this makes me wonder how much longer a towel could be used if it were promptly dried after use, rather than put up on a hook where some of it dries sorta and the rest of it clumps.
How many times in U.S. History have the 3rd or 4th options been elected to the office of President? When the answer is zero, how do you count them as options?
You are literally more likely to win the lottery than you are to elect a third party to U.S. President.
Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of...
This is such a common phenomenon that it has a name: cognitive dissonance. If you already knew what that was, then your comment suggests another example of it.
Signal’s president reveals the cost of running the privacy-preserving platform—not just to drum up donations, but to call out the for-profit surveillance business models it competes against....
For those that supposedly champion capitalism, this should be a win win in demonstrating what the market does when you are no longer competitive.
Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately it’s quite traditional only to tolerate markets as long as we’re happy with their behavior. The moment a market starts worrying or upsetting us is never “oh man, maybe this ‘markets’ thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”, it’s “obviously some regulation or policy is ruining this market, or it would never do this thing i don’t like”.
So we’re stuck with the lose-lose-lose of:
keeping markets, their volatility, and all the shit that comes with that
giving up the fringe benefit of markets redistributing wealth when they collapse
denying anyone a chance to see clearly what it means to trust markets to manage our economy for us.
that’s not the point. the point is that there are people who can’t afford to save money in the long run. not like metaphorically can’t afford, like literally mathematically cannot afford.
they are trapped by their existing financial burdens which they already cannot meet and which are getting larger every month thanks to compound interest.
inflation, which normally has the effect of reducing the value of debts over time, is instead making their financial burdens effectively larger too. as inflation drives up the cost of living, wages stay the same and they have ever less of their income available to make debt payments as a result.
A Greek proverb says a society grows when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never know. What’s the exact opposite of that?
Well what’s happening right now is old men are actively uprooting anything that won’t grow to shade tree size in their lifetimes. It’s as if their aim is to one day build their own coffin out of the absolute last tree on Earth.
The only way to make a profit under capitalism is to satisfy the needs of your consumers, regardless if you want or not.
This isn’t true. This isn’t close to true, not even a little. Rent seeking, manufacturing wants/needs, extortion, the list goes on and on, but…
It will not be profitable if other external factors arise, just as regulations, licences, government-granted privileges that squash other competitors
…Yep. You’ve defined capitalism so that all these inevitable features of a capitalist economy are “external factors”. What a stroke of genius. But much like the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, the myriad ills that inevitably accompany it are “external” only because capitalists have named them so.
Scarcity is not something you can “conquer”.
It’s not something capitalism can conquer, because any solution that would end scarcity for a good or service would thereby end profitability for the same. No capitalist would provide it; they’d sooner let their capital collect dust than be used without profit. Or in the case of the Great Depression, they’d sooner set fresh produce and livestock on fire than let other consume it without profit to themselves.
The unplanned order of markets […] emerges spontaneously, so it costs us nothing.
Markets cost us nothing because they emerge spontaneously? Things that emerge spontaneously cost us nothing? I’ll leave it to the reader to poke holes in this obvious nonsense. I’ll merely point out that capitalists have proven themselves masters at turning a profit from things that “emerge spontaneously”, costing everyone a great deal in the process.
fwiw, chemical energy batteries (aka typical batteries) are also potential energy batteries.
I don’t know a simple or correct label that differentiates batteries whose potential energy is gravity-dependent from batteries whose potential energy is chemical-reaction-dependent, but the concept of gravity-based energy storage absolutely is cool as heck.
vote for people that will help build the middle class up again
The point of the middle class is to split the working class in terms of income and wealth, so they spend their time antagonizing each other and mostly ignoring how the upper class is stealing everything.
We don’t need a middle class; we need a strong working class.
You want a class that’s got more education? Educate the working class. You want a class that’s got more wealth? Enrich the working class. You want a class that’s got the time and inclination to make informed political decisions? Deliver workday/workweek reform for the working class.
If the Republican party ever becomes irrelevant, Democrats will be stuck waiting to find out what their new opposition party will be. If it winds up being an actual progressive party, I don’t really see what options Democrats would be left with. Either they try to gain support from people leaving the Republican party, or they try to be “progressive enough” without losing corporate support?
If Democrats share that uncertainty about a post-Republican future, and if they think the way most status quo actors seem to, then I imagine they’d prefer the Republican party to hang on as long as possible.
What I think that strategy would look like: Democrats going as fiscally conservative as they can while still remaining left of Republicans. Democrats lamenting their inability to make progressive changes, all the while not investing much more than lip service towards advancing said progressive changes.
A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways....
provide artists a tool to prevent their content being used to train AI without their permission
On the surface it sounds all good, but I can’t help but notice a future conflict of interest for Zhao should Glaze ever become monetized. If it were to be ruled illegal to train AI on content without permission, tools like Glaze would be essentially anti-theft devices, but while it remains legal to train AI this way, tools like Glaze stand to perhaps become necessary for artists to maintain the pre-AI status quo w/r/t how their work can be used and monetized.
Traditionally, retiring entails leaving the workforce permanently. However, experts found that the very definition of retirement is also changing between generations....
A man who spent more than 16 years in prison in Florida on a wrongful conviction was shot and killed Monday by a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia during a traffic stop, authorities and representatives said....
Even if the arrest is unlawful, resisting arrest is clearly illegal.
And the punishment for breaking any law is death? Or from your prior comment:
They tried to stun him twice, use a baton, the only option left was to use the gun.
Yeah, the gun was the only option. You definitely can’t just let someone run away for resisting arrest at a traffic stop. Even if you impound their now-abandoned car, they might go on a whole spree of resisting arrests or something.
In case you can’t tell my tone is past sarcasm and well into disgust.
Also coming here from all. I had no idea any of the things you said were features of flashlights. Maybe a useful question for me to ask could be: what got you into flashlights as a ‘thing’? Also, do you feel you have a sense of what trades and hobbies mostly comprise this flashlight community?
Lastly, in your estimation is there a reason for an average flashlight user to make the jump from $10 flashlights that are bright enough for them to find their dog’s poo in the dark, to a $50 flashlight like those in this post?
This is coming from a slightly incredulous place, but I’m also trying to mentally pivot from incredulity to curiosity. I hope my tone hasn’t been abrasive.
The US military will aggressively dismantle any secessionist activity if it comes to blood.
There will definitely be no mistakes they make that cost uninvolved citizens their lives. No matter what, the U.S. military will never be wielded against opponents of the ruling regime, nor in a way that serves the personal interests of those in power.
Seriously, this is a bad outcome. This is a worse outcome. I’d rather have individuals crawling from the woodwork than the U.S. military being used against citizens.
So uhh.. how often should I be washing me towels?
Following the prior Lemmy post about towels…...
‘Pipe down’: Biden allies step up calls for Dems to rally around president (thehill.com)
‘I walked out with a £150 trolley – it was so easy’: the rise of middle-class shoplifting (www.telegraph.co.uk)
Jesse is smarter than what we give him credit for. (lemmy.world)
The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop bird flu (www.vox.com)
Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of...
Running Signal Will Soon Cost $50 Million a Year (www.wired.com)
Signal’s president reveals the cost of running the privacy-preserving platform—not just to drum up donations, but to call out the for-profit surveillance business models it competes against....
Marx, as usual, is the only based one (he means cocaine) (lemmy.world)
How I tell my friends I'm on Lemmy (lemmy.world)
Coincidence? (i.postimg.cc)
deleted_by_author
An Auto Loan Debt Crisis Looks Imminent (www.automoblog.net)
Gen Z, millennials have a much harder time ‘adulting’ than their parents did, CNBC/Generation Lab survey finds (www.cnbc.com)
Putin Unleashes Record Bombing in Ukraine as the World Watches Gaza (www.thedailybeast.com)
Almost 90 bombs were dropped in one region in just 24 hours....
crazy idea, let's just feed people (lemmy.world)
turbines (mediacdn.aus.social)
The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn't $73 trillion but $129 trillion, Bank of America says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers (fortune.com)
House Republican tells reporter to ‘shut up’ for asking Johnson about overturning 2020 election (thehill.com)
Consumer Reports finds more lead and cadmium in chocolate, urges change at Hershey (www.reuters.com)
This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI (www.technologyreview.com)
A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways....
What the hell is this shit? Instead of pushing for the return to traditional pensions, capitalism is celebrating the idea that Millennials and Gen Z may simply never be able to stop working. (www.cnbc.com)
Traditionally, retiring entails leaving the workforce permanently. However, experts found that the very definition of retirement is also changing between generations....
Man imprisoned 16 years for wrongful conviction fatally shot by Georgia deputy (www.cbsnews.com)
A man who spent more than 16 years in prison in Florida on a wrongful conviction was shot and killed Monday by a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia during a traffic stop, authorities and representatives said....
Recently convinced my dad to buy his first Hanklight. I'm doing my part! (lemmy.world)
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ef1a664d-8ba7-4300-beec-b8f03f1d985b.jpeghttps://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/55dea6a1-2f90-49d4-9279-60a67d1a1d9c.jpeghttps://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7b1e3229-bcc4-40ac-87e9-4addf00d62cb.jpeghttps://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dca08c58-0a9c-4d60-b939-c1b614e3b6bd.jpeg...
It's a risk worth taking. (lemmy.world)