Trump finally realized Putin has been playing him, with some not-so-subtle help from Melania. Trump did an abrupt about-face on Ukraine policy over the last few days and the US is going to start shipping them weapons again.

For example, using absolute numbers from Wikipedia…
South Africa: 27,272
Haiti + Philippines + Ecuador: 28,509

That map would look very different.

You’re right that using absolute numbers in the first place is bad practice.

The Catholic press has picked it up, too:

https://www.ncronline.org/news/california-bishops-scramble-tend-catholics-feeling-hunted-ice-agents

There are hints that the current government’s actions are widening a cultural rift in the church. Considering how large the Catholic church is, I’m really interested to see how this plays out.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/trumps-immigration-agenda-widening-fissures-catholic-hierarchys-consensus

The choice of regions feels cherry-picked to inflate the blue area on the map. Why else would they include Mongolia, or include only the least-dense regions of the US and Russia while excluding the major population centers?

While South Africa certainly has a lot of murders, both absolute and per capita, this map could easily be draw with a lot less blue on it.

To add all the other good comments here…

As a recording artist, it’s nearly impossible to stand out unless you have a marketing machine behind you. That means a record label that can promote your work, get your songs placed on radio stations and streaming platforms, and (in the old days) manufacture and sell physical media through many different retailers.

As a touring performer, you also need a large crew of people working for you: booking venues, marketing your shows, ticketing, managing the logistics of set-up/tear-down/transportation, operating lights and sound during the show, etc.

In both of these scenarios, the musician is only one small cog in a large machine. And there are enough good musicians in the world that they are treated as largely interchangeable.

There is a significant group of conservative Catholics who view any change as a departure from the One True Faith™. You can still find churches that do not follow the modernizations from the Second Vatican Council, which happened back in the 1950s. Pope Francis was seen as a radical by many of these people.

I’ll bet the lane is there purely to satisfy some requirement for including non-car infrastructure, regardless of whether it makes sense in this particular location. It’s the same way we get fun bike lanes like these:

Good point. I will add that to the long list of reforms we need in the US criminal system.

Mandatory minimums are a problem. Judges lose discretion to tailor the punishment to the specifics of the case. Minimums may be pushed unreasonably high so politicians can claim to be “tough on crime.” (This happened big time in the US, starting with the War on Drugs in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s.) Both of those lead to more people in prison longer than they should be.

Also, at least in the US, not all crimes carry mandatory minimum sentences. This gives prosecutors a new source of leverage:

The use of mandatory minimums effectively vests prosecutors with powerful sentencing discretion. The prosecutor controls the decision to charge a person with a mandatory-eligible crime and, in some states, the decision to apply the mandatory minimum to an eligible charge. Rather than eliminate discretion in sentencing, mandatory minimums therefore moved this power from judges to prosecutors. The threat of mandatory minimums also encourages defendants to plead to a different crime to avoid a stiff, mandatory sentence.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/how-mandatory-minimums-perpetuate-mass-incarceration-and-what-to-do-about-it/

Mandatory minimums can also lead to significant racial disparities. The linked article cites an example of very different minimum sentences for different drug offenses, leading to a sharp rise in incarceration rates for blacks but much less so for whites.

!noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works is leaking

Lays me down

Depends how high into the triple digits, whether there’s shade and water available, how humid it is, whether air conditioning is an option, etc.

I would probably choose triple digits. I do love cold winters, but a dry 104F with a cool place to swim and big, shady trees is splendid. Beyond about 110F gets miserable, though.

lemme.ee is shutting down at the end of this month.

The admin team is understaffed and suffering from burnout.

You still have a few days to gracefully transition your account to another Lemmy instance.

brrrt!
ping!
ka-chunk
“Ow, my thumb!”

brrt!
ping! …

“To The Department of Energy: DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!! And I mean NOW!!!” he added on Truth Social.

Fun fact #1: The department of energy does not control oil drilling. Sorry Donald, they can’t unilaterally make it happen.

Fun fact #2: Not all oil is equal. Refineries are designed to process certain grades of oil into specific products, and different parts of the world have different grades. Refineries also often blend oils from different parts of the world to get the characteristics they need for their process.

Fun fact #3: Moving domestic petroleum products between the west coast and the rest of the US is an expensive pain in the ass. There is a distinct lack of pipelines, so you need to ship it through the Panama canal. But shipping is expensive thanks to the Jones Act. So California, Oregon, and Washington would get particularly screwed in a domestic-only oil market.

“Drill, baby, drill!” has always been an immensely stupid rallying cry, even if you don’t care about the environment.

Also,

The internet has always been a collection of social media platforms: bulletin boards, Usenet, IRC, people hosting little personal sites and making contact with each other via email, etc. It got bad when big money arrived and brought in the general public. First is was platforms like AOL’s chat rooms and forums, and later things like Facebook and Twitter. We are all living in eternal September now.

Exhibit A: this t-shirt from 1994

Side note: If worrying about climate isn’t enough, we can also worry about potential famine as we use up our fossil fuels.

We are able to feed the world because of the Haber-Bosch process. This process uses fossil fuels, usually natural gas, to produce synthetic ammonia for fertilizer. That fertilizer makes modern high-yield farming possible. “Without the Haber-Bosch process we would only be able to produce around two-thirds the amount of food we do today.”
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/cewctw-fritz-haber-and-carl-bosch-feed-the-world/

In the US it’s roughly a tie between road transportation and energy generation (which lumps together both heat and electricity).

(Source: University of Michigan https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability-indicators/carbon-footprint-factsheet)

The global breakdown is similar: https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors

The solutions? Build mass transit, live in temperate climates, buy less stuff, …? Honestly, I don’t think we’re not going to fix the problem with simple, local improvements (though by all means do what you can). There are global demographic forces to contend with. A century ago there were 2 billion people on earth. Now there are >8 billion, and in my lifetime we will surpass 9 billion. Many of those people are climbing out of poverty, and they want cars and air conditioners and all the other energy-intensive things that rich countries have enjoyed for a century. IMO we’re going to need massive technological changes (like powering much of the world with nuclear very soon) in concert with a major population reduction and/or major changes to how people expect to live.

You’re not wrong. There are cliffs exactly like that not far from this spot.