isleepinahammock
@isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on Will the Democrats gerrymander every state they have control over? 1 day ago:
Read again.
- Comment on Will the Democrats gerrymander every state they have control over? 2 days ago:
Presidential elections are not relevant to this conversation.
- Comment on Will the Democrats gerrymander every state they have control over? 2 days ago:
They control the Texas House and governorship. At the very least, it would be very easy to force a neutral gerrymander through. They have an enormous mandate and could make removal of the conservative gerrymander a condition for passing any legislation.
- Comment on Will the Democrats gerrymander every state they have control over? 2 days ago:
They should use the fact that they now have the ability to gerrymander even harder as leverage to pass a constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering.
A constitutional amendment can only pass if both sides have an incentive to do so. Democrats are generally in favor of banning gerrymandering just out of principle. Republicans’ only principal is self-interest. Now though it would actually be in Republicans’ best interest to ban it.
- Comment on Lemmy users logging on to level set the Blue Wave enjoyers 3 days ago:
You miss the point. Democrats listen to the wealthiest 10% that happen to be Democrats. Republicans listen to the wealthiest 10% that happen to be Republicans. The parties are two coalitions of the elites. One elite coalition is mostly folks genuinely trying to make the world better. The other…isn’t. But it’s all a game of elite vs. elite. The rest of us are just along for the ride.
It’s not some conspiracy. It’s just social circles. Politicians spend their time interacting with the upper levels of society. Even when they are trying to reach out to ordinary workers, they mostly do so through workers in relatively elite positions, like union leaders. Politicians just don’t spend much time interacting with normal people, and thus they don’t understand normal people’s problems. Politicians of either party will hear about whatever things the wealthiest 10% happen to be worrying about at any given moment. And we very much are influenced by those we spend our time around.
What bills the new Democratic Congress passes will have nothing to do with what the public as a whole wants. Whatever the wealthiest 10% who happen to be Democrats want? That is what they will focus on, to the exclusion of everything else.
- Comment on Lemmy users logging on to level set the Blue Wave enjoyers 3 days ago:
Just remember something. In the United States, you only exist in a democracy if you are in the top 10% of household incomes. Anyone poorer than this has absolutely zero say in government policy. Your votes don’t matter.
And before some mouth-breathing moron starts hyperventilating about “encouraging people not to vote,” you can actually go look this up. It’s been studied. The opinions of the top 10%, and only the top 10%, are reflected in federal policy going back decades.
This is why the vast majority of people don’t give a shit about democracy in the US. They don’t give a shit about protecting a democracy that they themselves are only nominally a part of. Just because you vote doesn’t mean your vote actually matters.
- Comment on Anon has a proposal for you 6 days ago:
If DND has taught me anything, it’s that there has to be some way to use the hut to kill the t rex.
- Comment on Things you feel Star Trek handle poorly? (In general, political, technical, etc, share your opinion) 6 days ago:
Honestly, the whole thermodynamics of the Starship Enterprise are an open question. Real spaceships need to be festooned with radiator panels. The Federation ships just deal with waste heat by venting it…somewhere? So it has to have some thermal management system that is beyond our understanding. How that would affect how long a passively cooling starship would take to cool down, I cannot say.
- Comment on Things you feel Star Trek handle poorly? (In general, political, technical, etc, share your opinion) 6 days ago:
That’s true. If you assume it’s a lot more than just the O2 supply, it makes more sense. Ok. I have a new fun headcanon.
So, here’s the thing. We know the Federation has multiple species in it. Those species likely have different atmospheric requirements. Sure, we sometimes see crew members wearing breathing apparatus, like the Benzites. But I wonder if every species actually needs its own atmospheric mix? Maybe every species has its own ideal mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, etc.
That is a problem if everyone has to share the same atmosphere. But what if they didn’t have to? Imagine if the life support system is generating little individual micro atmospheric pockets for every person onboard. Every crew member basically gets to breathe the atmospheric mix of their home planet. Using transporters, force fields, replicators, and good-old-fashioned fans, the ship generates little atmospheric bubbles around each crew member. And those bubbles move with them through the ship.
So would anyone need a breathing apparatus? It’s possible those species just have very unique air requirements that go beyond the capabilities of the life support system to handle. For example, maybe the Benzites require a gas that is poisonous to some other species? You don’t want to make big pockets of that floating around. You minimize the amount of it introduced to the ship by using personal breathing devices.
This would also explain why the system is capable of dispersing arbitrary compounds.
But the need for constant filtration is an interesting point as well. Though that seems like less of an immediately lethal threat than a long-term exposure thing.
- Comment on Things you feel Star Trek handle poorly? (In general, political, technical, etc, share your opinion) 6 days ago:
Life support. It’s always hilarious to me when power going out to life support is treated as an instantly fatal threat. IIRC, if you actually do the calculation it’s ridiculous. If you combine the interior volume of the Enterprise D with its crew count, you would find that the life support system could be offline for MONTHS before the oxygen levels started to substantially drop.
- Comment on and they wonder why reddit stock is tanking 1 week ago:
You’re so purposefully dense you’ve compressed yourself into tungsten.
- Comment on can be scaled up to elephants! 2 weeks ago:
My point is simply that there cannot be a black hole near the Earth’s surface. If there ever is, Earth will no longer have a surface.
- Comment on can be scaled up to elephants! 2 weeks ago:
Read more carefully.
- Comment on can be scaled up to elephants! 2 weeks ago:
False. A mosquito cannot suffer a fatal fall. It is incapable of it. Gravity is incapable of accelerating a mosquito to fatal or injurious velocities, at least near the Earth’s surface.
- Comment on Why is suicide considered selfish? If your like 80 or something and rely on your family for care. Would it not be a burden off of them? 3 weeks ago:
Have you lost a close relative? Have you personally lived that pain?
When people call suicide selfish, they’re not talking about your infirm 80 year old.
- Comment on it's a hoax 3 weeks ago:
For example, a TV antenna transmits in all directions, while a lunar rover transmits strictly upwards
Do you know…what a parabolic antenna…IS?
- Comment on it's a hoax 3 weeks ago:
No. Gravity isn’t gay. Gravity is pansexual. It’s attracted to everything.
- Comment on Why? 3 weeks ago:
What exactly am I looking at here?
- Comment on Anon joins girl's night 3 weeks ago:
But femboys aren’t girls. That’s literally their entire thing.
- Comment on If the legalization of drugs reduces crime, why can't the same be said about the legalization of guns? 3 weeks ago:
What’s the question here? These are two factual questions. You assess them with data, not speculation. The truth of one is completely independent of the other.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
India for example, a country with lots of poverty that is already struggling to feed its population after just a little bit of fuel price jumping, has no business being at what, 1.4 billion? Why should we continue to grow even further beyond the limits of a country?
India is already below replacement rate.
Well, there is, if you don’t use a binary indicator of above/below replacement rate, and don’t just take “south” as geographically south, but rather as “poor, exploited countries, usually (but not always and exclusively) in the south”.
You’re missing the point. This isn’t about geography. This is about the actual countries that get labeled as the global south. That includes India, China, Southeast Asia, South America, etc. These are the countries that experienced the worst of colonialism. And they’re all heading straight towards population decline, just like the global north.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
You’re trying to move the goalposts. We’re talking about the future and how birth rates are trending. Now you’re trying to change the conversation to the present, “Are you suggesting that birthrates don’t remain high in the global south?” Obviously they’re higher in some countries, but those rates are collapsing like they are everywhere else. And there isn’t a good match between those countries and what is usually described as the global south.
Since you’re too lazy, I did your homework for you: statista.com/…/fertility-rate-world-continents-19…
You can look up more information here: www.birthrate.io/fertility
We’re talking about the future need for workers, not the present. So please don’t try to move the goalposts by asking the obvious question of are birth rates still higher in the SOME PARTS of the global south relative to the north.
But there’s a very clear trend here. Every single country undergoes a decline in birth rates as it industrializes. The global south is not an infinite source of labor you can rely on forever.
You need to let go of this myopic North/South, Imperialist/Colonized framework you seem to be trying to shoehorn into every problem. Here are the countries that have above replacement fertility rates (in green):
There’s no real connection here between these countries and “the global south.” Counties such as India, most of South America, Iran, SE Asia, etc are all below replacement rates.
Here’s what fertility rates are currently projected to look like in 2100: Image
We’re on track to have less than a handful of countries around the world with above-replacement fertility rates. The global south doesn’t have elevated fertility rates, the specific regions of Subsaharan Africa and Central Asia do. Even Somalia will barely be above the replacement rate.
You’re too lost in a surface-level understanding of “theory” (read: socialist memes) that it’s clouding your judgment. Within a generation, countries all over the world, including countries in the global south, will be fighting each other to attract immigrants.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
Put down the socialist theory and look up actual demographic numbers. You’re just wrong.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
We’re talking about a global phenomenon here. It’s pretty racist to assume that other groups of human beings are somehow fundamentally different from your own. It’s pretty xenophobic to believe that the countries with high birth rates will just maintain them forever.
The problem isn’t the US running out of workers. The problem is the entire world running out of workers.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
Why the obsession with only retirees? What matters is the dependency ratio.Image
The dependency ratio counts the total number of dependents, not just the retirees the eugenicists like to focus on. By the end of the century, globally we’ll have a dependency ratio similar to the level it was in the mid-20th century.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
Hogwash. You forgot the other half of the equation. We don’t have as many children to support. Notice how people obsessed over birth rate always focus on the retiree:worker ratio rather than the dependent:worker ratio? The problem disappears once you realize we can simply take money that we were spending on childcare and shift it to eldercare.
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
I mean, this is a pretty silly response. Is there a hidden population of Martians I’m not aware of, eager to immigrate to Earth to work our low skill jobs?
- Comment on Anon isn't worried about population decline 4 weeks ago:
Even the fears about the economy and government spending are bullshit. Notice the folks obsessing over birthrates always quote the retiree to worker ratio. They don’t talk about the dependent to worker ratio, and that’s what really matters. Yes, our populations are aging, and yes that means relatively more old people to take care of. But we in turn also have far fewer children to take care of. If we can adapt to the Baby Boom era, we can adapt to an aging population.
Further afield, fears about human extinction are total bullshit. No country is a monolith; every nation has groups within it with higher and lower relative birth rates. If the birth rate stays low and never recovers among the mainstream society, eventually the smaller groups end up composing most of the population, and then the birth rate recovers. The Amish inherit the Earth.
Or, if even that fails, ultimately technology loss alone stabilizes your birthrates. Eventually your population falls so low that you just can’t physically manufacture reliable birth control anymore. That’s a product of industrial production. It requires a certain minimum population size to run a factory. Below that and we just regress to earlier technological eras. Eventually we end up back in a mostly agrarian state, and suddenly having kids is once again economically beneficial.
- Comment on What is your interesting fact or knowledge that is completely useless that you wish to share? 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on What is your interesting fact or knowledge that is completely useless that you wish to share? 4 weeks ago:
What if I replace most of my organs with younger ones? If a billionaire gets a whole body transplant, does that also de-age his brain?
