I can’t imagine that it would ever have enough impact to reduce their population significantly

I’m not the person you were originally conversing with, but I appreciate this comment. I really relate to what you describe. If someone was to look over my profile now, they’d see someone who is broadly quite helpful and wholesome in their interactions. However, my default mode used to be “abrasive arsehole”, both online and in-person. Even besides the impact that had on other people, it made my head an unpleasant place to be, and so I put a lot of work into changing that.

It took a while (and I still sometimes slip into my old ways), but it gradually got easier, and I’ve found that I’m way more likely to have productive and meaningful discussion with folks online, as well as having the wisdom and restraint to step back from negative stuff. I think it’s especially tricky online, because it’s so easy to end up getting pulled into negative stuff, and it can feel like it’s impossible to have good faith discussions online. I don’t think that’s true — however, online communication does demand we put extra effort in if we want to avoid slipping into those harmful patterns.

I’m glad to see that you’re working on it, and I wish you luck in your quest.

Talk about kettle calling the pot black!

I have a friend who escaped human trafficking, and whilst there were times that she came close to ending her own life to escape her situation, she is tremendously glad that she didn’t, because otherwise then her life would have been entirely defined by being a victim.

Last year marked the point at which she had been free for longer than she had been treated as property. It’s taken a lot of work for her to heal from the trauma of being trafficked, and certainly she was extremely lucky to be able to escape from that situation, but if we give up on trying to save people like her, then we’re just papering over one tragedy with another.

If I were being trafficked, I don’t know that I would’ve had the strength to endure as she has. However, I am certain that I would not want to be given up on.

I can’t say for certain why they’d want a plant in the US, but I do know that they are already midway through building one in Texas, which is scheduled to be completed in November 2027. If I had to guess, I would say that it’s for much the same reason why Trump pushed through an executive order ordering USDA to pull back from programs that involved cooperating with other countries.

I don’t know this for certain though — it’s possible that the building of this plant was something that was approved during the Biden era, and that it was just intended to increase the amount of sterile flies available (the Panama plant was already working 24/7), or to make the system more resilient. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another facet of MAGA hostile foreign policy

Edit: apparently the plant began being built in April, so it seems it was indeed something that started recently.

Even if the facility had been already operative, it would’ve still been dumb as shit to pull back from cooperation with other countries, but the fact that this decision was made before there was a viable alternative boggles the mind. (To be clear, the pulling back from international cooperation didn’t mean that the US would no longer be relying on the Panama plant at all — I imagine they still were. However, because the dropping of flies was reliant on so many faces of cooperation, it appears that there has been less active work to maintain the barrier, possibly because it would involve relying on Panama)

There have been many times where the gap has been breached in the 50+ years it’s been in place — it’s inevitable when dealing with a flying insect with such a short lifespan.

You’re right to highlight that multiple decades is a heckton of time when it comes to the evolutionary lifecycle of this fly, but keeping track of these kinds of changes is part of the intensive preventative work done by programs under USDA.

DOGE explicitly slashed the USDA, including the screwworm program. Some funding was restored at a later date, but I believe a lot of that was put towards the construction of a new plant that would breed sterile flies (which needed to be released weekly) — a plant that is a long way from being completed. Previously, the bulk of the flies being released were produced at a plant in Panama, which no doubt spurred the decision to build a new one in the US.

However, even if the new plant had already been online before Trump ordered USDA to pull back from intergovernmental cooperation with other countries, this outbreak might not have been averted. Progress in keeping the screwworm at bay has only been possible through constant cooperation between countries. Especially because monitoring fly populations and cases of screwworm (on both sides of the barrier line) is probably the most significant facet of the program. Inspectors have to patrol thousands of square miles of land by motorcycle, boat and horseback, and the amount of manpower that takes is insane. The US was previously contributing a heckton of that manpower, but I can’t imagine that monitoring has been anywhere close to how it used to be when the USDA has been bled dry of personnel

TL;DR: I was going to say that it was definitely the US who dropped the ball, but it would be more accurate to say that they threw it, with force, at the people who were most essential for keeping the screwworm at bay

The gap has been crossed many times in the 50+ years that the barrier has been in place. These crossings aren’t failures, but inevitable when trying to wage war on a flying insect with an average lifespan of 21 days. Keeping the screwworm at bay requires constant effort and monitoring. Here’s an excerpt from the 2020 article"America’s Never-ending Battle Against Flesh-eating Worms"

“To get the screwworms out, the USDA to this day maintains an international screwworm barrier along the Panama-Colombia border. The barrier is an invisible one, and it is kept in place by constant human effort. Every week, planes drop 14.7 million sterilized screwworms over the rainforest that divides the two countries. A screwworm-rearing plant operates 24/7 in Panama. Inspectors cover thousands of square miles by motorcycle, boat, and horseback, searching for stray screwworm infections north of the border. The slightest oversight could undo all the work that came before.”

“The slightest oversight could undo all the work that came before”, huh? Shame DOGE didn’t give a fuck when they slashed screwworm monitoring programs.

The failure we’re seeing isn’t a failure to keep the screwworms out of the US (which any administration would inevitably fail to maintain perfectly), but a failure in monitoring and proactive preventative efforts to maintain the barrier. Fuck knows how long it’s been spreading before it was noticed, given that it’s already affecting multiple states.

The blame for what happens now lies solely with Trump and his cronies.

I’m trying to persuade my partner to play it with me at the moment. He seems open to it, but experiences inertia around starting a new game.

Well the point of the strike is for the workers to flex their power, with a hope of gaining more favourable outcomes in the negotiations. Along those lines, just the threat of a strike could be enough to force Samsung to make a better offer — especially after the news of the impending strike hit the news a few days ago

In an ideal world, the workers wouldn’t have to be striking at all, so it’s reasonable to at least try to avoid that outcome

Something that’s been made very clear from existing penal systems, both in America and elsewhere, is that incarceration doesn’t actually solve anything: it does give people the chance to reform, and whilst punitive justice may give some initial catharsis to people who have been victimised, restorative justice is a much better path for healing for all.

That doesn’t mean we should let them get away with the awful things they’ve done. The damage that has been wrought was done so largely by people who have power, and thus they should not be trusted with that kind of power again (tbf, that kind of power is stuff that no-one should have, but still). We don’t need to take away their basic rights in order to do that.

I know that there would be a heckton of people for whom figuring out a way forwards is far from simple, in terms of how to remedy past harms when the people responsible may have no inclination to try help with that. This would be such a radical departure from how justice has typically functioned that there would be a tremendous amount of learning to be done in terms of how to implement this, as well as difficult periods whilst the benefits of a more compassionate society would not yet be fully evident yet. However, I don’t think it’ll be possible to build something genuinely better if we give into our desire for punitive justice.

Because don’t get me wrong, I want to punish them. I want them to suffer for what they’ve done — I want to be one of the people hurting them, even. But I don’t want to be the kind of person who wants that kind of thing, because I don’t think it’s productive for society or for me. If we want to be better, we have to choose to be better

My mum didn’t do anything as bad as that, but your comment made me reflect and realise that there weren’t really any instances I can recall of my mum sitting down to help me tidy up my room. I’d just end up shoving everything under my bed when it came time for the weekly check for our pocket money and then doing a massive organise every few months or so (but it would never stay tidy for long.

What’s especially interesting was that I was quite enthusiastic about tidying and cleaning other parts of the house; we could do extra chores for extra pocket money. I wonder whether my attitude towards cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen was different to my room because I had to be shown how to do these tasks, as opposed to being left to my own devices with my bedroom

I’m pretty sure that electric vehicles didn’t really exist in a remotely viable form in 2008, because my Dad was a relatively early adopter with the Nissan Lead, and I remember it took an inordinate amount of effort to plan charging stops for a long distance journey.

A lot of people will just go back to their old habits, but for many others, this could be the thing that kicks them out of their inertial rut.

Thanks for the link. There have been a few people in this thread making this point, and I was considering asking them to elaborate so that I can gauge what my risk is from using pip for python. I appreciate you providing a resource so I can go learn more about this

What’s your basis for saying the vast majority are into it as a kink thing? Because I’m someone who used to feel uneasy about furries for much the same reason you are — but that was when I personally knew few, if any people who were furries.

Over the last few years, my work has meant that I’ve met more furries than I can count, becoming friends with many of them, and developing a better understanding of what being a furry offers them. It’s not a sex thing for the vast majority of furries I have known. This isn’t just based on my experience either — I have an artist friend who draws furry porn for a living. Although she is not a furry herself, she exists in close proximity to the furry community so that she can network and get commissions, and she agrees that the people for whom it’s a kink thing is a minority

Yeah, I share your unease. There have been a few times where I’ve gotten this vibe from some writing and later found out that it likely isn’t LLM generated text, but it’s always striking to me how this doesn’t ease that uncomfortable feeling — because the thing I’m actually uncomfortable about is how the prevalence of slop has made me so paranoid.

If I’m hyper vigilant about avoiding spending energy reading synthetic text, then I risk unduly dismissing something that someone put real time and energy into writing. But if I’m not cautious enough, I risk wasting my own time and energy engaging with content I’d rather ignore. It sucks to be forced into this position

That’s a very funny joke though, so I can see why you felt compelled to make this comment

Marmite is really good for this. Some of the other go-to “umami bomb” condiments aren’t vegetarian, but Marmite works well for vegetarians

It’s usually safe to assume that If there are people who seem to find a thing difficult despite you finding it easy, it’s probably difficult for them. For some reason or other, they have needs or struggles that you don’t have. You don’t need to understand why they struggle, just accept that they do.

You’ve just reminded me of a funny time when playing the game Eco with friends. It’s sort of like Minecraft but themed around ecological sustainable technological development, and the specialised labour necessary to make that happen. There were about 8 of us in total, and we would drop in and drop out over the course of a month

The way the electric power system worked in Eco is that in addition to dedicated objects you could place to expand the electrical grid, objects that use electricity could also act as repeaters, albeit with a much smaller radius. They didn’t even need to be physically connected up to power for this to work. They weren’t intended to be used as repeaters; the radius thing was just an artifact of how the electricity mechanic was implemented, to ensure that it wasn’t too complex to build an electric grid.

When we were short of materials and expanding our settlements, I ended up implementing a kludge solution of just placing a few unconnected water pumps between our power station and the place we needed to connect to the grid. It was only intended to be a temporary solution — but there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

nipped off the server for a little while, and when I came back, everything had gone to hell due to massive outages across the entire grid. After a while of fruitless troubleshooting, I happened to walk past one of the places where there had previously been a water pump, but there was no longer. I discovered that someone had removed it as part of routine tidying up the world.

Surprised and exasperated, I asked my friend why they removed it, and they (justifiably) responded indignantly with “Well I’m sorry! I didn’t know that it was a load bearing water pump!”. “Load bearing water pump” ended up becoming a recurring joke in my friend group, persisting long after we finished playing Eco. The situation really captures the absurd inevitability of this kind of change

Oh man, this has really cracked me up. You made me laugh so hard I was at risk of waking up my housemates