https://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/tables/pop1.asp

70-something million children. Let’s make them eligible to vote, and let parents vote on their behalf if they’re too young. As another poster said, the parents who abuse that on “both sides” would more or less come out in the wash. The parents who took it seriously would probably adjust both their vote and their child’s vote to benefit the child.

(One interesting thing is that would mean citizen children of non-citizen immigrants would get to vote.)

Those poor people spending time only on HB for four years, never going anywhere else, never finding 4/8chan, never even finding reddit…

Is your question why a propaganda operation focused on disrupting or presidential elections would “go live” 18-ish months before the presidential election?

And are you asking if I have specific evidence that they’re trolls? Or that the governments I’ve listed have troll farms? Or that specifically HB is specifically rife with trolls from this governments’ farms? Because I definitely don’t have specific evidence. Just the historical evidence of (attempted) general interference from those countries in our previous elections.

I think HB and some of the other groups are mostly trolls or Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, or aligned operatives trying to gas up trolls or wannabe trolls.

There are definitely some well meaning Americans and others who get suckered into the bullshit tornado that is those sites. They are definitely worth saving if we can. But it’s hard. They ban and block anyone with a dissenting voice no matter how calmly presented.

If someone calls me insane, the response that proves them wrong is a reasonable, chill response at most. The actual sane thing to do is ignore them or make a joke about the claim.

Just like if someone calls me weird, the response that proves I’m not weird is to say, “hahaha, sure, whatever” or “so what?” The response that would prove their point is along the lines of, “I’m not weird, you’re weird” or “they’re not calling me weird, they’re calling my associate weird.”

I have it on pretty good authority that everyone who likes having sex with humans likes female boobs. And plump round asses. It’s some deeply ingrained evolutionary stuff.

Doesn’t mean a gay guy is gonna go straight because of some nice tits, but he can appreciate them erotically.

Hmmm maybe we should ignore #1 and focus on #5 then

If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.

All these other “like Twitter but ______” micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they’re profitable.

If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they’ll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can’t kill it.

I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.

For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a “just do this part for me” option, probably automatically enabled.

#3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.

#4 is hard… Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the “early” Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That’s some very strong “lizard brain” stuff.

So… let’s get going y’all! :)

I bought a squirrel proof bird feeder pole thing

https://jcswildlife.com/products/squirrel-stopper-deluxe-squirrel-proof-bird-feeder-pole-system-with-baffle

It works great, now I’m happy to watch the squirrels run around not eating my birds’ seed.

Only downside so far is some wasps built a nest inside and stung me. But they’re dead now.

Also I think you’d be hard pressed to find any credible biological scientist willing to define “life” let alone define when it “begins.” I’m sure there are scientists who will, but they’re probably not biologists, or they’re “scientists.”

Not all fertilizations create viable zygotes. Not all zygotes become viable blastocysts. Not all blastocysts successfully embed in the uterine wall. Not all embedded blastocysts develop into viable embryos. Not all embryos become viable fetuses.

So I’d take exception through all of that to say any of those are protectable “lives” in any meaningful sense.

Roe was a very imperfect solution to the problem of men wanting to control women’s bodies. The best decision would’ve been to say that any abortion a woman and her doctor agree on is legal.

A moral or ethical doctor’s willingness to perform an abortion is inversely proportional to the gestational age of the fetus. Medical boards are charged with only granting licenses to moral & ethical doctors.

I think RBG had it right that abortion should’ve been protected by equal protection instead of privacy.

https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade/

Слава Україні!

Xemu: Not Too Much Lead

https://youtu.be/MKTN2OiR2R8

You should go vote if for no other reason than to keep Sherrod Brown in his seat.

And honestly nobody knows what’s actually going to happen in this election. Ohio is “red” (god I hate that terminology) only by a few points. It’s flippable in the right circumstances. Like if people remember that MAGA wants to force 10 year old rape victims to have their attacker’s baby.

This is a numbers and momentum game. If you vote AND some of your fellow closeted Midwestern Democrats (or at least pro small-d democracy) vote and convince some people who want to have a chance to fix American democracy to vote for the Democratic nominee, Ohio could flip.

They all could. If there were justice in the world, all 50 states would be “blue” on November 5th because of who Trump is, what he’s done in the past, and what he’s telling us he’ll do in the future.

Vote!

Is the implication here that adult women snuggle/wrestle with their friends? Outside of porn videos?

If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.

Lemmy for good content and discussion. Reddit still has niche fan communities that will probably never migrate over here, but I can always hope.

I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …

Keep in mind too these guys are writing and reading in like assembly or some precursor to it.

I can only imagine the number of checks and rechecks they probably go through before they press the “send” button. Especially now.

This is nothing like my loosey goosey programming where I just hit compile or download and just wait to see if my change works the way I expect…

I’ll let others address the “enshittification” angle but I thought I’d point out that “shareholder value uber allies” is a relatively recent … “innovation” … in economic theory, brought about by failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Milton Friedman in the last half of last century:

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/what-made-chicago-school-so-influential-antitrust-policy

The rethinking of what the boards of companies are supposed to do (from maximize stakeholder value to maximize shareholder value) and how they can operate (from requiring justification to approve mergers to requiring justification to block mergers) really took off with them, and exploded when former union boss Ronald Reagan found “religion” (because Nancy’s pussy was just that good) and ruined the economy for workers.

Lots of other people contributed, including Clinton after he “won” the 1992 election with 40% of the vote due to Perot splitting the Republican vote. His campaign of fiscal conservatism but without less bigotry became the model for the Democratic Party for the next two decades.

Anyway, Biden’s FTC is finally working to help workers again, which might even release the death grip of the Chicago School from our economy. We’ll see after November I guess.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/fact-sheet-ftcs-proposed-final-noncompete-rule