Lemmeenym

@Lemmeenym@lemm.ee
4 Post – 64 Comments
Joined 5 months ago

Mostly us.

We're not the only ones that can do that. Wolves, dingoes and other wild dogs, and hyenas are also persistence predators. All species of the Homo genus were persistence predators but we're the only one still around.

E:Our level of hand eye coordination is unique to the Homo genus. We're the only living animals that can use thrown weapons effectively. Chimpanzees are the next best throwers and at a range of 6.5ft they hit their target with about 11% of their throws.

A Martha Stewart/Snoop Dogg ticket would be interesting. I kinda want to see Snoop in the debate though so maybe a Snoop Dogg/Martha Stewart ticket.

If you want to guarantee a win though Oprah is the answer. Just to maximize Trump's rage I say we need Oprah/RuPaul 2024.

1 more...

Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen. He was born in Canada but his mother was an American citizen who met residency requirements to pass citizenship to him so he was a US citizen at birth.

1 more...

The first time I watched a true crime documentary it scared the crap out of me. I was eight, I think, and it was about Jack the Ripper. I watched it in a small dark smokey lounge in the back of a funeral home with some other kids of similar age and then had to run out to the car alone probably around 10:30pm or so.

In the article it says that immunocompromised people spoke during the public comments on the bill and Republican senators said that the bill would criminalize their wearing masks but they just won't be prosecuted for it.

12 more...

https://www.billtrack50.com/legislatordetail/20814

That's his record of votes and proposed legislation for the current Congress.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2034

That's a bill he supported in committee.

He has also worked with Sanders and Warren to convince Biden to expand debt relief granted through the executive branch. As far as congressmen go, he's a good one.

2 more...

My mind can't comprehend those walking and biking numbers. The walking is about 70 miles a day. That's more than double the average distance of a one day ultra marathon done everyday for a month and a half. The biking distance is about 255 miles a day. Roughly 2.5x the average daily distance for the Tour de France. I want to meet the people who can do that.

3 more...

The criticism isn't about a fair fight, it's about the unnecessary cruelty in the treatment of the animal. An important part of hunting ethics is minimizing the suffering of the prey. Kills should be as quick and efficient as possible.

Making fight decisions based on "could I kill it" is a convenience of human technology. The ability to seclude ourselves during healing and medicine allowing us to avoid infection, heal faster, and heal from more serious wounds has skewed how we think about fighting. Most animals make fight decisions less on "can I kill it" and more on "how badly can it injure me".

Sure a human can kill a house cat, absent technology can the human do it without having the skin on an arm or leg shredded? Will the injuries be significant enough to make you unable to protect yourself from other predators? Will the injuries set up infection and kill you?

Cats are basically the perfect land predators. Even with their small size domestic cats are the most deadly and destructive hunters on earth.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-kill-a-staggering-number-of-species-across-the-world/

They are ambush predators. They are really good at evaluating prey, identifying strengths and weaknesses, figuring out how, when, and if they should attack. Cats know whether or not they can win a fight. Cats will sometimes charge into fights they can't win, like attacking the bear, because they know that they can inflict damage and that the other animal is making a similar fight decision. The hyper aggression of a 10lb claw tornado flying toward a 200lb bear is usually enough to convince the bear that the fight isn't worth it.

1 more...

The Vice President doesn't certify the vote count, the Senate does. The VP usually presides over the counting because the VP is the head of the Senate but if the office of the VP is vacant or the VP chooses not to preside over the vote count then the president pro tempore or the Senate leader elected under SR1 is the presiding officer.

It's not just phrased poorly, it's not a true statement. It's a conservative talking point that does not bear out when you look at the federal budget. Republican Presidents and Congresses increase spending at least as much as Democratic Presidents and Congresses. Both parties are big spenders. Despite this and related talking points, Republicans are the less fiscally responsible party because while increasing spending they tend to enact policies that reduce growth in revenue.

Sounds like it would conflict with the ADA.

It's fake. It looks like that so she can bring the same one to every picnic.

I've never been much of a social media user outside of reddit and lemmy and I've never had an Instagram account so maybe it's my lack of familiarity but does that page list some really unimpressive stats? The original post had "more than 3,000 likes in less than three years" and for the second Instagram post it says"Within seven months, the post gained over 4,000 likes." Do Instagram posts continue active participation for years? I felt pretty good the few times I've posted something that got thousands of likes but it's more personal achievement 'than this is going to be bigger than two broken arms".

3 more...

I'm not convinced that Biden hasn't slowed down. Dude's old but his speaking style, history of gaffes, and his stutter makes it hard to really gage a change in his public speaking. I definitely don't think he's struggling nearly as much as Trump but ultimately I'm not sure how much difference it makes for how I will vote. Even if Biden was as bad as Trump he would be the better choice because he builds teams and listens to experts whereas Trump collects sycophants and listens to whoever best flatters his ego.

The job of the President is complex and involves dealing with incredible amounts of information. No one person can meaningfully process the amount of information Presidents get presented with everyday nor have the background to understand and properly contextualize the variety of types and sources of that information. The person that recognizes that they aren't experts on every subject and who builds teams of subject matter experts to help them process the information and make the most informed decisions possible will always be the better choice.

He's pro choice and proposed federal legislation to guarantee the right to both medication and surgical abortion and to require insurance to cover it. He has sponsored bills to protect IVF and other reproductive treatment, to give everyone paid sick leave specifically including parents taking leave to care for sick children, to expand Medicare to cover all citizens.

I'm not sure how much more he can support the right to bodily autonomy.

1 more...

We used to have laws that decentralized control of media. An entity could only own a certain number of newspapers, tv stations, or radio stations. There were incentives for smaller news companies to insure that there was competition in each market. Congress kept chipping away at those laws letting larger companies buy up more and more of the market, allowing mergers that restricted competition. Now radio is nearly a monopoly, TV and newspapers are oligarchies. The Internet fell into an oligarchy disturbingly quickly.

The only way to get the media serving the people again is to break up the big companies and restore the guardrails that protected and supported small local companies.

2 more...

Socrates answered this. If morality is objective or has an objective basis then it is necessarily independent from any God or god's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma

Edit to add: If you're interested in the concept of an evil God in the context of Christian beliefs I recommend reading "Answer to Job" by Carl Jung. He doesn't exactly make the Christian God evil but ascribes moral failings to God and frames Jesus as the redemption of God instead of the redemption of man.

We are rapidly approaching the point where it is an open question as to whether the Supreme Court can make its rulings stick in jurisdictions that don’t fall along the current majority’s ideological bent

Recently the most significant refusals to follow court rulings are in jurisdictions that do agree with the court majority's ideological bent. Alabama's voting maps fight and Texas's current border fight being the two biggest ones. At least for now democrats still generally believe in the American system and respect the rule of law.

2 more...

It's a really good topical antiseptic.

3 more...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism

You probably don't want to read all that so here's a what I think is the important take away as far as your question is concerned. American Christians have always been a bit different from the mainstream religion elsewhere. The largest Christian group to come to America in the early colonial period were called the Puritans. They believed that the English Reformation did not go far enough. They were staunchly anti-Catholic and were very upset that the Church of England had adopted so much theology and tradition from the Catholic Church.

The Puritans believed that the Bible is the complete revelation of God rejecting the papacy, the concept of continuing revelations, and the related concept of the Divine Right of Kings. They believed that individuals forged their own covenant with God and that their belief and acceptance was all that in required for their salvation. That sin is so pervasive in our corrupt world that it was unavoidable, no person can be "good" or worthy of salvation and so salvation is only available through God's mercy. They believed that it was their role as Christians to fight against the corruption of the world by spreading their theology and enforcing their concepts of sin and redemption on each other and on the greater community. The narrative is that they fled Europe to avoid religious persecution. The persecution that they faced was that they were not allowed to make laws banning things like alcohol or "revealing" clothing that they considered sinful or forcing people to go to their churches.

They adopted most of there theology from a reformist movement called Calvinism that sought to expand the Protestant Reformation further stripping away the power of the clergy and empower believers to enforce theology. Calvinists adopted an extremely socially conservative interpretation of the Bible and supported strict adherence to their moral ideology and severe punishment for violations of their concept of morality.

The modern Christian movements that trace themselves back to that foundation are still the largest Christian groups in the US. In the 1960's the Republican party began the "Southern Strategy" which was shift of political focus to conservative social issues and attacking secular institutions. Republicans used this strategy to unite the philosophical descendants of the Puritans under a political ideology that is strongly focused on conservative social issues and on pushing their concepts of religion and morality into all aspects of society enforcing adherence through government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

Prosperity theology is a newer theological concept that was popularized by Oral Roberts, has been embraced by the Republican party, and allowed the rise of the megachurch and celebrity preachers. Basically Prosperity theology gives an answer to the question of how you know that that someone is "living right" and a solution to the problem of evil. You know that someone is "living right" because God rewards their righteousness with material wealth. Evil exists as a punishment for the corruption of the secular world. Bad things primarily happens to the unholy but evil spills over to the righteous because secular corruption is so pervasive as to make sin unavoidable in our fallen world. Poverty is the primary form of punishment God visits upon the unholy.

You say you are from a predominantly Christian country so I assume that you are sufficiently familiar with the Gospels to recognize that this is a significant departure from the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Bible. I dare say that the departure is significant enough to be called an outright rejection of the teachings of the purported source of their morality and salvation.

Honestly, I don't get it. I saw the total eclipse in '17 and I've seen a couple of partial eclipses and they weren't particularly exciting. I live about 10 min outside of the total eclipse path and I'm not even sure I'm going to walk outside for it. What am I missing? Why are people spending thousands of dollars to see it?

4 more...

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, did not have wmd's, and was the only major Sunni power in the region. Saddam Hussain was not a good guy by any means but he actively worked against Iranian influence and was a stabilizing presence on the middle east after the first Gulf War. Pre-invasion Iraq was good for US policy. The invasion led to the growth of Iranian influence in the region and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization. We should not have attacked Iraq.

I was in support of attacking Afghanistan at the time and still think military action to go after Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin was warranted. The diversion of resources from that conflict is another reason we shouldn't have attacked Iraq. We probably should have extended that conflict into northern Pakistan where we knew Al-Qaeda's leadership and the bulk of their fighters were hiding.

We definitely should have invaded Saudi Arabia. They provided training, equipment, travel, and money to enable the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 would not have been possible without Saudi Arabia's support. Saudi Arabia was(is) in the curious position of publicly allying with us while plotting terrorism against us. Curious because by siding with us publicly they gave up Iran's advantage of attacks against them potentially leading to conflict with Russia. Iran had some part in 9/11 but between their having a lesser role and the risk of Russia coming to their defense it would not have been worth it to attack Iran. Saudi Arabia had our backing instead of Russia's. When they used proxies to attack us we should have leveled their royal palace. So far we haven't even pulled our support.

The lyric is "I owe my soul to the company store". Sold requires a conscious choice, willingly entering into the agreement. Under a company script system children are forced into labor as early as possible to help pay the family debt. In less than a generation teenagers are given the "choice" to go to work or see their families already meager income reduced to cover "their portion" of the family debt.

As a small silver lining, about a third of the Israeli aid package was humanitarian aid for Gaza.

Yes I was, sorry. This is even more useless than I thought. The Kim Davis case has already established that public officials have an obligation to perform their duties without regard for the sexuality of the people they serve. The law has already been preempted by federal law and precedent in the 6th Circuit which is the appeals court with jurisdiction over Tennessee.

Anybody else remember the dozens of stories about how a car is a deadly weapon and the cop was completely justified in killing the driver?

While I agree, it doesn't really apply to Netflix. It was always a rental/streaming business. Netflix never offered to sell the media, just temporary access to it.

That corrupt people using positions of power to harm others should be brutally murdered in the streets? That's what I got from the books. Maybe most people who use that symbol have read different books though, they do seem to have gotten a different message.

We're no where near $170 a year but $500 is very high. I haven't had a ticket or accident in about 15 years, I think insurance companies can only go back 6 years, and I'm paying about $75 per month.

3 more...

They're afraid of another lawsuit. If they get sued for pushing lies related to the same topic the Dominion suit was about it's likely to cost them more than that one did.

There is a super depressing story of a YouTuber named Leathersmokemi who died engaging in a similar fetish. Nick Crowley did a good video on him. I don't know of a fetish centered on prostate cancer specifically but there are cancer fetishists and the fetish centered on terminal illness is called nosaphillia so it's certainly possible that there are fetishists already out there focused on prostate cancer specifically.

Why isn't IUI an an opinion for them? From a biological standpoint what's the difference between a sperm sample being used for IUI with a surrogate and IVF with a surrogate?

4 more...

No but the only punishments that can be imposed if the person is found guilty is removal from office and being barred from holding future office.

Scaled

Mosquitoes are the only thing that kills more humans than other humans. In fact, if you look at the top 10 animals that kill humans and add up 2-9s per year totals they're a bit less than mosquitoes. Also the list is very bug and parasite heavy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_humans

1 more...

I understand that stepping on one could blow out your flip flop.

1 more...

To throw an add on to your comment in case readers have the ideal that the Navy's mostly flying cargo planes, Top Gun is the Navy Fighter Weapons School. The Navy is flying a decent number of cargo planes but they also have some of the best fighter pilots in the world. Also flying a Space Shuttle would be a lot closer to flying a cargo plane than a fighter jet. Space Shuttles weren't designed to maximize speed and maneuverability so that kinda makes pointing out that the Navy has amazing fighter pilots irrelevant, but they do.

I'm confused about what's presented in the article. The article says that to qualify for IVF the couple must be unable to conceive through IUI and that this requirement prevents gay men from accessing IVF. In the article's conclusion it says that gay men can only have biological children through IVF. That doesn't appear to be true.

https://www.scrcivf.com/lgbtq-fertility-faq/

That organization says that it is an option for gay men to use a surrogate and have a biological child through IUI. It wasn't the only one I found when I searched, "can a gay male couple use IUI with a surrogate".

Gay couples should have insurance coverage for and access to infertility care but is it unreasonable for an insurance company to say that a simpler cheaper alternative that produces an equivalent result (IUI) must be ruled out before it will cover the more complex procedure (IVF)?

Where is the disconnect? Will the insurance not cover IUI unless the procedure is preformed on the insured? Why jump to IVF and dismiss the simpler procedure? Why make IVF specifically the center of the argument instead of infertility treatment in general?

2 more...