“Hoverflies, also known as flower flies or syrphids, are beneficial insects that play an important role in the environment. They are often seen hovering around flowers, nectaring on them. Hoverflies are true flies that range in size from a few millimeters to 2 centimeters. They are often yellow and black with bands on their wings. They mimic bees and wasps to avoid predators. Hoverflies are harmless and do not have stingers.”

what the heck, how have I never known or heard about hoverflies before?

it’s a pretty good time, thanks

they really have tiptoed into obsolescence.

I’m sure they’ll hang around domestically, but not as industry forces to reckon with.

they voted for W twice.

it’s not like they have a great track record.

yup, they’ve been declining a long time and China is definitely going to take over next gen EVs.

basically has already taken over that industry.

The big three don’t want to compete, and China is basically a factory company already, so it’s difficult to see how American automotive manufacturing catches up when they refuse to invest in new technology or manufacturing processes.

got it.

Democrats want to help society and civilization as a whole, and they know civil War would only make things much worse.

anyone who wants civil War doesn’t care about the country or its people as it is.

plus, civil wars are a lot of trouble.

in real life, conservatives are afraid that somebody is going to take away their fill-in-the-blank, despite having zero evidence for that anxiety.

so they repeat whatever the crazy or ignorant extremist next to them says because they’re standing on the same side of the road.

Kamala was trailing in the polls nearly the entire election season, and a lot of people were very upset that the democrats didn’t do more quicker to stem the genocide in Palestine, so I’m not sure where the shock is coming from for people being surprised that she lost.

also important to note that women have so few rights in America that they’re dying in hospital parking lots with stillborn babies stuck in their wombs, so that misogyny didn’t help a female candidate.

also, misinformation is crazy.

The USD is as strong as it’s ever been, immigration policy finally enforced under Biden, national debt reduced, inflation from Trump’s first term has been reined in, civil rights have been restored and expanded, but as you can tell from the internet, people don’t like optimistic facts as much as exciting emotional sound bites, accurate or not.

W bush was elected twice and that guy literally raised carcinogenic levels in public drinking water(as did trump), after he told all the frightened conservatives that the brown people were coming to get them.

didn’t even matter that he blamed a totally unrelated country.

Trump did the same thing and it worked again.

None of those feelings are accurate examples of American sentiment in the real world, but these commenters all live on the internet, so they’re parroting whatever hyperbolic thing the person next to them says.

civil war’s an outsized, extreme solution to simple problems, and I have never met a conservative who actually wants civil War.

every Trump supporter I know and have talked to is very frightened of something, covid or immigrants or some other non-issue they don’t know enough about. they’re just frightened.

in real life, both sides go to the same supermarkets and libraries, it’s just that the conservatives don’t want to anybody except themselves to have access to the libraries and supermarkets and the democrats think they can preserve public access if they can convince the conservatives that democratic laws are more fair.

selfishness vs naievete.

conservatives are selfish all the time, but democrats are only naive half the time, and they do have better laws for society as a whole.

that is a ridiculous tangent and has nothing to do with the simple fact that China is producing cheaper EVS at the same or higher global auto standards and is taking over the EV Market.

that is a separate issue from the Chinese government spying on citizens abroad.

this article is specifically about the market in China, not even foreign markets.

you are wide off the mark.

this is what happens when you make one country produce most of the electronics in the world and then the world pivots to electric vehicles.

Chinese companies are making EVS that conform to global auto standards for far cheaper. they are taking over the EV Market.

that’s a fact.

weird little scurtier, I never heard of those before.

The brainwashing does go both ways, with the significant caveat that brainwashed Republican voters support laws that restrict civil liberties and brainwashed democratic voters bemoan that everything is over forever and nothing will ever change while supporting laws that advance civil liberties.

they’re both irritating, but the democrats pass better laws.

they’re all whiny doomsayers right now, it’s pretty irritating.

things will get worse, but the vague popular defeatism is useless tripe.

you’ll be fine on valid visas.

North Dakota is cold, it’s not a cultural hot spot, but there are tons of natural features, hiking, skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, fishing and all that stuff.

it is a sparsely populated state.

wow, I love that movie and also your story is very exciting, congratulations!

it’s because everyone stopped using it, right?

at least months ago?

“This is the part where you’re dense as fuck”

buh-hurrr?

“I said from the get go, I wasn’t trying to do that, you absolute insecure buffoon.”

The crippling insecurity of… let’s check your notes… my having been correct, not getting distracted by your tangents and make-believe and you now furiously insisting that there never was an argument about the main point and all you wanted to do was fruitlessly quibble about one irrelevant point on the number line for a dozen comments.

where shall I ever gain the confidence to stand up to your relentless onslaught?

“Go back and re-read the first comment”

nah,; I got it the first time.

not a brain buster.

“I was literally, as you say, correcting a typo.”

or rounding error, butI know, that’s why I literally said it.

“Your first comment is grossly misleading”

mmm, nah, that’s the one you agreed with, you silly goose.

“Then you went off on insane ad hominem tangents”

here are your quotes:

“you’re dense as fuck.”

“you absolute insecure buffoon.”

you get a confused between what I wrote and you wrote again?

Hey, did I teach you the word “tangent”? look at that, time not wasted!

““Wikipedia has a half billion cash and is evil for asking for more” is very different than…”

it’s also a made-up quote from you, just now, that you made up.

or have you been responding to a different person this entire time and you think you’re making a point to someone with completely different comments?

that would be the funniest thing, if the reason it’s so easy to dispel all of your made-up quotes is because you think you’re talking to a different person.

that would make a certain sense for you, you conflate a lot.

“I’m ambivalent about donating.”

clearly, you have no horse in this game.

you are carefree and feckless.

“Maybe, just maybe, it’s like I’ve been saying…”

We already agreed that it is not and as you freely admit, it is like I’ve been saying from the first comment.

are you talking about the typo/ rounding error that doesn’t affect the outcome and nobody disputed?

Great work on sticking with that mote in a sandstorm.

“as I like to call them…”

you do it! you go ahead and call them whatever you like!

you can call them unicorns or wyverns, whatever strikes your fancy.

“they don’t have decades of cash saved up” isn’t a disagreement with your main point"

I agree, it doesn’t affect my main point at all.

glad we’re doing this.

makes a lot of sense for you to combatively agree with my point over and over again.

“Then you went off on insane…”

how crazy it must seem to you to stick to a single point and not deviate from it, not to get distracted by relentless quibbles, not even to make up quotes or delve into irrelevant rabbit holes that do not affect the outcome!

imagine how much simple being correct in the first place about the actual topic must be.

smoooth sailing.

“You aren’t coming across as cleverly as you seem to think you are.”

virtue of the medium by which I am constrained.

like you said, you agree with my main point straight off the bat, but then you insist on creating fictional arguments so I am limited to responding to you raving and ranting about the number four not being the number three, or feeble insults, or you pretending that cash are somehow not assets.

or pointing out your made-up quotes.

at this point, I’m just helping you polish your turds.

that’s okay, I have time and you have…who knows, I’m sure you have something.

you’re probably great at getting all the toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube, right?

you can be proud of that.

well that’s contemporary, that’s pretty amazing.

I thought it was some talking heads cover band from the '80s.

it’s good.

“You’re a surprisingly dense person.”

Huhh?

“You’ve managed to mistake a news article for a financial audit,”

nope, that’s a straw man you’ve been trying to prop up for a dozen comments because you can’t refute my main point that WMF has plenty of money and shouldn’t be lying to and manipulating donors for more.

“misread a number of comments”

still no evidence for that after a dozen comments? rad.

“misinterpret numbers”

you don’t think three is next to four… that one’s on you.

“think that the phrase “article I agree with” means I don’t agree with”

also nope

so your strategy is to keep making things up?

consistent.

"the second article you shared, which doesn’t get their cash or assets wrong "

see, every time you respond, you make up a whole bunch of stuff, and then right at the end you angrily insist “also, I agreed with you all along!”

fine, I’m glad you can’t refute these things anymore.

You can keep ranting about irrelevant details and then agreeing with my original conclusion.

from the first comment.

I’m fine with that.

“Also, congrats on actually running with “bold of you to assume I can read”.”

thank you!

given that I’ve roundly quashed all of your efforts here, I figured that insult was a facetious, last-ditch attempt of yours to distract from your illogical meandering and thought it would be fun to turn that little insult back on you.

it was fun!

your insults and tangents have that “water off a duck’s back” quality I enjoy.

weird non-sequitur.

how?

they should ask a question if they want a specific answer.

you’ll notice that they complained about not receiving an answer despite 1. they didn’t ask any questions for the first dozen comments or so until I repeatedly taught them how questions work and 2. I responded to the relevant parts of every one of their comments that I hadn’t answered fully before.

their comments do not entitle them to a response, especially if, as in this case repeatedly, their response is flawed, irrelevant or has already been answered.

I correct them, they say " fine. you’re correct but I don’t like it."

I don’t care if they like the truth of the matter or not., and it doesn’t matter If they like being corrected or not, so I’m not going to address that.

If you scroll up, you’ll see that every part of every one of their comments stems from a single rounding error from one number among dozens from two otherwise solid articles for no other purpose than for the commenter to get a foot in the door of denying the actual crux of the argument, which is that Wikipedia does not need your money and them pretending they do to stay in business is manipulative and flat-out false.

that is a straight up fact, and after accepting that in I believe their second comment, they’re trying to deny that they were wrong by pointing out a tangential rounding error.

they’re looking for a gotcha through an insignificant detail.

I think they forgot what they were talking about in the first place to be honest, or that they already conceded the point of the main argument and can only remember their overwhelming personal commitment to that rounding error(or typo? who knows?)

but that’s okay.

it’s funny.

“Literally, 99%+ are trainwrecks”

haha, instead of “literally” when you mean “anecdotally”, try “99% of the activists I know are train wrecks”

far less available comment that makes way more sense as supporting evidence for whatever point you’re making.

“you’re a rare exception”

I am! that’s very nice of you to say, eh?

“it’s probably just going to catch again as long as the house burns.”

that’s fine, you keep fixing it. putting out fires every day doesn’t mean you’re not making a difference, it just means there are a lot of fires that need your help.