silence7

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In recent days, Brazilian climate experts have mulled why. Some city council and mayoral candidates are financially supported by activities that profit from deforestation, such as logging and mining, Agência Pública reported. Reporters found that in several areas with high deforestation—and thus wildfires—leading politicians tended to be silent about forest stewardship.

Brazil’s largest political parties generally do not tout climate consciousness as a top issue. The party that appears the closest to doing so is the ruling Workers’ Party. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promoted forest protection and green energy in international forums. But Lula governs in a coalition with centrist and conservative parties and has embraced fossil fuel exploration domestically.

To Angelo, a former science editor at Brazil’s newspaper of record, Folha de S. Paulo, climate was discussed so little in the campaign in part because “mainstream media tries to replicate the conversations that are happening on social media,” rather than journalists trying to orient the news cycle around policy questions.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Right. There's impeachment, but actually using it to remove people from power requires a supermajority, which makes it substantially ineffective against a criminal political party

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

They actually built a database of willing sycophants as part of it.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago

In general, preventing abuse via static rules is really difficult. People who want to abuse the system are innovative. Most systems really depend on having people who respond to the abuse by stopping it more than having specific written rules to block the kinds of abuse that have happened in the past.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Political change tends to be like that — nothing at all for a long period when you don't have the power to act, and sudden rapid change when you do.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Mostly because the progressives didn't control them in the early 1900s, so they don't have legislature-bypassing initiatives, and even in states where you do have that, it's expensive to get one through.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

While I've known that for a while, a lot of the press was in utter denial months after he gave this money, as with this NYT article dated December 10, 2022

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

Four states don't use first-past-the-post for legislative elections. In particular:

  • Alaska - uses a top-4 primary + ranked choice general
  • Maine - uses ranked choice voting
  • California & Washington - use top-two primaries (note: CA can be top-3 if there is a tie for 2nd place)

If a third party wanted to succeed, they would put significant resources into winning legislative and congressional seats in those places. I don't see any of them actually doing that though.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago

They wanted to redact witness names before releasing it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

An archived copy shows

J.D. Vance Freaks Out Over the Slightest Pushback in V.P. Debate

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

The whole modern commercial web is like that. Pretty much unusable without uBlock origin or the likes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Yep. Needs to have both clearly cheaper up-front costs and longer-term costs paid by the property owner.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The common causes of that are:

  • Device needs reboot
  • You've disabled javascript
  • You're running a browser extension which removes the gift token from the URL

I'm guessing it's the disabled javascript; the Boston Globe has a paywall for anybody who has it enabled.

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