senorali

senorali t1_jdw3xfn wrote

I live in a red state as well. The reason I'm reluctant to tell people it's going to be okay is because of the police. If they come to Texas and go to a town like Vidor, which was historically a Klan town, they are not safe calling the police for help if they don't visibly 'fit in'. Even when the attitudes of the general public change, and their voting habits change, the small town red state cops will still be small town red state cops.

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senorali t1_jdv2bqm wrote

I should've been more specific, I was thinking more along the lines of carnivorous megafauna that would directly antagonize kangaroos. The camels are an interesting case, but haven't been there long enough to seriously disrupt the ecosystem. Given a few million years, they likely will push the kangaroos out of some prime real estate if left unchecked. Every other part of the world has large hoofed mammals and large cats, and nothing quite like a kangaroo.

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senorali t1_jdv0ctn wrote

Oh, definitely. All the extant bipedal animals are pretty decent at what they do in various ways (the ostrich uses its wings as rudders to steer at high speeds, which is neat). It just seems that large cats are their greatest enemy, and probably a much bigger obstacle to their success than other carnivorans like dogs and bears. Big cats have successfully hunted both apes and flightless birds for millions of years, and would probably give kangaroos a lot of trouble as ambush predators if they ever found their way to Australia.

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senorali t1_jduc191 wrote

Bipedal animals that primarily move with their legs are efficient long-distance runners but less nimble than comparable four-legged animals. They do well on open plains, typically. Humans, ostriches, and kangaroos all fall into this category.

These types of open environments can't support as much biomass or biodiversity as, say, forests. So even if there was an equal distribution of forests and plains across the world, the plains could support far fewer species overall and thus there would be fewer species optimized for this type of long-distance running.

And honestly, it's not a terribly effective body plan. A lot of flightless birds go extinct when they come in contact with quadrapedal mammals, from the terror birds of old to modern species that are currently being wiped out by invasive rats and cats in isolated island habitats. Kangaroos survive because they live on the only continent without mammalian megafauna. The only things big enough to regularly threaten them are slow-moving reptiles like monitors and crocs.

Humans are kind of a fluke. We developed tool use before we were fully bipedal, and even with that advantage, our ancestors were preyed upon by big cats and other quadrapedal mammals. The loss of two functional limbs for locomotion is a huge risk, even with tools.

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senorali t1_j9izg24 wrote

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senorali t1_j6u9cr3 wrote

Wait, he did the N-Strike line too? I knew about Super Soaker, didn't know about the dart blasters. Do you have a link to that?

Edit: So after some reading, it looks like that's not exactly the case. He created the pressurized air blasters (which are basically just the Super Soakers, but shooting darts), but that wasn't N-Strike.

Still, his contributions were priceless and he ended up winning a lawsuit against Hasbro for underpaid royalties. Anyone who gives Hasbro a good kick in the dick is okay in my book.

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senorali t1_iurtm7d wrote

The problem with flat fines is that they disproportionately punish people with less money. Big real estate firms can do a simple cost:benefit to determine if they make more from fees than the pay in court, and continue the practice indefinitely.

On the other hand, fines proportional to the company's net worth? Now we're talking.

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senorali t1_iub1bww wrote

You're being pedantic and ignoring the fact that if a group in practice behaves a certain way, it doesn't matter what their stated goals are. Their actual behavior overrides that. You're not providing some amazing revelation by saying "actually, not all of them are like that". These motherfuckers were still segregated 50 years after the Civil Rights Act.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna15405618

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