This proposed rule change is open for comment until May 19.

My comment was:

I urge the rejection of this proposed rule.

I think we can be very thankful for the definition of harm as currently defined. If we were talking about the human species there would be no doubt that significant degradation of our ability to feed, shelter, and produce offspring would indeed be considered harm.

From only an economic perspective this proposed rule change is extremely counter productive. We learn an enormous amount from animals and that knowledge creates enormous economic value.

An example is the horseshoe crab. The Virginia Institute of Marine Science estimates the value of horseshoe crabs to the medical research industry at $100M per year. In 2023, the US Fish and Wildlife Service began work to aid their reproduction and support this industry. If harm is no longer defined as a significant decline in ability to reproduce, will we be able to protect this industry?

As our technology advances we are always learning more from animals, so we don't know which animals will give us our next billion dollar industry. After we decimate a species, we may not get to choose if it goes extinct, and with each extinct species we inflict immense harm on current and future generations of humans.

The theorem has been expressed colloquially as "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" or "you can't comb the hair on a coconut".

How much time is wasted sorting socks?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26717237

I was curious how well wealthy countries do at hosting refugees.

The plots are interactive so its better to view them here: https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/insights/explainers/refugee-hosting-metrics.html

In the plot, the size of the circle is the number of refugees.

Germany is really doing an amazing job, y'all should be proud.

Compared to Chile, the US has 15x the population and 5x the wealth per capita but hosts fewer refugees. I certainly don't have the full picture but its not a good look.

The tesseract Lemmy app, has a little overview from mediabiasfactcheck.com (MBFC). It seems like a clever way to foster a healthy community.

If you click on the ranking you get details.

EDIT: Sorry to stir up an old hornet's nest.

EDIT2: Commenters have some valid criticisms of MBFC. Even if there are flaws, I would like to celebrate all attempts at elevating the conversations we are having.

This person is surprisingly skilled

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25383874

Whats a good tool for tracking my emissions?

I tried apps like Klima and Earth Hero. Earth Hero is especially good but I would like to play with the numbers myself for specific scenarios like snapshots of my emissions, planning my next year, logging my specific air travel, hobbies, etc.

If anyone has a spreadsheet model I would be grateful. Otherwise I can build one. Earth Hero gives a lot of references to their source models.

I tried apps like Klima and Earth Hero. Earth Hero is especially good but I would like to play with the numbers myself for specific scenarios like snapshots of my emissions, planning my next year, logging my specific air travel, hobbies, etc.

If anyone has a spreadsheet model I would be grateful. Otherwise I can build one. Earth Hero gives a lot of references to their source models.

It's a Lemmy front end, very clean. On your local device it runs some algorithm that tries curate a better feed for you based on your interactions with Lemmy. Not unlike many larger social media sites.

You can also sort by the normal filters like 'active', 'new', etc.

I read about it burried in some comments.

It's great to see so many front ends and experimentation within the Fediverse.

Another interesting frontend is tesseract.dubvee.org which has some clever features, and good mod tools.

The artist: http://www.simonstalenhag.se/es.html

I always really liked these pieces. Mixing the mundane with scifi.

My friend does something similar and paints scifi elements on top of old boring prints from second hand stores. I'll have to get a picture and share.

A Shower Thought is a concept that is hard to define but you know a good one when you see it. If you see some that are especially good, please link them in the comments.

I want to add a few examples to the sidebar to help shape the community, so it makes sense that they should come from the community.

Please upvote the ones you like.