• 3 Posts
  • 1.53K Comments
Joined 8 months ago
Cake day: December 19th, 2025
  • Janx@piefed.socialtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.world•Its onEnglish
    9·
    3 hours ago

    How is it dumb? Because you don’t like supporting an imperfect candidate? I understand that, but “never red until dead” is what got us Trump. Like, literally. I’ve posted this before, but this would have been the result if “Did Not Vote” was a political candidate in 2024:

    And 2020:

    And 2016:

    That’s enough to swing the election to either party, all 3 times. Hell, it was enough to hand both the 2016 and 2024 elections to an unaffiliated, 3rd-party candidate who had zero corporate sponsors and would work 100% for the benefit of working people in every state in the country, without having to listen to a single lobbyist! And Trump would never have been been president.

    But we have to be realistic. With the Electrical College and our “first past the post” system, a 3rd party candidate has no chance of winning a presidential election. Not yet. Now, that alone will piss people off and they’ll downvote this very comment, but it’s the truth. Other countries have more than 2 parties, so they can organize strategic coalitions. If that “Did Not Vote” actually was a political party, both sides would have to pay attention to them, because again, every single election they could defeat either party. Power to The People.

    So why do I mention this in the context of “vote blue, no matter who”? Because of Trump. Because the Republican party doesn’t pivot to working for The People when they can’t win elections. They pivot to fascism, voter suppression, unlimited dark money in elections, discrimination, Supreme Court overreach, foreign interference, fake electors, and literal fraud. But all of this corruption, unaffordability, and incompetence could have been avoided, simply by supporting the candidate who was not my favorite and probably not yours either. It’s much more important to defeat Republicans than it is to have a purity test most politicians will fail. At least until we have election reform. Because the very instant we have more than 2 parties, I’ll shut up about this. But until then, we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good…

  • Janx@piefed.socialtomemes@lemmy.world•Adult life in 2026, so beautifulEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    A reasonable assumption to make, but you would be wrong.

    According to Howard Carter, president of the board of trustees at the Water Environment Federation (WEF), a nonprofit established in 1928 that works to protect public health and the environment, this isn’t just a nightmare scenario—it’s a reality for these workers. Carter tells CR that workers can be on call any given night, and it’s not unusual to get calls at 2 a.m. because of pumps blocked by wipes. “We try to keep up with these things by engineering different products to help, but it’s just a very, very expensive endeavor,” Carter says. These costs, part of the NACWA’s estimate of $441 million a year in operating costs to deal with wipes in sewage systems, range from investing in new technologies to track the level of water in pipes and manholes due to blockages from wipes, to investing in new pumps that will actually cut up the wipes. “These are all extra capital costs associated with increased staff time to monitor and remediate,” Carter says.

    Hell, here’s a link to a FAQ from a company that would benefit from more people using “flushable” wipes:

    https://www.rotorooter.com/blog/toilet/wet-wipes-not-passing-plumbers-flushability-test