• ALQ@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Y’know, as unrealistic as this (probably? I’m not really sure of anything, anymore) is, seeing this pop up in my scrolling gave me a bit of relief. I’ve been so terrified and angry and anxious and unsure of the (immediate) future that it’s practically paralyzed me. Knowing that this pipedream is there helped me breathe for a moment. I’ll take what relief I can get right now.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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      5 months ago

      Ah yes, because Brexit was such a success, demonstrating that this clearly would solve all your problems 😬

      • ImADifferentBird@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        The question is, at what point is continued membership in the US a bigger problem than splitting from it would be?

        California is large enough and prosperous enough that they could definitely make it as an independent nation, but the transition would be extremely difficult.

      • ALQ@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Oh, I agree, but I’ll still take whatever anxiety relief I can get right now.

  • Godric@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago
    1. Brexit was clever wordplay, every proposal since hasn’t been. Fuckin “Calexit”, do better.

    2. Yeah, you don’t get to just leave a country. Believe it or not, there was actually at least one war about that!

    3. Fuck CBS for their cancer ass website.

  • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    CA better get their hands on some ICBMs. Keep one pointed at DC, and another pointed at Mar-a-Lago. It’s pretty much the only way a state can keep its sovereignty.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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    5 months ago

    You wanna do it Cali, do it before the iron curtain comes falling down. Shit or get off the pot, ya’ll might not get another chance.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Okay, but then California becomes a smaller country bordering a much larger fascist neighbor with the largest military in the world.

    In what world is that a good outcome?

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      If they do start to secede or actually secede than it just becomes an expensive and complicated mess that doesn’t help anyone. Because even if they are forced back then the larger federation has to work ten times harder to keep them in place and cooperative and in the end becomes a net negative where they have to decide if it’s cheaper to let go or keep paying to stay together.

      Ask a Canadian what it means because we’ve had that discussion many times with Quebec and less often with other regions. It’s far cheaper for everyone to be cooperative and mutually benefiting one another on good terms than to threaten anyone into a corner … and even when things are working, it’s still not easy.

    • peregrin5@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Oregon and Washington would probably do the same if California seceded. (Which it won’t). If BC Canada left, Cascadia would be a thing that is large and prosperous enough to stand on it’s own. That or the three states just join Canada.

    • theherk@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They’d become a pretty large country with one of the world’s largest economies holding major port access to their neighbor. A few allies and things aren’t quite so clear cut. Not to mention they’d potentially have significant military resources.

      • superkret@feddit.org
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        5 months ago

        That economy is tightly integrated with the rest of the country.
        In a secession, those ties would be severed, likely tanking the economy of both California and the US.

        • theherk@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          That’s definitely possible. I’m not saying it would be a good thing. The only thing I feel confident about is that we do not know. A lot isn’t as it once seemed right now. Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

      • cristo@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        If you think the US military wouldn’t immediately remove all assets from California you’d be sorely mistaken. There is no way that the fed would allow assets like that to be given away to a successionist movement. Even if they didn’t, California doesn’t have the logistic ability to maintain those assets for more than id say 3 months.

        • theherk@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          If you think you know exactly how all installations, including National Guard Installations, would operate in a situation of this magnitude, I envy your blind certitude.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Something that might work out better and would be a lot easier to do (thought still not very easy), would be to split into 3 (or 4?) states.

    California has almost 12% of the US population concentrated in that one state! By far most of the states contain about 2% or less of the US population each.

    By splitting, the population would be better represented in the Senate with 6 senators between them instead of only 2, and there might be a net gain in some other benefits that are given on the state level.

    edit: I see that someone had already brought this idea up, but IMO it’s a good idea that they should seriously consider!

    • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      Careful. Texas has some long forgotten provision where they could easily do the same thing, into 5 states. and they’d all be red.

      • leadore@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        If they split California into 3, the northern state might be red (or swing) but the other two would definitely be blue because of SR and LA. Look at a map of election results by county.

        With Texas, at least a couple of them would have to be blue because some would contain the blue urban areas. Same with FL, at least one new state would be blue. if CA, TX, and FL all did it. If they divided into 5 states it might even out. Of course there would have to be negotiations to get enough people and the parties to agree to the boundaries, which should prevent too much of an advantage to one side or the other, especially if people don’t want their cities be split between two states.

        But regardless of the results for the Senate, the point is that the people in most populous states of this country are not getting their fair representation in our federal government and that needs to change.

        Then of course as long as we’re altering our makeup of states, we have to give the citizens DC representation and make that a state. And Puerto Rico should be able to decide if it wants to become a state as well.

        • McWizard@lemmy.zip
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          5 months ago

          German here, so excuse my ignorance, but wouldn’t it be easier to change the voting system to one that counts each vote as equal on a state level and get rid of the voting people stuff? Last time I checked you’re no longer riding horses to Washington…

          • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            but wouldn’t it be easier to change the voting system to one that counts each vote as equal on a state level and get rid of the voting people stuff

            Country wide that requires a constitutional amendment, which requires 2/3 of all states to agree. It’s been tried, the cuckservatives rage and bitch like the children they are because it would mean they’d never win again, so it never goes through

            There’s an effort to make it so that individual states will ignore the EC called NAPOVOINTERCO that would basically force the US to use a popular vote system, but it’s not got enough individual states signed on yet to activate itself

            When it comes to the US, this is a simple rule to follow: federal change is nearly impossible because of the babies in the GOP, while states are easier but can change a whole lot less overall

    • ModestMeme@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The right wing has wanted this for years because California is very conservative outside of its cities. Splitting the state up would guarantee a Republican Senate.

    • Desert Hermit@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The State of Jefferson would have started this process, but WWII got in the way. Except that was all predicated on being super racist.

      I think if you get a legit Cal3 proposal, you might end up with a Cal4 where they pull from the six-state version where “Silicon Valley” is its own state shows up so that there can be some technopolis with custom laws and insane cost of living. Essentially, turning SFO into another Manhattan.

      I would never move back to CA as it is, but if there was a breakup, I might actually go for it.

      • peregrin5@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        The racists all wanted to leave the US because it wasn’t racist enough. However now the racists are in power and they don’t want to leave anymore.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The remaining Blue States should do the same. Common sense should prevail and it would allow the MAGAts to create their racist neo-Nazi White Christian slave run utopia dictatorship without resistance from those who support the US Constitution.

  • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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    5 months ago

    Sorry California, you will have to negotiate with Colorado and Arizona for your water. So basically you have to take us with you.

    • Loss@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      If they just kick out the alfalfa farmers and the almond farms, they don’t need water imports.

    • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      The negotiating:

      If you don’t give us water we wont send you the good you need to live

      You’ll die well before us in that waiting game, baby

      • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Aren’t a lot of crops grown in Mexico and imported through the Arizona channels? Because produce is way cheaper in Arizona than California.

        • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          $1,000 to $3,000 per acre-foot of water produced, which can translate to about $2,000 to $3,500 per acre-foot for smaller-scale projects .

          • 1 acre-foot of water = 325,851 gallons

          • At $2,000 per acre-foot, the cost per gallon is about $0.0061 per gallon. Its really a range between $0.005 to $0.01 per gallon.

          Of course you can just move to a state that has water. Everyone knows you can just drink river water and lake water without any treatment at all. Plus the convenience of living near a swamp, river, lake or flood plane is superb. Otherwise you would need to carry the water somewhere else than where it is. But sure, you’re right, we shouldn’t desalinate water. That’s crazy!

          • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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            5 months ago

            Acre-foot? Fuck me that is a cursed unit. Americans really will use anything other than the metric system

          • Welt@lazysoci.al
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            5 months ago

            River water and lake water are potable with minimal input, whereas desalination is prohibitively expensive. Unless there’s a free energy source somehow, we’re better off drinking river water or small beer as our ancestors did.

            • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Did you look at the numbers I researched for you? Those numbers give you water ready to drink. Once the water gets the salt removed, you can drink it. The desalination is basically cleaning the water. If you got a water filter at home, get some pH measuring test strips and measure the pH of the water from your tap and from the filter. You’ll find that there is a significant differences. It could be like two pH levels difference, and I think each level is one order of magnitude larger than the previous. So 100 times cleaner. Plus they get salt, which is a valuable byproduct.

              • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                FYI the pH of water is not a measurement of cleanliness, it is a measurement of the acidity-alkalinity. I am not sure if you were meaning that but it seems implied by your comment.

                • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  No, dude, I mean pH. The carbon in your filter will definitely alter the pH. PH is changed molecularly, so a filter for that must be chemical, electrical or both. Activated carbon is both. Plus all the gunk already trapped in it does like to react with the opposite charge.

                  This is fairly complicated stuff, its better to just give it a try.

          • probably2high@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Oooh oooh, now do one for the AI GPU farms. Now, a lot of people would argue these are not a comparable use of vital resources, what with water being critical for the survival of all life, and AI the current billionaire snake oil.

            But I mean, what’s really more important than generating capital to grow the net worth of a few people by a few percents so that we can input text to generate pictures of a sick-ass panther or stories that lose the plot less than three sentences in?

            • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              A single ChatGPT query requires 500ml of water, or let’s say one water bottle. Meanwhile, a single cheeseburger requires 700 gallons of water or 5299 bottles.

              The whole “AI is wasting all the water” argument is not as significant as it seems when you compare it to literally anything else we as humans do.

              Electricity consumption, on the other hand…

              • probably2high@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Sorry, I thought we were talking about the amount of power desalination uses. Didn’t even know AI consumes water.

                edit: wait a minute–why the fuck does AI consume water???

  • Awesomo85@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    California? You mean the state owned by the tech oligarchy that is (according to you) the current ruling class of the entire country?

    🤣 You people crave an enemy so much, you can’t keep your stories straight!

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      You understand that things change over time, right? Silicone Valley tech giants like Facebook had an extremely cozy relationship with Obama, and they’ve been heavily involved with Democratic politics for years.

      Now they’re pivoting right; Zuckerberg didn’t donate to Harris this year, even though he’d donated $400 million to Democrats the previous election cycle, and he’s now adopting Trump’s, “anti-woke,” bullshit. Musk, who made a killing on Obama’s electric vehicle subsidies, is now doing Nazi salutes at Trump’s inauguration.

      A lot of this has to do with how social media algorithms are driving people down right-wing conspiracy rabbit holes. Democrats blame a lot of their losses since 2016 on, “fake news,” and online misinformation, and have begun demanding small amounts of accountability from tech giants. In response, the tech industry has been slowly moving rightward over the last eight years, and now seem to fully embrace Trump.

      So, yes, California is basically owned by tech oligarchs, and it is also mostly run by Democrats. Until very recently, those two groups weren’t at odds, and now that they are, we are just beginning to see what that conflict will mean for California and the rest of the country.

    • Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      HQ wise: Musk exited to Texas.

      Oracle is in Texas.

      Microsoft is in Washington.

      Amazon is in Washington.

      Google, FB and Nvidia are in CA.

      The tech bros don’t want to hire people in CA because salaries are too high. They do because that’s where a lot of coding talent is, but they also tend to have offices all over the world and produce as much work as possible offshore where labor costs are minimized. It’s why basically nothing is manufactured in CA, let alone the US. When things are manufactured here it’s almost always in places that use the $7.25 federal minimum wage, not states with a $16.50 minimum wage or where transportation costs are prohibitively expensive compared to local labor.

  • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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    5 months ago

    Remember how the federal government treated the south when they tried to secede. And people still celebrate it, not without good reason. But they didn’t just go to war to stop it, they burned the south to the ground.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      Well, there are two big differences.

      The ethical one, the South wanted to secede to keep their slaves, and to clarify because the term slavery has been run ragged by propaganda, they wanted to keep their forced labour/death camps where they could kill, maim, rape, buy and sell people, also children, and have them do backbreaking, crippling work to enrich themselves.

      On the other hand, California is contemplating this because the South, after losing their war, did a 200 year psyop to get a rapist and a bona-fide sieg heiling Nazi in power to force California to drop initiatives that would keep the Earth inhabitable and let their citizens live in peace.

      The pragmatic one is that while the South was what it was, California is still an economic powerhouse accounting for 20% of the US economy. If they would secede, and bring a few like-minded states with them, it’s not the least bit implausible that the South would be doing the burning again.

      All that said, the Russians and the Chinese are salivating at this idea I’m sure.

    • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      But they didn’t just go to war to stop it, they burned the south to the ground.

      Do that to CA and you’re shooting yourself in the foot as the US

      Destroying your most important ports and where more than 50% of your agriculture nationwide comes from is not a good idea

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Which is exactly why they would burn it to the ground. The federal government would never let California, let alone any state, secede peacfully. They can’t risk losing those resources and would destroy them before allowing them to be competition.

          • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            Question: what things were done in the 80’s to prep for wildfires? Do they do any of those things today?

              • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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                5 months ago

                I was alive in the 80s, I definitely know what I’m talking about. If you can’t answer the question though, then you obviously do not.

                • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  5 months ago

                  That’s cute of you, but I can answer the question

                  That’s why I know you don’t actually know, because your implication that the way things were done in the 80s was perfect and correct and should still be done is wrong, we’ve learned, and so shit differently now using more modern understandings and tech

                  But you’re an idiot conservative who thinks how things were done when you were young is still exactly the only correct way it seems, so fuck off

          • howrar@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            Climate change = mismanagement on the part of pretty much the whole world. So technically correct.

        • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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          5 months ago

          A huge reason the south lost was because they were NOT an economic powerhouse…

          Much like today.

        • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Was it really? I was under the impression that they mostly were agricultural, while the north had all the light and heavy industries… (sorry, I’m not american)

          • WagyuSneakers@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You are correct. It heavily contributed to their loss. Without international support, or the industries to leverage that support they were isolated, poor and out of manpower.

            If Union leadership was better in the beginning we would have seen them rolled much faster.