As a kid we had a neighbor that ran a bee-brothel and had hives all over the region. Since his hives would just sit on un-used corners of farmland, he would offer some honey annually as ‘rent’. (He was also generous with his boat so a couple waterskiing trips were also on the table).

We (2 parents, 4 kids) would get a 5 gallon can of honey every other year or so.

That has been over 45 years now and my father is still working through that supply. We put it in sealed mason jars and it has remained good all this time.

Minority parties have a great deal of procedural power and with such a narrow minority, even a few defections from the other party can swing a vote.

Politics is theater and it is breathtakingly stupid to just lay down and let them do whatever they want without using the power at their disposal.

That is factually untrue. They did not get voted out everywhere and it is somewhat silly to say so.

House: R- 218, D- 215 Senate: R- 53, D- 47

That is what I call a fair fight.

Your position is indefensible.

The traditional conservatives are suspiciously quiet right now, so I count them as fully complicit.

It will be me. You have freedom of speech. I am also free to ignore, mock or ostracize you if you spout hateful nonsense near me.

I think a clear distinction to make might be:

“Tech” as used in this sense is the industrial complex around mobile and web technologies dominated by a few players who might just be evil.

“Technology” is, of course, everything you mentioned and more. A rock that fits nicely in your hand becomes technology when used to crack a coconut.

It’s a weird linguistic murkiness, isn’t it?

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“You do? Then we’ll make it work.”

Sick burn

What! My outie loves Severance.

I can’t locate this community using search on the term ‘severance’.

Do you mind sharing the instance and community name?

Praise Kier!

Hard agree! I do think fediverse platforms are perfect for public entities to disseminate information.

I’m US based so my example is say a county. They already have the IT infrastructure and staff. Make an instance for the county and a community for each department.

The road department can post road closures and upcoming traffic diversions. The parks department can promote events, etc.

These type of instances can just disable comments. They are read-only so moderation is not needed.

It’s trivial from a resource perspective and even easier than updating a website.

It is a feature, not a problem.

I have, like, this whole rich life offline. My curated list of instances and communities (plus my user block list) is just my entertainment and a small portion of my day.

You may not believe this but I have numerous thoughts, activities and interactions that never leave a trace online. I have no obligation to drink from the firehose that is being pumped from the septic tank of the human psyche.

At that moment, the student was enlightened.

It is so very frustrating when some one elevates their indefensible personal feelings to the level of cosmic law.

Someone read those books thoroughly and decided they are not worth the cost of staying in a damaging situation.

You have not read them and yet you to want to defend stories you don’t think are true, but might have some little pearls of conventional wisdom? And just gloss right over that the religious trauma caused them serious harm they are still recovering from?

Just pointing out that your luke warm defense of your favorite children’s stories in this context comes across as extremely tone deaf.

Oh that is a good video and a good channel overall, thank you.

Yeah I don’t think I need to be an infectious disease expert to see the writing on the wall. We learned from the COVID Experience that a lot of the pain of a pandemic is the social chaos and confusion that make solving the resource choke-points even harder, creating a runaway feedback loop of problems.

This time around we are less prepared, less informed and the woo-woo crowd has had their feelings validated lately so they are feeling extra empowered.

Stocking up on simple essentials in a calm and measured manner is surely not a bad idea. Just some extra toilet paper, hygiene supplies.

And of course, beans.

Well that’s one potential source of new pathogens, but we don’t need new pathogens to create a disaster.

We (meaning the US) are currently dismantling our pandemic management infrastructure and withdrawing critical funding for international prevention efforts, kids are dying of Measles already and bird flu is already everywhere for all we know. And don’t forget that the regular flu can still be a major killer. God knows what Ebola is up to these days.

This isn’t a future doomsday scenario like a John Carpenter movie. We will be facing this as the world turns into autumn 2025 in the northern hemisphere.

We’ve had pandemic, now we get second pandemic, and we are going to have it very soon. But this time we will fight it with denial, a weapon proven to be useless against infectious diseases.

I despair of any insulation of Canada. Too much daily ground traffic across that huge unguarded border. Cancelling flights won’t make much difference there. North America is one giant petri dish sharing disease like a family full of young children.

But I am glad the other nations have begun to strengthen their systems too. Humanity will survive in some form, pandemics can’t wipe us all out.

So the field is ripe for harvest then. :(

I’m trying to prepare myself for things to get really bad really quickly. Pandemics are the Achilles heel of complex global societies that forget the great secret: we are all made of meat.

Some people do think that way and we generally use the word ‘stupid’ to describe their behavior.

Some people act that way but don’t really believe it because for some reason it has become cool to be ’edgy’.

Exactly. Total protonic reversal in a five mile radius.

I am certain I will be the last person to point out that you may feel you are the last one to know what it was like before the public internet, but that your feeling is completely off base and not based on anything from reality.