Hildegarde

@Hildegarde@lemmy.world

There is no record of this bio

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Hildegarde,

The news is so awful these days they make their paywall look like shoddy journalism. There is an entire article I’ll put it in the comments.

Hildegarde,

The washington post has paywalls. The text is below.

The sweeping agriculture law hasn’t been renewed since 2018.

By Jacob Bogage June 4, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

A battle that ties food aid for needy families with crop subsidies for American farmers may stall efforts to renew a sweeping agricultural policy law, forcing Congress to consider delaying action on the $1.5 trillion proposal until after this fall’s elections.

The law, known as the farm bill, is set to expire Sept. 30. It typically draws bipartisan support because it combines resources for such programs as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for low-income families with updates to farm supports, including commodity price guarantees and crop insurance.

This year, however, the Republican-controlled House is writing a version of the bill that would spend less on future low-income food assistance and more on large-scale commodity farmers, while the Democratic-controlled Senate is mulling a proposal to do the opposite.

Lawmakers say the probable outcome is a stalemate that would force a temporary extension of existing policies. That would benefit Democrats and their allies by preserving the higher nutrition benefits in current law. But it would mostly leave commodity assistance unchanged, frustrating Republicans and their allies in the agricultural community.

“The world today is drastically different than it was when the current law was put into place,” said Sam Kieffer, vice president of public policy at the American Farm Bureau Federation.

/The farm bill is supposed to be renewed every five years. But the last one was written in 2018, before the coronavirus pandemic caused historic inflation and snarled supply chains; before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the world’s largest agricultural producers; before the cost per acre of U.S. farmland skyrocketed; and before President Biden and Democrats passed first-of-its-kind climate policy that weighs heavily on agriculture.

Congress must pass some sort of agriculture and nutrition legislation before the current law expires or face massive upheaval in agricultural commodities and dairy markets. Leaders in both parties said a temporary extension of current law is looking increasingly likely.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, told The Washington Post that continuing the 2018 version of the law temporarily might prove the easiest option to steer through Congress, saying, “I’m not going to support a bad bill.”

The committee’s top Republican, Sen. John Boozman (Ark.), agreed: “If we don’t make meaningful improvements, if we don’t put more farm in the farm bill, we’re better off not having a new farm bill.”

Lawmakers are already discussing a brief extension that would push a vote on a longer-term measure into the “lame duck” session after the November election and before the new Congress takes office in January. Lawmakers also have discussed another year-long farm bill extension; Congress passed similar legislation in November, which is why the 2018 law is still on the books now.

“A lot of people forget why we need a five-year farm bill, why it’s so necessary to balance fiscal responsibility reform with anticipatory policy and why the legislation we pass today ought to reflect the needs of agriculture producers and consumers. It’s because farm bills are felt in every corner of America, in every field and pasture, in every grocery story and agribusiness. The legislation we pass today will have ripple effects for years to come,” Rep. Tracey Mann (R-Kan.) said at a House Agriculture Committee meeting in late May.

The 2018 farm bill authorized the administration to reevaluate the formula used to calculate food assistance, which Biden leveraged in 2021 to approve the largest-ever increase in SNAP benefits. The 2018 bill also guaranteed minimum prices for certain agriculture products — promising that the government would pay the difference between the market price and what are known as “reference prices.” But those levels haven’t changed despite the subsequent upheaval in global markets and rising inflation.

That means producers have struggled without as much help as Congress may have envisioned, Kieffer said.

Republicans are trying to push those levels up. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) advanced legislation in late May that would pour billions of dollars into raising the price floors for agricultural commodities by as much as 20 percent.

Soybeans, which in April traded at $11.80 a bushel, according to the Agriculture Department, would have a guaranteed price of $10 under the legislation, up from $8.40. Wheat in April traded at $5.91 a bushel and would have a $6.35 price floor, up from $5.50.

“Over the past few decades, the farm safety net has lost its ability to protect those who are the backbone of our great nation,” Thompson said at the May 23 committee meeting. “American farmers face natural disasters, take huge personal risk and are at the whims of regulatory overreach. It is a privilege to deliver a farm bill that strengthens the risk-mitigation measures available to producers, providing certainty in a time of volatility.”

The GOP bill would pay for those increases by limiting the White House’s authority to increase SNAP benefits, which would cost recipients nearly $30 billion in enhanced food assistance over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Nearly 42 million people a month use the program, which is designed to cover about two-thirds of a household’s monthly food expenses. A household of four people can receive maximum monthly benefits of $973 in most states.

Limiting benefit increases is a nonstarter for Democrats, who have united against Thompson’s bill on both sides of the Capitol.

“I want a farm bill; it’s just that I’m not going to have my legacy going backward,” said Stabenow, who is retiring in 2025 after nearly three decades in Congress.

Other issues that divide the parties are negotiable, lawmakers said.

Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act set aside almost $20 billion to pay agricultural producers or landowners to enact “climate smart” conservation practices. The program has been wildly popular and oversubscribed, and Thompson’s bill would remove the climate guardrails from that funding to allow producers easier access to conservation funds.

Democrats have balked at that idea but said there is room to compromise; the vast majority of the most popular conservation practices that farmers employed even before the Biden administration’s incentives kicked in are already considered “climate smart,” said Michael Happ, who studies climate and rural communities at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

While GOP proposals on price floors have caused an uproar among Democrats, Thompson’s bill otherwise aims for bipartisan agreement: The legislation is loaded with Democratic proposals to try to preserve the political alliance that has traditionally propelled farm bills. One provision would require new administrative procedures to help young farmers acquire land. Average farm real estate values have increased more than 30 percent since 2018, according to the Agriculture Department.

Thompson’s bill also would allow individuals with felony drug convictions to receive SNAP benefits after completing their sentences, a longtime Democratic priority.

Hildegarde,

Someone must love paywalls.

Hildegarde,

Its not in Boise its in Eagle.

Hildegarde,

The FMV bits show characters in the world rather than just on a screen. Using FMV for that would be weird to say the least. I doubt they will.

Hildegarde,

They will be using CGI characters, but it sounds like they hope to do a better job of it this time around. The 90s digital camera footage would be unusable for a modern game, beyond recasting and refilming I don’t see any other feasible way to make the FMV not look out of place in a modern game.

From gameinformer

One of the biggest technical challenges for Anderson and Gamiel has been bringing Riven’s characters back to life. The original game featured live-action video performances by several actors, including Rand Miller as Atrus, Sheila Goold and Regina Altay as his wife Catherine, and Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus John Keston as his father Gehn.

But it’s literally impossible to graft a 2D video from 1997 into a real-time, high-resolution 3D environment. Cyan’s previous remake, 2021’s award-winning VR and PC version of Myst, featured computer-generated characters in lieu of the original live-action performances. “It was… an experiment,” Miller laughs, but for the new Riven, Cyan hired a full-time animation lead, Autumn Palfenier, to raise the uncanny valley.

“For Gehn, we tried analyzing the [old] video and tracking certain features, but the resolution was so low, and it’s not even a full shot, so it just wasn’t doable,” Anderson says. Instead, they’ve been filming performances in Cyan’s basement using motion-capture technology.

“I can say on the record that this is a union production with SAG-AFTRA,” Gamiel says, referring to the same labor guild that represents Hollywood actors. “We wanted to get some incredible talent into this game.”

She won’t tell me who’s playing who but does confirm that Miller will return as Atrus and that the studio managed to salvage an old audio recording of John Keston, who died from COVID-19 complications in February 2022 at the age of 97. “We had an actor study John’s performance and then do it in sync with the original audio, so we got Gehn’s full body,” Anderson says. They show me a work-in-progress close-up of Gehn’s face, which exceeds my expectations.

Hildegarde,

Make sure you vote so you can get a say in how enthusiastically the federal government implements the same policy on the southern border.

If you want an easier path to legal status in the us to disincentivise illegal crossings, you can get fucked. If you want a north american schengen agreement, you can get fucked. If you want any change in policy related to the southern boarder, get fucked.

If you care about whether the president leads chants about border policy, then american style democracy is for you.

Hildegarde,

Meanwhile apple tells you to put your removable media in the trash.

Hildegarde,

RATM, and many other bands sing with terrible diction. I wouldn’t blame anyone for not understanding the message if they’ve never read the lyrics.

Hildegarde,

So maths time…

If that cart is a weeks of groceries, it takes 1250 weeks of groceries to buy a house in 1980.

According to a 2024 USA today article the average family with kids spends $331 per week on groceries.

If the groceries per house ratio stayed the same, a house would be $413,750 in 2024.

The U.S. median home price was $412,000 in September 2023, according to Redfin.

I dunno seems pretty proportionate.

Hildegarde,

Its a reasonable assumption. Most of the visible foods are bulky items that are not stacked efficiently to be visible to the camera.

Hildegarde,

The US is saying 3.4% because inflation is based on a consumer price index. It’s not a good metric because it doesn’t account for housing, education, healthcare and most other major expenses.

However, gold is an awful metric for the value of the currency. No single product can be a good metric alone. And gold is famously effected by speculation. People buy gold when the future of the currency seems uncertain.

Hildegarde,

Did the USD deflate significantly between 2012 and 2016? Your gold based metric says yes.

Hildegarde,

Anyone driving a black or white ford explorer is worry some. The tell is the antennas. Cop cars have big antennas on the roof that normal cars don’t have.

Hildegarde,

They can say this because they lobbied for 100% tariffs.

Hildegarde,

Not a boeing.

The plane, an Airbus A319, was cleared for takeoff into the path of a King Air landing on an intersecting runway.

From www.wcvb.com/article/…/60942328

Hildegarde,

News is reporting more now because boeing has been in the news.

Trains didn’t start spontaneously derailing after east palestine, it’s just the news started reporting on stories they would have previosly ignored. Same is happening with aviation.

Hildegarde,

Yes, but the news will mention boeing in the headline if one is involved.

Hildegarde, (edited )

If I’m booking a flight and the plane is a lockheed TriStar, I’m going to fly another flight. I am that pricipled in boycotting the wokes.

Hildegarde,

Its a 15 gallon tank, and testing methodology that doesn’t reflect reality.

The 2024 prius would get 750 miles according to the EPA’s estimates if it had the same sized tank.

Hildegarde,

Not enough for voters who are undecided about whether to vote or not.

Democrats win when turnout is high. It’s not enough to be better than the opponent, to win they must beat apathy.

Hildegarde,

Anyone who is eligible to vote actively lived through the trump years. And a third of those voters disagree with you. Calling them stupid is not an effective way to help them change their minds or voting decisions.

Day to day economic realities matter to the average voter.

Electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles were found to be approximately twice as likely, on average, to collide with a pedestrian than internal combustion engine vehicles (press.psprings.co.uk)

During 2013–2017, casualty rates per 100 million miles were 5.16 (95% CI 4.92 to 5.42) for E- HE vehicles and 2.40 (95%CI 2.38 to 2.41) for ICE vehicles, indicating that collisions were twice as likely (RR 2.15; 95% CI 2.05 to 2.26) with E-HE vehicles. Poisson regression found no evidence that E-HE vehicles were more dangerous...

Hildegarde,

More pedestrians are injured by gas and diesel cars because most cars in the UK are gas or diesel.

The UK has less EVs, but they injure pedestrians at a higher rate than gas cars.

Hildegarde,

Try reading a dictionary from this century.

Hildegarde,

The aircraft involved is a short-haul Embraer jet used by KLM’s Cityhopper service

If its a boeing they will put it in the headline for more clicks

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • mdbf
  • ngwrru68w68
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • rosin
  • khanakhh
  • tacticalgear
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • ethstaker
  • GTA5RPClips
  • modclub
  • tester
  • anitta
  • osvaldo12
  • cisconetworking
  • everett
  • cubers
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • normalnudes
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •