Where I live (Ontario Canada) we are overwhelmed with invasive Phragmites. Although they’re edible and can be used as livestock fodder they still dominate our waterways. We don’t really have any farmers raising water buffalo which would be an ideal herd for grazing them down.

What do you do with noxious weeds like giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum)?

I’m not describing any state solution!

Right but this is a separate issue. My original comment was about Israelis whose families have been living in that region of the world for millennia. They have a right to be there. They are not equivalent to colonists from Europe arriving in the Americas.

The Israeli government uses antisemitism as a weapon to attack their critics. They conflate criticism of the Israeli government with attacks on Jews. It’s bullshit, duplicitous rhetoric.

But here we are conflating Israelis who can trace their ancestry to that region for millennia with (a minority of) European Jews who moved there during/after WW2, and calling all of them colonists. Now we are being duplicitous!

The situation isn’t comparable. The majority of Jews in Israel are not European (or from anywhere else), they’re native Israeli and they trace their roots to Israel back for millennia.

The problem is not that Israelis want to live there. They have a right to live there. The problem is that they’re depriving Palestinians of their right to live there instead of seeking peaceful coexistence.

Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.

When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.

It was a casual remark, not a hill to die on. That’s entirely your read!

Floor to ceiling stalls are much harder to clean. The gaps underneath allow for water to drain out when washing everything.

Absolutely! Taboos are one of the biggest aphrodisiacs! If it were out in the open and fully accepted then it would lose all the appeal!

Weight in pounds isn’t the right unit here. Weight varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field you’re in, whereas mass does not. A kilogram here on earth weighs 2.2lbs but on the moon it only weighs 0.36lbs.

I think it’s the opposite. All the outrage on social media just feeds back into itself. It’s an engine fueling disillusionment, not productive change.

Honestly it’s a form of depoliticization because it’s not a serious proposal with any realistic chance of success. It distracts people from getting engaged with real politics and actually making a difference. And at the end of the day, isn’t that exactly what the billionaires want?

To him it’s just another day at the office.

Religion is a product of oral tradition, taboo, and superstition. These features of human behaviour played a valuable role in protecting humans from dangers we did not individually understand. Fires, lightning, floods, drought, poisons, diseases (especially sexually transmitted diseases) underlie much of the religious beliefs and other cultural superstitions you can see even today.

A favourite of mine is the processing of cassava aka manioc by indigenous Amazonian tribes. Their cultural practice involves a long, multi-stage cooking and washing process which removes the cyanide that is naturally present in the root. The amazing thing is that the cyanide levels are high enough to cause chronic poisoning but low enough to not present any short term symptoms besides a bitter taste. However, taking shortcuts with the process leads to a reduction in the bitterness without actually removing enough of the cyanide to prevent chronic poisoning.

This means that this cultural practice maintains a complicated process that can’t be immediately supported by the available evidence (bitterness) but nevertheless provides a strong protective effect against chronic poisoning. In the absence of modern chemistry, this complex practice could only have developed through a long process of cultural evolution selecting against tribes who suffer from the chronic cyanide poisoning.

Or maybe they could convince Trump that supporting Ukraine is good for them; good for a lot of American weapons factory workers.

Does anyone know what the timeline is for these cases? Seems to me like there won’t be enough time to finish these before the election.

You can see it all play out in a microcosm on reality shows like Survivor. People cooperate and compete. They cooperate TO compete. They cooperate when it benefits them the most, and betray each other when they think they’re most likely to get away with it. Some people are more trustworthy than others. Some are extremely likely to betray, but then they struggle to benefit from cooperation.

Groups of people engaged in a kind of eusocial super cooperation are very rare and tend to be fairly small. They also tend to act the most like a clique; being highly discriminatory against the outgroup.

It’s woke not because of what’s in it, but why. It’s performative politics. Token ensemble casts. Empty signaling. It’s not meant to make the world a better place, it’s meant to make money. It’s like cheap pride merch at Walmart.

As a Canadian and former campaign volunteer (and poll observer) this is really weird to me. Federal elections in Canada are always hand-counted. Results at each polling station are counted in front of volunteer observers from each party (as well as neutral observers) and then delivered to Elections Canada where they’re tallied (in front of lawyers from each party) and results are reported to the media.

It’s not a big deal and there’s no chaos.

You can’t pull up the ladder until after you get to the top.