I don't get it. The article's title is that the ranchers have become allies to jaguars and pumas.
But nothing in the article supports that view. What has changed are cattle ranching practices that reduce the opportunity of attack. Everything that the article talks about is "How did cattle ranchers adapt to an ever present threat of pumas and jaguars without killing them (for reasons that are not well discussed beyond a reference to a government mandate)" rather then "We're best buds now!" or even "We have found utility in the jaguar and puma population that benefits us".
It seems the adapted practices are beneficial on their own, but it sounds like they would be beneficial without jaguars and pumas.
If the goal is to maximize ranching, I think you're right. But if the goal is to maximize the economic opportunities in Costa Rica it probably is not the best decision. When I hired a tour guide there he pointed out that Costa Rica could easily install dams to create vast fresh water reservoirs and generate some power as well. But because the country doesn't do this they have ecosystems people come to visit their from around the world. So by choosing not to maximize for one thing they retain another at little to no cost. After all, free flowing rivers don't cost much to maintain.
The tourism industry is important to them. So perhaps by finding a way to co-exist with big cats, it's a net positive to the ranchers because they probably don't want Costa Rica to be a nation with only 1 industry. If they can produce enough beef (or whatever animal they want to raise) to satisfy domestic and export desires then there probably is not much of a need to expand the industry at all costs.
> In spite of the recent incident, Durán says that since 2018 he’s been able to see the benefits of jaguar conservation on his ranch firsthand. He’s now one of the most active cat defenders. In December 2023, he became a park ranger and helped three former hunters do the same. This transformation is an example of how improving data collection and carrying out interventions based on evidence in the communities benefit both humans and cats.
I guess the point is that ranchers don't blindly hate big cats. They hate suffering large economic losses due to big cats. Once they aren't suffering the losses, they're happy to have the cats around.
What the article seems to suggest is what economists have always known. People react to incentives (and so do animals). Ranchers do not have blind hate for cats but rather care more about their cattle than the cats. By making few changes that are profitable for them cats can co-exist. But that does not make them allies.
This has been such a frustrating limitation of all the big AR platforms. For years, my company has wanted to make an AR app for a certain industrial use case that scans QR codes. Neither Meta nor Apple allow it! We had to give up and do AR on an iPhone instead. Think about that - the iPhone has more powerful AR than the Apple Vision Pro for every developer except Apple.
Step 1 of reverse engineering anything: Figure out the make and model of the thing. ;)
"Employee badges" can be implemented in a number of ways, from simple broadcasted rfids down to having secret challenge responses that aren't breakable without going down the jlsca route since the secret is on the device and never leaves it.
So, step 1: figure out what exactly the model your 'employee badge' is using and what protocol it uses. There's probably some marking on it that should give you the manufactuerer at least.
Facebook created products to induce mental illness for the lolz (and bank accounts I guess?) of the lizards behind it[0]
IMHO people like these are the most dangerous to human society, because unlike regular criminals, they find their ways around the consequences to their actions.
First of all this is irrelevant to GP's comment. Second of all, while these products do have net negative impact, we as a society knew about it and failed to act. Everyone is to blame about it.
I mean, if you want to argue it's a Non Profit, not a business, go ahead, but I'm not particularly interested in fitting modern tax code and business rules to an entity that has existed for 1500 years.
The organization has existed and has had a need to find funding for it's activities. Since the question was about 'state' run entities, the goal of "making a profit" seemed not particular salient.
Honestly, I thought the more contentious part of this claim was going to be if the Church of Sinai constituted a state.
> I thought the more contentious part of this claim was going to be if the Church of Sinai constituted a state
That is not as contentious, because it's basically autocephalous/self governing.
It's always been a couple dozen loners in the Sinai peninsula maintaining self sufficiency, which is why I don't find it a good example - as there are plenty of similarly old and continuous organizations, but never truly scaled.
> What do you mean by free speech is regressing in anglophone countries? That seems like a weird opinion to have? Do you have a particular example?
In the US at least, I'd say for most of the existence of the web, the prevalent idea was that the best way to counter 'bad' speech was more speech.
The concern over 'misinformation' has resulted in a lot of people, whom previously had advocated for unrestricted speech, calling for regulation or removal of section 230.
Like many Zeitgeist trends, it is difficult to measure concretely and objectively, especially if it hasn't been tracked in the past. Especially when people's understanding of what constitutes "free" speech shifts over time.
But nothing in the article supports that view. What has changed are cattle ranching practices that reduce the opportunity of attack. Everything that the article talks about is "How did cattle ranchers adapt to an ever present threat of pumas and jaguars without killing them (for reasons that are not well discussed beyond a reference to a government mandate)" rather then "We're best buds now!" or even "We have found utility in the jaguar and puma population that benefits us".
It seems the adapted practices are beneficial on their own, but it sounds like they would be beneficial without jaguars and pumas.
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