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Cake day: February 14th, 2025

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  • I 100% was sold on the hype, but I think it’s still interesting having had my expectations tempered. I don’t think it could be argued they are original dire wolves. Maybe it could be argued they are a modern rendition of what those researchers believe a dire wolf would look like.

    I think it could be argued to be its own unique species now, which could be named as a dire wolf for lack of a better name. Whether or not the changes they made have made them unable to breed with grey wolves is probably also an important question on what these animals are exactly.

    The stated goal of the company seems to be to reintroduce similar extinct animals to the best of our ability and help introduce genetic changes to threatened species to better adapt to climate change.

    I think the company calling the animal they made a dire wolf is mostly for marketing purposes at the end of the day though. Still really cool research! I hope they continue to get funding for this and other projects.




  • I like Lemmy more, especially since it’s not corporate owned. The Reddit admins turned the site to shit purposely to push their greedy agenda, they instilled moderators that acted in bad faith for many subs, they allowed misinformation bots and other bad faith actors to run rampant, and they hosted ads to bet on US elections for months up until the day of the election itself. Truly and utterly disgusting behavior from Reddit.

    Ellen Pao deserved better, Spez taking over is what enshitified the site.


    1. How much are you spending on your cards every month???
    2. Why not have more than one card for different things, rather than cancelling cards?
    3. You generally want to very rarely cancel a credit card, I recommend finding one with no annual fees and sticking with it. You can always have more cards after all.
    4. A spending limit doesn’t really mean anything if you payoff your credit early, you can always request that your CC company release your credit early once you pay it off early.



  • With time we’ll get there! The more we slowly contribute to the niche topics, the more we’ll see these communities grow. I’m sure there are a sizable amount of people from Reddit looking for their niches on here to start growing more for them to fully hop over. I’ve got a good chunk of mine on Lemmy now, but still a handful of ones I haven’t found a comparable server for yet. If I understood running a server more I probably would have started a couple of my own for these topics.

    Is there anywhere on Lemmy people can request for servers to get started? I think that would be helpful to have since missing topics are some of the barriers of entry for some people.







  • RCV is Alaska is still relatively new for voters. Republicans only fought against it in Alaska when a Democrat managed to win an election when RCV was present, which they may have still won with FPTP as well.

    The Democratic Party is not strongly for or against alternative voting systems. More or less on a state by state basis it could be in their favor to have, and the same applies with Republicans as well.

    Some forms of Alternative voting have been banned in red states. They certainly are trying to prevent it and marketed against it hard in 2024. 2026 will likely have less Republican turnout due to it not being a presidential election year.

    Many states were trying to push RCV and failed to get it passed in 2024. I feel it mostly had to do with not enough people understanding how it or other alternative voting systems worked. We have two to four years to work on educating people about how alternative voting systems will work and trying again and again to get an alternative passed. It’s okay if each state chooses something else, as almost anything is a step up from First Past the Post.

    I will say that Alaska opting to barely keep RCV is still a solid sign for Alternative Voting systems as whole, as everywhere else it was on the ballot but not in place it got voted down in 2024.

    I think along with a state centered Alternative Voting strategy, a lesson we can take from 2024 is trying to go for grassroots change at the local, city, school board, and union board elections level to promote alternative voting systems. If it’s something people are familiar with, it’s much more likely to succeed at the state and national levels. What’s neat is that even low stakes things such as a vote for what you and your friends want for dinner or what movie to watch can use these different voting systems to introduce people to the idea.

    It will take time and hard work for change to happen, but every bit we do now will matter if we want to try to shape things for the better.


  • It functionally can’t without changing the system, imo. The system itself must change or the Democratic Party needs to be changed from within by electing more people like AOC. That later type of change can take decades though, and the more business oriented side of the party doesn’t make it easy for progressive to move up the ranks. Also, the old guard of Democratic voters is not as progressive as the younger base. The Baby Boomers and Gen X for instance don’t exactly want all of the same things as Millennials and Gen Z. The fact that Millennials and Gen Z do not make up the largest percentage of the base voting in elections influences some of the decision making as well.




  • FrostBlazer@lemm.eetoFediverse@lemmy.worldfedi 4chan?
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    1 month ago

    I agree, I actually have been wanting a 4chan type replacement for a while and I believe there are enough tools out there with a federated space for it to be possible. 4chan’s method of communication in the best of times is fun and spurs some interesting conversations, when it’s done right. I think we all know what 4chan does wrong, mostly its lack of any noticeable moderation or automods.

    If it had the same type of moderation tools that say BlueSky had though, where things like misinformation, slurs, etc. are removed/hidden as the default setting for users. Then this would go a long ways to building a kinder community/discussion space.


  • That’s close to what happened in 2024 tbh. Sites like Reddit, Instagram, and YouTube were heavily botted and full of bad faith actors to promote misinformation. Since there are no guardrails like BlueSky has for instance, the bots could show up early to every thread/post/video to set the narrative and then they’d be the last to reply before threads closed to get the final word in.

    I believe the future depends on more Federated sites to become mainstream and for Federated sites to adopt the same moderation mechanisms used by BlueSky.


  • I think it’s important to work towards enabling more political parties between now and 2028. We need alternative voting systems like Alaska and Maine have, but in the other states as well. That is only really possibly through getting ballot initiatives passed in each state for something like STAR Voting, Ranked Robin Voting, Score Voting, or Ranked Choice Voting.

    A different voting system enables us to move away from First Past the Post, which is what forces a two party system. By having this, there can be more smaller parties that more truly represent the values of each state that can work with the bigger parties. Plus, it opens up the door for the most liked candidates to not knock each other out over the least liked candidates when tallying the votes.

    All that is needed in about half of the states is to get signatures to put ballot initiatives up for a vote. Through grassroots action we can make a meaningful difference, and get more politicians like Walz that actually care about us in office.