There are people who speak up, but it’s definitely not a sizeable demographic. Even before the genocide started, Israelis who protested Israel’s human rights abuses and wars faced a heckton of suppression. A friend of a friend was hospitalised after being severely beaten by right wing counter protesters at an anti-genocide demonstration. Far from taking action to stop it, the police (as they were watching it happen) laughed at her and said she deserved it.

Children are taught from a young age of the necessity of Zionism, and that they are fundamentally superior to Palestinians and other Arabs, who are inherently violent and dangerous. They twist the knife of the generational trauma of the holocaust, because scared and hurt people are easier to manipulate to hate.

Compulsory military service in the IDF is another powerful tool used to shape Israeli’s opinions; There’s been a lot of research on how the military has a shockingly strong effectiveness at shifting the views of those who serve in it, leading to galvanisation of an us-vs-them way of thinking. People who refuse compulsory service are routinely imprisoned, sometimes for longer than their term of service would be.

Press freedoms are heavily restricted. A friend who was studying in Israel in the late 2010s was astounded by how homogenous the media landscape was, especially in terms of news. There are some organisations that do good work, but they themselves have documented how difficult it is to be a journalist in Israel who isn’t willing to be a propaganda mouthpiece. +972mag is one of the few publications in this space , and they do some absolutely incredible journalism, so check them out if you’d like to be able to get an insight into some of the on-the-ground politics in Israel. Their editorial team includes both Israelis and Palestinians, and much (if not all) of their work is available in both English and Hebrew — because even if there aren’t many in Israel inclined to listen, they want to get their work out to as many people as possible

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 mean, we’ll have to handle it, we won’t have a choice.”

A lot of people won’t handle it though. I’m too disabled to work, so even if I had been old enough to be working during the dot-com era and the '08 crash, I still wouldn’t have had a job to lose.

However, I have had my benefits temporarily removed due to various bureaucratic bullshit, and there have been multiple points where things got bad enough that I’m honestly surprised I’m still here to write this comment. And it sucks to know that for all the trauma and disadvantage I face, I am one of the lucky ones.

That’s what’s so grim people being pushed to their limit — when we don’t have the luxury of choices, then it’s easy to get drawn towards choosing “the bad ending” so to speak. Even during difficult times where I’ve not been at risk of making that particular choice myself, I nonetheless found it comforting to fantasise about, as the escape lever that no-one could take away from me.

I deeply and sincerely love whoever made this image

There are worker protection regulations for temperature in the UK, which account for both excessive cold and heat. However, whereas there is an explicitly stated minimum temperature for indoor workplaces (16°C, or 13°C if the work involves rigorous physical exertion), there is no stated upper bound, only that employers must ensure the safety of their workers with respect to heat stress, by maintaining a “reasonable” temperature at work.

We honestly need an update to the regulations, because part of why there isn’t nearly as much guidance for excessive heat is that when the regulations were written, it was assumed that the only workplaces that would be at risk of excessive temperatures were places like bakeries and foundries. Although a kitchen like the one in the article obviously has plenty of equipment outputting additional heat, places like this getting too warm probably wasn’t conceived of when these regulations were written — and it’s only going to get worse.

Unfortunately, the word “reasonable” is pretty fluffy, and I can imagine some workplaces only shutting once workers start experiencing heat stress. And in some cases that I know of, some asshole employers will continue pushing employees past that point — the employees would no doubt succeed if they tried to take action against their employer at this point, because that’s clearly beyond what’s reasonable, but it’s much easier to prove “the temperature was this high” than it is to argue that the temperatures were unreasonable.

I learned a bunch of this from a friend who was concerned for her employees — she was complaining to me about how much work it took for her to figure out what constituted “reasonable” and how the lack of clearer regulations about excessive heat not only made it easier for asshole employers to exploit their workers, but also harder for employers like her to protect her workers (another friend, who was a manager but didn’t directly employ the people working under him concurred, because it took him a lot of arguing to convince the higher ups that AC was necessary in the office)

You are delightful, and I really appreciate you, and this comment of yours. I didn’t know about this, but you’ve piqued my interest enough that I’m going to go read more about it now. It’s super cool!

It’d probably still count as littering, which would be fineable, I imagine

Not only are cashews healthy for them, they also go nuts for them (pun not intended, but I am delighted to have made an accidental pun). I forgot to mention “unsalted” in my comment, so I’m glad you mentioned it

I once had a crow friend who would knock on my window if I was late coming out to give them their seeds. It was just the one crow that was bold enough to do this. Sometimes he’d do it way earlier than usual, and I am 100% confident that he wasn’t mistaken, just being a cheeky asshole and trying his luck. I miss that asshole bird.

Seconding the crow effigy idea (well, I didn’t do it with an effigy, I just left them a couple of shiny stuff).

For me, what I did was sit on my doorstep for a while, to get them used to the sight of me. And then I made sure they saw me leaving the shiny thing. I wasn’t forbidden from feeding them, so I also let them see me putting out some seeds.

Although feeding them is prohibited, the crow effigy idea person said to have a few cashews or similar in the little nesty thing, and I agree that this would be likely be necessary to draw them over at first.

If you’re okay with bending the rules a tad, if the sitting outside thing works and you’re able to not scare them away, then leaving behind just a cashew or two in your wake (if the crows are nearby) could help them to begin to associate you with good stuff.

Though if they’re dive bombing you, it might be challenging to come back from that

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.

https://youtu.be/m6e_dUkW0sg

I read a fair bit of it, and I was surprised to see so many of the talking points I hear from some of the techy/sciencey people I most respect, just with a religious coat of paint. He’s clearly got some pretty clued up people advising him, and is wise enough to listen

As an add-on to this, people having the thought pattern of:

They’re saying that my friend said something racist -> Therefore they’re saying my friend is a racist ™ -> However, my friend is a good person -> Therefore they’re not a racist -> Therefore what my friend said wasn’t racist -> Therefore the people calling my friend out are the bad guys

You can substitute in words like homophobic, transphobic, ableist, classist etc. for racist — the flow goes the same. An excellent book that helped me to understand this was “racism without racists”. Reading that as a teenager helped me to more constructively respond when I have been called out for prejudiced attitudes, such as racism.

It makes me feel deeply uncomfortable to think of myself as a racist — and so I don’t. However, unlike people who default to this thought pattern that turns cognitive dissonance into indignant resistance to change, I work to accept the fact that I am absolutely capable of doing, saying or thinking racist shit — it’d be hard not to, when I’ve grown up in a systemically racist culture. But I can acknowledge that without blaming myself for it, which allows me to avoid the discomfort of considering myself a racist whilst maintaining my moral fortitude.

A phrase that’s helped me a lot is “you’re not responsible for your first thought; you are responsible for your second”. That helps me to actually interrogate where something is coming from if I catch myself having a reflexive thought that shocks or disgusts me. Unfortunately, this habit isn’t one that many people have.

Thinking about things in terms of innate essences people have (even if they’re less binary than good Vs evil) is harmful even when we’re just looking at harms to ourselves. For instance, I was a super bright kid, and “the smart one” was a core pillar of my identity. However, as I entered my teens, I was so scared of losing this that I became more concerned with appearing smart than actually being smart. It felt like something I didn’t have control over, which was terrifying. But I often say that I got a hell of a lot smarter when I let myself be dumb. That’s because when I think about what a smart person actually does that makes them smart, it’s stuff like being curious about the world, self reflecting on one’s beliefs and knowledge and being open to being corrected etc… It was a lot less pressure once I stopped thinking about things in terms of immutable, innate essences

Plastic leather also wears out so quickly. Real leather is much stronger and easier to repair/restore.

As the person highlighted (and you have expanded on), there are a lot of ethical and sustainability problems with the leather industry as it is, but I think it’d be far better to improve the problems with natural leather than to expect much from the plastic leather

That science is rational and objective.

In reality, the way that science works is much muddier than most realise. It’s full of subjectivity, and this isn’t a bug, but a feature. Intuition and tacit knowledge play a big role in basically any research (and this is why I am confident that AI can’t replace scientists). Politics are also present at every stage of the process. Science is at its least objective when scientists convince themselves that they’re being objective. We can’t escape our biases, so we need to actively acknowledge them and embrace the subjectivity of our situated perspectives.

The problem is that talking about this is a great way to piss off other scientists. I’ve been accused before of “betraying the side”, by a scientist who was aware that science has a disproportionately large epistemic platform (epistemic means pertaining to knowledge — basically just that as a result of the huge benefits of scientific advancements in the last century or so, science has been on a bit of a pedestal in terms of trusted expert knowledge in society. Criticising this is seen by a betrayal by some because of the concerning rise in psuedoscience and anti-scientific rhetoric.

However, I’m of the belief that some of what has driven the rise of psuedoscience is that the average person doesn’t like to be told “shut up and do what the smart people say”. They feel a lot of mistrust towards society (which, in many cases, is entirely reasonable, especially in the case of marginalised groups who have been heavily exploited by science and scientists),

The problem goes far beyond just science, but I think this is certainly an aspect of it. I sympathise with scientists who want to continue to have the privileged position they hold, but I don’t think that’s helpful in the long term.

Privatisation, combined with a government that seems allergic to actually making there be any penalties for water companies’ fuck ups.

For instance, you mention the excess of rain that the UK receives — well another way the water companies keep fucking up is that when it rains, and the amount of water going down drains is too much for them to process, they end up discharging raw sewage into rivers, polluting many rivers that would otherwise be swimmable (last summer, I lived in a place near a river that was beautiful to swim in during hot weather, but before actually doing so, I checked an online map (from a charity doing data activism) to see if there were any points where sewage was typically discharged from, and if there had been recent instances of this. Turns out that one of the most popular swimming spots was downstream of one of these sewage points)

This is meant to be a thing that is only done in the most exceptional of circumstances, but it’s something that is done frequently, all over the countries, because it’s cheaper to do this than to actually improve water infrastructure. Water companies say “we had to do it because of exceptional levels of rain”, but when occasional bouts of exceptionally high levels of rain is the norm, that excuse is more full of shit than our rivers.