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A bag of Cheetos created a huge impact on a national park ecosystem
  • "As for the spilled Cheetos, Ward told The Associated Press that could have been avoided because the park doesn’t allow food beyond the confines of the historic underground lunchroom."

    I was going to say, one of the most exciting things for me as a kid visiting 30 years ago was you could buy a candy bar while down inside the cave. If this is such a mortal threat seems like a good step to take would be closing down the concession stand!

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    Michaela DePrince: America's trailblazing ballerina dies at 29
  • Often in a news article when someone is described as dying "suddenly" without any other explanation it's understood to be a euphemism for suicide.

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    Don’t Fall for the Third-Party Trick
  • So people who don't live in swing states should vote third party until there's enough of them that the state is in danger of going to trump (or whoever)? If they're successful at some point that's a threat.

    How do we actually get third party candidates to win, not just "oh, Ross Perot Jr got 3% of the vote"?

    However you slice it, we're looking at like a 20 year struggle minimum to get election reform, and it would be at least the same length to elect a third party candidate to the office of president, but that's a one off thing. (Or more likely that third party would be the new one of two parties)

    If we're committed to the struggle of improving things, we might as well improve a reusable process rather than have a single go at a third party presidential candidate.

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    What are the most important holidays for each major religion?
  • I assume you're getting down voted because of AI use but I don't mind it in this case because I think it's a useful starting point for "how many big holidays are we talking about"

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  • I just saw a discussion among corporate event planners where one person was upset that event organizers don't give proper consideration to scheduling over top of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

    I can appreciate the annoyance, when I was still a practicing Christian I would never think to schedule a work thing over Easter or Christmas. We should treat others with consideration, and should be mindful of what others view as important days. But I also don't know what each religion considers to be major, non negotiable holidays. Do you?

    Another question, does it matter where the event is? (for example, in the US should less consideration be given to holidays of religions that have fewer adherents?)

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    Jump
    What started “weirdo” as a slur just recently?
  • I've seen people say there's good weird and bad weird, and if you don't mind calling yourself weird it's probably the good kind.

    As for calling maga people weird I think it's effective because their whole deal is about vibes. "We're strong, we're smart" and it really bothers them to be perceived otherwise. It's also not something you can "debate". Either people accept it or they don't. What are you going to say "no, I'm not weird"? Sure thing buddy.

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    What a slacker
  • Lol, well I didn't mean specifically "tell me you're from the US" just the general phrase "tell me X without telling me X".

    And can confirm that plenty of Americans aren't thrilled with how things are run in America. We're running democracy v0.1 beta

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    What a slacker
  • Well like other people were saying, there's a trend of people posting this prompt, and then others responding with funny answers. You're right, I don't like it when people use the same formulation in response to a comment. I also don't get why people are doing it, for the same reason: I don't think it's funny, and it doesn't really add anything to the conversation.

    Usually memes are funny because there's a familiar pattern and then people riff on the pattern and make little unexpected tweaks. The type of usage I don't like and don't get is when people are just saying "you're this" in a more wordy way. It has the form of a joke with no punchline.

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    Welp....
  • Sorry, that probably came off too negative. Looking at all your posts there's clearly plenty of variety. And anyone regardless of party is going to do things worthy of criticism. Only reason I commented is I've noticed that when I get to the end of my subscribed feed I often encounter a post with low upvotes critical of Harris and see your username. I guess that illustrates the audience on lemmy just as much as the type of things you post.

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    What a slacker
  • Thanks yeah, I've seen that sort of thread. If anything in this particular case it would make more sense if the comment was "tell me what country you're from without telling me what country you're from."

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    What a slacker
  • Not calling you out specifically, but I see this phrase everywhere and don't understand its popularity. It would be more concise and equally "clever" to just say "Sounds like this guy works in the US". What is the appeal that everyone keeps typing this?

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  • I know people can wear two video cameras to recreate a first person experience in virtual reality. I also know they make those mannequin head stereo mic sets that create interesting spacial audio, supposedly because they mimic the head's shape and position of our ears.

    Instead of the dummy head, does anyone make a mic set that you can wear, with the mics in approximately the position of our ears / ear shaped?

    I was thinking you could do some interesting things with that, like recording a band in their practice space from the perspective of the band members. Or tracking lead vocals where the singer is singing to a person wearing the mic set.

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    Some animals sing (birds, whales) and plenty of animals make sounds together at roughly the same time (wolves howling, prairie dogs yelling at threats). Are there animals that harmonize? Or animals that make sound that's rhythmically coordinated, like has a time signature?

    Guess I'm asking about more finely coordinated sounds. It's something that's pretty neat about human music.

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    theintercept.com How I Got a Truly Anonymous Signal Account

    Yes, you can use Signal without sharing your personal phone number. Here’s how I did it.

    Doesn't seem especially practical, but I thought folks here might be interested in this method. With the increasing scarcity of pay phones I suspect it might be equally as "easy" to get a burner cell phone with cash and register a signal account that way.

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    No, not talking about their own shit or vomit, har de har. I mean how dogs can't have chocolate, can't eat grapes. Are there things it's no big deal for them but would be toxic for us.

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    Just learned that Wikimedia has a project called Wikifunctions. I'm a big fan of Wikipedia and associated projects, and on its face sounds like a cool site. I do wonder how this would work in practical terms though, like how could it actually be used?

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    Prompted by another thread about conscription in Ukraine.

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    I saw a post on lemmy about how we could prevent 133 holocausts by promoting animal rights and veganism. The article opened by doing some math about how many dogs you could torture and kill in order to be equivalent to taking a human life, and then how many animals humans kill, and concluded that we're committing holocaust equivalents many times over.

    I have respect for people who question the status quo and think seriously about morality. Thinking about slavery, it used to be argued "this is the natural order," "this is actually the moral thing to do" and so on. It wasn't easy then to stand up for what we now see as the obvious moral position. So I have some receptivity to this type of argument.

    That said, I think back to when I was a Christian (atheist now), and was fully bought into the anti abortion movement. They argued that fetuses were human, that we were committing fetus holocausts all the time. Taking that view to its logical conclusion, one could justify things like killing a few (abortion doctors, judges) to save many (fetuses).

    The author of the vegan piece was not advocating for such things. But one could ask why not. I think the fact the conclusion (133 holocausts) is so far outside accepted views should prompt some examination of the starting premises. (Is any killing of an animal for food the same as torturous factory farming, should we do something about animals that eat other animals etc)

    I'm glad I read the piece because there's value in hearing other perspectives. We can't see ourselves and our own blind spots. I would have responded in-thread but that community description said "not a place for debate", so tossing out this thought here.

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    powering-the-planet.ghost.io Clean Power and Storage Wars

    When people find out what I do for work, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “Are we doomed?” My usual response is, “We would be, if not for the amazing developments in renewable energy.” We know the people willing to destroy the planet for personal gain are still

    I wasn't aware just how good the news is on the green energy front until reading this. We still have a tough road in the short/medium term, but we are more or less irreversibly headed in the right direction.

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    arstechnica.com Taking a closer look at AI’s supposed energy apocalypse

    AI is just one small part of data centers’ soaring energy use.

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    Every week or every month each level of government throws a party funded with taxpayer dollars, and attendees are selected at random from the residents and given advance notice of the party schedule.

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    My default buying process is research + spreadsheet creation, this time thought I'd ask the community here if you have any experience / wisdom with garage door openers. Thanks for any help!

    Additional info: Single car garage built in the 1950s in the U.S. The current opener is a lift master, just eyeballing it probably from the 90s. The door could be original? I don't know. It's wood, seems fairly substantial.

    Yesterday and this morning started having issues with the door just stopping in the middle of opening or closing. When it stops, the remote button becomes unresponsive for a few seconds. When it starts moving again it goes the other direction so you have to keep pressing and try to get it to close/open before it stops again. This morning I ended up pulling it down part of the way because I'd gone through several rounds of up, down, up, down. It doesn't seem to want to move manually which isn't surprising. Worried my car is going to get stuck in there before work so I figure should probably be proactive here.

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    Question inspired by the news that Dave and Busters is supposed to be adding gambling to their games. And of course there are the sports betting apps.

    I get that all things being equal we should let people do what they want to do. But I don't see much of a benefit, and a lot of downside to allowing the spread of gambling.

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    Let's assume no zombies or other supernatural occurrences, but could be plenty of people being shitty, consequences thereof, or natural disasters

    Edit: to expand on this, presumably if society has temporarily or permanently collapsed there would be issues with things like deliveries, security, digital transactions, utility service etc. Feel free to use whichever scenario seems most likely to you, I'm asking more because I was thinking how screwed I'd be if I was just out of food after say, seven days.

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    I don't mean the actual rules of passing it, I mean what organization, activities and funding are necessary to do so.

    The last one passed was in 1992 and it was just about congressional pay. Last one before that was 1971. Is there some kind of play book? It seems to happen so infrequently that it would be hard to study and conditions would vary enough that the last effort wouldn't be useful as a model.

    ("The amendment process is very difficult and time consuming: A proposed amendment must be passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, then ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states." Link)

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    We're talking actions limited to something one human could achieve - so not wishes, but could be something amazing or rare like "become president"

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    www.bloomberg.com Conferences for the 0.1% Breed Skepticism

    Plus: The trouble with rent inflation and the hope for a new B-school AI tool.

    "...These kinds of private conferences, where business and cultural leaders interview one another free from the pesky, prying grasp of the press or public, are becoming increasingly common."

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    I like getting glasses off of Zenni but they never seem to fit quite right, mostly the arms. Would be nice to be able to make adjustments.

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