I never thought I’d say this, but can we channel a little Andrew Jackson energy in regard to the courts?

We have so much empty space in much of the country, I dont know why we can’t just build a few cities for them. I’m not sure the cost of these detention centers vs a functioning town, but if we gave them real housing, infrastructure, and gave them a place to work and earn income during their asylum or immigration process, it sounds much less cruel and more productive, and would treat them like human beings and get a start on building a life here.

Thanks for sharing these. There has really been a bunch of good to come out of this administration. Much of it isn’t flashy stuff that gets talked about, but there is a lot that really should be important to a lot of people.

I think Biden has exceeded most expectations many of us had for him. There are always going to be things presidents do that we won’t agree with. Obama was also pretty crappy with immigrants, drone strikes, and a number of other things, but it seems we’re able to look back at his terms as a net positive. If Biden didn’t have to clean up after Trump and Covid, I think he could have been a very memorable president.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pissed about Gaza and the border, but Gaza is a result of almost 100 years of bad policy of many parties, and the number of regular people still bitching about false immigration stories is pressuring all representatives to be harsh on that. We can only expect a president to do so much if a large swath of Congress and the people themselves are against something.

How any business or their associates have a say in the final regulation and enforcement of that regulation on themselves seems antithetical, and we see it fail over and over from oil companies, the police, chemical manufacturers, mining and logging industries, and so on.

They don’t leave us to write ourselves traffic tickets or fine ourselves for zoning violations, because that would be an idiotic approach. Suddenly when it comes to business and industry, it magically makes sense then? Some things I’ll never understand…

Did some more digging to get us some more helpful info here. I assembled quotes from 3 articles to make you guys a more cohesive story. Take that AI, I’m coming for your jobs! 😆

First quote is from OP’s PBS article. The rest is assembled from this BBC article, and this other article that the BBC referred to for their info.

Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where the poor cannot afford licensed brands from government-run shops. The illicit liquor, which is often spiked with chemicals such as pesticides to increase potency, has also become a hugely profitable industry as bootleggers pay no taxes and sell enormous quantities of their product to the poor at a cheap rate.

The district police had arrested one person on Wednesday, June 19, identified as Kannukutty (49). He is accused of peddling the liquor. The police had also seized 200 litres of liquor from his possession. According to the police, Kannukutty had mixed methanol in the country liquor and had sold it in packets.

Family members of the deceased, however, told TNM that the police are complicit. “Illicit liquor is regularly sold in this area. The police know. If someone complains, they will stop for 10 days but resume again. If a person complains, the police will tip the peddler off on who raised the complaint and immediately, that person is threatened by the peddlers. That’s why people have refrained from complaining. The peddlers definitely pay a sum of money to the police to continue selling illicit liquor,” a family member of a victim said.

Another family member of the victim added that Karunapuram’s Dalit Colony has seen the most number of deaths. “The sale of illicit liquor is so rampant here that even 13 and 15-year-old boys are being sold packets by peddlers. These peddlers are now also selling Marijuana. Today, despite so many deaths, no one apart from the Tahsildar and a few police have come to this Dalit Colony. We want the officials to initiate strict action and put an end to the sale of drugs and illicit liquor,” she added.

A day earlier, Chief Minister MK Stalin expressed his shock over the tragic incident and announced actions against officials who failed to prevent it. In a post on X, MK Stalin said, “I was shocked and saddened to hear the news of the deaths of people who had consumed adulterated liquor in Kallakurichi. Those involved in the crime have been arrested in this matter. Action has also been taken against the officials who failed to prevent it.

Authorities have also suspended a senior police official and ten members of the state’s prohibition enforcement wing - which overseas the smuggling of illicit alcohol in the state - for negligence.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has announced a compensation of 1m rupees ($12,000; £9,425) to families of those who have died and 50,000 rupees each to those who are hospitalised.

It may be noted that earlier, in May 2023 as well, 22 persons lost their lives after consuming illicit liquor in Villupuram and Chengalpattu districts of Tamil Nadu. The Villupuram police had confirmed that the fatalities were due to the presence of methanol in the spurious alcohol consumed.

“The deaths caused by illicit liquor in the past two years under the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] regime have decelerated Tamil Nadu by four decades, taking us back to the 1980s,” said K Annamalai, the state chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He demanded that the minister in charge of overseeing the sale of alcohol should resign immediately.

They’re well mannered and don’t take up much space is the answer in seeing in all the search results.

I try to put a lot of emphasis on encouraging new posters and commenters. I don’t get why you’d come to the “wild west” of social media to just be solely a lurker. You should want to be an explorer and a settler, forging that new frontier. I won’t hate on the lurkers, they will always be the majority, but why deal with the quirk, less ease of use, and less content to not want to help shape what it becomes?

I came over intending to lurk, hence my crap username, but what I wanted wasn’t here, but I didnt want to crawl back to Reddit, so I started building, and it’s great. People are friendly, you have less competition for attention, and the userbase is largely supportive of whatever you do because you’re doing something.

But ultimately, as long as we arent on an extended downswing, we’re doing well. I’ll keep making posts and giving positive feedback, so hopefully it keeps catching new people with the bug to interact.

The increase in monthly is just mainly replacing users leaving as the active 6 month seems to be going down the same rate as active monthly is going up. Am I reading that correctly?

Total users doesn’t concern me too badly, as I’m more happy to see daily post and comment counts going up. I feel activity needs to be our focus rather than headcount. A packed stadium is kinda pointless if nobody is on stage putting on the show! 😁

Just have the Hussars bring buckets with them next time they come…

I do give them credit for running a creative scam this long while staying technically on the right side of the law, but I gave up on going to shows about 8 years ago now.

Between the crazy cost and dealing with rude fans at the shows, I just pass on going now.

Lol exactly, hence the monopoly accusations. We’re on to you Ticketmaster/LiveNation!

I do remember this episode. They go into it a bit at the 5 minute mark, but didn’t get into many specifics.

It looks like Hollywood accounting to me still. If we look at the statements from Ticketmaster’s site for answers, we get:

Who sets the ticket price? Artists, promoters, sports leagues, or teams decide how they want to sell their tickets on Ticketmaster. That includes setting the face value prices, determining how many tickets to sell, and when to put them on sale.

How much money does Ticketmaster make from a ticket? Ticketmaster doesn’t keep anything from the face value cost of a ticket. We take a portion of the fees added to the ticket. As a ticketing vendor selected by the venue, Ticketmaster’s portion covers the costs of the technology, people, and resources needed to provide a safe and secure ticket-buying experience. It also covers the equipment and support we provide venues with, helping them to manage their box office and seamlessly get everyone into the venue on event day.

What are service fees? Service fees are an essential cost of putting on a show. The venue sets the service fee rate card and keeps most of the service fees, sharing a portion with Ticketmaster, sports teams, leagues, promoters, and other parties who have a hand in making live events happen.

Can you tell me how many tickets have been sold for an event? For all inquiries on pricing and sales you must reach out to the event organizer directly.

And if we look at LiveNation:

As the world’s largest live entertainment company, Live Nation is the one-stop solution for all your event needs. From corporate events to private live concerts, to social gatherings, our event specialists provide seamless execution, including event planning, experiential marketing, state-of-the-art equipment, live entertainment and more.

And also:

With over 150 venues across North America, we offer unique event spaces, state-of-the-art production and branding capabilities, as well as an experienced staff ready to exceed your guests’ expectations.

So while plenty of money is leaving Ticketmaster, a very large chunk of that is likely going right back into several of their other pockets.

The LWT piece also goes into how only a minority of tickets actually go to sale to the public, leaving the rest up for resale, which they also have the potential to get a slice of as well, and they have seemingly done nothing to combat resllers or bots.

So LiveNation I can understand having slimmer margins since they seem to be providing actual services and have overhead on their physical ownings and staff, but Ticketmaster itself still seems to mainly by an app and marketing department.

Live Nation said Thursday it doesn’t benefit from monopoly pricing, saying that Ticketmaster service charges “are no higher than elsewhere, and frequently lower.” The company noted its overall net profit margin is at the low end of S&P 500 companies.

How do they not make a killing? What are they spending their money on? I can’t remember how many years ago it’s been since I got a physical ticket besides the ones I had to pay them for to print myself.

Down with monoculture! Down with monoculture!

It will always be a challenge, but we’re also in an era where communication is available to us at the same capacity it is to the propagandists. We’ve got leakers and whistleblowers like never before. We also have crackpots who can do the same, but it’s much harder to isolate and silence those with positive agendas.

All we can do is keep trying to learn all we can and apply our critical thinking and share what we learn. I post a lot here and always try to show references, as itn no expert on anything, just someone with a love of learning.

We all get fed info from everywhere, it’s just our individual responsibility to filter through it and verify it. Nothing to feel guilty over, just post if the joy of the human experience. 🙃

It’s easier for us to fight each other as individuals instead of focusing our dissatisfaction toward the ones causing these problems, so I didn’t want to see this sink down into that when everyone had valid criticisms. I want to see the people and environment be protected.

From looking it up quick, 90% of palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, so it is important to understand how it is being produced, so I’ve marked some things to read so I can get better informed. I’m glad you were brave enough to speak up when everyone was pretty fired up on the issue already.

I think the anger is directed and the agricultural conglomerates and the governments that have allowed those groups to pillage these places while selling out their countrymen, not the farm workers themselves or the citizens of those countries. Probably no matter the issue, that is likely the case. I know palm oil is important to many people, and colonialism is a lot of the cause of these issues for both the people and those that care about the local environments, as many times they are the same people.

Many people, myself included, don’t know much about the current Malay government, so the initial action being mistrust of something like this shouldn’t be a surprise. As people are realizing how much of our natural resources we’ve squandered for quick cash, I don’t fault them for being angry.

As you said though, it’s important to realize there are good and bad actors in all of these situations, plus many doing what they need to survive in many of these regions.

Thanks for sharing this. I always get excited when I see the coelacanth pop up in the news.

It was amazing to get to see one at the Smithsonian. It felt like seeing something that I shouldn’t be able to see, like something of this world, but not, at the same time. I can’t imagine how thrilling it would be to see them in person and to learn about them directly.

I’ve been really impressed so far. I’m going to have to try it with a physical controller, I’m not used to mobile gaming, so especially using the screen for the dpad makes it feel kinda clunky.

Design wise and what they were able to accomplish is quite impressive. It looks beautiful and is giving me about the same quality of experience as LttP.