[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

I have sleeves over a few really sensitive areas up my arms/shoulders. That's so painful that I have to zone out and can only last three hours on a site like my hand. It's superhuman endurance to get one on your neck, collar bones, ribs, stomach, pelvic wings, and even the nipples.

37

The full series from that session: https://www.reddit.com/r/tattoos/comments/1g57kzy/full_body_suit_in_progress_by_me_ivan_zagusta/

The rest of his self-published work: https://www.reddit.com/user/Ivan_Zagusta/submitted/

I'd love to get a tattoo from this guy at some point. It's such a beautifully intricate style that none of the other really talented /r/tattoos artists take on.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Ballet is probably the most athletic form of dance, but it's just super cool outside of the cliche ones: https://vimeo.com/455396674

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 21 points 2 days ago

I really like ballet and I'd like to see a Chinese ballet, but I've heard this is shitty.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 30 points 2 days ago

Shirts that go Hard have put out some quality shirts, but this is their finest.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 29 points 2 days ago

Ethically it's on par with a normal ballet, but it's also charging $80 for the cheapest seat while the Colorado Symphony charges like $55. Those are the lord deterring me. I shouldn't be charged a premium for a hogwatch when I'm already not getting a good performance.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

Potentially it's just generic white people who think it's any other ballet, but that in itself would be the baseline for fun people-watching. That's a four page booklet where the entire last page is dedicated to anticommunism, so I'm hopeful it's going to be motivated anticommunists of some kind even if I don't anticipate it being a Trump rally.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 19 points 2 days ago

I feel like I could convince him to go a second time if I stress that it's in Wyoming. Ever since I saw a billboard for it a few years ago I've wondered what kind of Guy goes to it there. It's going to be entirely new species of goobers.

124

I want nothing more than to go to the one in Cheyenne and see who goes to an anticommunist Chinese ballet in Wyoming. I even have my "I lost my virginity at Shen Yun 2022" shirt for a thumbs up photo with the cast.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 48 points 2 days ago

surprised-pika-messed-up only one of them?

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 36 points 2 days ago

timmy-pray come on nitrous oxide, git sum

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 16 points 3 days ago

We need to vote for Obama in 2008 so he can close Guantanamo Bay.

53

Read George Orwall

47

spoiler(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc.’s sales plummeted 59% last month in Germany, where Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk asserted himself in national politics like never before.

The US manufacturer registered only 1,277 new cars in January, its lowest monthly total since July 2021, according to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority.

Tesla lost substantial ground in an electric vehicle market that was up 54% for the month, suggesting Musk’s vocal support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party likely dragged on demand.

Tesla also posted declines in the UK and France last month, meaning its sales fell in Europe’s three largest EV markets. In addition to vouching for AfD leader Alice Weidel and taking on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government, Musk spent the month cementing his position in the administration of US President Donald Trump, who’s threatened to hit the European Union with tariffs.

The company’s sales plunged 63% last month in France — the EU’s second-biggest EV market, after Germany — and dropped 12% in the UK. Tesla shares traded down as much as 2.3% shortly after the start of US trading Wednesday.

Musk, 53, hosted a live discussion with Weidel on his social media site X ahead of Germany’s federal election this month. During a virtual appearance at a party rally later in January, the Tesla CEO urged Germans to be proud of their culture and, in an apparent reference to wartime atrocities under the Nazis, discouraged “too much focus on past guilt.”

The remarks — made just before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp — sparked outrage in a country where reckoning with the past is central to its postwar identity.

Other factors outside of politics are likely at play in Tesla’s slow start to the year. The company is changing over assembly plants to produce a redesigned Model Y, its best-selling vehicle, which will cost the manufacturer several weeks of lost production. One of those plants is located just outside of Berlin.

Tesla also may be contending with shortages of inventory in some markets due to the all-out push the company made to boost sales late last year.

While the automaker delivered more vehicles than ever in the fourth quarter, it fell short of a forecast for slight growth for the full year. Instead, the company posted its first annual decline in more than a decade.

But there have been more signs outside of Europe that Musk’s politics are having an effect on the carmaker he runs. Tesla registered fewer cars in California in all four quarters of 2024, as sales of its second-most important vehicle — the Model 3 — plunged 36% for the year.

California went for Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris by 20.2 points in November, and Musk feuded with Governor Gavin Newsom throughout the year.

[-] happybadger@hexbear.net 71 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Titan Invictus, Simone, Industry Americus, Malcolm, Torsten Savage and Octavian George

Shut the fuck up. screm3

edit:

Still, the Collinses’ ideas about what will encourage people to have more babies are unconventional, even among other pronatalists.

They dismiss solutions such as more housing or more money as “unrealistic.” And just because a policy is pro-family — universal day care, for example, or extended parental leave — doesn’t necessarily mean it will encourage people to have more children, they say.

Instead, they’re pushing for deregulating the day-care industry (“We have data on this,” Malcolm said, sharing a Substack link) and removing car-seat mandates (another Substack link). Requiring parents to have car seats discourages people from having big families, because you can only fit in so many seats, he argued. “In a number of states, you need to be in a car seat until you’re, like, 16, right?”

62

spoilerNYU Langone Health System is warning staff not to shield patients from immigration raids after the Trump administration moved to make hospitals a site of federal enforcement.

In a memo to employees about what to do when Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrives, the health system told staff, “you should not try to actively help a person avoid being found by ICE.”

The language in the guidance, which was obtained by Crain’s, emphasizes compliance with authorities beyond what other health systems and trade groups have issued in memos to staff, which have tended to focus more on hospitals’ rights to deny ICE access and set up protocols to gatekeep facilities.

The notice has unsettled some staff, who see patient care as their primary mission.

“I feel like it’s part of our job to treat people from other countries compassionately, whether or not they are here legally,” said one NYU Langone nurse who was not cleared to speak with press. “Most people I know feel the same way. Like, obviously if ICE was there we would try to protect our patients from them.”

NYU Langone declined to comment.

Hospitals began issuing guidance to staff after President Donald Trump repealed an Obama-era limit on immigration enforcement in so-called “sensitive locations,” like hospitals, schools and houses of worship. The move corresponded with a number of high-profile immigration raids in the city and around the country as the administration moved to implement Trump’s mass-deportation agenda.

In January, Greater New York Hospital Association, the largest trade association of hospitals and health systems in the northeast, issued a memo to its members with suggested procedures for handling ICE agents. The memo outlines the scenarios in which employees may block an ICE inquiry from moving forward and cautions members that officials may use “persuasion and even intimidation” in attempting to circumvent protocols.

The trade group’s guidance makes no mention that staff should be warned to avoid aiding undocumented patients from capture. In it, GNYHA suggests hospitals reiterate a commitment to patient privacy, “regardless of their immigration status or that of their family members. Every action that we take, or decline to take, in response to law enforcement activity will be informed by that principle,” it states.

By contrast, the guidance from NYU Langone, which is named after Home Depot billionaire and GOP-megadonor Kenneth Langone, focuses on “our obligation to comply with applicable laws and regulations.” It instructs staff to notify the security department when a government agent requests information about a patient or access to non-public areas.

“Please note, it is illegal to intentionally protect a person who is in the United States unlawfully from detention,” it states.

"Definitely didn't sit well with me," the nurse said.

24

spoilerAir traffic control staffing was "not normal" at the time of a mid-air collision between a military helicopter and passenger plane in Washington, DC that killed 67 people, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has acknowledged.

US media reported that Reagan National Airport tower was understaffed during Wednesday's crash, according to a government report.

One air traffic control worker was managing helicopters and some planes from the airport, a job normally done by two people, two sources told CBS News, the BBC's US news partner.

"I'll take the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at their word that it wasn't normal," Duffy said when asked about reports during the FOX News Sunday programme.

Duffy said "that was part of the review process that we have to do".

He explained there was a "consolidation of air traffic controllers an hour before it was supposed to happen during the time of this crash. And so was, what was the appropriateness of that?"

Duffy raised questions about whether controllers did "appropriately direct traffic, consistent with procedures at the FAA", as well as the elevation of the helicopter.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Board Member Todd Inman said preliminary data revealed the helicopter was flying at about 200ft (60m), CBS reported. The flight ceiling for helicopters in the area near Reagan National Airport is 200ft.

Duffy also questioned the timing of its flight.

"Why would they fly a mission at nine o'clock at night through really busy air space... as opposed to flying that mission at one o'clock in the morning, when there's very little traffic"? he asked.

"I want our military to be trained up and ready to go, but I also want air travellers to be safe as well, and there's a time and a place to do it, not at nine o'clock at night when there's heavy traffic."

Investigators are considering a number of factors, including height, in determining the cause of the crash, but have not yet made any public conclusions, NTSB officials said on Thursday.

There were 64 passengers aboard the American Airlines flight when it collided mid-air with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers. There were no survivors.

Dozens of family members of the victims gathered at the scene of the crash on Sunday morning.

They arrived in chartered buses with a police escort, first travelling to the crash scene and then on to a runway where the flight was supposed to land.

Duffy said the US has a chronic understaffing problem in air traffic control.

US media has reported that more than 90% of air traffic control facilities in the country are operating below FAA recommended staffing levels.

"We haven't had enough air traffic controllers in America for a very long time," Duffy said, adding "they are stressed out. They're tapped out. They're overworked. That's no excuse. It's just a reality of what we have in the system."

The new transportation secretary said he was working with the FAA to train new air traffic controllers and "has a plan that's going to come out to fix the problem, but the issue is you can't flip a switch and get air traffic controllers here tomorrow."

88

To the left is the moon, on the right is Venus with the same luminosity if you weren't seeing it through my phone camera. It's probably the brightest I've seen in a year. Taken in Colorado so I don't know how your local orientation will differ.

7

This is a really interesting study on the psychogeography of car infrastructure and how they flatten space and time in a postmodern way. It's otherwise paywalled so the source is the Masaryk University in Brno, Still-Czechoslovakia.

Abstract:

The social sciences have generally ignored the motor car and its awesome consequences for social life, especially in their analysis of the urban. Urban studies in particular has failed to consider the overwhelming impact of the automobile in transforming the time-space ‘scapes’ of the modern urban/suburban dweller. Focusing on forms of mobility into, across and through the city, we consider how the car reconfigures urban life, involving distinct ways of dwelling, travelling and socializing in, and through, an automobilized time-space. We trace urban sociology's paradoxical resistance to cultures of mobility, and argue that civil society should be reconceptualized as a ‘civil society of automobility’. We then explore how automobility makes instantaneous time and the negotiation of extensive space central to how social life is configured. As people dwell in and socially interact through their cars, they become hyphenated car-drivers: at home in movement, transcending distance to complete a series of activities within fragmented moments of time. Urban social life has always entailed various mobilities but the car transforms these in a distinct combination of flexibility and coercion. Automobility is a complex amalgam of interlocking machines, social practices and ways of dwelling which have reshaped citizenship and the public sphere via the mobilization of modern civil societies. In the conclusion we trace a vision of an evolved automobility for the cities of tomorrow in which public space might again be made ‘public’.

49

spoilerPoultry farmers are appealing to the government to let them vaccinate their flocks against the "devastating" bird flu virus spreading across the UK.

Vaccinating poultry against avian influenza is currently not allowed in the UK. The government says that strong biosecurity measures and culling are the most effective ways of fighting it. Meanwhile, there are concerns that poultry vaccinations might be linked to the virus evolving.

Overall levels of the virus have not yet reached the peak of recent years.

But one farmer, who has previously lost 30% of his flock because of bird flu, told the BBC that, without a vaccine, it was only a matter of time before "it all kicks off again".

A bird flu prevention zone enforcing strict hygiene standards around domesticated birds has been declared for England, Wales and Scotland amid a rising number of cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).

The risk to humans remains low, with chicken and eggs safe to eat if properly cooked, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Defra has set up a cross-government and poultry industry taskforce that is looking at the potential use of vaccines, and is due to publish its report later this year. But poultry farmers say things are moving too slowly.

Essex turkey farmer Paul Kelly, whose business was hit hard in the worst avian flu outbreak from 2021 to 2023, told the BBC that "the foot has been taken off the gas" when it comes to making poultry vaccines available to UK farmers.

"This is poor planning as we need to be ready for another huge outbreak as opposed to reacting to another outbreak and being behind the curve on rolling out vaccination," he said.

"Avian influenza is so highly pathogenic that if a farmer gets it [in his flock][ it is devastating."

There have so far been 25 farm outbreaks of bird flu since the annual winter recording season began in October.

In comparison, between October 2021 and January 2022, during the UK's worst outbreak, there had been more than 70 cases in poultry or other captive birds.

But Gary Ford, of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, said that there was still "panic, concern and fear out there" among farmers over the virus spreading.

He added that the organisation was a "huge supporter" of vaccination for poultry but recognised there were challenges, including the cost to farmers and the impact on trade with other countries that prohibit imports from producers that vaccinate.

Meanwhile, there have also been some scientific questions raised about bird flu vaccinations.

Recent work by researchers from the UK's Royal Veterinary College and institutions in China found possible evidence that they may be linked to changes in how the virus evolves.

They carried out genetic analysis of avian flu samples collected from wild birds and farmed poultry between 1996 and 2023.

While they found that infections occurred more often in unvaccinated birds, they also found that in countries with high vaccination rates, there was a higher rate of change in the virus itself.

They said such evolution could, in theory, lead to vaccines needing to be updated frequently to remain effective and to the virus spilling over into unvaccinated populations. They acknowledged that more research was needed to establish whether there was a direct causal link between vaccination and virus evolution.

Earlier this week, the government agency that deals with infectious diseases, UKHSA, confirmed a case of the H5N1 avian influenza virus in a farm worker in the West Midlands region.

It said bird-to-human transmission of avian influenza was rare and that the risk to the wider public continues to be very low.

Farmers in Shropshire, North Yorkshire, East Riding of Yorkshire, City of Kingston Upon Hull, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk have to keep their birds caged under mandatory housing rules put in place to manage the spread.

Biosecurity restrictions are also in place across England, Wales and Scotland as part of an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone.

The National Farmers' Union said it was "essential that Defra refocuses efforts" on coming up with a workable avian influenza vaccination plan for the UK.

The government currently only allows licensed zoos to vaccinate captive birds against HPAI.

It said it would continue to invest in research and that any future decisions on the use of emergency or preventive vaccination would be based on the latest scientific evidence and veterinary advice.

6

Completely free on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2397300/Half_Sword/

This video really captures what makes Half Sword unique compared to a lot of other gladiator games. The weapons and armour feel real. There aren't hitpoints or stat bonuses, you're only protected where something is protecting you, and one wrong move can lead to bleeding out or losing your limbs. If you fight based on the physics of your weapon you can pull off really precise moves that feel so much more organic than button combos.

74

spoilerThe CEO of Coinbase says that a million new crypto coins are created on the platform every week, and it's becoming hard to evaluate them all.

Coinbase is a popular cryptocurrency trading platform that has allowed users to trade cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and dogecoin since 2012. The company has seen enormous growth since going public in 2022 and is now worth $74 billion.

Coinbase, like all cryptocurrency exchanges, uses an application process for new currency listings that evaluates the coin based on the company's own digital asset framework.

"High-quality problem to have, but evaluating each one by one is no longer feasible," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a post on X on Sunday. "And regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is totally infeasible at this point as well (they can't do 1m a week)."

Coinbase and other leading crypto companies have urged the federal government to clarify cryptocurrency regulations to ensure they can stay compliant.

The industry is optimistic, however, with the arrival of President Donald Trump, who has made promoting crypto a central part of his agenda. Trump even launched his own meme coin shortly before his inauguration. His wife, Melania Trump, quickly followed suit.

The number of circulating meme coins has risen in recent years. These are cryptocurrencies that are sometimes based on an internet meme or the result of a joke but are always designed to go viral in the hope of increasing their value.

Anyone can create a meme coin online. If it does go viral, it could earn the creator, who is often the largest investor, a windfall. Influencers have caught on and now often leverage their followings to capitalize. Hailey Welch, known to most online as the "Hawk Tuah Girl," made headlines in December after she launched her own meme coin, $HAWK. The coin's total market value shot up to almost $500 million before it collapsed after just hours. Welch told Fortune at the time that the coin was not meant to be a "cash grab." In a post on X, Welch said her team did not sell any coins.

Armstrong said it's time to "rethink" the listing process at Coinbase, advocating for regulation of the crypto listing process to move from an "add list" to a "block list" that utilizes customer reviews and automated scans of blockchain data to help with the process.

According to the company's website, Coinbase's current listing procedure is a six-step process that requires a review request, an initial review, an additional "due diligence" analysis, and a notice to complete the analysis, listing, and post-listing support.

Justin Sun, former representative for Grenada at the World Trade Organization and founder of the cryptocurrency Tron, said in a post on X that his cryptocurrency has been under review at Coinbase for seven years. Sun said that Tron is one of the world's top 10 cryptocurrencies and has performed well in other markets, but never passed through the Coinbase listing process.

"Will Coinbase ultimately list TRX after it debuts on the NYSE and Nasdaq, or will it never list it at all?" Sun wrote. "This has nothing to do with TRX itself but rather reflects Coinbase's loss of the most basic fairness and industry judgment when it comes to new listings."

36

From a really interesting book on socioecological energetics- Environment, Power, and Society by Howard Odum.

view more: next ›

happybadger

joined 4 years ago