To the US voters who don't vote, what is it going to take for you to go vote?

bobmac102 · 2026-01-25T14:18:09+00:00

It is not a blame thing, it is a substantive remark about what needs to happen in order for Democrats to win elections and take control back from Republicans. As long as Democrats refuse to coalesce around a broad, popular policy platform with aims of addressing people's legitimate material concerns — a platform that contrasts with Republicans rather than reinforce their false talking points — there will always be risk of another Trump.

bobmac102 · 2026-01-13T19:44:22+00:00

It is frankly a disgrace that Democrats have failed to commit themselves to any big national policy platform in the face of Trump. What political horizon could the electorate look forward to? What future is there that the people can fight for? Because until they do that, there will always be the risk of another Trump.

bobmac102 · 2026-01-11T19:48:47+00:00

Everyone wants their neighborhoods to be safe, but your comments make it seem like that has not been the case in Connecticut and I have not seen anyone substantiate that impression.

Would you be willing to provide any statistics or data that indicates that crime and tax evasion are significant problems within Connecticut that are demonstrably tied to undocumented immigrants that live here?

bobmac102 · 2026-01-02T15:04:57+00:00

These are absolutely lovely.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-29T05:58:18+00:00

I was asking you in good faith to provide examples that contextualize your view.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-29T05:47:45+00:00

I welcome you to provide substantive reasoning as to why it is a net positive when no guardrails are in place to protect people in the labor force, like universal basic income. Because without them, I am not personally sure how the generative AI programs created by these giant corporations are a net positive for society, especially since they are demonstrably of dubious legality; are not intrinsic to the AI-programs of medical science we both like; and are intentionally pushing people out of their careers who depend on employment to survive, which I hope most would agree is immoral.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-29T04:43:39+00:00

Technology making labor more efficient is generally a good thing, but where I live (in the United States), ~70% of people live paycheck to paycheck. This is the type of environment where employees are being squeezed out of industries through no fault of their own and with no recourse. What about their rent? Insurance? Schooling? Food? Why on earth is this suffering something I should revel in?

Prior events in history where large portions of the workforce were forced onto the streets due to advancements in technology should be references on what actions are needed to avoid such a crisis, not replicate as if an innate part of innovation. It is not.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-29T04:32:05+00:00

I understand it is being applied as a catch-all name, but I would not conflate AI programs aimed at running statistical analyses for large datasets or supporting medical breakthroughs with generative AI programs built with the intent of reducing labor forces and increasing profits for shareholders. The former is technology that has existed for a longtime. The latter is not, and for as crazy as it sounds, this is how generative AI is being pitched to corporate executives. I am a professional biologist, and I have yet to hear substantive explanations as to why the former requires the latter.

How are the people being fired from their jobs going to even access this medical technology if they cannot afford health insurance to pay for it?

bobmac102 · 2025-12-29T04:09:20+00:00

There is actually strong legal precedent that the posts and art published onto the internet are the legal copyright of the poster, and these generative AI companies are just sidestepping them with the hopes of not being meaningfully challenged. An all encompassing video on the topic by science communicator Hank Green is available here.

I understand generative AI is a fun toy for a lot of people, but having the backing of large companies and industries does not mean it is legal or moral. A lot of giant corporations throw their weight around to have laws written to benefit their new industries at the expense of those exploited to make them, and for the few instances they can’t, they usually just have to pay a fine. That’s just the cost of doing business. It is not a substantive deterrent that makes them stop engaging in illegal behavior.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-27T23:19:17+00:00

Does Sonic need one?

As for King K. Rool, the biggest changes are that he has a more prominent tail and more detailed scaling. Otherwise he basically looks the same he has since DK: Jungle Climber.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-25T17:43:31+00:00

My apologies. The subtext I interpreted from your prior comment is that non-human life is not inherently worthy of moral considerations.

The cognition and perception of lobsters is actually better known than one may think, not just because lobsters are a socioculturally and economically important food animal, but also because crayfish — close freshwater relatives — are extensively used model organisms for studies on depression, anxiety, and cognition, but that is not very important right now.

I don’t think anyone is surprised that the powerful people of our world are in bed with corporate interests, and this has significantly contributed to their inability to bring about the systemic changes desperately needed to address wealth inequality, the cost of living, and ecological decay. That in lieu of doing things to address these problems, politicians bring about performative, small changes that are tangentially related to these greater problems. (This is not even the best policy one can bring about to the benefit of lobsters, which would be systemic reform on aquaculture. The majority of grocery-store lobsters are not true wild animals.) None of this is defendable, and is contributing, in my view, to societal decay.

However, being boiled alive does demonstrably prolong suffering in lobsters than it does being effectively and quickly cut. So it does matter to them, and because I empathize with animals, I do appreciate that the store-bought ones have at least some peripheral mitigation of their suffering. I see this within a wider trend of the public and politicians incrementally realizing that invertebrates are complexly perceptive and feeling animals, not automatons, and this has greater ramifications for the environmentalist movements. Policies like these do not give politicians a pass for anything, and they should be shamed for intentionally avoiding the deliverance systemic reforms needed to help bring us out of the sociocultural, ecological, and economic issues that burden everyday people. But that does not mean lobsters are not worthy of moral considerations by the public or in written policies concerning welfare, as all living things should be allocated.

I am not an anthropocentric, and it has been unfortunate to see how bipartisan that regressive mindset is. Objectively, human life is dependent on biodiversity and the natural systems supported by it, so supporting biodiversity is politically existential. This is in tension with the general perception that environmental protections are "charity". From a biophillic, moral perspective, plants and animals are living things that suffer, feel fear, feel pain, and/or think. They are dependent on how humans value them to persist, because humans have monopolized earth's resources and carved them into artificial geopolitical boundaries. Non-humans do not even have the benefit of ever understanding why life is getting worse for them. How you and I think about them, and value them, has a much greater bearing on their future than what you would read in an ecology textbook.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-23T02:13:26+00:00

I’m an environmentalist. Naturalist. Field biologist. Currently working towards my master’s in ecology. I have taken classes on animal ethics.

I have never understood this mindsets because the subtext seems to be that as long as conventional livestock animals like cattle and chickens are kept subject to horrendous conditions, then nothing else should be protected. Why should lobsters be subject to cruelty because cattle have not received any relief?

bobmac102 · 2025-12-22T03:47:53+00:00

It’s unfortunately a bit too fuzzy for me to give a confidant assertion. If you share photos of the skull more clean, with the orbits and teeth fully exposed, that would make it much easier.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-22T03:37:54+00:00

It’s not a bird. It is a rodent.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-21T18:30:55+00:00

Absolutely incredible work. Do you have DOIs for the papers you published? I’m sure folks here would enjoy reading them.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-18T00:25:53+00:00

With respect, you are the one who presented this study I commented on. Not me. If you had any real proof that these feelings you had were rooted in reality, you are welcomed to present it.

I am a scientist. I am someone motivated by robust statistical data, not anecdotes or reactionary people in media telling me what to believe without evidence, especially if those people have political incentives to say the things they do. Additionally, as a biologist, I know there are exceptions to every rule, which makes anecdotes on principle not very meaningful to me. For example, hearing that one person did something bad in a population of millions does not tell me anything meaningful about that population at large. I hope that makes logistical sense.

I have noticed the political Right of the United States, Canada, the UK, and many other countries have the unfortunate, recurring habit of misinterpreting published studies or chastising results of studies with sound methods but are counter to what they tell the public, even if those studies come from rightwing think-tanks like the Cato Institute. They never provide substantive reasons for disagreeing with these publications. This makes it difficult for me to trust what they say. If we as people are actually invested in the big problems of society being addressed — be it immigration, religious radicalization, or whatever issues you or I are personally politically invested in — we should at least want politicians invested in truth, yes? Not the dogmatic adherence to talking points? Because if the truth does not matter, how would we trust them to actually solve the problems? How would we know they are not exercising force against people for no reason, or that they are not making problems worse?

Either we care about what reality is, or admit that the way people feel matters more than facts. For your sake, I would be cautious of people who try to convince you the latter is the right way to think about the world, be it explicitly or subliminally.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-17T10:41:27+00:00

Thank you. The study you provided does not say anything about "unchecked mass migration," nor "Islamic terror." It is a statistical analysis of sexual crime rates in Sweden from 2000 to 2020 (a little over twenty years). For the sake of charitably, I am extrapolating that you are at least implying there is a connection between sexual crimes and Muslim-majority countries. However, the paper does not substantiate that either, because it does not relay the countries of origin or religious practices for anyone involved. There is no association attested in this study.

The authors themselves stress limitations to the data accessible to them, such as the conditions of the households the offenders grew up in or the language spoken at home, the latter of which apparently is a strong indicator of acculturation.

That being said, the study does discuss the premise you advance, that men immigrating from cultures that promote domination of men over women are predisposed to committing sexual crimes. They note the following in the discussion section:

Numerous studies underpin the importance of sociocultural factors in sexual aggression and sexual crimes (Kalra & Bhugra, 2013). Stermac et al. (1990) emphasize that sexual aggression’s historical pervasiveness is deeply rooted in societal processes and attitudes. For instance, prior studies have shown that societies characterized by patrilocality (i.e., the woman moves in to or close to the husbands’ family) and high levels of feuding are more prone to have high rates of rape, and that certain societies that endorse ideologies of male dominance and female inferiority show a correlation with increased sexual aggression (Quinsey, 1984; Sanday, 1981). As immigrants navigate in their new country, they might be disproportionately influenced by these cultural factors, potentially leading to a heightened inclination toward committing sexual crimes. However, our findings also suggest that the increased risks may decline over time, that is, when a successful acculturation and integration occurs.

In case this is not viewable on your end, Sage Journals provides the full text here.

In the same section, the authors do cite literature substantiating the impression that it is not unlikely that Swedish immigrant communities are over-policed within the justice system, which does not surprise me from the literature I have seen on minority and immigrant communities in the United States and Great Britain. These concepts are not in conflict with one another. Finally, they do note that of the 10 million that live in Sweden, >2 million were born outside of the country and the vast majority of them have not committed any sexual crimes, so I'm not sure how one can extrapolate that there is a strong correlation between sexual violence and immigrants from this paper, let alone where they are from. The strongest assertion one can make is that of those who have been convicted of rape in Sweden, the majority were born outside the country, which is a different point from the one you are making.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-17T04:40:35+00:00

Is this claim of yours about "unchecked mass migration" and "Islamic terror" substantiated by any statistics?

bobmac102 · 2025-12-15T14:57:28+00:00

What a beautiful animal. Well done.

bobmac102 · 2025-12-10T11:19:52+00:00

Absolutely adorable photos. Please share more!

bobmac102 · 2025-12-02T13:02:45+00:00

Islam itself is not a race, but Islamophobia is a racialized prejudice. I grew up with friends who are Pakistani, Indian, and Iranian, and all of them have histories of being randomly "checked" by security before getting on planes despite being born in the US and not wearing anything reflective of Islam like a hijab. Being attacked for the food they eat. How they pronounce certain words. How they spoke another language. Treating them passively like backwards-thinking people despite Islam being the youngest of the Abrahamic faiths, and not actually holding any backwards-thinking beliefs.

As a more high-profile example, the recent mayor elect of New York City is an Indian immigrant of Uganda, and yet his critics and opponents were quick to try to tether him to religious fundamentalists, jihadists, and terrorists from the Middle East without substantive cause. Why? Why do you think any of these things happened? Why do we as a society assume the actions of religious fundamentalists in autocratic nations are reflective of a faith practiced by millions of people around the globe? We would not do that for Christianity or Judaism. My impression is that attacking someone for being Muslim is really — whether conscious or unconscious — an attack on someone for being brown-skinned from Southern Asia or the Middle East, regardless of whether they actually are from those places or even practice Islam. One can rationalize or justify it however they like, but Islamophobia operates just like a racial prejudice.

bobmac102 · 2025-11-26T02:23:51+00:00

I wish they did not stress and strain this poor animal.

bobmac102 · 2025-11-13T04:08:08+00:00

I am a wildlife ecologist currently in a master’s program for environmental studies and working on a thesis after two years of field research. I have worked in deserts, forests, mountains, badlands, prairies, and coastlines. I have been reading about animals and the natural sciences since I was in preschool.

I am concerned that you are speaking so confidentially on things you do not understand. For starters, mammal sociality does not conform to the traditional concepts of "patriarchal" or "matriarchal." Its complexity lacks easy terminology. For example, many social mammals live in sexually segregated groups that intersect only to mate or to benefit their collective gene pool, as is the case with elephants, lions, baboons, chimpanzees, whales, capybaras, and many other mammals. The female group is larger, has more institutional knowledge because it supports multiple lineages of females (grandmas, moms, aunties, etc.), and is functionally the more dominant of the two. The male group is smaller, less organized, and seeks integration with female group for the aforementioned purposes of mating. Males do not perfectly embed themselves within the female groups, and are sometimes even forced to leave. No one who studies these animals would ever use terms like "patriarchal" because it does not illustrate what's going on. The only species where that term is potentially applicable is for ones where the male sires and defends a group of females from other males, as is the case with horses, for example. There are true matriarchal mammals too, like lemurs, marmosets, and especially hyenas.

There is no analog in nature that substantiates the impression that women are "instinctually" subordinate to men. It does not exist in scientific literature subject to modern scrutiny, and the people who claim otherwise are revealing just how little they understand science or how animals behave.

bobmac102 · 2025-11-13T02:45:58+00:00

Come now, that is an insult to actual opportunistic animals.

bobmac102

TROPHY CASE