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Cake day: January 11th, 2024

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  • What makes you think the party elites give a shit what they think?

    As I said, I think they’ll be out on their ass. Schumer will not get another term in leadership. Jefferies might, since he kept the House together on shutdowns, but his polling is still underwater and his days are numbered. The rank and file will go where the wind blows. We’ve already seen this when normie-centrists started dumping AIPAC money because of their base. I’m sure leadership will fight it until they’re ousted, and donor class will pivot to Republicans, but the average Dem politician would rather adopt a Democratic Socialist platform than lose their seat.

    One anomalous Mamdani cannot reasonably justify hope in electoral reform.

    Platner is also polling ahead or Mills despite the whole, “having a Nazi tattoo,” thing. Kat Abughazaleh is in a dead heat with Biss despite Biss having the establishment backing. Richie Torres is getting a DSA primary challenge after he had to drop his bid for governor against Hochul, and Hochul herself had to pivot to supporting Mamdani (she saw how the wind was blowing). There’s also Donavan McKinney primarying Shri Thanedar in Michigan, but I’m not following that one closely enough to say much about it. The point is, it’s not just Mamdani, there are several strong DSA or DSA-aligned challengers that are doing well.

    Capital will do all it can to extinguish Socialism as it always does. This system was made by and for capitalists and cannot be used as the sole means of establishing a socialist system.

    OK, well, the entire philosophy of Democratic Socialism is blending public ownership with heavily regulated private businesses using the current system of democratic institutions. If you think that Democratic Socialism is impossible, fair enough, you’re entitled your opinion and I’m not really interested in debating political theory. But even if you’re right, and Democratic Socialism will be a failure, I don’t think that means that the Democrats won’t adopt it.



  • There’s a reckoning coming for Democrats as well. Their poll number are still rock bottom in their own base. Primaries are coming for Torres and Jefferies, and it’s basically assumed Schumer won’t have a Minority (or, dare to dream, Majority) position in the next Congress. Despite the entire Democratic establishment lining up against him, Mamdani won. I think, with a little luck, Democratic Socialism will be the norm by '28 (though they’ll probably call it, “Getting back to our New Deal roots,” or some shit).


  • Based on the reports of torture and abuse out of, “Alligator Alcatraz,” (God I fucking hate having to use that stupid fucking name), we are certainly heading there. They described torture techniques similar to CECOT, including denial of medical treatment. We don’t know what’s happening inside ICE detention facilities, but an alarming number of detainees are dying. We just kidnapped a sovereign head of state, and Trump is actively talking about doing the same to other nations.

    Things don’t start at the end. There were six years between Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor and the invasion of Poland. It was five years between the opening of the first concentration camps and the mass interment of Jews, and another three years before they opened the gas chambers in Auschitz. If anything, 2025 has shown that this administration is moving faster than the Nazis, and the midterms will probably be our last chance to purge these people (including the Democrats who refuse to fight them) from our government before they kill what’s left of our democracy.


  • Alright, I’m prettty sure the only reason you’re so bitchy about this is because my second reading of the meme is what you actually believe, and you’re pissy that someone called you our for defending propaganda. Block me if you want, it’s really more of a mute button anyway. Enjoy being media literate.


  • There is no dichotomy…

    This is just making fun of liberals in the US who comment on lemmy threads about RT being unreliable and not much else. The implication is really that the western media is equally unreliable.

    This is the false dichotomy: RT and western media. You’ve even stopped distinguishing between western corporate media and western media in this comment, because you boiled it down to this false binary. What about Common Dreams? ProPublica? Democracy Now? Those aren’t western media?

    If the point here is, “Liberals think CNN/MSNBC/NYT isn’t biased because its not state media,” fine, but with no context, this just as easily reads, “RT is fine because corporate news is also biased.” That’s why this is sitting at 59% upvotes.


  • All that’s present is a false dichotomy between state propaganda and corporate propaganda, and the implication that people who choose corporate propaganda are idiots. This reads as apologia for consuming state propaganda, framed as media literacy. If it’s not, it needs more context.






  • My old biology teacher used to say, “evolution only works as well as it needs to.” Rabbits digestive systems are so inefficient they have to eat their own shit just to get enough nutrients. Hyena clitoris are so large they sometimes suffocate their offspring during birth. You’re mouth is full of vestigial molars that will likely require surgery in your lifetime. None of those things matter, as long as your genes are successfully being passed down effectively

    Panda’s have a digestive system that’s not well suited to their diet, and they’ve adapted to that mostly through behavioral changes. Since they don’t have kind of stomachs that efficiently digest plant matter (like a cow’s four-chamber stomach), they’re constantly hunting for different types of bamboo to get the nutrients they need. They eat young bamboo shoots of one species in the spring, then migrate to higher elevations to get the shoots of another. Both shoots lack calcium, so they migrate again in late summer to get more mature plants calcium-rich leaves.

    One weird physical adaptation they’ve developed is in their pregnancies. They mate in the springtime, but fetuses require lots of calcium to develop, so females embryos basically get, “paused,” neither developing or dying, until later in the season when they have more calcium in their diet.

    Anyway, I guess my point is that evolution did fix the pandas digestive system to work with plants. It’s just that, like most of evolution’s fixes, it’s a solution that’s barely held together by duct tape and hope, and it could fall apart at any minute.


  • Yeah, but Pandas aren’t herbivores, they’re vegetarians. They’re too slow and clumsy to actually hunt prey, so the only thing they can catch is bamboo (which is the fastest growing plant, so I guess that’s something…sort of…). Anyway, the point is, Pandas as a species are from a family of predators, and they would absolutely eat meat if you gave it to them.


  • Birds? No. Though, even on the side they do often have a tilt toward frontal in a lot of predatory birds. It could be argued…

    Birds of prey absolutely have their eyes positioned on the front of their heads. It’s most obvious in owls, since they have the largest eyes and wider faces, but all of them have front-facing eyes for binocular vision.






  • RFK is a true believer; he actually thinks, against all evidence and logic, that vaccines are bad for your health. Trump does not give a shit about vaccines, but he offered RFK the CDC position because A) RFK was running a third-party candidacy in 2024 that could have cost him several swing states and B) anti-vaxers are a large part of the Trump coalition, but he was losing their trust after promoting the covid vaccine. Most congressional Republicans are just going along with this out if cowardice.

    So, tl:dr: ending vaccines is what RFK (stupidly) believes in, Trump put him in power to return a favor/appease a portion of his base, and every other Republican is too chicken-shit to do anything about it.