Reading these comments seriously makes me wonder how many of y'all read the article. The US doesn't need Iranian oil but China DOES.
A dwindling supply of oil through the Strait and rising oil prices damages China and buoys the United States. If China doesn't want to put any effort into keeping the Strait open it's going to hurt them far more than it will hurt anyone else.
The bot problem has been around since before Sam Altman was old enough to legally drink. For example in the early days the founders of Reddit were running bots to make the site look wayyy busier than it actually was in order to attract new users.
He's a convenient bogey-man, and a huge asshole, but he's the not the source of this problem.
but breaking down what’s different I can’t pin anything concrete down.
One big difference is scale. The 2000s Internet was primarily centered around single(ish) interest forums with relatively low user counts. The entire Lemmy-verse, which is itself quite tiny in 2025, is still WAY larger than nearly any of the 2000s era forums ever were.
Another other big difference is why the user base is online. The majority of them aren't participating to discuss a shared interest anymore, they are doing it for general entertainment or to earn money.
Those two things explain nearly all of the change. Way more users congregated into a handful of websites with many of them, including the sites, attempting to get rich doing it.
The 2000s web was a much smaller number of users spread across a zillion websites / forums with nearly all of the users and site operators doing it without money as a motivator.
There isn't a single county in this country that votes 100% in either direction. So saying that "All of whom voted for this." is objectively incorrect.
I'm in Wyoming and fiber started rolling out in multiple cities with multiple different providers in each city two years ago. They got to my house earlier this year so I now have a 2Gb/s connection.
I thing getting rid of plastic sacks is good and we shouldn't have ever had them anyway. They only came into being due to misguided and low information efforts to "Save Trees" by getting people to stop using paper!
Just ban plastic bags completely and bring back paper. Then charge for the paper bags if necessary in order to incent re-use.
They are re-usable but so were the old ones. A lot of people re-use these bags for various things like trash can liners.
Honestly this whole thing went off the rails when plastic bags were introduced. "Paper or Plastic" was an oft asked, and ridiculed, question a couple of decades ago.
The trees used in the manufacture of paper bags come from cultivated forests so nothing was really being saved PLUS if we'd stuck with paper bags it would have boosted recycling, specifically paper recycling.
Well intentioned interference is what created this mess. We should have left things as they were.
I applaud the article for taking the unusual step of actually linking the Legislation. What passed is somewhere between practically meaningless, objectively a good a thing, and eyebrow raising.
SB 1362 restricts the use of ERPOs, often called "Red Flag", firearm confiscations in Civil cases. In relation to criminal charges they can still be used. I generally support ERPOs but there needs to be more oversight of them. Despite Nicole Golden's statement to the contrary they ARE abused in Civil Courts, primarily by Police. There are a handful of examples from Colorado in 2020 alone.
SB 1596 removes state level penalties for possessing Short Barreled Weapons. This is basically meaningless because they are still federally regulated and the BATFE will absolutely rain bricks on people who violate these kinds of laws.
SB 3053 makes it impossible for Cities to run "Gun Buy Back" programs. This is silly and I have to wonder why the legislature even took it up as an issue.
HB 668 extends the renewal period for concealed carry licenses by 30 days. It's fairly meaningless since Texas is already a "Constitutional Carry" State where if you're not prohibited from carrying by law you can carry without a license. I again wonder why the legislature bothered with this.
HB 1234 Reworks the appeals process if someone has been medically denied from obtaining a CCW. It forces the responsible board to provide 30 days to appeal the decision and requires documentation from the panel members as to WHY an applicant is being denied. This is common sense stuff. No Government Board should be able to deny a permit without stating the reason(s) why and providing an appeal process.
SB 706 is a firearm carry reciprocity bill that requires the State of Texas to honor concealed carry permits issued by other States and publish information regarding reciprocity on the website. Someone who has a CCW from another State already has a permit, likely one with HIGHER requirements than Texas itself has, so I'm failing to see the problem with this one.
It's a mixed bag but there's nothing awful in here.
There's at least one bill they didn't pass, allowing firearms in polling places, which would have been objectively terrible.
Try reading MY comment. You are talking about a central element of the movie GATTACA from 1997. I know it's old and many younger people haven't seen it so I provided a link to the Wikipedia article about the film.
This issue was widely discussed, at least in American society, almost 30 years ago. The film is still heavily referenced in any discussion involving bio-ethics and genetic manipulation.
Should I be able to use CRISPR to keep my baby from being born with Downs?
Yes, absolutely yes. Downs children are wonderful, there's one in my family, but I can say without hesitation that both he and his parents would have used a treatment like this if it was available. He's 30 now and he himself would choose to do it if it was available.
Reading these comments seriously makes me wonder how many of y'all read the article. The US doesn't need Iranian oil but China DOES.
A dwindling supply of oil through the Strait and rising oil prices damages China and buoys the United States. If China doesn't want to put any effort into keeping the Strait open it's going to hurt them far more than it will hurt anyone else.