A Boring Dystopia

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45453315

cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/42469014

Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.

They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/opinion/ai-polling.html

No paywall: https://archive.ph/oR5U2

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45277089

Source: @mrlovenstein on Bluesky

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45209819

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45217727

When faced with domestic/personal political problems, an easy method to sideline & slowly solve them, is to start or escalate #war.

It shifts the public conversation, changes the legal & political environment /interests, eases expanded military action at home, & creates opportunities to reward & align with certain factions (oligarchs, corporations, #military leaders).

Here are my thoughts and analysis on the subject in the shape of a table.

What do you think?

Took me a while to make this :)

Please share if you think this makes sense!

*Focusing on recent / ongoing conflicts!

🖼️ #CC0 #PublicDomain madeindex.org as always, use as you like friends <3

Today, while watching a George Carlin video of all things, I saw an ad from Rafael advertising their new laser weapon systems. Who is their audience? I don't think the DMV would let me mount that on my sedan. And the HOA might frown on concentrated energy weapons.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/57872518

backstory is that i try to fill up my tank more when gas prices are at a low and less as prices go up to make my long term average cost per gallon lower.

now given current events, and empirical reality, gas has only been going up and will continue to go up. we could assume different curves(only constraint being that price per gallon goes up as time goes forward), but if you buy your gas now you will spend less money then you have if you bought it tomorrow, day after, or week down the road. my estimate is that it will be month minimum before it gets cheaper.

now that I have put this out there into the world you should fill up asap, I already filled up before making this post and other people will come up with this idea independently of me.

The reason why I'm cross posting here is because my advice will trigger acceleration in increasing gas prices and I view that as a means to spite trump and put pressure on him by effectively by people not in politics. Lemmy users are getting mad at me for telling others to buy gas as soon and as much as possible to save money

Seems boring dystopia to me and I'm helping to remove the crust off a shit sandwich

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/66087691

The International Olympic Committee will prohibit transgender athletes from participating in women's sports, starting at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

The new policy, approved by the IOC's executive committee Thursday, requires all athletes to undergo a genetic test to compete in women's sporting events at the Olympics.

I put this bumper sticker on my car to indicate my opposition to the US war in the Middle East.

That was 21 years ago.

I'd replace the bumper sticker... but it's actually time to replace the car

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/57463684

Florida’s public universities will no longer allow a standalone introductory sociology course to count toward general-education requirements after state leaders on Thursday approved a sweeping, systemwide ban that reflects years of Republican criticism of the discipline.

The move — which was not originally on the agenda for the State University System’s Board of Governors — will effectively relegate introductory sociology to an elective starting this fall, removing it from the core curriculum taken by most undergraduates.

It also marks an escalation in Florida leaders’ efforts to reshape college instruction, particularly on topics such as race, gender and inequality, which conservative officials have increasingly targeted as “woke.”