A lot of expensive hobbies don’t have to be expensive. I’m a musician, and I have spent thousands of dollars on musical equipment but realistically, if I weren’t going to play out, or record high quality songs, you can get away with just a $200-$300 guitar (you might even be able to go lower. Cheap guitars are crazy good these days), a used amp, a tuner, and a cable. With that alone you have a lifetime of entertainment and challange, and the most expensive long-term cost is your strings. It’s honestly a steal in term of cost to entertainment ratio.

Now. That said. The real challenge is not falling into GAS (Gear Aquisition Syndrome), which is a real challange. And if you become even mildly capable on guitar you’re probably gonna wanna play live and record too, so, easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to be expensive.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I think people, especially very politically-minded people tend to imagine their fellow citizens as has much more inflexible political views than they really do.

Most Americans are pretty ignorant of politics in general, and we get fed what is essential political theater in place of political news. I think those of us sitting online vigorously discussing politics tend to overestimate the political convictions of the average voter.

Most American voters, outside of those who are extremely entrenched in their parties, seem to me, to be pretty protean and contridictory in their views. I think it’s not unlikely that a self-described “conservative” would in fact support a lot of progressive policies as long as they were presented in a way that Tucker Carlson hasn’t pre-provided a talking point for.

Don’t forget that Trump was *against the discriminatory trans bathroom bills" in 2015, and all the same people who are now ready to organize pogroms against trans teenagers voted for him either way.

It’s also important to note than depending on how we define “income”, many of the richest have no “income” or a misleading small income (Zukerburg has, like, a 1$ salary or something) because they don’t their money from a wage… they get it from returns on investment. This is also why income tax is a misguided policy goal a lot of the time. We need to tax the investment income of the rich, not their salary.

This is actually how chromatography works. The mobile phase is 0.1% formic acid and 0.3% blood of the innocent.

Cheney almost certainly is concerned about Trump mismanaging US foreign policy, not his fashiness.

That wasn’t my question. But if you must know, if the choice is between “maintaining the current standard of living” and “stop risking the habitability of the one place known that can support life”, I choose the latter. Everytime. And it’s crazy to choose the former.

So if throwing paint at a entierly replaceable cover for a dusty old painting is too far gone to be acceptable, what action can we take to stop oil production? Like. It needs to stop. To continue producing fossil fuels is a death cult. It needs to stop, like, a decade ago. I ask genuinely, how is this too far, and what is an acceptable response to an existential threat?

edit: On the off chance someone reads this so long after the post, I just want to point out that nobody actually engaged with my question here.

I really wish people would look at it in this lens more. I think this is a big part of why we’re see this same issue in many developed countries. Like, yes. Xenophobia and racism is a part of it, but the other, more actionable part of it is that all of our viable political options have turned into technocrats who have used their political and economic expertise to fatten the richest people, and largest, most profitable industries at the expense of the poor for decades. This reality has bred resentment, distrust, and disinterest in politics, especially of political moderates and “status quo” politicians. All major left-wing opposition has been suppressed, or neutered, and as a result the only truly “oppositional” seeming politics come from far right nut jobs and they end up being the release valve for the political frustration. People can only hear “the economy is doing great”, while watching their children struggle to afford even a modest standard of living (by the standards we’ve come to expect) for so long before they become desperate for a significant change.

George Bush Jr. has the most impressive ability to sound like the dumbest motherfucker in the room always. He should also be tried as a war criminal.

Because it’s slightly tricky to replace the post master general: https://www.federaltimes.com/federal-oversight/2022/08/24/can-biden-fire-us-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy/

Liberals should be careful with this. Y’all want them to feel like Trump did alright. We can’t have him being switched out at the 11th hour for a more competent candidate

If I, as a teacher, responded to a less-than-compliant, and upset student by even lightly putting my hand on them I would be fired and charged that day. Police, if we are going to have them at all, need to be able to handle this kind of situation without resorting to violence. Period.

Just to clarify, this “fourth power” rule is reasonable because that is approximately how road damage scales with per axle weight (last I checked it’s not an exact integer exponent but it is about 4)

“Yeah. I really do want a big salty lugee in my mouth” ~ Oyster Enjoyers

Are we sure it’s cheaper though? I mean it legitimatly might not be. I have some friends who work in tech and they use an AI model for, amongst other things, summarizing information on their internal documentation. They’ve told me what their company is paying for the license to use this thing, and it’s eyewatering. also, uhh last time I checked, the company they got that license from does not turn a profit… so it appears to be too cheap at the moment.

It might really be the case that it isn’t cheaper than just paying someone a normal salary to do that work, and it probably isn’t cheaper than just jamming the work being done by the AI now back onto preexisting employees (which is what they did before ~2 years ago anyway).

The other thing that makes me feel this might not be unreasonable is that everyone on the team likes the tool, except their manager, who has thrown out the idea to cut it twice now (that I know of).

Yeah, but because our government views technological dominance as a National Security issue we can be sure that this will come to nothing bc China Bad™.

My county has very much felt it has a stake in your country, whatever country that may be. We probably enforced that stake with weapons at some point.

My countrymen spend a lot of time pontificating on how they feel about other countries. I think it is entierly welcome that people other than Americans and Europeans have some discussions about us.

I sincerely hope that some of my fellow Americans get mad about the things you might have to say about us. We very much deserve it.

Low Quality Facts, the account that made this has a lot of these kinds of made up quotes. https://mstdn.social/@lowqualityfacts

https://youtu.be/X9FGRkqUdf8?si=L3qIpoF6TfV5S8D9

Damn. And these bitches are charging me 12 dollars a lb for ham?