Heat pumps are especially ridiculous because their installation costs are insane when in actuality they're mostly the same installation process as Central Air with minimal extra work required, but they cost 10x more just for the installation alone, let alone the units themselves
I'm eyeing a heat pump water heater though, when our current one dies (which hopefully won't be too soon).
Supreme Court: Well, you see, this country has an entrenched tradition of allowing oil companies to do whatever they want, so this law is unconstitutional. Wait, you know what ... in fact, Vermont needs to hand over a few of their state parks to oil companies even if they don't have oil under them, because fuck ya'll for even thinking you can make an oil company less profitable.
I don't know if you like podcasts, but Know Your Enemy is a take on the right from two leftists who used to be conservatives who approach it from an intellectual POV.
I linked to the political magazine that helps support them since it gives some rundowns of their topics that might give you some of the sources that can be read instead of listening to their podcast, if you'd prefer.
Extremist Militias Are Coordinating in More Than 100 Facebook Groups
After lying low for years in the aftermath of January 6, exclusive reporting shows, militia extremist groups and profiles have been quietly reorganizing and ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook.
“Join Your Local Militia or III% Patriot Group,” a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: “Now more than ever. Support the American militia page.”
Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an “armed militia group" on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence.
Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country.
After lying low for several years in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot on January 6, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook—with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, shared exclusively with WIRED.
Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit “active patriots” and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They’re also advertising combat training and telling their followers to be “prepared” for whatever lies ahead. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for “war” or to “stand up” against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students, communists—and the US government.
These groups are also rebuilding at a moment when anti-government rhetoric has continued to surge in mainstream political discourse ahead of a contentious, high-stakes presidential election. And by doing all of this on Facebook, they’re hoping to reach a broader pool of prospective recruits than they would on a comparatively fringe platform like Telegram.
“Many of these groups are no longer fractured sets of localized militia but coalitions formed between multiple militia groups, many with Three Percenters at the helm,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “Facebook remains the largest gathering place for extremists and militia movements to cast a wide net and funnel users to more private chats, including on the platform, where they can plan and coordinate with impunity.”
Paul told WIRED that she’s been monitoring “hundreds” of militia-related groups and profiles since 2021 and has observed them growing “increasingly emboldened with more serious and coordinated organizing” in the past year.
One particularly influential account in this Facebook ecosystem belongs to Rodney Huffman, leader of the Confederate States III%, an Arkansas-based militia that, in 2020, sought to rally extremists at Georgia’s Stone Mountain, a popular site for Confederate and white supremacist groups. Huffman has created a network of Facebook groups and spreads the word about local meetups. His partner, Dabbi Demere, is equally active and on a mission to recruit “active” patriots into the groups. Huffman and Demere are also key players in the pro-Confederate movement known as “Heritage, not Hate.”
Before Meta shut it down, the pair ran Free American Army, which drew in individuals from several militias, including the Kentucky 3 Percenters, the Virginia Liberty Guard, and the Florida-based Guardians of Freedom, a group that was mentioned in the final January 6 report and whose members were among those arrested in connection with the Capitol attack. Free American Army also included a known activist in the far-right extremist Boogaloo movement. At least one user in the group claimed in their profile to be active-duty military; another claimed to work for the Bureau of Prisons.
“We have (and still do) traveled across our country standing up for our constitution, and have met most of you face to face. There's no time like the present to come together and organize our states, to build them stronger with true patriots (not people pretending to be Patri
No, no, you see, it's actually so empowering for the worker because they can quit at any time with no notice! Isn't that so empowering! In fact, I almost think that the balance of power goes too far in the workers favor on this and we need to give some of it back to the poor employers who are just always walking on eggshells since they can be quit on at any time!
/s just in case
It's so insane that anyone can argue that at-will employment is anything other than a shitty employer's wet dream.
Losing access to personalized YT would suck, but losing decades of emails would suck even more (when I initially got GMail, I imported all my old emails in ... I guess I should probably look at making a backup periodically, like I used to). I share your sentiment that I fear what these companies are going to do next in the pursuit of more money they can burn and/or give to shareholders as they continue to tank their reputations.
I, personally, don't see that happening, but I can easily imagine them making it a TOS violation to use adblock and then killing your account if you continue to do so :-/
Same with Google's ads in general. For a long time they were whitelisted by default on just about every adblock list out there because they were so unobtrusive it didn't make sense to bother blocking them, especially when you compared them to the other ads that were common at the time. They were also generally relevant ads, so people actually did click on them and use them since it actually related to the thing they were searching for.
They're obviously more profitable now, but you have to wonder by how much and if they'd be a more trusted company today (and what's that worth monetarily) if they hadn't gone down this race to the bottom.
ETA: Part of what I mean is that now they create things like Stadia and most people didn't even bother trying it because they knew it'd hit the Google Graveyard in a few years. Had Google been a more trusted company, people may have been willing to give it a try and they could possibly have printed money since by all accounts the service was actually pretty good.