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All living creatures who want the planet to still be habitable in 20 years celebrate 'wonderful' new bill that will lower incentives for people to burn coal to collect imaginary tokens.

I'm sure you didn't mean to cause offense, but this comment is so incredibly frustrating and highlights the incredible ignorance and stereotyping of rural America that's still common.

My reaction to this comment was to shudder the same way as if someone had said "A black person on hacker news? Please tell me more"

Modern farmers are polyglot technologists. Hybrid GMO seeds are selected to optimize yield in their specific soil and weather conditions. Tractors are largely self-driving along with a host of technology to rival a race car and harvesters give live feedback on the quality and quantity of grain so that farmers can make decisions about what to do with the grain- sell immediately, store, or take to a specialized storage facility to dry. Crops are rotated seasonally to minimize pests and optimize soil quality, sometimes on complex multi-year patterns of cover crops, cash crops, spring harvests, etc. Underground "tiling" is installed to speed the flow of water away from low-lying sections of fields to maintain consistent soil moisture across fields on rolling hills. And the futures, options, insurance and debt financing decisions to maintain stable income in the face of unpredictable weather and commodity prices rivals what any investment banker in Manhattan is doing. And that's just for commodity grain producers, meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables have their own unique uses of cutting edge science and technology.

A group of farmers in Iowa sitting at a conference about managing soil nitrogen are likely leveraging far more real science and tech than a group of web developers in the bay discussing the latest updates to React.

Or make other changes that make it possible for more people to do away with cars- better mass transit, better pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, less urban sprawl, more condensed housing options, etc

No, a handful of Trump supporters walked around taking selfies for a few minutes inside a building because they mistakenly believed the election was fraudulent. They did not hold any power at any point and were not right wing nor driven by a left/right idealogical divide, they were fools mislead about vote integrity.

That said, left wing extremists did actually seize and hold a section of Seattle for an extended period of time, which would be a more genuine example of a failed state- violent rebels holding territory inside a major city.

The anti-American scree at the end here is hilariously inaccurate. The "inequality" has a kernel of truth- but that's why having a high salary in the US is amazing.

I'm an average developer at an unglamorous company you've never heard of. I have unlimited vacation and lots of company holidays. Parental leave is full pay for 5 or 6 months, my monthly healthcare costs are the same as a single hour of wage if I was paid hourly, which thankfully I'm on salary because I really only work about 30 hours a week. My city isn't very walkable overall, but my high salary means I can live in the area that is. Oh, and despite buying everything that I want I still save so much that I'll be retired at age 40.

And again- I'm not special or unique or lucky or privileged. I went to a public school in a poor area, got a job by applying to a public listing with no connections, and haven't had any lucky IPO or investment win, just plain boring salary at a plain boring company writing CRUD applications.

Western Europe gives a better quality of life than America if you're low income. America gives better quality of life if you're high income. Eastern Europe is mostly lower quality regardless of occupation.

The "nobody visibly cared, then some people cared more loudly, then everyone cared" pattern exists in essentially everything.

Climate change, opioid addiction, police murders, genocide in China, microplastics, childhood obesity, #metoo, whatever other thing.

That's just how society works. There are a billion different things happening every day, at any given moment some are gaining attention and some are losing attention. Everybody will care about the most popular one for a while, some laws might get passed or someone might go to jail or get elected or give a speech, and then it'll fade from the mainstream news and daily conversation will move on to the next issue.

This isn't some coordinated conspiracy, this is the pattern of how literally every issue ebbs and flows in attention.