Nelson Mandela Didn't Once Say, 'When Two Neighboring Countries Fight … the USA Visited One'
The former South African president and anti-apartheid activist is a frequent target of misattributed quotes.
Burger King Didn't Post 'We Don't Snitch' About CEO Shooting Suspect's McDonald's Arrest
The fake post followed news of a Pennsylvania McDonald's employee alerting police about a suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's killing.
No, UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Suspect Wasn't Caught Using Fake ID at McDonald's
Here's how this specific rumor related to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson started.
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No, Videos Do Not Show Barron Trump Singing
Most of the songs were about his support for his father, President-elect Donald Trump.
No, RFK Jr. Is Not Banning Diet Coke
Many people appeared to believe the claim, including a U.S. representative.
Pope Francis Presented Nativity Scene Featuring Baby Jesus Wrapped in Kaffiyeh Scarf
The 2024 Nativity of Bethlehem, displayed in the Vatican, was designed by two Palestinian artists.
Miscaptioned Video Claims to Show NYC Celebration of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's Death
Crowds sang and danced in a Manhattan street after a Natasha Bedingfield concert.
Real Image Doesn't Show Gymnast in Extreme Backbend
"How come when gymnasts do these things they are ok?" one Reddit user asked.
Canada's postal strike - Bigger context
I don't know how many people outside Canada, but Canadians certainly know, that for several weeks we've had a postal strike that of course severely impacts businesses and customers in the lead up to Christmas. There is a short Wikipedia article. Usual issues of wages not keeping up with inflation and benefits - what, they don't already have paid breaks? #canadapoststrike
What people may not have heard of is how since several years the postal union has been advancing innovative ideas for how the postal service could be more sustainable and useful to the community in multiple ways going forward into the future. Seems to fall on deaf ears in management whose forward looking focus seems to be expanding hours of parcel delivery by hiring more part-time rather than full-time workers.
deliveringcommunitypower.ca/ou…
Delivering Community Power
Canada Union of Postal Employees ideas for the future of the postal servicewww.deliveringcommunitypower.ca
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Do you use Ecosia search engine - the search engine that plants trees?
blog.ecosia.org/tgbs/
#treeplanting
Right tree, right place: the Global Biodiversity Standard
We’re excited to be the technical partner of a standard that aims to ensure real ecosystem restoration.Ecosia (The Ecosia Blog)
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Thank you Kershaw for becoming our new TROM supporter! We are getting close to a milestone: 100 Supporters! We need 200 supporters to donate 5 Euros a month for TROM to keep all of our projects alive. See tromsite.com/donate
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For some reason this depresses me the most. More than reading about Dr. Fucking Oz becoming part of the healthcare system administration in the USA. (source)
USA's healthcare system is a joke in terms of providing healthcare for people. It is a for-profit business, that's all. So making it worse is not something that depresses me that much especially since I live in Europe and I get great free healthcare. But to see NASA being run by those who want to exploit the space....when NASA is by far the leading agency in space, is quite depressing.
The Idiocracy is here, led by no other than the United States of America.
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the LVs they are involved with developing - ie, SLS - are pretty terrible. sX is, _objectively_ (and i'm by no means a die-hard elon-fallating fanboy) revolutionary and the de-facto industry leader.
yes, their rovers and satellites and unparalled, but launch is _the_ most important part of the space economy, and the part most people mean when talking about a company's role in spaceflight.
"economics" is a very detached from reality concept. NASA just needs a taxi to do the important work. SpaceX failed to deliver on their promises and contracts with NASA from what I know, but regardless their "achievements" are hyped to the extreme. NASA space shuttle was also reusable and other rockets before that.
So the "costs" of the launches are a human made up invention of course, based on imaginary money and wrong priorities. We could easily divert a lot of human potential and resources into making these space exploration missions cost nothing, if we were a smart society.
SpaceX, Musk, and the like (billionaires) are simply making space into yet another market and brag about how much "progress" they are doing. Disgusting indeed.
Georgi likes this.
"economics isn't real" is a bold leading claim, which i want you to contemplate a little more.
yes, sX is behind schedule on HLS. so is every other artemis contractor. HLS is *not* (expected to be) the limiting factor for artemis III (rather orion's underperforming heatshield).
this is plainly untrue. shuttle was a disastrous program. the peak turnaround was 54 days, average 190. F9's is 21 days, average 60. even the, which boosters were recovered had to be essentially re-manufactured.
no, no other rocket, before or since, has been successfully re-used.
listen, if you want to argue for som pseudo-communist, gift-based society, _i won't stop you_. *but that's not the world we live in*, money isn't "imaginary", rockets can't "cost nothing".
if you don't follow spaceflight that's fine! i'm just passionate about it. but have the humility to accept you don't understand what "progress" looks like, and spare us your judgment.
Your communism-word-salad may be a sign of you being too trapped into the fantasy world humans have invented, one that is very harmful. From climate change to slavery, useless products and waste. "money" is a human invention, of course. And if we are not to see this we have no chance to detach from its bad influence on us.
When humans put prices on a banana or a rocket launch, these prices rarely reflect the reality of resources, human costs, or even more so importance. We made a whole documentary about it tromsite.com/documentaries/tro…
If you follow the "spaceflight" flavor of the human activity on Earth, and you think we are making "progress", what does progress mean to you in that context?
if i'm being honest, i don't really care about your economic views. i just want you to understand the current spaceflight dynamic.
i understand money is a human invention, but it is a human invention nigh-every human obeys buy. like it or not, it _is_ a measure for efficiency, and if you can't see that the 3,000$/kg of a falcon 9 implies greater efficiency than the 35,714$/kg for SLS, i don't know what to tell you.
re: Q
"progress" means more mass can be put into more orbits more often.
congrats on the documentary & books btw
I understand, but do you think we can still call it progress if that means we put more commercial satellites into space, more trips for rich people, or exploit other planets for materials?
Like cars are more efficient today in terms of fuel consumption but the entire "car industry" creates a terrible mess here on earth. We better make clean public transport.
there's a tendency to hand-wave commercialisation as "a big bad", but that's still just hand-waving.
regardless, i don't want to argue this back/forth so moralistically. i just want you to understand: sX, objectively, *is an industry leader*. that's all i disputed. they launch the most mass, at the lowest cost (not just price).
SpaceX being the "industry leader" means almost nothing if you disregard the fact that they may just be a taxi for the commercialization of space. And NASA is far more than just launching rockets into space. As @Michael Vogel also said.
And this is not a "moralistic" argument between you and me, it is a fact that commercialization (most of the times) equals to destruction, abuse, and exploitation. On Earth or above ;)
science is built on the shoulder's of giants. no advancements would be made without several thousand years of prior discovery and expirmentation. whether they a helped or funded by NASA is irrelevant - the point still stands: NASA has stagnated in LVs, and sX revolutionised that.
see that as positive or not, i don't mind. but it's an undeniable truth anyone with an interest in rocketry will confirm.
We "obey" this human invention and this is a terrible thing as you can see around you. It is not at all a measure of efficiency. There is no efficiency that the USA imports 95% of the clothes from abroad or you eat tomatoes from across the continent just because is "cheaper" to grow them there and ship over to you. This system is a mess.
As for spaceflight sure you can measure the fuel consumption as a more relevant efficiency progress, but it is no progress if those rockets transport rich people into space, or more commercial satellites. That's where I fee many people fail to make sense of this system. They simply look at these measurements of fuel efficiency and so forth, but not the overall picture.
And "my economic views" are not "mine" or "views" the reality is that this global system of trade is a human made up game that is detrimental to the entire species and frankly obsolete. That's the truth.
I do contemplate about "economics isn't real" - I wrote 2 books about it. tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-t… and tromsite.com/trombooks/#flipbo… - Economics is human imagination going bad. Letting the fantasy of money (trade) rule over important things. Instead of asking how much it costs to to do this or that, we should see how we can do it efficiently.
As for which space taxi is more efficient, I do not care in terms of "economics" but real importance like what is it done with that space-taxi? Put more commercial satellites into the orbit? Go exploit space? Put the rich into orbit?
Don't assume that NASA is a rocket manufacturer or launch provider, they are not. NASA does aeronautical research (they're not just into space stuff). They operate Earth observation satellites, they operate space telescopes, rovers, ...
The JWST, for example, is by far the most advanced space telescope - and in developing it they had to create and research a lot of new things.
And as for SLS: The Space Launch System has to be built on existing shuttle hardware. That's what the Senate told them to do. Even if they tried, they're not allowed to deviate from that because the Senators want each of their states to participate. So SLS needed those solid fuel boosters, the rocket engine from the shuttle, etc.
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A clique of Conservative Senators delay bill to stop horse export for slaughter, Meanwhile...
ACT NOW: Tell Senate to Pass Bill to Ban Horse Exports for Slaughter 🐴
Canada is still shipping live horses to Japan to be killed for human consumption. Tell the Senate to END the export of horses for slaughter! 🐴💔action.animaljustice.ca
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Or Japan raise their own horses. They don't have enough room, I guess? It's a luxury food, otherwise I don't see how it could be cost effective for them.
The horse meat is sliced very thinly and served raw.
Adam Hunt
in reply to fionag11 • • •I am really happy Canada Post is on strike once again, as it is saving me tons of time not having to clear out the piles of junk mail they deliver each week. It is also saving my municipality money not having to pay to recycle it all.
Canada Post loses $1M a day normally so this strike is saving the taxpayers a lot of money in subsidies.
If I was CEO of Canada Post I would offer to seel the entire operation to the union for a dollar.
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fionag11
in reply to Adam Hunt • •Is it actually saving money..don't they still have costs but now no revenue?
Not sure how that works.
In the good old days we used to have those "no Junk mail" stickers to put on mailboxes. I don't have one anymore but nevertheless seem to have made it onto a "do not receive" list and haven't had flyers for years, not even the local stores. Of course there is still the addressed junk mail like banks trying to get me to sign up to credit cards and charity appeals.
Adam Hunt
in reply to fionag11 • • •The vast majority of their costs are union wages which are now being saved, so overall the losses go down when the post office is not working.
I have to admit that since the previous four strikes I have just totally stopped using Canada Post for anything I can possibly avoid. They have never provided a reliable service in the past 20 years. It is a waste of money mailing anything
A couple of examples from my own experience:
I used to mail in a cheque annually for my house insurance premium and always a month early too. One year I got a call from my insurer letting me know that my insurance had lapsed four days earlier, because it was not paid. Canada Post had lost the cheque and it never showed up, ever. I moved paying that bill online, in fact I moved paying all my bills online. Canada Post just loses mail all the time.
A few years back I sent a gift of some books to my grandson by mail. His father went to the PO to pick it up but they would not give it to him, because it was addressed to his son instead. So he brought in his son, who was three at the time
... show moreThe vast majority of their costs are union wages which are now being saved, so overall the losses go down when the post office is not working.
I have to admit that since the previous four strikes I have just totally stopped using Canada Post for anything I can possibly avoid. They have never provided a reliable service in the past 20 years. It is a waste of money mailing anything
A couple of examples from my own experience:
I used to mail in a cheque annually for my house insurance premium and always a month early too. One year I got a call from my insurer letting me know that my insurance had lapsed four days earlier, because it was not paid. Canada Post had lost the cheque and it never showed up, ever. I moved paying that bill online, in fact I moved paying all my bills online. Canada Post just loses mail all the time.
A few years back I sent a gift of some books to my grandson by mail. His father went to the PO to pick it up but they would not give it to him, because it was addressed to his son instead. So he brought in his son, who was three at the time. They wanted to see ID so he showed his birth certificate and the names matched. The postal clerk said he had to see photo ID or no package. Three year olds don't have photo ID so they refused to give him his package. They sent the package back to me. I made a formal complain which the Canada Post ombudsman investigated. The ombudsman said it was one of the worst cases of not following their own rules and just plain rotten customer service they had ever seen. I got a full refund and a written apology. I had to deliver the package myself though, 12 hours round trip.
I won't use them any more.
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fionag11
in reply to Adam Hunt • •Wow! yes, I think it has been mismanaged for years and it's a shame.
It's so much easier to pay bills online now that was inevitable.
The package rate starts so high for even the teenyist item it really discourages one from sending anything. I understand it costs money to move items but really wonder if they could drum up so much more business and economies of scale with a cheaper rate..I don't know.
Another crazy thing: Apparently there are agreements between nations on rates for moving each other's mail, and China's rates still reflect its previous status as a developing country not the major economic powerhouse it is now. So that's why you can order gizmo's from Chinese ecommerce sites for less than the cost of a parcel delivery within Canada.
Adam Hunt
in reply to fionag11 • • •That all makes sense.
I don't see any easy fixes for Canada Post's woes. I remember many of their past failures while trying to move into new areas. Some years ago they offered an email serve as "the last email address you will ever need to sign up for" in two year it was gone. Then there was their e-billing service, where they would open you mail and scan your bills and email them to you. It was a good thing no one took them up on that one, although I got lots of paper junk mail from them trying to sell it.
Now the union wants them to get into stuff like banking??? There is no trust there, so that would be another big #fail.
fionag11
in reply to Adam Hunt • •Actually some outlets already offer financial services. This surprised me but it is a thing. My sister works part time at the post office in the village of Salmo, BC and it was one of the things she had to learn to do when she started (the training was really poor because apparently they can only show the trainee how to do this when a customer comes in to request it, which is rare...hmm) But this post office is still open during the strike because it's a different union and the financial services is the only thing they have to do these days, besides tidy up the office....
I like the ideas the postal union put forward because - well despite current shortcomings, I think we do need to have a postal service, but the present situation is unsustainable and some vision is needed. Adding new purposes to existing infrastructure and jobs would probably still need to be subsidized, but would give the taxpayer more value that might lead to savings elsewhere. eg. Checking in on elderly people might enable them to stay in their homes longer.
I remember the "Vault", cloud storage t
... show moreActually some outlets already offer financial services. This surprised me but it is a thing. My sister works part time at the post office in the village of Salmo, BC and it was one of the things she had to learn to do when she started (the training was really poor because apparently they can only show the trainee how to do this when a customer comes in to request it, which is rare...hmm) But this post office is still open during the strike because it's a different union and the financial services is the only thing they have to do these days, besides tidy up the office....
I like the ideas the postal union put forward because - well despite current shortcomings, I think we do need to have a postal service, but the present situation is unsustainable and some vision is needed. Adding new purposes to existing infrastructure and jobs would probably still need to be subsidized, but would give the taxpayer more value that might lead to savings elsewhere. eg. Checking in on elderly people might enable them to stay in their homes longer.
I remember the "Vault", cloud storage that was offered and then discontinued. Why? Who knows what goes on behind the scenes. Probably ideas that were set up to fail for some perverse reason.
debo
in reply to fionag11 • • •fionag11 likes this.
Adam Hunt
in reply to fionag11 • • •They really need a whole new business model, because the current one is just failing badly.
I am not a fan of Maxime Bernier, but he has a policy of privatizing Canada Post. That may be the only way to save it, but I always ask "who would buy it?" I can;t think of anyone other than CUPW. I mean UPS or FedEX might, but only to shut it down.