Lvxferre [he/him]

The species actually got eradicated from both Mexico and USA, using sterile males, and almost eradicated from the southern tip of North America aka Central America.

So yes, it is possible. Regardless of presence or absence of cows. Because, like I already said and you repeated, they can infest any mammal.

The reason they stopped at Panama is simply because it’s a chokepoint; in the short term it’s cheaper to keep releasing sterile males in the Darién gap than to push further. It works until it doesn’t, like another poster highlighted once they stopped doing it in COVID times the flies re-invaded NA.

I’m criticising governments in the Americas (including but not exclusively USA) for not co-ordinating and pushing further, to get it extinct.

IMO controlling it “down to Panama” is part of what went wrong, I think. Pushing further into South America would’ve been costlier, but if people managed to get those flies completely extinct, the problem wouldn’t come back.

But that requires multiple governments working together with a “helping them out means less problems for me in the future” mindset, and that simply doesn’t roll with USA; USA’s external policy was always “I’m shitting my pants so others smell it”. And working together with a bunch of dictatorships can be a bit hard, specially when those dictatorships were supported by USA so they can’t trust the United-Statian government to die properly.

Well, I told you guys it’s NSFL.

In general humans are the least concern. We’re smart enough to know something is wrong with our bodies, and fix it before it gets worse; we wear clothes and bandage wounds so there’s less exposure of vulnerable areas; etc. It’s a bit more concerning because of children, since the flies can attack eyes and mouths, but as long as the parents actually do their job and take care of the kid, no issue. (Bug repellent, pay attention to small wounds, regular visits to the doc, this kind of stuff.)

Dogs and cats are another can of worms (or maggots). Specially urban strays; if anyone here wants some nightmare fuel, websearch images for [NSFL] miíase cachorro or miasis perro [/NSFL], apparently the flies (it isn’t just C. hominivorax) responsible for this sort of infestation will lay multiple eggs in the same wound, if they can; so it can get really nasty. Same deal with the fauna.

When you see an animal, there’s likely a bunch of the same species you didn’t see. Specially if it’s a small animal, with a fast lifecycle, and the animal burrows itself into something (like, dunno… the flesh of another animal?). And if the animal can live pretty much anywhere there’s another, warm-blooded, animal living. (Livestock? Wild fauna? Pets? Humans? Yes.)

So a dozen cases isn’t just “a dozen cases”, there’s likely millions of those flies in USA already. I’m taking a wild guess here and say a billion dollars won’t even scratch the surface of the problem there.

(Not that it changes things for me. Here in South America the fly in question goes from “present” to “present”. Just businesses as usual.)

My trouble is always ending up with too much leftover whey.

Add some fruit juice to it, and sugar to taste. IMO it’s delicious. (Note: this works better with sour fruits. Lemon, orange, passion fruit, cashew, pineapple, this sort of stuff.)

I’ve never made paneer, but I have made a lot of ricotta (well, this type of ricotta, there’s also leftover whey ricotta, which I haven’t made). I had no clue paneer was basically just pressed ricotta.

It’s possible what you made is paneer.

At least traditionally, ricotta is the one made from leftover whey; that’s why it gets this name (ricotto = recooked). You make some low temp cheese like pecorino, re-heat the leftover whey to ~80°C, add some white vinegar (and probably salt), transfer the curds outside of the liquid and here you go.

Probably because I accidentally made chlorine gas.

You tried to electrolyse table salt, right?

I did the same as a kid. The chlorine reacted with the transparent plastic from my electrolysis apparatus, and made one side opaque and ugly, I hated it. (The “electrolysis apparatus” was a transformer, two pencil leads, two plastic bottles, a bunch of aquarium tubes, and glue. Lots and lots of glue. Even then it leaked a lot, it was hilariously unsafe.)

Then I learnt I should care about the electrolyte, and started using lye. (Nowadays I wonder what my parents had in their heads to let me play around this sort of stuff. It’s surprising I’m still alive.)

It would but since it’s a baby it’s like the marine equivalent of a baby jaguar or lion doing their best to look “I is fiewce! I bites!”.

dolphin good, shark bad

Be careful! Sharks bite! Here’s some wild footage of the apex predator biting someone. (Content warning: cuteness overload. Discretion is advised.)

There’s no reason gravity control requires a subjective truth.

In this case, it does.

Let me put it this way: is the statement “there’s a phenomenon called «gravity», experienced by all massive bodies, that accelerates them in relation to other massive bodies” epistemically true?

If truth was subjective, the answer would be “true” or “false” depending on the subject. For those whom the answer is “false”, this means they would not experience the phenomenon, even in situations other subjects would; e.g. near Earth. That implies they’d have at least some control over experiencing gravity, because they could simply say “it’s now true for me” and fall, or “it’s now false for me” and stop falling.

Eh, probably the universe is a cold, dead clockwork of matter

This, but unironically.

Spoilers: we’re riding some weird rock in the middle of the empty space.

I doubt you’ve come across someone who claims that all truth is subjective all the time in all scenarios.

I wish I could say I’ve never came across this sort of muppet. But… *sigh*

The example you give isn’t an example of subjective truth, it’s an example of wilful/conscious control of reality, which isn’t the same thing.

Wilful control of reality in this case requires truth to be subjective; and conversely, if truth is subjective you can control reality. You’re right they aren’t the same thing, but they’re clearly tied.

Someone on earth vs someone on the ISS have different gravitational experiences for instance.

The experience is different because the person in the ISS is simply not close enough to Earth to be subjected to Earth’s gravity, in any practical amount. But that doesn’t mean gravity stopped existing for them.

English is not a creole language.

To keep it simple, a creole language originates from children learning a pidgin (a contact “language” with barely any grammar), and “gluing” the lexicon with features on the spot. To the point its grammar doesn’t resemble any of the parent languages over the course of, like, a single generation.

In the meantime English is simply a West Germanic language that got a bunch of borrowings from Old Norse and then Norman+French. Those borrowings don’t change affiliation.

Regarding the distinction between “libre” and “gratis”: it’s simply that “free” displaced “costless”. That sort of semantic shift happens, it’s most of the time internal (i.e. not caused by interference of other languages).

This, I think, is an argument that exists in your head only.

This is blatantly false. The argument exists in the comment I wrote. If it existed only “inside my head”, you wouldn’t access it. Because nobody knows what’s “inside someone else’s head”, nor we (people in general) should lie = assume = bullshit otherwise.

An excellent example of relativity [SIC - subjectivity], if I’m being honest.

Also false. While I believe my argument is correct, there’s also the chance it’s incorrect. If it is correct, my belief is true. But if it is incorrect, it won’t magically become “true for ME! ME! ME!”; I’d be simply holding a false belief. But either way, that depends on the argument itself, not on the fact I’m the one voicing it or analysing it or whatever. The subject here (me) still doesn’t fucking matter. And that’s bloody common sense.

I don’t understand why subjectivity makes people so uncomfortable. [implied* by context: “relativity makes lvxferre uncomfortable”.]

Okay… first off, let me address the most pressing matter: in no moment you showed that this “truth is subjective” babble would be even remotely true.

Secondly. You’re making a bloody mess of “relativity” and “subjectivity”, as if both were synonymous. Get shit right dammit — subjectivity is a specific type of relativity regarding the subject. Showing time is relative to speed does jack shit to prove things would be relative to the subject, i.e. “gravity is false for me lol I’m jumping from the building!”.

Thirdly. Why are you bullshitting = assuming = lying about what I’m comfortable or not with? You have no way to know it, don’t lie you do. I’m not uncomfortable with subjectivity. I simply consider it such inane bullshit, that I’m outright mocking it. Just like I’d mock flat Earth, souls, zodiacal signs, aliens visiting Earth on weekends, et cetera.

Finally, drop off the Reddit style sealion: “I dun unrrurstand” followed by bullshit? Seriously, keep this shit in Reddit.

Like, people would fight each other over the objectively correct temperature for the AC of their building if you let them—I just, I don’t get it.

Gotta love assumptions…

Not wasting my time further with you.

*see Gricean maxims, specially the one of relevance.

[Warning: bar philosophy. Might include ramblings, booze, chain smoking, and fried snacks.]

And yet, gravity is still there.

Even if simultaneity is relative, the phenomenon is still there, you know? You can claim something fell before or after another event, but you can’t really claim it didn’t fall. And you can’t claim two simultaneous events stopped being simultaneous if they’re stationary for you, so it’s less of a “truth is relative to ME! ME! ME!” and more of a “truth is relative to that speed”. It’s still an objective matter, not a subjective one.

It’s rather curious how those people who claim truth is subjective never do it for gravity, jumping off a high building while claiming “gravity is false for me”. Because guess what, odds are they know it’s bullshit.

It is not a “sister” group because some crustaceans are more related to insects than to other crustaceans; check the family trees here. The accurate way to say this is that Hexapoda is clade within Pancrustacea, and that “crustaceans” is a paraphyletic group composed of all Pancrustacea minus the ones belonging to Hexapoda.

That Luminous vs. Kaplan case is a good example on how the popcorn crowd fuels fires. And, sure, some tankies are too combative*, but neither side here was one — it was mostly an anarchist and [I believe] a liberal.

From my PoV the whole thing went like this:

1. Deceptichum@qokkau gets banned by Kaplan@reddit.world, allegedly for “trolling”; in practice for criticising the Fedihost foundation. Bad admin behaviour from Kaplan, who’s clearly emotionally invested into his reddit.world foundation. Popcorn crowd goes like “Zionists! Zionists!”, even if the immediate matter is another.
2. Luminous@AN bans Kaplan from AN, allegedly for “zionism, genocide apologia". I do not know if this is accurate or an overreach; if it is an overreach, it’s bad admin behaviour from Luminous. Popcorn crowd still chanting “Zionists! Zionists!”.
3. Luminous was using a childish username, “murder all Zionists”. The underlying message (don’t tolerate Zionism) is sensible, if read in the right context and in good faith; problem is, people in bad faith will remove it from the context. And that’s exactly what Kaplan does, to justify defederating a whole instance (AN) without previously contacting neither other LW admins nor other AN admins. Now the popcorn crowd chants “Death threats! Death threats!” [Rimu goes here.]
4. Since AN is part of the flotilla with /0 and quokkau, the “pact” between all three instances is evoked, escalating things further. Popcorn crowd makes sure reddit.world sees the flotilla as “all terrorists” and the flotilla sees reddit.world as “all Zionists”.

All of that while the folks in the flotilla consistently ignore why reddit.world censors pro-Palestinian messages (pressure from the German government), but not pro-Zionism ones (no such pressure exists). While reddit.world “conveniently” keeps doing this immoral shit because “we just follow orders”. (And because banning the whole topic altogether wouldn’t sit right in an instance that sees itself as the spiritual successor of Reddit, and other instances as those inconvenient stones in its path.)

Without the popcorn crowds, the most you’d have are two admin teams solving their issues in private. But because of the popcorn crowds the whole thing blew out of proportion.

Worst part? I’m not even sure if I’m not part of one of the crowds now.

* or should I say too “screechy”? If they actually spent that energy fighting for the causes, it would be great. But they’re busier using it to screech at random people on the internet.

Thanks for the link! Relevant to note, one of the comments there linked this thread, where Nutomic (note for the onlookers: Nutomic is the Lemmy backend developer) criticises what Yogthos did. I’ll quote it here:

Responsible disclosure is still important because it takes the developer time to develop, validate and release a securit fix. Keep in mind that open source projects like Piefed, Lemmy and others are developed by volunteers in their free time. So it is irresponsible to publish security problems without any private warning. For all the infighting that is happening, we need to remember that our enemy is Reddit, and not anyone on the Fediverse.

And even then. I disagree with what Yogthos did, but what he said holds some merit (if a large model can find it, an attacker can do it too, so devs need to be proactive).

What I’m really disliking to see, though, in all this PieFed vs. Lemmy talk, is not even dev behaviour. From either side. It’s user behaviour; the “popcorn crowd”, throwing petrol into random fires, and burning the house down because it wants to see pretty flames go brrrrr. I’ve seen this in plenty other situations, but the threads both of us linked shows it really well.

Every one [platform] is incomplete to varying degrees

And as typical for software, none will be ever complete! Or should be.

And on a related note, Rimu is stepping backwards a bit from directly contributing so much to PieFed, as it is leading to burnt-out

That might explain why some of his recent takes have been a bit… over-simplistic, to say the least. Odds are he isn’t informed on the drama going on, and it’s easy to jump to conclusions.

At the same time the Lemmy devs are attacking PieFed, e.g. by running AI to identify vulnerabilities and then rather than offer even so much as 24 hrs notice go ahead and publicly disclose them (yes they “can” do so, but is it “friendly” to have chosen that route?).

I’m not informed on that. Do you have some link where I can read further about it?

Regarding the rest:

I feel like the problem regarding Lemmy features might be what you said about being difficult to work with, plus that there’s way less people who can contribute with Rust code than Python code. However: I’m no programmer, this is just hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt because it might be incorrect.

That said I like the concurrent existence of Lemmy and PieFed, and I’d really like if there was more “Fediverse forum” platforms. It might split efforts a bit, but every new platform brings new stuff into the table; Lemmy was there at the start, then Kbin trying to “tie” the forums with microblogging, and then Piefed with the improvements you mentioned. More importantly, that concurrence allows us to not need to have “faith” in any specific platform, since if the devs for some reason go MIA the rest of the “Fediverse forums” survives.