So all of these answers have some truth to them, but they are also missing a key factor. The heritage foundation exists because they are paid tons of money by billionaires to sit around and come up with ways to strengthen their dominance over society. The left simply doesn’t have many supporters with that level of wealth. While it’s possible to do this on a voluntary basis it’s a lot harder than getting paid to do it.
I guess when the people being drafted have a higher likelihood of being killed by an invading army without the draft than with it. Tough to assess though.
That’s a tough one. There’s no obvious moral calculus to translate between lives lost and quality of life.
I tend to think drafting is similar to slavery—it’s a grave violation of basic human rights and should only be considered under the most extreme circumstances where the alternative is clearly worse.
It might depend on the exact nature of the authoritarian regime. Or maybe I’m just not comfortable with either outcome and so I don’t want to answer the question.
Humans are apes which are monkeys which are primates. Taxonomically speaking of course. In common parlance they can be considered distinct, but this isn’t scientifically accurate.
Your statement is like saying both iPhones and smart phones are phones. It’s technically true but it contains a logical error in you are implying a comparable status between one category and another category that contains the first.
I mean I think it makes sense to focus on the most severe possible punishment in this context.
That said, I did not find any mention of the death penalty in the linked page. I do not speak Chinese so I was relying on the translation feature in my browser, so I’m not sure if it was mistranslated, the article is wrong about that, or what. Curious if anyone has further information on this.
OK so probably a translation issue. But to respond to your statement, if your city announced it would punish illegal parking with penalties ranging from 3 years imprisonment to fucking murder, which would you be more concerned with? And which would you rather local journalists make you aware of.
Like I said, focusing on the more severe possible punishment makes perfect sense in this context. Not to mention that all of the punishments are extremely excessive.
I think partially but you missed a key factor which is that most new homes in California require rooftop solar. So the net-metering change only affects individuals adding solar since it’s optional for them. SF builds an extremely low number of new homes compared to the rest of the state, so they have less of a foundation to fall back on when individuals stopped installing systems.
We have a similar system in California called the jungle primary—basically there are no party specific primaries (except for president because this system is incompatible with other state’s elections), and the top two advance to the general election.
There are a few issues though. If a candidate wins more than 50% of all votes in the primary, they win the election and don’t appear on the ballot in the general election along with the president. Since there is generally higher turnout for the general election rather than the primary, you can sometimes have a generally unpopular candidate win in the primary with 50+% of the small number of primary voters.
We also have issues with spoilers—if a bunch of similar candidates run, and all split the votes between them, it’s possible they don’t make the final ballot, even if any of them individually would have won the final election. This seems like a fringe issue until you realize that parties have actually supported lots of minor candidates on the opposing side in order to eliminate an otherwise dangerous challenger.
So overall it is somewhat better than first past the post but it still has significant issues. In general I think elections that select a single candidate are somewhat undemocratic by nature and we should think about ways to give the minority a voice but not the ability to shut things down. This may be a difficult balance to achieve but it’s still worth aiming for.
It seems like every voting system has pros and cons, but I’ve become interested in STAR voting as it seems to have a nice blend of positive characteristics without the worst flaws of other systems.
It’s effectively a mix of score voting and instant runoff (ranked choice).
It hasn’t been tested much, mainly because it’s relatively unknown, so I’d like to see more real-world testing before I say it’s the best, but it’s definitely intriguing.
I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might've been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months....
I don’t think it is failed. It has reached self-sustaining levels for many topics. It will need further growth to make smaller, niche topics self-sustaining. Whether this growth will take place is an open question. I know my instance is growing in terms of activity, but I’m not sure how others are faring.
But as long as it isn’t shrinking, I think it’s well-positioned to absorb more growth as users discover it or become disillusioned with Reddit or other sites in the future.
MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that the United States was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula with five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed at least five people including three children and injured 124 more....
I know everyone’s here dunking on the hypocrisy of Russia making this complaint and that is valid but it’s still sad this happened and I personally don’t think the US should be distributing cluster munitions which are inherently more dangerous to civilians.
In the past several weeks, I have watched dozens of sleek U.S. military planes descend over Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I live. They were the first flights to land since gangs blockaded and halted commercial air traffic in March. U.S. news reports suggest that the aircraft contained...
I am very concerned about the situation in Haiti and the global public seems to have a very poor understanding of the situation. Media coverage of the crisis there has been very biased and superficial. This concerns me because the powers that be may not have Haitians’ best interests at heart and without public oversight these military solutions could end up creating further problems.
If anyone here lives in Haiti I would be very interested to hear any knowledge they could share of what is really happening and how they think it can be solved.
Is there reason to think this is anything more than a fig leaf? The US is obviously heavily involved in directing this effort, even if Kenya is doing the dirty work.
The whole framing of this conflict as a “gang” issue is very problematic in my view, since these warring factions are more of competing political actors seeking to control the country. While they may or may not be engaged in traditional criminal activity, their primary goals are political, not merely economic as with typical organized crime. Yet there has been essentially no attempt to explain who the various factions are and what their goals are. They are just described as gangs that are going on killing sprees for no reason (with an unspoken implication that Haitians are just violent savages). From my limited research on the topic, this is highly inaccurate.
That said, I really am not too knowledgeable about the situation there which is why I was hoping someone from outside of the US media ecosystem could share some real knowledge.
I mean you read the article right? It’s all about how the US has created this multinational coalition but that it’s really calling the shots. It almost seems like your excerpt was deliberately chosen to omit all of the other information that supports what I’m saying.
So, I guess there would have to be a large accumulation of information that the US was not directing these efforts, despite members of congress and others having already confirmed that fact.
I'm not making a statement about Kenya, I'm saying I don't trust the US's intentions in this case based on their historical actions in Haiti. But no, I don't think it would be good for Kenya to be involved unilaterally either. I would prefer to see a non-military solution.
First, I don't accept that it can't work, there are still holders of power in Haitian society, and if you get them to negotiate and agree to a peace then it will happen.
But even more importantly, having order imposed by force by hostile foreign governments is no more guaranteed to improve the lives of Haitians, and it could make things much, much worse. A real solution for Haiti needs to come from and be supported by the people. We've had a series of US imposed foreign puppets for about a century, and the current situation is the direct result of this failed policy. This medicine is already killing the patient, applying more won't help.
No of course not. But I don't see how that's relevant. Kenya is just a puppet here, they don't matter at all other than as a tool for the US. Kenya has no interest in this issue beyond what the US directs. The two countries didn't even have any diplomatic contact before this scheme was concocted.
I’m just describing the situation as it exists. Whether it’s respectful to the Kenyan government or not is not my concern.
But I am curious what possible interest you think Kenya could have in this matter given that it is a regional power from the other side of the world that had almost no relationship with Haiti before last year. Besides, apparently, an interest in whatever the US is offering in exchange for this adventure.
I just did but you didn’t answer. But I guess we can skip that step. I am mainly curious if you are naive enough to accept the statements of these authoritarian leaders unquestionably. Do you really believe Kenya is doing all this just because they believe it’s the right thing to do? I suppose Putin really just wants to protect Ukrainians from Nazis and western imperialism, and Bush just wanted to bring democracy to Iraq too?
Using isotope geochemistry, scientists have uncovered new information about the Barmaz necropolis in Valais (Switzerland): 14% of the people buried 6,000 years ago at this site were not locals. What's more, the study suggests that this Middle Neolithic agropastoral society -- one of the oldest known in the western part of...
Overall a good summation of most of the facts, however, they did gloss over an important issue with EVs and the grid.
Yes, the grid can handle the additional load with proper development, but adding any new load to the grid at this point will necessarily slow our transition away from fossil electricity, unless you somehow charge only during times of excess renewable energy. Currently, this is not possible.
Also, I think there’s lots of other useful things we might find to do with cheap excess energy that will be available at certain times. I don’t know exactly what but pumping or desalinating water is one possible idea. Sort of an inverse peaker plant—a cheap piece of infrastructure that may sit idle for a time but kicks on when there is more energy than we can use to do some practical work.
Is it practical for vehicle charging though? From what I've seen, typically these periods of abundant green energy are only for short periods of the day or year. At other times, additional energy will be generated by gas or other dirty source.
One of the weird quirks of capitalism: doing good things that help people generally attracts more workers (since most people are empathetic and want to do good things), and the labor market then places downward pressure on wages and other benefits. Of course, this does have benefits in that we can then enjoy a larger quantity of cheap coffee, music, charity, etc. but I feel there’s got to be a better way. Especially since the inverse is true. Doing wicked things the system requires but most humans hate then demands a wage premium because fewer people are willing to do them.
Thanks, but it seems a lot more complicated than just saying they’re “confirmed fake”. It sounds like there’s a legitimate debate over the best way to translate a word that doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English.
I mean correct translation is very difficult. I don’t really know what you’re referring to here but none of the links posted here suggest the translation was completely wrong. Just that there is a nuanced subtext that isn’t totally clear in this context.
But I mean this is Israel Palestine so fuck nuance, let’s just kill the other tribe and be done with it, am I right?
So far it’s just angry terminally online people angrily shouting which I don’t put much weight on. The experts listed in the articles disagreed so how am I a non-Arabic speaker to know which is correct?
I have little faith in Israeli propaganda and about as little in online ideologues. But thanks for sharing your knowledge in any case, since you sound like you are speaking from a place of knowledge, unlike the other commenters.
I’ve often wondered what the implications of the internet will be for future historians. On the one hand, there is now an enormous body of writings from not just the educated elite as in the past but from all sorts of ordinary people, which is something that has never really existed before.
On the other hand, how and for how long will these writings be retained? If we stop writing things on paper, will these digital writings become completely inaccessible at some point? Could we have a situation where there are almost no writings from a certain period down the road? That would be unfortunate.
Agreed. If you’ve lived somewhere ten years why should you be denied a vote? Frankly I would allow all residents to vote even when they first arrive but I’m sure this would be even more controversial.
Seems like a strange thing to riot over—is this being perceived in a lens of colonialism?
I see. Well I definitely support New Caledonia’s right to self-determination but I don’t think fighting over disenfranchising people is going to be the best way to achieve that.
New York post is definitely biased but I don’t know if I’d consider them quite as bad as a tabloid. I’ve seen decent articles out of them often enough, though I’m not a regular reader so maybe only the good ones are filtering over to me.
Ukraine’s troops withdrew from several areas of the country’s north-east amid mounting pressure from a new Russian offensive, as the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, postponed all foreign trips underscoring the seriousness of the threat....
So what’s the problem? Lack of arms? Has the new aid had time to make its way to the front yet? Or is it lack of soldiers? That would be harder to solve.
Be Cool Even When Really Big Goblins Casually Drop Acid
Lemmyversers, I'm looking for some help developing a new mnemonic device....
Why is there not an equally opposing force to Project 2025?
In what scenario is conscription acceptable? (if any)
Prompted by another thread about conscription in Ukraine.
Game-Changing HIV Shot Can’t Get to High-Risk Groups Fast Enough | Lenacapavir proved it's possible to prevent 100% of infections in women. Access and affordability are the next big hurdles. ( www.bloomberg.com )
China: death penalty for advocating ‘Taiwan independence’ ( countervortex.org )
San Francisco has seen the most dramatic drop in solar adoption across California ( www.sfchronicle.com )
International scheme to tax billionaires’ wealth technically feasible, study finds ( www.theguardian.com )
Request to mod [email protected] ( lemmy.world )
Mod has been inactive for a year, and I’d like to take it over and help it generate more traffic.
What is the superior voting methodology? To whom does each alternative benefit
I'm not very well-versed on all this but it seems...
Iran to designate Canadian army as a terrorist entity ( islamabadpost.com.pk )
Lemmy is a failed Reddit alternative
I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might've been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months....
Russia says U.S. is responsible for deadly Ukrainian attack on Crimea ( www.reuters.com )
MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that the United States was responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula with five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed at least five people including three children and injured 124 more....
U.S. Military Planes Are in Haiti. Haitians Don’t Know Why. ( foreignpolicy.com )
In the past several weeks, I have watched dozens of sleek U.S. military planes descend over Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I live. They were the first flights to land since gangs blockaded and halted commercial air traffic in March. U.S. news reports suggest that the aircraft contained...
6,000 years ago, men and women -and those migrated from other locations- had equal access to resources, research finds ( www.sciencedaily.com )
Using isotope geochemistry, scientists have uncovered new information about the Barmaz necropolis in Valais (Switzerland): 14% of the people buried 6,000 years ago at this site were not locals. What's more, the study suggests that this Middle Neolithic agropastoral society -- one of the oldest known in the western part of...
When It Comes to the Environment, There Really Is No Such Thing as a “Good” Car ( www.nakedcapitalism.com )
Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation ( www.nature.com )
Brennan Lee Mulligan Serving Fair-Trade Artisanal Anti-Capitalism ( yt.artemislena.eu )
Canonical YouTube link
18+ (NSFW) Israel releases film of women soldiers being taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 ( www.reuters.com )
The footage shows the young women, all of them stunned and some bloodied, being bound and bundled into a jeep....
Wash your own dishes! ( slrpnk.net )
Outrage as new Aussie car tax ignores 'dangerous' mega-utes ( au.finance.yahoo.com )
Online Content Is Disappearing ( www.pewresearch.org )
New Caledonia: Two dead as riots escalate after French vote ( www.bbc.com )
Ukraine says it has no reserves as Putin amasses half-million troops for summer offensive: report ( nypost.com )
Ukraine’s troops withdraw from parts of north-east as pressure mounts ( www.theguardian.com )
Ukraine’s troops withdrew from several areas of the country’s north-east amid mounting pressure from a new Russian offensive, as the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, postponed all foreign trips underscoring the seriousness of the threat....