A recent study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology studied more than 100 cows carrying 12-pound bells at two dozen farms across the country, and found that the bells can lead to deafness in cows, whose hearing is more sensitive than that of human beings

Basically, they moved to another country, in the countryside, and immediately started telling everyone around them they were living their lives wrong

I say this every time I see someone complain about female castration, corporal punishment, or waterboarding.

If you don’t like how a community operates, you shouldn’t complain. You should leave. Or, better yet, don’t show up to begin with.

Get your fancy liberal ideas about social reform or rights for the disposed out of her. If we’re torturing cows in our town, with our own money, on our land, that’s our choice. Idk how you have the nerve to come in and try to make this place better.

Fuck you. I’ll torture my cows if I feel like it. As my father did, and his father before him. Cow torture is a tradition. Don’t be annoying.

Humans

I think it’s kinda cruel to the cows but

I get so tired of the “yes, this appears to be a historical atrocity people have deliberately ignored, but mentioning it now is rude” framing.

Slapping “we ruined her ability to interface normally with the bureaucracy as a punishment” on top is some reactionary bullshit I’d like to think the anti-Trump crowd would be above.

But nope… fascism is just a reflex for people.

Only ironic if you don’t see the motivations behind their actions.

Liberals who feared a school shooter or deranged ex aren’t the ones arming up now. Conservatives who knocked down the regulations aren’t the ones who feel particularly threatened by a liberal with a gun.

authoritarians end up making carrying arms easier

But organizing any kind of community defense significantly harder. There’s no magic bullet you can buy to protect yourself from the violence of your neighbors, much less your external oppressors.

A great deal of the pro and anti gun frameworks have been about organizing local political interests into activist groups and police-aligned influencers.

The pro-gun groups have won primarily because their organizations are in tight with sitting administrations, but because they simple have guns available to any dipshit with a credit card and a driver’s license.

He’s an old Soviet defector who has been plugging western neoconservative foreign policy for decades.

It makes my heart ache to think what Russia could be like today if he and a few others had been able to stay there as public figures and role models.

They did stay. Kasparov was an outspoken advocate of Boris Yeltsin, even as Yeltsin shelled Parliament in a Western backed coup.

Nonsense. I think if there’s one thing this US Senate has proven to be, it’s anti-pedophile.

But she never stood a chance with, what, a three month campaign

That was half her strength. Trump’s entire team was geared around shitting on Joe Biden. And then Joe Biden stops being on the ballot, sending oodles of oppo-research and Hunter Biden smears and god even knows what kind of October Surprise they had cooking down the toilet.

Biden dropping out and throwing up Harris in his place meant she was free to pummel Trump with negative ads while he had to fully reconfigure his campaign to attack someone who’d spent four years as a backbencher. And - early on at least - Harris capitalized on this well. She came in with a moderate Dem - Tim Walz - who defused some of the Zionist image built up around Joe. She spewed negative ads at Trump and Vance, leaning on the “they’re just weird” talking point that got plenty of mileage both on and off-line. She was a prodigious fundraiser, unlocking a ton of cash that Biden had left on the sidelines because he was too senile to call the mega-donors and ask for it.

And, as a tabula rosa, she (initially) ditched all of Biden’s first term baggage - his failure to secure student loan relief, his endless efforts at compromising with far-right Republicans, his pull-out of Afghanistan and dive into Ukraine, his just being a gross old fart who couldn’t talk good.

But then Harris had to take on a bunch of Hillarycrat advisers and tack to the right. She ditched Walz for Liz Cheney and Cindy McCain. She sucked up to the Silicon Valley Techbros as they lined up to knife her in the back. She repeatedly defended Joe Biden’s least popular policies. She undid everything that Biden dropping out was intended to accomplish.

If anything, it speaks poorly of her leadership potential that she was willing to be saddled with that mess of a non-campaign.

She never really had a choice. But that’s been the hallmark of her entire political career. Harris always just kinda blew where the wind took her. She shouldn’t have been VP to begin with, taking the job only because Biden confusedly promised a black woman VP when he was asked about his plans for a next SCOTUS pick.

But then she surrounded herself with some of the most abysmal neocon reject advisors $1.5B could buy. And she tanked her chances at becoming the First Woman President by running the Clinton Playbook that had cost her predecessor so two prior electoral defeats.

Harris adviser says VP ran ‘flawless’ campaign

“I would posit she ran a pretty flawless campaign, and she did all the steps that [were] required to be successful,” she added. “And I think – obviously, we did not win, but I do think we hit all the marks.”

…

Nix, Harris’ campaign manager, also attributed Trump’s decision not to participate in any debate following the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10 as detrimental to the Harris campaign’s strategy of presenting the choice between Trump and Harris clearly to voters several times.

“I think that was hard for us to then get the attention that we would have liked to,” Nix said.

Well, there you have it. Perfect campaign. No notes. Just wish Trump had been willing to debate, because we all know the problem Harris had was getting her face out there.

SecurityCube 360 Pro

The Russian Federation being granted the former USSR’s permanent seat was conditional: the Russian Federation was required and expected to uphold the responsibilites that the USSR had, as well as the USSRs treaties and agreements. Failure to uphold those commitments would mean the Russian Federation was in breach of their agreement with the UN and should lose the seat formerly granted to the USSR.

Sure. But the mechanism by which the UN functions is such that the Security Council has extensive veto power over most actual policy set by the UN. Consequently, any effort to challenge Russia on its failed obligations or to penalize or remove them would be subject to… Russian veto of the action from the Security Council.

That’s because the UN doesn’t exist to set policy against its primary member states. The UN exists to allow member states a neutral(ish) space to negotiate international policy amongst themselves and to organize against non-members and non-state-actors. Even if you could kick a $1T/year economy and largest sovereign landmass on the planet out of the body… who would benefit? Its not like removing Russia from the UN makes the country not-a-state. It’s not like the BRICS wouldn’t continue to coordinate amongst themselves independent of the UN. All you’ve done is cut the cord to the Little Red Phone that helps a future Russian President and a future American President from hashing it out before they launch nukes at one another.

The USSR, interestingly enough, had signed many treaties recognizing the borders of its successor states before it was dissolved, one of which being Georgia. Thus the actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia in 2008 violated one of these USSR agreements they are required to uphold. This was a direct violation and one that is technically grounds for removal of the UN, at least removal from a permanent seat.

You can single out the USSR on this technicality and hold Russia to it. But then you could single out the US for its extensive violation of the Geneva Convensions or its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords or any number of other historical treaties and associated promises.

You could single out the US for the Hague Invasion Act if nothing else. But we won’t, for the same reason nobody’s seriously interested in ousting Russia (or China or the UK or France for that matter).

This isn’t the G7 (formerly G8) where “We’re embargoing you, why are you even here?” would be the response to any Russian delegation. This is the body that exists to negotiate member states out of nuclear war. If anything, the Security Council should have significantly more members, given how nuclear weapons have proliferated over the last 70 years.

Maybe getting Pakistan and India on the panel could avoid the last great Pyrrhic Victory of human civilization.

Is it possible there are some SNAP recipients taking advantage of the system?

The federal equivalent of asking “Is anyone abusing our Take A Penny / Leave A Penny tray”. It’s such a paltry amount of money with so many strings attached that anyone serious about abusing a federal system looks elsewhere. Why would I fuck with food stamps when I can get take a job at an investment bank that got in on the Trumpcoin scam or take six figures beating up the homeless as an ICE Agent? Hell, part time National Guardsmen get way better benefits than anyone accepting federal cheesebux. Or take a job at the state or municipal level doing any of a number of annoying bureaucratic tasks that guarantee a stable income and good benefits.

There are so many ways to get money out of the federal government if you’re able-bodied, middle-aged, and sporting an IQ in the high double digits. Food stamps are for folks who can’t be exploited or coerced into exploiting others on the state’s behalf. You’re kept at just above starving in hopes you can be roped back into the system somewhere down the line, but systematically abused by the bureaucracy to get you to jump off asap.

Mafiosos in the 60s and 70s were more generous to their neighbors than the Feds are with their benefits schemes. Its the last place you should look for fraud.

Finally, we can get to the bottom of this whole “Did Donald Trump has any kind of involvement with Jeffery Whatisface?” question, once and for all. I’m excited to see these files released so that the FBI can act and any prosecutions of those involved can begin forthwith. Can’t wait for this decision to Release The Documents to put this whole matter to bed, once and for all.

Preach. I almost got suspended for being punched in the face, because the school logged me as “being in a fight” and considered that evidence I’d broken a rule. My assailant was straight up walking down the hall and shoving anyone in his way, eventually deciding to punch me because I didn’t move aside fast enough. But because I was the only one who complained to a Vice Principle (and because his parents had enough money and influence in the school to make things ugly), school admin effectively tried to extort me into retracting the complaint.

Took six months and multiple hearings, along with a threat of lawsuit, to eventually get the school admins to reverse their decision.

Why would anybody use Threads?

Let’s say you were a Bitcoin spammer who wanted to appeal to a higher quality of bullshit techbro crowd.

Unfortunately, the Epstein Files are full of Liberals, too.

It’ll never top the folks who are convinced $25k in Facebook ads cost Hillary’s $2B campaign the election in 2016.

But it is dizzying to see how quickly we Doublespeak about Russia/Ukraine. It’s The Battle of the Somme every day in America.

They were. Donald Trump was as much of a racist, sexist, xenophobic shitbag when he demanded the execution of the Central Park Five as he is today. Joe Biden was as committed to the Zionist project under Ben-Gurion as Netanyahu from Philly. Dianne Feinstein was fighting to put the Confederate Flag up over San Fransisco over forty years ago. Mitch McConnell has been fronting for fossil fuel companies all the way back to his days as legislative assistant to Marlow Cook and and campaign aid for Tom Emberton. My man was an aid to Robert fucking Bork ffs. Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl.

These people all sucked back then. They have always sucked. They were the teenagers screaming at the first black students to cross the segregation line after Brown v Board. They were the Vietnamese veterans doing war crimes at My Lai and flying bombing runs over Cambodia on behalf of Kissinger. They were taking money from Walmart and DOW Chemical and Raytheon and Salomon Smith Barney as soon as they were old enough to cash a paycheck. They were at the forefront of the Red Scare and the first in line to bend the knee to Ronald Reagan.

These people have been awful for eons.

I will commit unlimited holocaust on the developing world if I do not see women dressed like this.

those people did not have the values you associate with them back then in the 1960s and 1970s

Oh yeah. Nobody was suggesting we round up all the immigrants, criminalize homosexuality, segregate people by race, and deny women rights over their own bodies in the 1960s and 70s. And we definitely weren’t cooking up a Cold War with an Eastern Power, or picking fights with left-leaning democracies in Latin America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa, during this time.

It’s actually totally different now!