• 4 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 30th, 2023

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  • Blutopolitics @lemmy.worldDoes Trump Have Momentum?
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    1 month ago

    You get downvoted for it, but it’s absolutely true. She had a real opportunity to distinguish herself from Biden, and for a brief moment I thought she would. Then she shifted to the right to draw in centrists.

    Users here can stick their heads in the sand all they want, but like with the Clinton campaign, it won’t change the election outcome.

    She’s handing Trump the race by imitating Biden. I say this as someone who will likely vote for her anyway: this is becoming a disaster for her. She cannot afford to lose Muslim voters in Michigan, and the continued bleeding of Hispanic voters spells even longer-term problems for the party.


  • Blutopolitics @lemmy.worldDoes Trump Have Momentum?
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    1 month ago

    On this site? Users of Lemmy in denial of her alienation of voters. She started strong and then pissed all of that good will away by announcing she’s just going to be a continuation of the Biden Israel policy.

    And before anyone says “oh, the Biden administration is pushing for a ceasefire”. Nobody takes that seriously. You can’t push for a ceasefire and rhetorically and materially enable the annihilation of Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon. Any ceasefire proposals are performative.







  • The schools doing okay financially aren’t the ones cutting these programs for cost-saving reasons. In bigger state universities eliminating programs, the cuts are largely political. School admins are worried that state legislators will target school budgets in the near future if cuts aren’t made to “useless” subjects in the humanities and social science.

    In regional state universities and private liberal arts schools, however, the situation really is dire. They’re cutting to survive. The US has started to experience a decline in college enrollment. Universities have known it would happen since the late 2000s, but not in the way it has.

    Big universities are growing or maintaining class sizes, which is putting tremendous pressure on the regional and liberal arts schools as the available students evaporate. It’s pushed the timeline for change up at many universities and it’s only going to get worse.

    Do I feel sorry for university admins? No, they should’ve taken action sooner, with real wind-down plans for students. But we’re going to continue to see cuts to small programs for decades to come; it’s unavoidable.


  • Shapiro has a sexual harassment coverup allegation (for a close aide, not himself) and what appears to be serious mismanagement of a stabbing case, where a woman’s death was initially ruled a murder, but ultimately his office refused to re-examine the case. It’s going before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and might be heard before the election. Harris doesn’t need an October Surprise to derail her momentum if it makes Shapiro look bad.







  • If Baldwin provided all the ammo used, it increases the likelihood he is convicted by a jury. This ammo would’ve been provided to the Armorer by a third party, without his knowledge. At trial, the defense could have made any number of arguments that Baldwin had no way of knowing live ammunition was on set because an outside individual brought it to the set.

    In any case, it’s a clear Brady violation. The prosecutor has a constitutional duty to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense. It’s not up to them to decide if it will be enough to establish reasonable doubt.

    What the prosecution did was place this evidence under a new, case & number for a non-existent crime. They never had any intention of investigating the case that ammo was assigned to. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw was the prosecution deliberately obfuscated the relationship that ammo had to Baldwin’s case to avoid providing it.

    In an already highly attenuated case, and with overwhelming evidence that Baldwin’s rights were violated, there can be no fair trial going forward. From the perspective of the law, once the prosecution has been found to have violated Brady deliberately, there can never be due process for the defendant.



  • I kinda don’t want to dip my toes in this, but here goes:

    I agree that it’s occasionally a breath of fresh air. The issue I’ve always had with Hexbear is they’ve more or less replaced one version of American (and to a lesser extent European) exceptionalism with another. Where American nationalists consider America to be exceptionally great, Hexbear considers it to be exceptionally evil. They routinely attribute domestic incidents in different countries to American meddling–regardless of evidence–even when those events either achieve nothing for American geostrategic goals or actively harm them. America as the “great Satan,” etc.

    Just an example because I remember it: Imran Khan lost an internal power struggle in Pakistan. He was probably the most west-friendly candidate left there, but Hexbear blamed a CIA coup https://hexbear.net/post/186331

    In the same vein, they permit or even encourage Chinese aggression against the Philippines, within the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone. You can’t substitute one form of imperialism for another. It’s a trap I see a lot of leftists fall into.

    I think most of 'em are alright. Just growing into leftist thought still and grappling with the moshpit that is international politics. Also they’re funny lol



  • So, as someone who has used the Internet since its very earliest days, what would you say about what the Internet is like today versus back then? Was it better? Worse? Any major online events that you can recall from that period?

    I grew up at the very tail end of the old forums and certainly after the decline and death of old school chat rooms. Most of them died or went inactive while I was in high school/college. The version of the internet older adults used is almost alien to me.

    Hell, today’s Internet is on its way to being alien too.


  • Blutoxkcd@lemmy.worldxkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas
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    5 months ago

    EVs are also a major issue for firefighters. Lithium ion battery fires following an accident are ridiculously hard to put out and present a significant safety hazard in confined spaces, like tunnels or narrow streets. It takes close to 6 times the water to control EV vehicle fires.

    And while it’s a more minor issue, EVs are heavier than ICE vehicles in the same class, which causes more road wear and more tire wear (and more micro plastics to enter the environment).

    And, I guess, finally, there’s no established break-even point for carbon emissions over ICE vehicles. The estimates provided in the literature vary wildly–from 13,000 miles to 94,000.

    I love the technology, but I hope solid state batteries become a viable option for EVs.


  • As someone who peer reviewed papers, and got familiar with the process, most reviewers do not take the time to seriously examine papers. I would compare my comments to other reviewers for the same paper, and holy shit they barely read it. I would spot pretty blatant omissions–bad methodology, incomplete sections that make a paper impossible to reproduce, poor quality figures, need for major revisions. The other reviewers would offer minor suggestions and leave it at that. And the chief editor will push it out the door with minor revisions that don’t address any issues.

    I have seen some truly blatant shit get published. Like figures that have made up data, or that we’re straight up copied from the authors’ previous publication and presented as new. The for-profit publishing industry doesn’t give a fuck. Those issues might get caught 10 years down the road, like in that case, but it’s usually a slap on the wrist for tenured faculty unless it gets lots of attention.

    Prof in my department when I was a grad student blatantly copied work from another researcher, and the only sanctions he got were a moratorium on taking new grad students.