this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] debil@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago

I love how the images of Trump trying to look "cool" always end up just adding more comic value whatever the headline or meme.

[–] Ceruleum@lemmy.wtf 4 points 23 hours ago

Those two images are the same.

[–] laranis@lemmy.zip 37 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Can't wait to see how they turn this into another grift.

I'd bet a shiny nickel one of his cronies gets the contract to eradicate the screw worm where lip service is paid to solving the problem and a few people take in that sweet, sweet gov funding.

Also, I'd bet another shiny nickel this gets blamed on brown people and funding the wall gets pushed as a way to contain the screw worm.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I was on Fox News today and they are already blaming immigrants for this. Something about a liberal conspiracy to let immigrant's cattle into the US to destroy our ranchers. It was really dumb.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 points 23 hours ago

1bn emergency to fund this, probably wont do much the screworm invasion anyways, its likely a slush fund.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 6 points 1 day ago

And you can bet is made in most wasteful way possible trying to content the fly at Texas instead of Panama because they would not let that benefit central America for that even if it's cheaper that way.

[–] Clutter@sh.itjust.works 69 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Socialize the costs, privatize the gains.

[–] Clutter@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

P.s. about the picture, I see a screw worm and a worm that screwed us. Which one do we combat first?

Put one in the ass of the other. I don't care about the order.

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 126 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

folks please caption your pictures. which one of these is the new world screwworm ?

[–] dalekcaan@feddit.nl 30 points 1 day ago

Well it's pretty simple, one of these pictures shows a horrible disgusting blood-sucking parasite, and the other is a new world screwworm.

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 days ago

I'll help. One is the world screwworm (the demented pedo) and the other one has a fancy mustache.

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[–] Diddlydee@feddit.uk 157 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's almost as though DOGE was doing lots of shit the people involved knew fuck all about. 'I don't understand this or see the point, therefore it must be woke wastage.'

[–] NekoKoneko@lemmy.world 48 points 2 days ago

Musk is the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and his wealth represents the exact monetary value delta of confident ignorance over intelligence.

[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

"What does this 400-room hotel need to employ a full-time plumber for? The pipes are all fine, and no one ever complains about a clogged toilet. Fire that lazy bum!"

[–] JesusSon@lemmy.world 135 points 2 days ago (11 children)

I'd love to blame this entirely on DOGE and trump but honestly this was a perfect storm that built up over decades.

The screwworm was eradicated from the US a long time ago using sterile fly releases that pushed the population progressively southward until the Darién Gap became the permanent chokepoint. They maintained the barrier there with sterile fly releases and ground monitoring and it worked. It worked so well that the Mission, Texas facility closed in 1981 and the Mexico facility closed in 1999 because there was no longer a need for them.

That success is part of what caused the problem. Complacency set in, and capacity eroded. Then COVID wrecked the monitoring infrastructure. Ground teams couldn't operate, sterile fly releases got disrupted, and the barrier at the Gap was breached. The flies started moving north again and the program didn't have the capacity it once did to respond.

DOGE cuts to USDA APHIS in 2025 hit an already compromised program at the worst possible time reduced staffing and funding when they needed to be scaling up emergency sterile fly production and reestablishing the barrier.

So yes, the current administration made it worse. The vulnerability was already there before those cuts, and once COVID broke the barrier there was always a real chance they were going to make it back to the US regardless.

Fuck DOGE and trump though for real, I just cant get on this "its entirely their fault" train.

[–] Folstar@lemmus.org 3 points 1 day ago

That success is part of what caused the problem. Complacency set in, and capacity eroded.

This part is sort of glossed over. There was a report in 2018 that the Panama facility was in dire need of updates. We were talking about a one time $50M investment and an extra $10-15M a year to hold screwworms at the Darien Gap as they had been for decades. Trump did nothing. It's easy to blame COVID, but there is a very, very avoidable problem and yes, the blame lies squarely with Trump.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fuck DOGE and trump though for real, I just cant get on this "its entirely their fault" train.

Ah yes, let them blame COVID instead. Because we all know in hindsight that Trump’s response to the pandemic was amazing \s

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 days ago

They’d also cut funding to vaccine and pandemic research in his first term. So it was his fault at more than one step along the way.

[–] emmy5482@quokk.au 58 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So trump is just the last in line whose failure was worst.

That still makes it his fault

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

He was the one that broke it at first too. It's just Musk that came later and only finished breaking it.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 17 points 2 days ago

Texas facility closed in 1981 and the Mexico facility closed in 1999 because there was no longer a need for them.

Nah it was a series of overconfidence and underfunding, this is capitalism.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That old lady was standing near the edge of the cliff. The fence was already broken. I pushed her off the edge. You can't say it's entirely my fault.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

And to be fair, I was wantonly shoving a whole bunch of people, and lots of them didn't die. The ones who did had some preexisting vulnerability, so not my fault.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's very refreshing to see something so nuanced actually getting upvoted here.

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[–] justaman123@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I dunno, this just seems like the entire narrative that government ran things are bad. I mean sure everything was crumbling when Trump started actively breaking things with Doge. But the reason they were crumbling before that was Republican policy and Covid was absolutely Trump's fault from dismantling the programs that monitored pandemics.

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[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] OccamsRazer@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago

It started while Biden was in office due to instability in the region of central America that functioned as a wall to the rest of North America, so there is some truth to it. Trump cutting funding was the wrong thing to do at the wrong time, but the problem was already well under way when he took office.

[–] LBP321@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Does the worm have a moustache?

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's from the darkest timeline.

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

I'm from the good timeline and I can confirm:

Don't fuck with screw-worms. Eradicate them. They're not "good for the ecology".

Also hello neutral timeliners 👋

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 20 points 1 day ago (7 children)

When you see an animal, there's likely a bunch of the same species you didn't see. Specially if it's a small animal, with a fast lifecycle, and the animal burrows itself into something (like, dunno… the flesh of another animal?). And if the animal can live pretty much anywhere there's another, warm-blooded, animal living. (Livestock? Wild fauna? Pets? Humans? Yes.)

So a dozen cases isn't just "a dozen cases", there's likely millions of those flies in USA already. I'm taking a wild guess here and say a billion dollars won't even scratch the surface of the problem there.

(Not that it changes things for me. Here in South America the fly in question goes from "present" to "present". Just businesses as usual.)

[–] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So how nasty are these things to humans? They seem like body horror nightmare fuel.

(I think I live far enough north to not have to worry about them but thinking about them still makes me a bit queasy.)

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 23 hours ago

if you are infirmed, or unable to move its a problem for those people.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

In general humans are the least concern. We're smart enough to know something is wrong with our bodies, and fix it before it gets worse; we wear clothes and bandage wounds so there's less exposure of vulnerable areas; etc. It's a bit more concerning because of children, since the flies can attack eyes and mouths, but as long as the parents actually do their job and take care of the kid, no issue. (Bug repellent, pay attention to small wounds, regular visits to the doc, this kind of stuff.)

Dogs and cats are another can of worms (or maggots). Specially urban strays; if anyone here wants some nightmare fuel, websearch images for [NSFL] miíase cachorro or miasis perro [/NSFL], apparently the flies (it isn't just C. hominivorax) responsible for this sort of infestation will lay multiple eggs in the same wound, if they can; so it can get really nasty. Same deal with the fauna.

[–] Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I should not have googled that, I should not have googled that...

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

Well, I told you guys it's NSFL.

[–] Fluke@feddit.uk 10 points 1 day ago

Nope. Leaving that one alone. Not today.

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[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They can just engineer a virus to interfere with this creature's metabolism or reproduction, right?

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That's more or less what we've been doing for decades - breeding, sterilizing and releasing screwworms by the million to curb the population. It works too - but Trump & Friends axed the program, and so now it'll cost $1bil (more than was spent over the entire lifetime of the program previously) to start it back up again (to make the subtext clear it's because that money will be stolen)

[–] feetandballs@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

To make the subtext even clearer, it shouldn't cost that much, but will end up costing even more than the number they say today as they find new opportunities to line their friend's pockets with your money.

[–] BigMacHole@thelemmy.club 61 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm GLAD I live in a Country where an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT can FIRE Hundreds of Thousands of People, KILL Millions of People and DECIMATE my Countries Livestock and in Response we give him TRILLIONS in Taxpayer Dollars!

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[–] fox2263@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago

They will bemoan it and cry there is no money due to evil democrat fraud and the worm is a hoax.

And then give Iran another 50 billion.

[–] Wilco@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

There is no "finding out". No one will ever hold these deranged weirdos accountable.

[–] ThanksForAllTheFish@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I block DOGE, Trump and Elongated Muskrat as keywords, because Lemmy sometimes thinks it's AmeriLemmy, and I just don't care. But the blocks don't work on comments or pictures. Using Voyager app, anyone have any ideas?

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 48 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Turn off the phone and go for a walk?

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