We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.… So now, less than six years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Time flies when you’re having fun :walking-dead:
Part of me believed there was a very, very, very narrow window where we could avoid the worst possible scenario. :LIB:
:back-to-me:
Same. It felt like a last shred of hope keeping me out of full on doomer time, even though its naive.
Lol, everytime I think I'm being cynical enough my naivety is thrown back in my face. "It's a pandemic, surely they wouldn't risk themselves?" :pika-cousin-suffering:
lib shit, I know, but that moment with the bird was legit very moving to me, and I'm not even from the US... it was such a genuine happy moment, and we don't get many more of those nowadays it seems
edit: here it is, for old times' sake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc2TVLoxsDA
How long do birds live, anyway? I'd look it up, but I'm afraid of the answer.
House Finches (the kind that blessed Bernard that evening) are in some cases known to live over 11 years in the wild, so she still might be out there flapping around :bird-guerrila:
Even as grizzled and doomer as I am now, the symbolism and hope of that moment still gets to me. :bawllin-sad:
Small birds probably don't have a long life span. My wild guess is 2, 3 years.
Look to large bodies to understand long life spans | Popular Science
Generally speaking large animals like whales and elephants live a great deal longer than smaller ones like mice.
But how do they do it?
“My guess is there’s not going to be one answer,” Kaeberlein says. There seem to be a wide range of strategies that animals use to protect their DNA and tissues from the ravages of aging and outlive their peers. Scientists are determined to discover what they are in order to stave off age-related maladies like cancer, dementia, and heart disease in people.
The good news is we already have a pretty good idea why large animals often live longer than small ones. It has to do with the fact that tiny animals are more likely to be gobbled up by predators. These animals tend to have babies early and age quickly. “If you’re a mouse, there’s no selection pressure really there to solve problems relating to cancer or older age, because in all probability you’re dead by then, you never get to that stage,” says Kevin Healy, a macroecologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Bulky animals can afford to take a long time to grow up and reproduce. “If you’re an elephant, you’re not going to get eaten by a hyena, for instance, so being big has intrinsic advantages,” says João Pedro de Magalhães, a biologist who studies aging at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. So when an animal has a low risk of being killed by outside circumstances like food shortages or predators, it has a chance to evolve a longer life span.
Bernie may be a :LIB:, but if he had campaigned like a genuine leftist in any of his presidential runs, he probably would have received the CIA heart attack gun treatment. He had his purpose as a pipeline to leftism
Isnt it funny, how the capitalist class would’ve probably been better off had he won the presidency?
They wouldve found new profits to squeeze out.
They wouldnt have had any changes to the terrible foreign policy.
They would’ve had a more stable time during the pandemic, probably wouldnt have been one at all.
Letting him win could’ve killed the nascent left of america.Instead they reacted so swiftly and unilaterally that you couldnt ignore the difference between the capitalist and working class.
Instead he became the canary in the coal mine
they saw FDR 2.0 and slapped him down. didn't even need a business plot.
not understanding history they forgot that FDR saved capitalism. but maybe the biggest fear was the formation of a working class coalition that straddled between the two party system.
so no green new deal, no pressure relief valves, just brakes off and this machine in a death spiral.Letting him win could’ve killed the nascent left of america.
I think history doesn't bear this premise out. When people secure some improvements to their living conditions, it doesn't make them shrink back - it makes them leap for more improvements. The left in America wasn't killed by FDR passing the New Deal, it was killed by decades of state repression.
The left in America wasn’t killed by FDR passing the New Deal, it was killed by decades of state repression.
Taft-Hartley & the reaction to SDS & Civil Rights for examples.
Taft-Hartley
This one always pisses me off more than others because it's one of the many examples of liberals burning their principles on the pyre as soon as they become inconvenient. Who the fuck is the government to tell me and my union when we can and can't strike? We should strike over this!
bernie good dont care something better than nothing. its not like we dont have half the country being blood-thirsty psychopaths completely opposed to socialism.
Barack Obummer and Bummard Sanders
:obama-socialism: :flattened-bernie:
