Also incorrect. USDA has a great deal of discretionary funding. The new $750M facility being build in Texas (several thousand km from the Darian Gap = great plan!) was approved internally at USDA. There was nothing stopping the funding in '21 other than not recognizing how dire the problem could become in just a few years.

Sadly, no. That response in 2018-2021 would have been urgent, appropriate. By waiting until 2023 when reports were coming out in '21 that the Darian Gap was failing and '22 that it had failed, Biden did in fact drop the ball. The administration chose to try to work with/through Central American governments who, frankly, hadn’t dealt with screwworms in over a generation and were poorly equipped or completely clueless. Also, it’s worth noting, this facility was relatively inexpensive to operate at less than $20M/year. We had a beautiful system in place but Republican ignorance and Democrat pussyfooting has put us in a terrible position. The sunbelt population boom of the last 50 years was not just about AC.

They do this to hedge their bets. Trump crashes out = “see, I never did like that guy” pointing at that post as they quietly burn all their MAGA gear. That and they’re gearing up for Trump becoming the worst thing, yes way worse than a pedophile, that a Republican can be- unelectable. Bush in 2007 was, to the right, a strong leader in the war on terror and economic genius- in 2009 he was some nobody who painted. Reagan in (early) 1987 was the greatest president in US history according to the right- in 1989 they stopped pretending he wasn’t a senile old actor.

At no point did the eradication program end. In 23-24 Biden’s USDA quadrupled funding to the Panama facility producing sterile flies. The facility had been underfunded for years (/wave Trump1) and at some point during Covid lost contain of the Darian Gap, officially reaching “we fucked up” thresholds in 2022.

YES! Raw milk is ultra-omega-alpha. Any MAGA who isn’t drinking raw milk three times a day isn’t a real MAGA. Be sure to let them all know this.

I come to Lemmus for exchanges like this. Well reasoned, level headed, and consequences considered. Imagine if we could get conversations like this to take place in those government buildings- sure would be swell.

How neat is it that the screwworm, which was a plague in the 1930s, is back just in time (well, a little early but when the history books are written they’ll zoom out the timeline) for our reenactment of the Great Depression? A little on the nose with history repeating itself, but still interesting. I guess we should be on the lookout for another Dust Bowl too.

Putting a sign for the car infront of you to read on the back of your vehicle is incredibly on brand for Pavement Princesses.

Promising from a business perspective. Hughesnet was looking at a having a billion customers. SES looked poised to be the internet provider for Europe. Echostar exploded onto the scene. Teledesic, who back in the 90s pioneered the low orbit constellation you mentioned (possibly sent up with NASA’s VTVL rockets?), had a business plan that looks eerily similar to Starlink (speaking of, read up on all the people the Muskrat met with who pitched satellite internet, then he ditched them and did it “”“himself”“”) and was off to a solid start until dot.com crash wiped its funds and it fizzled. Yes, a lot of this was hype or promises of tech was nowhere near ready- “the future LOOKED bright”, not necessarily was.

No, no, no. You see, it all makes perfect sense because economics is built on the nobility of the rational thinking person. SpaceX is worth $1,500,000,000,000 because they have VTVL rockets! It’s the future! Wait, what’s that you said? Honda also has VTVL rockets and their market cap is only $35,000,000,000? Also, NASA has VTVL rockets in the 90s but keeps getting their budget cut? Ok, but the xAI has got to be making [searching] negative several billion dollars a quarter. Nevermind- what about Starlink? They’re making money. Haha, check and mate. Adding in all the money Starlink has made puts SpaceX at [searching] just over negative one Honda in revenue. That… could be worse. Also, I mean, sure, satellite internet providers have been around for 30 years and each one had a period where the future looked bright before upkeep costs or technical issues hammered them into oblivion, but… mhhh…

Look, it’s a very real, very serious, very professional system that is very grounded in reality. This is definitely not a huge scam with several giant red flags of unethical and possibly illegal rule changes to weasel into the NASDAQ-100 to fleece index funds.

Oh good, so they’ll be taking on domestic forced labour next, right? Right?!

Geez fellas, I’m starting to suspect these GQPedos actually have no values whatsoever and are just saying whatever feels convenient to get what they want.

Wildly better list. One of the failings of liberal/left minded people in recent decades has been to become list makers. “We will stand up for the rights of women [pause for applause], blacks [pause for applause], the elderly [pause for applause], etc…” sounds real nice until someone listening says “what about me?” It’s a losing political strategy in a world where the words “All Americans” and “everyone” exist. At the absolute least, tag those words on the end.

To be clear since this keeps coming up from people who like to put words in other people’s mouths then tell them those words are wrong, I am not saying laws can’t protect/benefit marginalized groups. This is about communication.

Parker Sedgwick has a Youtube channel and is pretty good. He could be a voice of his generation if he can manage to sand off his Ben Shapiro-esq energy.

In most cases, absolutely. There are a few jobs I can see an LLM performing as well or better. Though, then those people would be roaming the streets and do you really want your insurance claim denied while you’re out walking your dog or someone yelling about paradigm shifts to align synergies when you’re just having a nice day at the park?

Absolutely. Though I’m not sure we want the government taxing anyone down into the lower-middle class. Millionaires, or more specifically people who have $1M to $9.9M (sevens) are quite good for the overall economy and more common than most people seem to think as there are about 22M of them in the USA. Have the IRS watch them, but otherwise leave those people alone. Problematic wealth, the kind that should be progressively taxed, starts in the eight figure range.

Good catch. Thanks!

As likely as that is, it’s important to note that was step 3 in the screwworm failure.

1. Covid supply chain issues raised alarms that hey, that little lab we have in Panama protecting ~100M people and the livestock industries of several nations might need some emergency support, funding. The Trump Administration did not raise to the challenge. [note: the cause of the Darian Gap failure is “contested” because some people think it just, you know, happened or something, man]

2. The Biden Administration’s initial position, as is the Democrat way, was to assume the status quo their predecessors strived to create was good enough. When it became obvious this was not the case they sprung into forming a committee to create a plan to monitor the situation and collaborate with foreign entities who were completely incapable of handling this issue, since institutional knowledge of a problem solved 40 years ago was gone. Apparently process documentation is a problem in all human endeavors. To their credit, when screwworms hit Mexico the administration did halt livestock border crossings and quadruple the Panama facility’s output.

3. Trump takes over, does fuckall for half a year, then USDA announces they’ll build a $750M screwworm facility in Texas. Experts note this facility is about 3,000 km from the Darian Gap, but hey, can’t be sending American money to some shithole amirite? Luckily the facility will be online in late 2027 barring certain delays, so as long as the screwworm’s northern spread slows by orders of magnitude for no reason we’ll be covered.

Texas is wet right now and projected to have a hot, wet summer. This is ideal for screwworm spreading within the state and yes, droughts elsewhere mean Texas will probably be exporting screwworm filled products to a neighborhood near you soon.

People think the sunbelt population boom was all about AC becoming widely available. Yes, AC played a huge role. Also, not having extremely painful fly larva burrow into any open wound, mucus membrane. Believe it or not, that was something of a turn off for people prior to the eradication campaign of the 50s. Time to start wearing long sleeves and layers again.

But hey, at least we saved a few million dollars by not adequately funding the facilities that kept screwworms south of the Darien Gap. It should only cost a few billion to repeat the eradication campaign this time around.

Do You Want To Know More? https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8e4617f337af41b1a083ab17deb95e2a

I am unsure what direction you are attempting to take things here. Please clarify.