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nittany ramModerator— Kathleen Hefferon, PhD (@KHefferon) June 1, 2020
nittany ramModeratorDeaths from COVID19 May be massively underestimated…
According to the CDC, so far this year, Florida has had 1,762 deaths from #COVID and 5,185 from pneumonia.
Average pneumonia deaths in Florida from 2013-2018 for the same time period are 918.
Probably just a coincidence, yeah?
— Kellen Squire (@SquireForYou) May 27, 2020
nittany ramModeratorOur future home is looking đđ€©
–@SoFiStadiumvia: @RamsNFL | #LARams đđđđ pic.twitter.com/iymaRb4HCp
— Rams Nation (@RamsNationLAX) May 28, 2020
nittany ramModeratornittany ramModeratorThat is still one of my all time favorite Rams games.
nittany ramModeratorSo sorry, Jack. Pets are part of the family, and we love them as such. Not many things hurt more than having to put one down, but it sounds like you did the right thing.
Take care.
nittany ramModeratorP.S. (to WV) IMO the reason people didnât vote for Sanders has nothing to do with corporate influence or capitalism. It has to do with fear the voters had of âheâs going to take away my stuffâ. And that may be my entire point above.
I think the reason people think that has everything to do with the propaganda our corporate overlords have been promoting since the Red Scare. How many deaths in East Asia and Central America can be attributed to protecting US corporate interests from socialist governments that had had enough of their exploitation?
I wouldnât call Eisenhower a âcorporate overlordâ or even a tool of them-whoever they are-but he was so concerned about the âred scareâ-as you call it-that he began protecting the US interests in south east asia. It was an honest but misguided attempt at preventing the fall of a strategic part of the world to communism. ( can you say China) It had squat to do with âcorporate overlordsâ. Há» ChĂ Minh was not a socialist and we did not have any corporate interest in S/E Asia. Our interest was simply to protect an area that provided us with military access close to China.
And even if your corporate warlord notion is correct the questions are: Why are people so vulnerable to the propaganda?. Why arenât you ? How come Iâm not. Why do some have the ability to critically analyze issues while others donât. How did we become a country of minions ? To me that is at the core of these issues-not- we are all at the mercy of âcorporate warlordsâ. The latter is a simple response because we can use that to answer anything we dislike about our country. The former is a very, very complicated social issue .
Well, I wonât disagree that there was a misguided but benevolent motive behind stopping the âspread of communismâ. But that wasnât the driving force.
That simple fact that our biggest rivals (Soviet Union and USSR) were Communist was also a reason.
However, the main reason why capitalists hate communism was because they believed it was a threat to their pocket books. That was especially true in this hemisphere. It had little to do with liberating the poor souls bound to the communist yoke, (thatâs the message, not the motivation) and a lot to do with protecting a fruit company. We killed a bunch of people to protect a fruit company.
I agree that the question of why some of us see this while most donât is complicated. It involves are sorts of psychological, social, cultural etc reasons that would be interesting to research and talk about.
nittany ramModeratorP.S. (to WV) IMO the reason people didnât vote for Sanders has nothing to do with corporate influence or capitalism. It has to do with fear the voters had of âheâs going to take away my stuffâ. And that may be my entire point above.
I think the reason people think that has everything to do with the propaganda our corporate overlords have been promoting since the Red Scare. How many deaths in East Asia and Central America can be attributed to protecting US corporate interests from socialist governments that had had enough of their exploitation?
nittany ramModeratorAs a follow up to Wâs question, who are your favorite presidents/premiers/heads of state/etc of other countries?
Here are mine…
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand
Sanna Marin, Finland
Katrin Jakobsdottir, IcelandThey are all extremely progressive, and all have spearheaded huge social and environmental reforms. Gawd, to live in a country where they value the environment and social justice…
nittany ramModeratorFDR.
May 20, 2020 at 8:39 pm in reply to: the one-shot tweets thread (diff'rent stuff, funny angry interesting) #115134nittany ramModeratorA good explanation why antibody testing for Covid-19 is and will always be problematic. Even when an antibody test has a high sensitivity and specificity, positive results will be unreliable in a disease with a relatively low prevalence like Covid-19.
I wrote out an explanation, with a spreadsheet that can be downloaded and edited: https://t.co/osty4at54O
— Moebius Stripper (@moebius_strip) May 20, 2020
nittany ramModeratorI donât think you can separate Americans from the media stew they grow up in. Their ignorance, apathy, and short attention spans are deliberately cultivated and exploited.
And I donât think there was a time in American history where that wasnât true. It may be worse now, but the powers-that-be have been massaging the message since the beginning. Part of it is that many people today realize that things are not always what they are told, but to them the lies are only coming from the group they donât identify with. They cling to and vehemently defend the propaganda that fits their own word view, and dismiss out of hand any alternatives as fake news.
nittany ramModeratorIâm sure many people see me as a cynic because of my bleak outlook about the future, but I think Iâm just being realistic. There was a recent study that showed that no matter what steps individual people take, it wonât halt climate change. We, as individual citizens, can do nothing about it. Itâs like trying to bail out the Atlantic with a bucket. The climate crisis is a product of our corporate system, and it requires a reform of that system to halt it. Itâs funny how the system has always put the onus on individual people to change their habits to stop climate change, but itâs a system issue. Only the corporatocracy can change it.
Thus my cynical (realistic) outlook.
nittany ramModeratorA good friend of our family recently died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in Philadelphia. He and his wife had been my parentâs best friends since I was in my teens. Our families vacationed together in the Outer Banks every summer. He was a kind and fun-loving man. He was suffering from Alzheimerâs and had been living with his sonâs family, but he started experiencing âKorean Warâ flashbacks accompanied by a lot of screaming. He was frightening his sonâs small children, and not knowing what else to do, they put him in a nursing home. I had not seen him in years, but from what I have heard, Alzheimerâs had taken the man I used to know. He no longer existed. What was left was a frightened, tormented, shell of his former self who didnât know where he was and didnât recognize anyone around him. Perhaps this is one case where COVID-19 was a blessing.
nittany ramModeratorCongrats, Gramps.
nittany ramModeratorThe new helmet is starting to grow on me…a little
nittany ramModeratorThe most iconic helmet in the history of football is no more.
I agree with Ag, though – it could have been worse.
nittany ramModerator@JoelGHodgson pic.twitter.com/iz9NaBKQz3
— Jessica Ward (@Jessica1187) May 11, 2020
nittany ramModeratorHow can the interests of sociopaths be represented if they canât hold public office?
nittany ramModeratorI must say, Iâm rather intrigued by this Basil of which you speak.
nittany ramModeratorAnd I figuredâŠitâs prolly because John Denver LEFT West Virginia to go live in Aspen.
Well, in all fairness, Aspen has everything that West Virginia has except black lung.
nittany ramModeratorâAlmost Heaven, Westylvania…â
Is your allegiance with the Hatfields or the McCoys?
nittany ramModeratorWellâŠthat sounds a little sketchy to me. How many forests are being cleared for organic farming? I meanâŠ.
If organic farming was to become the standard of practice throughout the world, then a lot more land would be required to yield the same amount of food that is currently produced. Since practically all the land on earth that is suitable for farming is already being farmed, that means more forests would have to be cleared to support organic.
Instead of looking at farming as organic vs conventional vs industrial, etc, we need to incorporate the best practices of all types of farming to come up with the most environmentally friendly form and understand that some types of farming may not work everywhere.
nittany ramModeratorOrganic farming also contributes more to climate change on a per acre basis than conventional farming does.
Why?
âOrganic practices can reduce climate pollution produced directly from farming â which would be fantastic if they didnât also require more land to produce the same amount of food.
Clearing additional grasslands or forests to grow enough food to make up for that difference would release far more greenhouse gas than the practices initially reduce, a new study in Nature Communications finds.
Other recent research has also concluded that organic farming produces more climate pollution than conventional practices when the additional land required is taken into account.â
nittany ramModeratorI have been intrigued by the idea of ârewildingâ my yard for a few years. Lawns are a problem because grass just doesnât support a lot of insect diversity. The issue is local ordinances surrounding lawn appearance, height, etc.
ââââ
Any opinion on this:
âNative bees are more efficient pollinators, having a 91 to 72 percent advantage over honey beesâŠ..Weâve been duped by âsave the beeâ campaigns that show images of European honey bees or graphics of honeycomb. We donât really need honey bees in North America for pollination. The primary group that needs honey bees is an industrial agriculture system that has come to depend on them; this insect species is one more cog in the industrialization of life that minimizes and destroys ecosystems for profit. We put great stress on these bees, shipping them around the nation, treating them like machine parts with dollar values as their primary worth.â
â Benjamin Vogt, A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future
â
âUltimately, every garden is an ideology.â
â Benjamin Vogt, A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain FutureI agree with this. Honey bees are not native to North America. Itâs also true that their population is not in trouble, and that native pollinators like bumble bees are better pollinators, although studies show that pollination is most efficient in areas populated by both bumble bees and honey bees – probably due to different flower preferences leading to more flowers being pollinated when both are present.
Iâm not sure why honey bees are still the preferred pollinator for agriculture. Itâs probably because they are already domesticated, available, and we know so much about them. Bumble bees have been domesticated and are used for some things.
About farming – all farming, regardless of whether itâs âindustrialâ, conventional, organic, etc, has a negative impact on the surrounding ecosystem. Itâs the nature of the enterprise. Organic farming does a little better with maintaining insect diversity, but it is less productive than conventional farming so it requires more land to get the same yield. So organic farming on a large enough scale necessary to feed the amount of people we rely on conventional to feed would require the clearing of more forests and ruination of more natural areas. Organic farming also contributes more to climate change on a per acre basis than conventional farming does.
nittany ramModeratorI have been intrigued by the idea of ârewildingâ my yard for a few years. Lawns are a problem because grass just doesnât support a lot of insect diversity. The issue is local ordinances surrounding lawn appearance, height, etc.
nittany ramModeratorHigbee is so good after the catch, also I love how blythe pushes baker like 10 yards lol
Blythe more than anyone is responsible for the o-lineâs turnaround last season when he moved to center.
nittany ramModeratorFrom what I know of vitamin D, itâs way over-hyped. Itâs not the panacea for cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, depression, colds, the flu, etc itâs made out to be.
It is an important biochemical. It does play a role in immunity. It assists calcium in building bone, but increased supplementation does not improve osteoporosis. It does improve beta cell function in the pancreas, but supplementation does not prevent or improve diabetes.
Low levels of vitamin D are associated with increased mortality – but so are high levels.
Most people likely have enough vitamin D and donât need supplements. You probably get all you need just by eating right and getting outside in the sun.
nittany ramModeratorHow about we do both? Stop growing the population and replace capitalism with economic democracy, in the most eco-friendly mode possible?
Capitalism doesnât lend itself to concepts like economic democracy or conscientious environmental stewardship, does it?
Whatever system is in place, fossil fuels have to go away. However, people wonât willingly return to the Bronze Age either. We need to immediately convert to renewable energy wherever itâs feasible, and especially increase nuclear energy sources as soon as possible. This will limit the impact a conversion from fossil fuels will have on peoplesâ lifestyles. This will be necessary if we want them to continue to support the growth of eco-friendly energy sources.
nittany ramModeratorThe human population has doubled since 1970, the period of time over which wildlife populations have been reduced by half. It took humans 200,000 yrs to reach a population of 1 billion, and then only 200 years to reach nearly 8 billion. The rate of growth is beginning to slow, and eventually weâll reach a point where births <= deaths, but living on this planet will be pretty miserable for everyone but a select few by then. Different modes of production would impact the environment to different degrees, and the less damaging ones must be pursued, but wherever humans go, we change the environment. Itâs unavoidable. That was true even when our population was limited to small bands of hunter gatherers. If weâre going to really stop the continued degradation of the environment, we need to halt population growth.
Overpopulation is a core problem. But how do you even begin to control it without measures that resemble Chinaâs one child per family approach-and even that would have to be adopted world wide.
I donât know what the answer to that is, W. Itâs difficult to overcome the cultural beliefs, and economic/educational inequities that keep this from becoming a priority in the minds of most people. Of course itâs easy to sit on my couch in a country that contains 6% of the worldâs population but consumes 25% of its resources and complain about this. People in other parts of the world who lack food security arenât worried about the worldâs dwindling resources due to overpopulation.
I imagine at some point in the future draconian population control measures like Chinaâs will have to be implemented. Hopefully it wonât have to get uglier than that, but I bet it does in some places.
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