Vaguely related, a few years ago I made a map of "how to drive from SF to NYC while passing through the minimum number of Republican-voting counties": https://github.com/louispotok/blue-road-trip
With some maps of Cretaceous sediments, fertile Black Belt Prairie soil, farm size 1997, slave population 1860, black population 2010, and Election Results.
A little bit about the soils from a different link:
"The Black Belt is the only region in Alabama with extensive regions of alkaline soils (soil pH> 7.0). Early settlers discovered these clayey soils held more nutrients and were generally more productive than the sandier Coastal Plain soils. For this reason, many of the large, antebellum cotton plantations were located in the Black Belt region of Alabama and Mississippi. Black Belt soil color is dark because of the humus, or decomposed organic matter, that often coats the clay particles. However, severe erosion due to intensive farming practices removed much of the dark, rich topsoil."
https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/healthy-soils/alabama-soils...
Meanwhile there is a more interesting subthread exploring an interesting historical and geological reason behind why some of the counties in question leaned Democratic you don’t seem too interested in. Strange…
And I said by doing this you make online discussions miserable, not that I myself am miserable. If you aim to derail the argument with personal attacks in the form of keyboard psychoanalysis - reading comprehension is very much required.
You might have gotten too much internet sun this week, throw some ointment on it and stay in the shade. You are the only person going political in this thread.
When everyone around you seemingly makes everything political, maybe it's sometimes the observer and not the observed?
> I appreciate everybody's totally genuine concern about my mental health.
It's probably more genuine than you think, however hard that is to believe.
I made it a point to have the sub remain Apolitical - total disaster to the point where the corrupt reddit admins got involved and kicked me out of the sub (admins have tons of alt accounts they use to get mod status in /r/'s)
Its very hard to be apolitical at all these days because the constant barrage of damage control and distractions used to shield US lawmakers from corruption scrutiny. And it affects our lives on a daily basis.
Look at the news cycle today. Literally today ; talking about 'running out of money and raising the debt ceiling' - but zero acknowledgement of the ~250 BILLION dollars we have thus far sent to Ukraine for another proxy war. Fuck that.
We have fucking zombies slurping off the government tit (feinstein) and a crap ton of geriatric long time sitters with dementia and corrupt insider activities
https://i.imgur.com/fRlfeB2.png
https://i.imgur.com/aNoLw7X.png
A lot of that money exists only on paper. Take a warehouse full of air defense missiles manufactured in 2000, with a cost of $3m per missile and a shelf life of 25 years. If you give 200 of them to Ukraine to defend its citizens from Russian terror attacks, then on paper that costs $600m. If you use "replacement value" as cost and new missiles cost $6m (because they're better), you can inflate their value to $1.2bn. If you do nothing and let them expire, they'll be worthless in 2 years and you'll just write that $600m or $1.2bn off. In either case, accounting reports lots of money spent, but no real money actually changes hands. That money was already spent decades ago and you aren't saving anything by withholding missiles. By giving air defense missiles to Ukraine instead of letting them sit in a warehouse until they become obsolete, you at least do something useful with them.
This last comment extends, at an uncomfortable level, the politics argument and name calling you started and you’re accusing others of, for no discernible reason.
I don't see the issue with the comment, he didn't assign any judgement to the map. Which is where the politics problem usually arises.
Furthermore, clearly some things are too political to bring up in some places. This is not controversial. We can all agree we shouldn't let schools preach political propaganda to our children "because everything is political anyways." Or that churches shouldn't preach political propoganda "because everything is political anyways." This is one such case - it's a divisive partisan viewpoint that is only loosely related to the original topic and has nothing to do with hacker news. I assume the original poster meant no harm but it's still a negative contribution.
“Democratic counties”, right? I understand that it’s a common epithet used to deride an opposing party; but if one wishes to remain apolitical isn’t it better to apply the neutrality of using the party’s actual name and conventions of capitalization?
The original post is about roads, those roads exist (or don't exist) due to political processes.
> Furthermore, clearly some things are too political to bring up in some places.
Can you please explain what is too political about that post? I don't really get what you take offense at? It's just the result of a vote?
Simple fact most Red's don't want to associate with Blue's and it's the same on the other side. Sure individuals won't agree but they are a minority. If you don't like the project, then just move on it has NOTHING to do with you.
It seems to me that "everything is political" is just a way to provide cover for pushing partisan viewpoints places.
Sure, some states are targeting Trans people with the worst offending state being Texas, whose recently indicated-and-stripped-of-power AG ken Paxton criminalized provision of gender affirming care to children as child abuse. But this map goes across the full length of the worst state for trans people, so I don't really see how that map helps LGBT people.
This feels like 1998 on IRC. I'm shaking my head and laughing at the same time.
I mean on the internet anyone can anonymously claim they're anything, but what this person in particular is claiming doesn't sound out of the realm of possibilities at all.
https://www.gsa.gov/policy-regulations/regulations/federal-t...
My understanding is in Florida you can be arrested for dressing in opposition to the gender you were assigned at birth. If witnessed by a child this can be considered a sex crime, for which sex crimes involving children in Florida are eligible for the death penalty. Do I think this is likely to happen? Yes. The past 4-6 years have demonstrated we keep /hoping/ for de-escalation, but then examples are made that get national attention and evil things become normalized. Can and 'will happen' are subjective, but they did recently make it legal to seize trans kids.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/desantis-signs-florida-ban-...
I'm part of an employee advocacy group. It is my role to be sensitive and address concerns some may consider isolated or minute. Things we never thought we'd have to discuss at work are now being discussed to keep (management), employees, and families aware of risks and safe.
What is your definition of evil?
Try describing a concrete situation in which someone is accused under these laws you speak of, and then is able to escape by simply moving over the state border. Do you live in the world of the Dukes of Hazzard, where they can escape the Sheriff as long as they manage to cross the border? Do you think there are no extradition laws between the states?
Maybe return through maximally republican counties and compare?