Billions of dollars can buy a lot of fucking freedom and liberty.
Not really. You can free yourself from many societal restrictions, but you can never be free from who you are and what you’ve done with your life. Nor can you be free from the social climate in which you exist.
Money can buy a lot of freedom, but it’s like an asymptote. The closer you get to complete freedom, the more you realize that it’s impossible to obtain, especially in modern society.
What a pompous cunt.
Washington Post was one of the few marginally respectable journalist organizations remaining. It’s a sad day for the freedom of the press.
Meh, there’s little reason to think Adams knows which way the wind is blowing. More likely that he just needs to make a ballsy bet to salvage his career, and going against Trump is a guaranteed political win in NYC.
Giant sequioas are native to California. The fact that you are apparently offended that the largest giant sequioas are in the United States is quite bizarre and telling of your prejudiced attitude towards Americans. Maybe instead of blaming American culture for scientific facts, you should try doing some of your own research so you sound less ignorant and xenophobic.
Any giant sequioa that exists outside of America is almost certainly less than 200 years old, and thus unlikely to set any size records. The sequioa was first introduced to the UK in 1853. Additionally, it would stand to reason that sequioas would grow best in their native climates or similar conditions. This is why sequioas in the UK cannot naturally reproduce.
And yes, they actually can go out and check trees located in other countries, and I’m not sure what makes you think otherwise 😅
It says it’s the largest giant sequoia outside of California, so that claim would presumably apply to the US, the world, and indeed the known universe.
Largest giant sequoia outside of California, measured by diameter at breast height. It’s in the title of the post you’re commenting on. It has a girth of 36.2 ft.
The UK does have some chonky trees, tbf. Current girth champion appears to be the Marton oak with a girth of 47 ft. Historical champion was the Cowthorpe oak at 59 ft circumference.
In comparison, General Sherman has a girth of 102.6 ft, and there are many more sequioas in California of comparable size and even greater circumference.
We just need more users. Simple as that.
That other site is the 6th most visited website in the world, so clearly having upvotes/downvotes doesn’t preclude growth.
Does mbin only have upvotes or am I misremembering? And boosts I guess. That’s not my personal preference but the beauty is we can still access the same content from different platforms.
Well, never say never. It happened once already, in June/July 2023 the userbase grew more than 10x.
And we have seen a nice bump of 2k users in the past week or so as the fediverse has gotten some publicity. Reddit is not an option so we have no choice but to try to make Lemmy better, and I genuinely believe that the federated, decentralized concept can be the solution in so many ways.
Piefed and Mbin are also huge boons to our chances of success. Lemmy may not ever take off, but I expect one of the fediverse content aggregators eventually will. Reddit is simply too shitty of a user experience, they are guaranteed to fail.
Lol I read this thread first, then went to the article and his comments were supportive of the potential for anti-trust legislation under the new administration? That makes him a Nazi? Wtf 😂
This is a huge reason why Lemmy faces an uphill battle in terms of growth, these absolutely batshit insane political takes pollute most threads about newsworthy events, which are in many ways the lifeblood of a content aggregator.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen people say they tried Lemmy for a little while but eventually stopped because they got sick of every thread and community being constantly flooded with Nazi comparisons, accusations of genocide denial, and guillotine the rich stuff.
Like I get it, I really do, but maybe direct some of that righteous anger into some kind of real world activism instead of constantly bitching at anonymous strangers on Lemmy. These people are so outraged and the situation is so dire, and yet they continue to scroll online forums and farm upvotes? Have some ideological consistency ffs, if it’s a matter of life and death, go out there and do something to help.
Doomposting on Lemmy accomplishes nothing, and in fact continues to marginalize one of the few tools that we could potentially have to fight back. If Lemmy were to grow significantly and become a place where people could organize and communicate without being subject to corporate control or censorship, that could potentially do a great deal of good for people IRL. But constantly whining Nazi this, Nazi that is preventing that growth from happening.
The original post had a typo where the word states was omitted, OP has since edited.
For those who are confused by this comment.
It’s weird how you asked me a question and immediately pivoted to some tirade about racism when I answered, without clarifying whatsoever. Thanks for nothing.
I literally googled (via duckduckgo) queen Charlotte and that was every single result on the first page. Then I looked at Wikipedia for 30 seconds and responded. Apparently math = racism? Nice.
I naturally assumed you were talking about altering historical facts to suit a contemporary narrative. But I clearly gave you too much credit, I’ll avoid making that mistake again.
Edit: aha, you were referring to this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haida_Gwaii
Pretty obscure reference, but my fault for assuming. Instead of ignoring you like everyone else who had no idea what the hell you were talking about, I tried to roll with it and give you a response. You may want to refer to them as the Queen Charlotte Islands going forward…
deleted by creator
You’re referring to this Queen Charlotte?
Yeah I mean she obviously wasn’t black or biracial in any sense of the word. Even if you simply take the speculation about her ancestry at face value, you’re talking about 15 generations removed, which equates to one of 32,768 ancestors at the same genetic distance, contributing 0.00305% of DNA apiece.
What an absurd topic of discussion.
Good on you for doing some more research. Imo Denali and the Gulf of Mexico are like Mount Vesuvius and the Mediterranean Sea, i.e., the names are eminently suitable and essentially permanent. I’m going to expound on this at length, specifically in regard to Denali, because the case for the Gulf of Mexico is so incredibly one-sided and obvious. The case for Denali is also one-sided, but it’s much less well known.
To clarify, the name didn’t originate in honor of President McKinley, it was created while he was still running for president.
In 1896, a gold prospector named it McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year.
In other words, the mountain which had been locally known as Denali for centuries was arbitrarily utilized as a political pawn to boost the candidacy of McKinley, who turned out to be a mediocre president at best.
Also, it wasn’t officially recognized as such until 20 years later by Democrat Woodrow Wilson, potentially as a conciliatory political maneuver towards the Republican party, which was dominant under the Fourth Party System. Little known fact, from 1869 through 1933, there were 11 Republican presidents and only 2 Democratic ones. This is somewhat misleading because Grover Cleveland was elected twice and the Republicans had a couple deaths in office, but still drives home their political dominance at the time.
Speaking of which, William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist by the name of Leon Czolgosz, who appears to me a significantly more sympathetic figure than our contemporary Luigi, whom I personally find quite lame and reprehensible, but apparently the rest of you consider to be some kind of folk hero 🙄
A few notes about the circumstances and trial of this anarchist. See if you notice any parallels between his situation and ours.
Czolgosz believed there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality which allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor. He concluded that the reason for this was the structure of government. About this time, he learned of the assassination of a leader in Europe, King Umberto I of Italy, who had been shot dead by anarchist Gaetano Bresci on July 29, 1900. Bresci told the press that he had decided to take matters into his own hands for the sake of the common man.
Lewis and his co-counsel called no witnesses, which Lewis in his closing argument attributed to Czolgosz’s refusal to cooperate with them. In his 27-minute address to the jury, Lewis took pains to praise McKinley.
Scott Miller, author of The President and the Assassin, notes that the closing argument was more calculated to defend the attorney’s “place in the community, rather than an effort to spare his client the electric chair”.
His brother asked him “Who got you into this scrape?” to which Czolgosz responded “No one. Nobody had anything to do with it but me.” His brother said it was unlike him and was not how he was raised. When asked by his brother if he wanted the priests to come back, Czolgosz said, “No, damn them. Don’t send them here again. I don’t want them,” and “Don’t you have any praying over me when I am dead. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of their damned religion.”
Czolgosz’s last words were: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime. I am sorry I could not see my father.” Czolgosz was electrocuted by three jolts, each of 1,800 volts, in Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901, forty-five days after McKinley’s death.
The context which I have just provided should be reason enough to refuse the name Mount McKinley, based on the sentiments that have been superficially expressed on Lemmy and social media in general of late.
However, the fact that local Alaskans never stopped calling it Denali, and indeed successfully petitioned to have it officially renamed Denali in 1975, is even more damning. As per the Denali Wikipedia article
Indigenous names for Denali can be found in seven different Alaskan languages. The names fall into two categories. To the south of the Alaska Range in the Dena’ina and Ahtna languages the mountain is known by names that are translated as ‘big mountain’. To the north of the Alaska Range in the Lower Tanana, Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim, Holikachuk, and Deg Xinag languages the mountain is known by names that are translated as ‘the high one’, ‘the tall one’ (Koyukon, Lower and Middle Tanana, Upper Kuskokwim, Deg Xinag, and Holikachuk).
All of these names are essentially different pronunciations of Denali
Asked about the importance of the mountain and its name, Will Mayo, former president of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, an organization that represents 42 Athabaskan tribes in the Alaskan interior, said: “It’s not one homogeneous belief structure around the mountain, but we all agree that we’re all deeply gratified by the acknowledgment of the importance of Denali to Alaska’s people.”
In conclusion, Trump can go fuck himself in his fat fucking ass.
Who cares? Just because multi-trillion dollar corporation Google has to deal with it doesn’t mean we have to play along.
The politicians and corporations can do whatever bullshit they do, but average people can also choose to ignore that crap.
At least when it comes to changing well established names. There’s other stuff that has real world consequences and that sucks, but we can at least hold the line in this case.
Denali.
Gulf of Mexico.
From now until the end of time.
Nice. It’s amazing that I’m still slowly piecing together my reddit subscriptions on Lemmy almost 2 years later. There’s another classic one that I hadn’t yet found, thanks.
And remember, memes can be more salubrious than therapy 🫠
Maybe try looking up this word in a dictionary, it seems like you don’t understand what it means.
What contemporary paragon of journalistic integrity do you subscribe to, if I may ask? Which organization is more respectable than WP?