I personally don’t agree that Mexican food in the US is particularly good on average. Maybe in certain specific border regions. But even here in Northern CA where we have a large population with Mexican ancestry, it’s fairly mediocre compared to Mexico. And it was even worse in other parts of the country I’ve had it.

That said, Mexico is one of the top culinary countries in the world in my estimation, so perhaps American Mexican food is still fairly solid despite falling short of this very high bar.

Yeah I don't think it was wrong to do so. In the past climate regime, destructive wildfires in January were essentially unheard of. I was just surprised that the article did not mention this detail.

Gotta focus on what you personally have control over. We can't directly influence the way other people behave, especially those we don't know. Refocus on how you can help (and be helped by) people in your own community and you will feel much better.

If you're not sure where to start just do an internet search for "mutual aid [your city/region]" and show up to an in-person event. That should get the ball rolling.

Short term, there's really not much they could have done better. These were extreme conditions and they were bound to cause fire to a large extent in the current context of peri-urban development and forest mismanagement.

Long term, things could have been different but it would require major political and social changes in how we build cities and how we manage our wildlands. Happy to go into more detail if you are curious.

Reddit? What's that?

Bluesky or Threads logo.

It was only when Minsung traded video games for playing real-life games, including Dungeons and Dragons, that he met women, and his views shifted. He became, in his words, an "ardent feminist".

Tabletop gaming has really come a long way since the early days.

According to the LA Times, “Before the fire, all 114 tanks that supply the city water infrastructure were completely filled,” but the firefighting efforts required four times the normal demand, for 15 hours, which reduced water pressure. Fact-checker Verify noted, “Fire hydrants used by firefighters ran out of water because of high water demand that is outpacing the speed at which water service officials can replenish the tanks,” and quoted water policy expert Jeff Mount, who said, “At no time during this fire has there been a shortage of water in southern California. Their reservoirs are full. And there is nothing to be done with water that would have changed the course of these fires.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/8/25; Verify, 1/8/25]

My understanding was that a key reservoir was empty because it needed repairs, but they don't mention this. Did they miss this detail or were earlier reports incorrect?

If we were on a forum full of flat earth people you would see the problem.

But Lemmy is full of flat earther level thinkers on other topics. So it is a problem.

This is the same type of ideological purity that Lemmy.ml is infamous for enforcing. I don’t want to be like them and that means tolerating some opinions that are kind of stupid as long as they don’t hurt anyone.

I’m not saying it’s a good thing or that I agree with what they said. Maybe you’re right that they should use a different account. Is that normal for admins?

It does kind of open up the possibility of more abuse by banning people in arguments without it being obvious that it was personal. But on the other hand I guess that was always possible.

But who decides what is reality? We all think we know the true reality but people have huge disagreements about what is or isn’t true. Compared to the spectrum of what many many people genuinely believe, your or my idea of reality is narrow.

I disagree. If they have a pattern of behavior to suggest disagreement with them will cause them to abuse their power then sure but there’s no such pattern highlighted here.

Admins have opinions too. There’s no way to avoid it and suggesting that you’re only fit to be an admin if those opinions fall within a narrow palatable range is silly. Unless you’re an NPC you probably have some hot take that would be widely criticized about something. I think our culture right now is way too focused on these types of takedowns. They might be appropriate in a few cases but one bad opinion on something that barely matters is not one of those cases.

Admittedly the whole concept of an admin being elevated above other users is problematic in my view but that’s kind of a separate topic.

There’s no evidence this happens on Lemmy though. You don’t need a conspiracy to explain the fact that the site was founded by people with a certain viewpoint and it has and continues to attract more such people as it grows.

Definitely not the right community. This isn’t supposed to be about bad hot takes it’s about abuse of power.

Yeah brigading is an organized effort by definition. Maybe it did happen here I don’t know the situation but I’ve many times seen people whine about being brigaded when it was just unpopular to random disorganized groups of people.

Now I tend to think people do downvote too much but that’s a separate issue.

Are you trolling right now? The mod thought you were.

People think and do dumb shit all the time completely genuinely. Just because something seems crazy to you doesn’t mean it seems crazy to everyone. We all have a different perspective.

I understand the concept you’re describing but you aren’t applying or understanding it correctly. In fact, California’s climate is dominated by this effect because prevailing winds bring cool oceanic air to the state which is why coastal areas do not get extremely hot or cool. As this air warms across land the humidity drops, so this climate is a bit unique in the way it works but there is typically no extreme heat combined with humidity.

In contrast, the eastern US receives most of its air from dry inland areas, which is why the climate is so seasonally variable. It’s true that the more humid climate does reduce the diurnal temperature swing, and this means absolute maximum temperatures can be lower in many humid climates compared to their arid counterparts. But this ignores that the human body can tolerate dry heat much more effectively than humid heat. So the relationship between aridity and extreme heat mortality is more complicated than it first appears. The most vulnerable places are those that are both hot and humid like the gulf coast, parts of the Middle East, and India. There’s absolutely no reason to think California will be rendered uninhabitable by extreme heat in the foreseeable future.

None of these links support what you’re saying. Yes, heat is increasing, as it is virtually everywhere. Precipitation changes are small as outline in the graphic. And the heavily inhabited parts of California are along the coast where the modeled changes in GDP are negligible.

Now I personally suspect it may be worse than this but it certainly does not support the idea that California is somehow a dramatically worse place to be than anywhere else in the country. I know there has been some speculation that the upper Midwest and northeast might constitute some kind of climate refuge but I doubt this. These areas are generally humid and not well prepared for heat, and we’ve already seen huge wildfires and increased flash flooding in many northern areas. Not to mention extreme pest outbreaks and forest dieback, increases in mosquito-born illnesses, and even arctic air outbreaks and blizzards. Part of what makes these places less harmed by warming is the fact that they are already so cold. But people there are used to this cold. They are not used to the challenges to come.

The issue with climate change is primarily the change. We can adapt to these new conditions given enough time but their rapid and global nature makes this difficult.

Well first of all most of California is not a desert. It’s a Mediterranean climate. This is part of what makes fire so common. We normally have warm dry summers and cool wet winters. The winters allow vegetation to grow and the summers allow it to burn. At least that used to be the case, but regardless, it’s likely we’ll continue to have periods of healthy vegetation growth interspersed with extreme fire weather.

Desert climates are actually among the safest environments from a wildfire perspective because there is little vegetation to burn.

On the flip side, they are very vulnerable to extreme heat, as you allude to. But Mediterranean climates tend to be very mild in terms of heat—in fact many people in California do not even have air conditioning because there is no need for it where they live. Now, that doesn’t mean California won’t have issues with extreme heat—indeed, the lack of historical heat means we don’t have strong protections against it. But heat issues here are far less serious compared to Phoenix, the Deep South, and many other parts of the world. California is not projected to be among the areas where lethal heat is a regular occurrence.

So you are combining multiple catastrophes that don’t coexist in California to paint a worse picture than actually exists. And you are ignoring that extreme heat is actually more dangerous in humid climates, as are hurricanes and other catastrophic storms.

Climate change is a global phenomenon that will cause disruption and disaster everywhere. It is up to each community to act decisively to develop social structures and infrastructure to evaluate and adapt to the coming challenges. In fact, I think mass migration is more likely to make this more challenging by cutting social ties and loss of local knowledge.

To be clear, some migration will likely be necessary and part of this adaptation will be accommodating this. But these narratives that everyone needs to flee to somewhere safe do more harm than good. There is nowhere safe except those places that we render safe.

So they moved to North Carolina lol. The text acknowledges this but I feel climate refuges are somewhat of a myth.

Also, there are many neighborhoods in LA that are much safer from wildfires. You have to evaluate your risk in a more granular way.

It might also be possible to construct our houses to make them much more fire resilient. I haven’t seen the details but I’ve heard that Australia made some big changes to their design standards in recent years but California has not.