As a Cuban-American myself, I find it shameful that the Cuban diaspora wants Cuba to die under the pressure of American interests. They want Cuba to be another Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic: great for American tourists, absolute shit for locals.

I would love to live in a world where I don’t have to hear the words “NASDAQ” and “Dow Jones” ever again.

Not to mention shoving it down our fucking throats!

Good to know that light pollution is getting more attention. Now, if only we can somehow merge the urbanist movement and the “Dark Sky” movement, we’ll be a tad closer to a utopia. Imagine having walkable cities where you can see the Milky Way at night.

Not to mention that would drastically reduce dirty ocean water and countries can begin to clean up their coastlines.

In October, in an unrelated case, her 40-year-old brother, Brandon Lee Roberts, pleaded guilty to raping two people: an underage girl and a young woman. He subsequently received a 42-year prison.

I was going to joke how it’s “all in the family” but this goes to show how the law treats female offenders different than their male counterparts. In much of the western/anglophone world, we’ve come to associate sex abuse with men engaging in sexually predatory behavior; little thought is given about women committing sexual offenses since many are (sadly) the victim of such offenses. We’ve also come to see unbalanced age dynamics (younger man-older woman) as something of a rite of passage for men. If a guy loses his virginity with an older woman, he “scored” or got “lucky.” If the roles were gender-swapped, it would rightly be considered assault but the assailant would receive a much higher sentence than the woman.

We have stop treating sexual assault as one-sided.

If they were really serious, they would shut down their energy intensive datacenters and pledge far more (like 25%) of their annual profit.

Wait, they have to weigh the option of having their rivers poisoned? How about just rejecting it out right?

I forget what state this was in but they allowed pork farmers to dump pig effluent into the local rivers. This killed many fish and local wildlife. Why a state’s local EPA chapter would allow such blatant environmental hazards to happen is beyond me.

I’d argue that an armed uprising would have a greater effect than a smaller internet-based boycott but I’m just some random guy on some niche internet forum so… who’s to say?

Without Dan Simmons and Hyperion, sci-fi literature would’ve been still been regarded as disposable paperbacks. Simmons did away with the trappings of early pulp sci-fi that held a shadow over the genre for many decades. Instead, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion took the shape of the Western Canon and could be discussed as serious literature. Without spoiling too much, I remember reading the story of Sol Weintraub and his daughter and almost being brought to tears; something that no other book, regardless of genre, has done.

Rest well, scribe. Asimov, Heinland, Clarke, Herbert and, of course, Keats. You’ll be in good company

Why so antitrust? Trust is a good thing! Don’t you trust us to take care of Batman? Trust us, WB is in good hands. /s

I’m a bit conflicted on the population and birthrate issue. On one hand you have those who worry that an ever increasing population will lead to resource scarcity, economic stress and degrading climate resilience. Then you have those, especially on the right, that insist we need to have more babies. Usually, that “we” is white people. For example, that weird Collins couple who are having kids not of love but out of eugenic patriotic obligation.

So, my question is this: when discussing population crisis, be it overpopulation or under-population, what is legitimate concern and what’s just ring-wing fear mongering?

Whoa, Lemmy is going places! I never expected to see a Reddit-style AMA to appear here. I don’t have any questions for you, Mr. Karim but I do wish you the best!

We have been planting food for millenniums. All the crops and animals that we have cultivated and domesticated. All of it to feed our community. In the majority of that time, it was done without a profit motive. Why the fuck are we applying rent-seeking behavior to food? Does Dead Mommy Rand say that anything free is communism?

Let me first congratulate the devs on this milestone. Not many niche projects with small appeal last this long but this is impressive. Now, if they can get this working on Garmin and Polar watches the ball will really start rolling.

If I’m not mistaken, some of the higher-end models from Polar and (maybe?) Garmin work independently of a smartphone.

Fuck you, Trump, for depriving my ancestoral homeland of their energy needs!

Redneck logic.

In other news, the Church of England has confirmed that the Earth is indeed flat.

Kinda of. About 6 months ago, my speakers stopped outputting sound from their proper port on the I/O. Speakers themselves still worked as connecting them to the headphone port produced sound. When I put my PC back together about two weeks ago the sound problem persisted but this time switching sound profiles in the sound setting then switching back to the default, strangely, fixed the problem. It came at the caveat that I have to do it every time at reboot.