The top result is already out. Obviously the John Oliver fans got their wish and Pūteketeke won. Thousands of them had to be disqualified for cheating, though.

We are all waiting now to see who is in second. Fingers crossed for the Fairy Tern, New Zealand’s most endangered bird!

We are “social animals” though. It’s normal for the social animals to attempt to regulate what each other does and how they treat others in the group.

You see this in apes, elephants, whales, etc.

I think Medecines Sans Frontiers is good?

Never has the “Just a moment…” snippet view been more apropos.

Yes, it’s a massive level of cringe.

Gmail is convenient, but if it’s about to be filled with 😊 and 👍 then I’ve got to stop using it for any serious communication.

I agree, it is technically true. Sorry if I sounded too nitpicking, I’ve just come back from a week with no internet access /news so for a moment I thought you were talking about all of them doing it during the events of the last few days!

Germany, France and Spain also have killed and kidnapped citizens.

You may wish to rephrase that…

I’m just pointing out that he doesn’t have any more allegiance to US foriegn policy than any other non-American has.

If you have a problem with people trying to influence election results in other people’s countries, then you should have just as big a problem with the CIA as you have with Assange.

I’m far from being a fan of his but I am a fan of human rights and this whole thing has been a travesty. And something I notice a lot is the sentiment that Assange should have been loyal to US interests.

It scares me how human rights goes out the window when it comes to people who are disliked.

his own personal foreign policy

Assange is an Australian.

Oh hell this just gets worse and worse. I’m concerned for the survivors. 30,000 displaced. I really hope the two factions are able to work together:

The enormous task of providing immediate aid and then rebuilding Derna is complicated by the legacies of a decade of civil conflict, which has left two rival governments ruling eastern and western Libya.

Derna is controlled by the Libyan National Army, run by Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter and based in the eastern city of Tobruk. The rest of the country is run by the Government of National Unity based in the capital, Tripoli, in the west.

This split has hampered reconstructions efforts for years — though aid workers say both sides are now talking to each other.

Will look out for it!

Nowadays there are Saints for everything

There have always been local gods for everything.

This is why Catholicism has historically been such a sucessful religion, it’s inherently quite syncretic.

It adapts to local conditions and incorporates aspects, just like capitalism and viruses.

Sounds good! I learned about it from Wikipedia, which is a bit dry.

To understand where she’s coming from it’s also worth reading her very moving article on how Modi handled the covid pandemic ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe.

Yeah the largest biological weapon attack on US soil was a cult.

You seem to know a lot more about ordinance than I do but from what you’re saying, it sounds like tungsten that is not alloyed with thorium would be the way to go!!

I wish there were more international cooperation on this stuff.

My parents’ generation all seem to hate benzene and warn us it’s toxic as hell. That’s the only time it seems to come up, might be to do with napalm now that you mention it. Much shorter life and half life I guess.

For what it’s worth I also think deliberate napalm and white phosphorous use on humans are war crimes as well.

A couple of years ago Indonesia used white phosphorous on some West Papua villages and the results were horrific.

Edit, just realised I forgot to answer your first question. I do not recollect the details about the relative proportions of other causes of birth defects etc in that environment but I would argue that a) DU alone definitely earned its place as an unethical weapon and b) any known risk factor with that high a contribution should be phased out too.

It’s a type of “future eating”.

Well no, the article is about weird happenings in the research into this. You have to read actual research to see the evidence.

I apologize for not providing it here. I’m uncomfortably aware that I sound like one of those annoying trollish people who say Do yOuR oWn ResEarch instead of presenting evidence.

I read a bunch of research papers on depleted uranium years ago and found it very convincing, and that’s what my opinion is based on, but unfortunately I’m finding google and duckduckgo kind of useless these days (any recs welcome), it’s late at night and I’m tired. @[email protected] if you have anything handy?

I get where you’re coming from too. Especially since the Russians appear to have added that to their list of crimes. Fight uranium with uranium.

I’m very wary of the argument that people can use whatever weapons they like in their own country. War crimes are a thing in international law for good reason.

I’m a strong supporter of the “court of last resort” the ICC, and I firmly believe that it’s the duty of all the world’s citizens to oppose war crimes, genocides, and crimes against humanity wherever they occur.

Fighting war crimes with war crimes happens a lot - we have seen it in the past year in Ethiopia as well - but a line has to be drawn somewhere or attrocities keep escalating and everyone becomes monsters.

For me, that line is here. I appreciate that for you the line might be further along though.

The Ukrainian leadership is. But they are not the ones about to be born wirh painful defects.

To clarify, I am on Ukraine’s side in this war.

But being on the right side of a war of invasion doesn’t magically turn the Ukrainian military leadership into omniscient saints.

Depleted Uranium should not be used in any war. Period. If Ukraine is firing it at invaders on Ukrainian soil - and the Russians will be using it too I expect - the legacy is going to be horrendous.