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12·2 days agoHelpful links on how to delete stuff that’s meta owned
Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account
The title of the article is clickbait/ragebait. The actual article content is a little different. The gist of it is more so this:
In place of capping the out-of-pocket cost of just insulin, lawmakers should cap the out-of-pocket cost of all diabetes medications.
Headline writters are often/usually different people than the person who wrote the article leading to infuriating things like this
2·5 days agoElections 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
If you want something more hands on, work on local races this year. They are how we can fight back
Elections are run at the state level in the US. Even for federal offices
Many states have elections this year even despise it being an off year
There are special elections today in Virginia thay will determine who controls the state legislature. If dems remain control, they can block a lot of the Republicans governors attempts to disenfranchise
There are special elections in Minnesota on Jan 28th to determine control of one house of the state legislature
There is an election that will determine control of the Wisconsin state supreme court on April 1st. The more recent Progressive control has lead to Wisconsin getting fair maps as the gerrymandered maps were overturned. We are going to want to keep it that way and build further
There are special elections for various US house members like to replace Matt Gatez on April 1st. Should we win any suprise flips, it will be even harder for Republicans to get things through congresss with their already tight 3 seat majority
And so on
Here’s a frequently updated spreadsheet with various at home volunteering options
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jxO8g7q9VO3ZMAABcrvR7PMyX4Yl6dgIYhD3eRTKk1M/htmlview
EDIT: also on another note, consider running for election yourself. There are various small local positions around you that often go uncontested. Here’s one group that helps progressives run for local office https://runforsomething.net/
441·20 days agoGotta love President Musk’s brave defence of free speech just make sure you don’t want to share a link, mention any competitors, use the word cisgender, or track his private jets
Truly the freest of platforms
That’s not what they are doing right now
I’m also going be real that this is also the least of my concerns for a platform. If they make some people change their handle that don’t need to, it really isn’t a massive deal in the grand scheme of things. Especially since when handles are changed on Bluesky, all the references to that handle also change because they have a constant ID for all accounts. Impersonations leading people to scams is a much larger issue
? Did you read what the article? The change here is pretty minor and just reserving the @name.bsk.social if they verify with a domain to something like @domain.tld
Now, users that verify their account by linking their domain name get to automatically keep the default @username.bsky.social username
The breakup won’t happen instantly and this has already stolen some of his air of infallibility going into his term which I’d argue is rather important. He now looks weak so you are more likely to see more people willing to stand up to him on day 1
Good news on that from is that this wasn’t accidental
The “President Musk” messaging is by design, at least partially. This week, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it, at senior levels of different Democratic congressional offices, and also within the Democratic National Committee, discussions have been had about having party leaders and elected officials actively portray Musk as effectively Trump’s boss, and to do so during television appearances that the president-elect is likely to see. The idea is that it’s a cost-free opportunity to potentially drive a petty wedge between the notably mercurial and ego-obsessed Trump and his similarly emotive pal Musk, and to sow some chaos in the upper ranks of the Republican Party.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/president-musk-dems-troll-trump-elon-1235211922/
On a more serious note: The constitution requires you to be born a US citizen to be President which Ted Cruz was, but Musk was not
Shame that president-elect musk wants to try to break that
“climate-smart beef” is pure greenwashing
Many argue that this overlooks the large variation in the footprints of foods across the world. Using global averages might give us a misleading picture for some parts of the world or some producers. If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases
There’s not been a single study to say that we can have carbon-neutral beef
[…]
We also have to ask how much of the sequestered carbon in these systems is actually due to the cattle. What would happen to the land if it were simply left fallow?
The answer is, depending on the land, and on the kind of grazing, it might sequester even more carbon
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/10/03/beef-soil-carbon-sequestration/
There are other app views in the works from other people, but yes in the current state it is rather centralized. That’s why I started off saying it was semi-decentralized. I wasn’t claiming it was super decentralized
YouTube does have 8k support and a handful of 8k videos
It’s actually more so the other way around. The backend (PDS and relays) is open source but I believe the AppView is not currently open source
https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds
I think that’s a good part of it, to be honest. Plus I think also helps that Bluesky’s handles look visually less confusing and unusual than the conventional double @ sign for the fediverse
@user.bsky.socialvs@user@bsky.socialPlus other things like having starter packs
Who’s now left Bluesky which is probably for the better given his views on a lot of things
I noticed that and deleted my post but the deletion probably hasn’t federated just yet, sorry about that
Some platforms might be redeemable and worth that fight, others I fear are beyond saving in their current form
There’s an algorithmic component here though that is going to make anything like that extremely uphill
Meta has to want to follow Musks as example explicitly. If he look at Musk, that’s a worrying trajectory. Elon Musk specifically boosts his own posts on Twitter over others even if you don’t follow him. He downranks anything with the word cisgender. He boosts accounts that pay him for checkmarks and has taken those checkmarks away from people who criticize him