The fight against horrible things often benefits from people doing the right thing for the dumbest of reasons

Elections are not run federally, they are run by each state which makes it harder for Republicans to be as aggressive as they’d like to be

Mind you they lost a US house seat this cycle even with Trump winning. They have just a 3 seat majority. They would need a gain of +70 seats in the house in a midterm environment to get to 2/3

On the senate side, Republicans would need to pick up 12(!) seats to get 2/3. In the 2026 map, that’s extraordinarily difficult and would require winning extremely deep blue seats. 66 senators is a lot. They would have to win literally every single senate seat up for election in 2026

Assuming they win all the solid red + lean red seats, they would need to defend both senators in North Carolina and Maine to keep 53. Then they’d have to flip the tossups of Michigan and Georgia to get to 55. Then the lean blue Minnesota senate seat to get to 56.

Then the very likely blue seats of New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire to get to 60. Then to get to 66, they would need to win the safe blue states of Oregon, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to get 66

Midterms are usually very unfavorable to the party in power. Even with more stringent voter laws, that would be a tall ask. Flipping safe blue senate senates where dems have state and local control would be insane

And you’d have to flip a large number of state legislature in deep blue states too

Would be difficult for him to do so via any legal means. Each individual States run elections. They are not federally run, even for federal offices per the US constitution

Election days are similarly set by the US constitution

The bar to change that is quite high with 2/3 of congress + 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify. And while Supreme Court is insane, they did recently ruled 6-3 against the insane independent state legislature theory (which would have meant even state courts could not rule on anything election related) which is related to the exact piece of the constitution

Plus 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify which would be another high bar

There’s a reason why there’s so few constitutional amendments

The X service remains available to the people of Brazil, billionaire Elon Musk’s platform said on Saturday.

Wait so what do they mean by stopping operations in Brazil then? Just the offices and staff? The article isn’t super clear on it

Not the person you are replying to but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market

Not OP, but as someone who was at one point excited by the potential of crypto, the ecosystem has moved more and more towards what it claimed to stand against initially

It’s supposed to be decentralized, but things like mining pools have lead to heavy amounts of centralization in block production. If we look at Bitcoin, for an example, we see that over 51% of block production is controlled by just two mining pools. That’s not limited to just Proof of Work mining either. Proof of stake sees centralization in staking pools as well. That’s only just looking at one aspect of the network

It has also not really been seen as a currency. People’s view of it as an “investment” which have the opposite qualities you really want to see. People are encouraged to hold it and never let go, meaning they won’t want to spend it which is adverse to its use as a currency. This has also lead to it being incorporated and dominated by the very financial systems it was initially supposed to move away from

I don’t want to type out an essay, but I could keep going on in other ways that’s not really lived up to its promises.

Raising the wage of 1 million contractors is not just words. Yes, we do need more, but don’t think it’s nothing

Part of the goal is to encourage their campaign to get more of a mastodon presence

Most of those claims about treatment of trans people are just false. They are primarily based on misattributed actions of other people which harris has denounced

Here’s a good article looking at just that

https://archive.is/FNqUx

Not saying she’s perfect, but consider with the two party system in the US, the alternative is far far worse

Harris has generally pushed for minimum wage increases where she can. For instance

August 08, 2023

FACT SHEET: Vice President Harris Announces Action to Raise Wage Standards Over Time For More Than One Million Construction Workers

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/08/08/fact-sheet-vice-president-harris-announces-action-to-raise-wage-standards-over-time-for-more-than-one-million-construction-workers/

She has advocated for $15/hr minimum wage and joined protesting and striking workers in that push before

https://apnews.com/general-news-united-states-presidential-election-6a566fe8785a4ae5aa7963fd3bc5166f

Unlike a certain rich republican candidate who has misused funds, the money goes to their campaign not the person themselves

US elections certainly takes way more money than it should but until Citizen United gets overturned, donating is an unfortunately important part of elections for those who can afford to do so

In most species, bird flu is both highly infectious and very deadly. A disease being very infectious can make up for its lethality

I mean it still should still be horrfying, just that it should something to be worried about globally rather than just locally

Yep, for a source for others about the plastic bit

The system that strips off the plastic wrappings can’t capture it all, and so in the UK a limit of 0.15% of plastic is allowed by the Food Standards Agency. The official EU level for plastic permitted in animal feed is zero although in reality many other countries operate within the same 0.15% limit.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/15/legal-plastic-content-in-animal-feed-could-harm-human-health-experts-warn

Be mindful that a soldering iron cable can pull a soldering iron from your hand, so don’t have too loose of a grip. Learned that one the hard way :(

I think it’s worth reflecting on why being human should even be a relevant metric here. That they are not human doesn’t change what they feel. If they can suffer, as chickens and other farm animals very much can, why shouldn’t we aim to prevent suffering?

Don’t feel like you have to respond to this. I really just want you to reflect on that idea and think about it for yourself

Don’t worry they instead slaughter them even younger when their egg production falls :(

This means that in many countries, by approximately 72 weeks of age, flocks are considered economically unviable and are slaughtered after approximately 12 months of egg production,[3] although chickens will naturally live for 6 or more years

Animal agriculture is still horrifying around the world. It’s at best marginally better in some places like the EU, but it is not just a US issue at all

Could that be Exploding head syndrome?

Exploding head syndrome (EHS) is an abnormal sensory perception during sleep in which a person experiences auditory hallucinations that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up.[2][4] The noise may be frightening, typically occurs only occasionally, and is not a serious health concern.[2] People may also experience a flash of light.[5] Pain is typically absent.[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome

Unless things have changed, Apple’s policy of generally not allowing programs to download executable code would block this. Browsers are locked into using Apple’s allowed web engines because of this, so basically every browser on iOS is safari or re-themed safari