war criminal, so they kind of have a point.

However, if that is the standard they set, saying anything positive about Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Ron Dermer, Aryeh Deri, Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisonkot, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are all also leaders who have supported war crimes should also be grounds for having awards rescinded. But what are the chances that there is a double standard?

Perhaps a good approach is to check other recipients who are pro-Zionist‡ and see if they have anything praising war criminals, and complain - if there is no similar response, it is clear there is a double standard.

‡: And before anyone tries to twist my words as a smear, I define a modern Zionist in the usual way as someone who wants to expand the state of Israel beyond the 1967 boundaries, other than as a one-state solution with the consent of the people of the lands.

That catholics should practice confession is a religious belief. But the confidentiality part is from canon law - i.e. in terminology of most other organisations, it is a policy. It is a long-standing policy to punish priests for breaking it, dating back to at least the 12th century, but nonetheless the confidentiality is only a policy within a religious organisation, and not a religious belief.

Many organisations punish individuals who break their policy. But if an organisation has a policy, and insist that it be followed even when following it is contrary to the law, and would do immense harm to vulnerable individuals, then I think it is fair to call that organisation evil - and to hold them culpable for harm resulting from that policy.

Even if the confidentiality itself was a core part of the religious belief itself, religious freedom does not generally extend to violating the rights of others, even if the religion demands it. Engaging in violent jihad, for example, is not a protected right even in places where religious freedom cannot be limited, even if the person adheres to a sect that requires it.

• Measles estimated case-fatality rate: 1.3%
• Estimated US population: 346,715,067
• Measles deaths if everyone in the US got measles: 4,507,295
• Upper limit on estimated MMR vaccine caused anaphylaxis: 0.000066%
• Anaphylaxis case-fatality rate: 0.3%
• Estimated vaccine-caused fatality rate: 1.98 * 10^-7 %
• Estimate vaccine-caused fatalities avoided by not vaccinating US population: 0.69
• Net increase in fatalities from switching to measles natural immunity for everyone in the US: 4,507,294

So it would only be better if he wants an extra 4.5 million Americans to die.

Legally, he’s not even allowed to drive.

I think more like the SS advises the president not to drive for their own safety, and to leave it to experts.

Or as Trump probably sees it: The deep state is being insufficiently loyal and trying to tell him - the president - of all people - what to do. So he totally shouldn’t listen, and should drive if he wants to, and they should fall in line or be fired.

Years of carefully curated anti-intellectualism in every bit of media they consume, because facts didn’t suit the wealthy (smoking is bad for you, fossil fuels are destroying the planet, private prisons drive more recidivism are facts that get in the way of someone making lots of money). Those fighting facts that aren’t on their side have embraced a number of other groups with anti-intellectual elements (white supremecists / neo-nazis / anti-woke, religious, anti-vaxxers, natural health advocates) to create alliances of anti-intellectual thought.

This has driven increasing polarisation in the US; 49% of republicans approved of JFK as president, and 49% of democrats approved of Eisenhower. It went down over time - other party approval was 30% of Carter, 31% of Reagan. There was a break in the pattern (44% for Bush Senior), but back on track to 27% for Clinton, 23% for Bush, 13% for Obama, 7% for Trump (first round), and 6% for Biden. So in other words, Americans are so polarised that they’ll vote for whoever their side puts up, and for one side, being anti-intellectual is actually seen as a strength.

I think many of the people who started the anti-intellectualism ball rolling on purpose are wealthy neoliberals who believe in laissez-faire free trade as a fundamental value, and so there is a certain aspect of ‘leopards ate my face’ to this leading to the anti-intellectualism extending back to rejection of mainstream economics (even though the neoliberals’ preferred theory is notoriously flawed, Trump’s approach to pulling economic levers is wholesale rejection of all theory rather than replacing it with something less flawed).

Traditionally legal tender means that a person / entity has to accept it for the payment of a debt - i.e. they can’t refuse cash and say you didn’t pay them because you didn’t use some other method.

However, in many retail scenarios there is no debt - there is an exchange of payment for goods, and so the traditional common law legal tender rules do not prevent retailers from refusing that exchange (i.e. customer doesn’t get the goods, retailer doesn’t get the money, the transaction just never happens) on the grounds of payment methods.

Some places have additional laws on top of legal tender that might require retailers to accept cash.

I have submitted a DEIA role report to [email protected] giving my feelings about how DEIA roles are useful, and I’d encourage everyone to do the same. To help ensure it gets read, pick a subject that makes it hard to tell if it is a report of a person vs your feelings.