I’m not the most up to date on what all one should know, but it’s rapidly rising on my list of need to knows. I only ever hear blips about it from MSM and it always gets played like oh some more birds died today or this is why eggs got expensive. At the most bad I’ve noticed it get reported is when it hurts business by wiping out giant portions of large poultry farms. I don’t even think all these dead geese would make local news.

We do have a good test run of what happens without scavengers. This is just the first link that came up, but India near killed off their entire vulture population a few years back and it killed over half a million people from disease and such.

I was reading the posts from one of my local animal rescues last night about how they’re dealing with hundreds of dead snow geese that are testing positive for avian flu. They were begging for more money, PPE, and medicine to euthanize the ones not dead yet and crematory fees for dealing with the hundreds of contaminated bodies. That state and fed don’t seem to be pulling their weight in this, and they’re nervous about using the same equipment and vehicles they have for their healthy animals for so much bird flu. The photos and videos they showed were devastating.

Meanwhile, comments section was filled up asking how they know it’s bird flu, that bird flu is a gov conspiracy (US or China, both were covered) or this is what the mystery drones were gassing us with, and something about a “fog you could taste” (???) that was to blame for this.

If other animals like vultures get to the dead geese first, it just spreads the flu more, and if people try to dispose of the geese themselves, it can spread to their cats or birds at home.

People will just complain about the price of eggs as we lose so many animals, and potentially people.

I did a behind the scenes tour at a facility and got to go in the hippo paddock. It looked like what they’d have to hold animals at Jurassic Park. All kinds of mechanized 4 inch steel bars and gates to keep them separated from each other and the works in confinement.

They showed me the command to get them to open their mouths and we got to toss them some food. Those mouths and teeth are even wilder up close!

Hippos are one of my fav animals, and I think they are the true king of beasts. So of course I reached out to touch its snout. It felt like the world’s largest strawberry. Smooth and leather, and the dimples for the hairs felt like where the seeds are. So sturdy, yet gentle at the same time. A real amazing experience.

Truly underrated animals by most people.

Somewhat related story, but I’ll share it to put a win for the little guy somewhere in these comments.

When I was in my late teens I worked in the deli of a large supermarket chain. We had a hot food section with reheated frozen crap that was always dried out and gross, and a pizza oven to cook school cafeteria quality pizzas. Needless to say, no one bought anything.

Right next to that was the deli section where I worked evenings. We had the fancy Boarshead stuff, including a bunch of fancy Italian meats. Nobody bought that stuff either cuz we’re not redneck here, but city people kind of treat us like we are, and nobody knew what soppresetta and that kind of thing was.

All this stuff would just sit until it got thrown out from not being sold. I would take bits of it all on its way to the trash, and I started making calzones with the pizza dough and the nice deli meats and ringing myself up for the price of like a quarter pound of meat, which was fair to me and the store. I made them for myself at first, and then some other people in the department.

The one day I made a few and gave samples out to some of my regular customers and of course they liked them because they were made with care and attention and better ingredients than any of the store stuff. I started making them in nights I was in and putting them in the hot bar and they sold decent.

One day the manager came back and cried it wasn’t in the plan-o-gram and blah blah and I had to knock it off.

Maybe a week later, they came back to me again and asked how I had been pricing them and I said I was basically just charging the weight of the deli meat and they tweaked the price a little and I kept making them, as people had been ticked when I said I wasn’t allowed to make them anymore.

I left not too long after, and I can’t say it was due to me or anything, but now all of those sites around here make little calzones and have them in the deli section as a grab and go item to cook at home.

It wasn’t enough to teach me everything I needed to know about how companies treat people that go above, but it definitely contributed to my education about work vs reward. But I’m glad I won that one. I liked saving food from the trash, and I liked seeing people enjoy something that was my idea and made purely by me and my skill. I guess I learned some things about myself as well.

I added RFK to my list as I work in pharma so I can’t stand his nonsense, and I had to go back and add Elon as well, because they call him either equally as much and I was wondering why I was still seeing that dumbass in my feed.

Originally I was worried about missing out on important info. Listening to some people talk about it in one of my podcasts, they mentioned they were tired of seeing people say Trump will do this or that, they only care about hearing about what people are going to do about the dumb stuff he says and does.

That struck me, as firstly, he normally doesn’t do the majority of stuff he says, and secondly, if he does actually do anything of significance, I’ll see it on AP or NPR. If I don’t see it that way, that means nobody is fighting to stop it anyway.

I know everything these clowns do is going to be bad or stupid, I don’t need to constantly be told that because I already know. I want to hear the names of who is going to do something about it, or I don’t want to hear about them at all in my Lemmy feed, which is supposed to be fun or educational for me.

Other news that is less engaging can deliver the bad news when it needs to, but if I control my feed here, I’m going to make it less frustrating. Reading about these jerks the last few years has done any good.

I saw comments about tight woven cotton being flame resistant. It sounds like it helps deprive oxygen from the flame. Any frays and stray thready bits lose that protection.

Textiles are surprisingly interesting!

I know wool is. That may be what you are thinking of.

I found a fiber burn test with wool, cotton, bamboo, and acrylic fibers. The wool singes but doesn’t burn up completely while the others do. I can’t speak to whatever she says in the video as my speakers don’t seem to be working now.

Wool would be extra beneficial for homeless as well as it retains most of its insulating properties when wet and stays cleaner with less washing than other fabrics.

If a monitor could literally kill her (ankle monitor wasn’t used due to deep vein thrombosis) it’s hard to imagine her being much danger to the public.

It sounds like all she did was to block traffic, similar to many of these truck blockades the US, Canada, India, and I’m sure other conservative protesters have used to no punishment. Unlike them, she even is sorry, but felt she had no choice and it also sounds like they won because the government seemingly has agreed to the protestor’s demands.

From an older article:

At the time of her sentencing Delap said: 'I’ve had to read the evidence of people who were stuck in our traffic, it hurts me. I’m sorry I had to do this.

‘But we really have no other option. They didn’t listen to the scientists, they didn’t listen to their constituents, so we had to cause disruption in order to communicate the seriousness of humanity’s predicament.’

Ahead of the hearing Mr Sousek added: ‘No New Oil’ was the demand from Just Stop Oil right from the start. Now most political parties agree and it has become government policy.

‘How come we are being jailed for pushing for, what is now, government policy? Kafka couldn’t make it up.’

Ah, yes, if it has some rubber cement type goop in there, a hair dryer will work as well. Good call.

I recommend the repair option first, but I also have these clippers and they are really nice.

1. Unscrew one of the wire terminals. Wrap a piece of tape around it so you know which wire is which. Unscrew the other wire. I think you should be able to pull the wire through that stress relief and then cut it off on what would be the inside instead of cutting it off outside and trying to thread it through the molded rubber. It might be stiff but you can try putting a little soap on it to lube it up. You may or may not have to split the jacket down the middle between the 2 wires depending how the relief is molded.

2. If you’re soldering, just cut the wire at the terminal ring and solder the wire right to it. You can also get new crimp on terminal rings. Take an old one to the store to match it up to get the right size.

Disclaimer: not electrician, just a DIYer that doesn’t like to spend money

• Aaron Bean (Fla.) • Andy Biggs (Ariz.) • Josh Brecheen (Okla.) • Tim Burchett (Tenn.) • Eric Burlison (Mo.) • Kat Cammack (Fla.) • Michael Cloud (Texas) • Andrew Clyde (Ga.) • Eli Crane (Ariz.) • John Curtis (Utah) • Jeff Duncan (S.C.) • Russ Fulcher (Idaho) • Bob Good (Va.) • Paul Gosar (Ariz.) • Andy Harris (Md.) • Wesley Hunt (Texas) • Doug Lamborn (Colo.) • Debbie Lesko (Ariz.) • Greg Lopez (Colo.) • Morgan Luttrell (Texas) • Nancy Mace (S.C.) • Thomas Massie (Ky.) • Richard McCormick (Ga.) • Cory Mills (Fla.) • Alexander Mooney (W. Va.) • Blake Moore (Utah) • Nathaniel Moran (Texas) • Ralph Norman (S.C.) • Andy Ogles (Tenn.) • Scott Perry (Pa.) • Bill Posey (Fla.) • Matt Rosendale (Mont.) • Chip Roy (Texas) • David Schweikert (Ariz.) • Keith Self (Texas) • Victoria Spartz (Ind.) • Thomas Tiffany (Wis.) • Beth Van Duyne (Texas)

Oh, Boston is in on the racket too, huh?

I first learned about that fee in Las Vegas. They were calling it a “resort fee,” but it’s the same thing.

They justify it because you technically get something for it (free drink from hotel bar, use of the gym, etc) but you don’t get a choice if you pay it or not, even if you don’t claim any of the items you’re entitled to.

Feels like a sneaky cover charge or drink minimum. Just add it to the actual price, dangit! I eat and drink where I please and sure as heck don’t want to work out on vacation!

That is both a pro and con that’s been debated as long as democracy has existed.

The founders also debated if regular folk were wise enough to pick good representatives. Even since, we’ve changed how some positions are filled, by direct election or by appointments. We have representatives pass some laws by democratic vote, some by executive order, and some by ballot initiatives. We pick and choose what level of involvement we want the masses to have all the time.

Many problems with democracy in its modern state have been debated since the Ancient Greeks. The great philosophers saw how democracy can be turned to tyranny by appealing to people’s emotions rather than things being driven by fact. Here’s a nice little article on that!

We haven’t ironed out all the issues yet on how we should govern ourselves, and the more I watch my fellow humans, the more it puzzles me we can be so technically advanced as a society while still falling victim to residual primate instincts that appear totally irrational to anyone observing from the outside, while that same observer is likely falling victim to the same thing wherever they are living.

I don’t hate the US system of government, but its creators knew it wasn’t perfect. They tried to design mechanisms to let it be corrected, but do a majority of us feel we’re currently in the right course? Ignorance of politics certainly didn’t help the Ancient Greeks stay on top of the world, and it isn’t doing the world any favors right now.

That would rule her out for president.

I first heard about her study about Amazon she did at Columbia.

I liked her at the FTC so much so I never learned where she was actually from.

It’s a real investment most people don’t find necessary to learn all this stuff. Even having the knowledge really doesn’t give you that much to actually accomplish doing anything with it.

Like most things, it can be looked at in micro or macro levels. There are the specific current events, but we didn’t get here from nowhere, there is a rich history of previous events and decisions and the recollection of those events is different for every participant.

In a way I agree, but the Allies promised things in the exchange for cooperation against the Ottomans, and that isn’t the kind of thing people forget, and is the start of a lot of the problems ever since. Plus creating the state of Israel was not an altruistic thing, it was spearheaded by many antisemites who were just as willing to dump them off in Madagascar until the Middle East fell into their laps.

But I try to avoid wading into too controversial territory since I’m too lazy to use an alt, so I’m going to stop here and revert back to my original pro Lina Khan position! 😜

They had messaging and lots of it, but for the majority of the people that don’t follow politics (or don’t follow them very well!) the message was either not in line with the base’s perception of that reality or some found it downright insulting. I’m doing ok for myself, but even I had to remind myself constantly that things were getting better, even though I could feel real squeezing in price of goods.

I feel everyone has dragged their feet with Ukraine. I think since it seems Russia’s might has been exposed as a paper tiger, that we have been sleeping on an opportunity to make life better for millions of people in the former Soviet republics and in Russia proper. I’m not one for forced regime change, but Putin brought this one on himself, and I’d like to see Russia and the former Soviet lands have a real chance to modernize and open more doors to the rest of the world.

Biden seemed much more willing to aid Isreal than Ukraine, in part because the right supports Israel for cuckoo reasons, but in the opportunities I heard him speak on Israel, they seemed to have his personal support, not just diplomatically. I dislike many of our Middle East alliances, but I don’t really want to get too deep into my takes on WWI and WWII treaties. Stirring up more conflict is not the way I wish to see things continue though. People need to address past and present wrongs. How we achieve it, much like everyone else, I have no clue, but the present situation is absolutely not it.

I worry about the consistent lack of raising up future candidates. A lot of opinion pieces keep popping up about how the Dems have learned nothing from Biden/Harris, and I tend to agree. We have the same party leadership after a series of failed campaigns. Having Biden win as the non-Trump candidate worked once as a lucky fluke, but who’s up next?

We know what leaders Reps are working on. Vance, Desantis, Ramaswamy, Gabbard. All relatively young people to get molded and improved to take eventual leadership roles. But who are the Dem equivalents?

It feels like no plan is in place. Declaring yourself to be the high road is obviously not enough. Whether it is policy, messaging, or both, what exists is not doing it. Even what is being accomplished is far too conservative for many, especially dealing with the environment, immigration, the economy, and foreign policy.

I think Biden did a lot of good for the environment, one of my main concerns, but things like economic messaging, Gaza, and foot dragging in Ukraine still really ticked me off to put it nicely.

Starting a third party seems like building a battleship from scratch when we could mutiny on the one we’re already on like the Tea Party to MAGA movement did to traditional conservatives. But we need to get our asses in gear as from the ever creeping election cycle means we need a candidate and a plan in 2 years.

Who that is though doesn’t even feel on my radar though, and that is a serious issue.

I don’t know if she has such aspirations, and there would continue to be much opposition from the status quo from both sides. The FTC seemed the perfect place for her.

Put her back there under a president with a real drive to end the growing oligarchy and an at least neutral Supreme Court, and we could have a tremendous new trust busting administration to end our second Gilded Age.