This is the first I’ve heard of “a couple of devs are shutting out large numbers of contributors (frequently subject matter experts which they desperately need at this point) over relatively trivial issues” and “Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute”.

Can you give a summary or examples? I’m not trying to argue, but would just like to know more. I don’t follow Lemmy development more closely than reading the dev summaries they post, so wasn’t aware of any of this.

I agree that this is veering way off topic, but you seem to like to argue semantics.

My main point was that Biden, at that time a senator of a majority Democratic state, voted with Republicans and a minority of Democratic senators of mostly conservative states to pass a bill that would benefit his largest donor, MBNA, as well as other banks, to the detriment of common people. While the OP may have overstated Biden’s involvement with this bill, you seem to be understating it.

Yes, it is. Visa and Mastercard are not card issuers. Example: “Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash access programs to their customers.”

This article provides details of why Delaware is attractive to banks (various financial and legal incentives), how it became that way (legislation written by major bank lawyers), and some ways it benefits from this (jobs, tax revenue).

Biden didn’t earn the nickname “The Senator from MBNA” for no reason. MBNA was a huge credit card company that was later bought[?] by Bank of America. “Over the past 20 years [as of 2008], MBNA has been Biden’s single largest contributor.”

Student loans seem to be a massive part of the problem of out of control tuition increases. The National Bureau of Economic Research published this study in 2016 that showed that changes to the Federal Student Loan Program accounted for the majority of the 106% increase in tuition between 1987 and 2010. Whether that’s some right-wing scheme to divert attention from reduction of states’ funding of public universities I haven’t looked into, but it seems to me that it’s at least a significant factor on its face.

I had edited my post to add that he didn’t do it himself but was critical in getting in passed. Perhaps you started your reply before my edit.

I would have settled for him having done less in getting it passed. Your version of what happened or may have happened is way too charitable to Biden. He was known for being very friendly to banks and credit card companies, as a Senator from Delaware would be inclined to be, considering that Delaware is home to many of those types of businesses.

While he didn’t do it by himself, his support was critical in getting it passed:

“Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened,” said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specialising in bankruptcy.

Yes, good possibilities. I see you’ve struck a chord, because you’re already being downvoted again. I see I was downvoted too. lol

Absolutely no idea why you’re getting downvoted. CEOs browsing Lemmy?

Thanks for the additional info and explanation. That makes sense, but I realize now that I must have made a mistake. The NPR piece I was referencing was not the one you linked but another one that I had pulled up when I was trying to learn more about this: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/956842958/what-we-know-so-far-a-timeline-of-security-at-the-capitol-on-january-6

Going by that timeline and narrative, it doesn’t seem like Mayor Bowser asked for a large contingent of the NG until the attack was already under way. I now also understand better why she may have erred in that way, because of what had happened in the previous BLM protest.

Wow, that Flynn appointment timing definitely looks shady as hell. As for the Capitol cops, I wouldn’t be surprised if they put up token resistance. Cops in general seemed to be on Trump’s and his fans’ side, what with all the back the blue rhetoric and all that. So now after this discussion I’m definitely leaning more towards any possible conspiracy being all on the side of the people who wanted the insurrection to succeed, with some lucky help in the form of some people on the other side having acted with incompetence.

Thanks again.

I found another source explaining it from experience: https://www.grandin.com/humane/cap.bolt.tips.html

It seems that we may both be partially correct: If a penetrating bolt is used the animal is killed instantly. If a non-penetrating bolt is used, the animal sometimes revives. What we don’t know is how prevalent each approach is. Either way, re-reading your initial post that I responded to I realized that this debate doesn’t matter. Your point seems to have been that they don’t feel pain as they’re killed, and I concede that you’re correct. I missed that this was the point you were making, and that you were not mainly arguing whether the animals were killed instantly or not.

Edit: Just to add that I concede the point that they don’t feel pain only in a general sense. Looking at that last link, it seems that this procedure would have a lot of room for error and I’m sure that as a consequence a lot of cows suffer unintentionally.

What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?

I know it was a planned assault on democracy. I never said otherwise. I also know who had fomented and planned the assault: the people in the White House and all their die-hard followers. None of that is in question. What I was unsure about was who had fucked up and allowed it to happen that day. I had never looked very closely at the details of the events of that day, but I read the NPR and Politico stories you sent. The picture that those paint to me is that a lot of people primarily responsible for securing this event fucked up leading up to it. With all that intelligence that shit was going to go down, the local authorities should have had their shit together, ready for it. They could have asked the National Guard to be in place ahead of time, but didn’t think it was necessary despite having access to the intelligence and were worried about what had happened previously with the BLM protests. If they’re having to call the National Guard after people start rushing the capitol, it’s way too late. From the time that the crowd reaches the security lines at the capitol until the time that the protester is shot trying to enter the House chamber is less than 1 hour 45 minutes. And it sounds like the call goes out to the NG after the crowd reached the capitol.

I didn’t realize or recall that Michael Flynn’s brother was one of the generals involved in the decision to send in the National Guard. WTF, he was probably in no hurry to send in the troops. However, I still argue that the people who were intent on securing the event should not have given anyone the opportunity of a delayed response that could have been obscured by the chaos. Aside from that, what are the chances that the situation could have potentially been even worse had the NG been involved? Can you imagine the endless whining from the MAGAs if more of them had been mowed down by the NG?

So I went a little further by reading parts of the actual regulations, i.e., the implementation and enforcement of the act, because I’m genuinely curious to learn about this. It seems that they’re defining stunning as basically destroying the brain of the animal before killing the body. For instance: “Unconsciousness is produced immediately by physical brain destruction and a combination of changes in intracranial pressure and acceleration concussion.” It seems like a distinction without a difference, since they’re essentially killing the animal by “stunning” it or making it “unconscious”.

Conspiracy fact. I watched on video as cops moved barricades to let rioters in, took selfies with rioters, then literally held the hands of rioters as they walked down the capitol stairs.

Thanks, but that’s not what I meant though. What that person described was that an unusually low, insufficient level of security had been established before the event, in comparison to any other run of the mill event that had taken place in that area in the past. The exact opposite should have been done, since everyone expected there to be trouble.

In terms of conspiracy theory, there are two possibilities I can think of: a) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would succeed and become a coup, or b) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would not succeed but would be enough of a spectacle that it could then be used against the people who were involved with facilitating and encouraging it. However, this all hinges on that observer’s evaluation being accurate that the event had indeed been unusually under-secured.

Thanks for the link. It says nothing about making them unconscious before slaughter. They’re just saying that the slaughter should be quick and not subject the animals to additional suffering beforehand:

No method of slaughtering or handling in connection with slaughtering shall be deemed to comply with the public policy of the United States unless it is humane. Either of the following two methods of slaughtering and handling are hereby found to be humane:

(a) in the case of cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, swine, and other livestock, all animals are rendered insensible to pain by a single blow or gunshot or an electrical, chemical or other means that is rapid and effective, before being shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast, or cut; or

(b) by slaughtering in accordance with the ritual requirements of the Jewish faith or any other religious faith that prescribes a method of slaughter whereby the animal suffers loss of consciousness by anemia of the brain caused by the simultaneous and instantaneous severance of the carotid arteries with a sharp instrument and handling in connection with such slaughtering.

In which country? I’ve never heard of this, at least in the US.

Yeah, about that… let’s talk about a conspiracy theory. I remember reading, I think on Twitter, either just before, or maybe it was a retweet after the fact, someone local to DC saying that the security that had been established around town (or maybe around the capitol specifically) that day in preparation for the demonstrations was weaker than they had ever seen for any run of the mill event there. This would seem very strange because word was very much out that something was going to go down that day, so one would have expected a much higher level of security to have been established. Although I didn’t look very closely into what happened that day and the days surrounding it, it still seems strange that I’ve never heard this discussed since I read it.

True. So I wonder how is it that some European countries that do this got around that obstacle. I guess that’s what happens when you have an equitable society in place?

From what I recall, the places that do this usually do it in the form of days of income. I’m not sure how they determine that if someone’s money comes from investments, etc.

I saw a comment, probably on Mastodon, from an author saying that (I believe) ChatGPT had plagiarized some of his work verbatim. I don’t recall if it was a work of fiction or not, although for the purpose of copyright it doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s trained on works of fiction just as much as non-fiction though. I think that from what I’ve heard, you can ask ChatGPT to write something in the style of particular writers? If it’s possible to give a very specific prompt for it to write something with the same plot points as a Stephen King story in the style of Stephen King, I wonder just how close it would look like the original?

I had heard some mentions of this before too, but didn’t recall the exact references. I went searching and found this recent study.