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Main Paineframe posted:It's less grim if you go look at the actual results. "I'm not gonna read that, all of the above I guess" being a big part of what it is to be American is pretty accurately conveyed here. Maybe with a side order of "the news has been talking about X lately, if I mark 'uncertain' it'll make me seem in the know"
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Mar 27, 2023 16:59
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I'm also not about to listen to a single word the British press has to say on the subject.
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Mar 28, 2023 00:22
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You're fine, it's going to be blamed on trans people by the usual suspects anyway. In other news, since this thread brought it up I've heard two people independent of anything else bring up pickleball today. Big Pickleball has finally made its move.
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Mar 28, 2023 00:37
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Charliegrs posted:So if the people that chuds don't like both start arming themselves for self defense and also committing mass shootings I wonder if chuds will change their stance on gun control from 100% against to gun control for only certain types of people. Support for gun ownership has always been highly conditional, most take their cue from Dubbya and the more right-leaning of Dems and file it away as "they're basically terrorists and so don't count as citizens because they hate are freedoms so shouldn't get are freedoms" Conservatism in general precludes any universality, without exception. It's never had a theoretical basis or proponents within the movement.
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Mar 28, 2023 03:02
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Angry_Ed posted:imagine getting backed into a corner via questions by Wolf Blitzer of all people. This really is what is funniest to me. He's the perfect distillation of the Indiana Republican.
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Mar 31, 2023 05:32
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I'm only on the fringe of this and it's a shitstorm, things are gonna be grim tomorrow to a degree I dont think most people realize yet. They should be destroyed utterly for that poo poo.
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Apr 1, 2023 04:28
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In my experience, Trump has massive appeal to the constantly victimized mindset small business owner/landlord like nobody else I've ever seen since Dubbya specifically right after 9/11 (when he had that kind of support from almost everybody). Most of the rural lumpen who are getting hosed over instead of feeling hosed over because they watch TV news all day are about as relevant to anything that is going on as immigrant labor and urban lumpen. I could get a service worker with a Black Rifle Coffee shirt who lives in the cheapest place in town to sign up to vote for Bernie, but his boss, no fuckin way. I had to teach the former about class warfare, the latter already knows. It's not to say anybody is above the consequences of their actual actions, but there isn't a context in this country where power and priorities are driven by the will and concerns of the poor. Basically: James Garfield posted:"poor white people in flyover, industrial burnout areas" aren't the core of the Republican party. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a millionaire. edit - I'd like to put it out there now with my mod hat on that this is fine in regards to dumbass framing from the stenographer corps about MTG, but is in no way a license to start talking about the moral imperative of disowning family members.
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Apr 2, 2023 19:30
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Angry_Ed posted:Amazing what being able to just gerrymander things in insane ways does for you. Yes, they recognized and incorporated the report that young people hate them, it's just that "try to appeal to them" is only one of the possible responses and it's just not the one they took. It's always going to be easier to return our democracy back to what it was designed to be than it is to make it actually properly democratic
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Apr 2, 2023 23:08
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DarkCrawler posted:And percentage of the population is...20%, BTW. 20% sounds about right, that's the share of total population Trump got in 2020 and he only got 1% less in 2016. He also got the least amount of votes between the top 2 each time, or would've if these votes were actually for the President and not a non-binding statement of opinion for one of the relative handful of people who actually get to vote for POTUS. Most democracies as designed have a red carpet laid out for any conservative minority (by design and declaration, it's not a conspiracy) so I wouldn't count yourself as in any better a position than we are, just maybe not as far along the path just yet.
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Apr 3, 2023 17:17
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DC if you have any interesting comparisons or observations stemming from being a foreigner watching all this from afar compared to your own system that is fine, but making broad declarations as to the fundamental nature of all of American voters when you dont live here or participate in our dumbass fake democracy is a doomed endeavor I'm going to once again ask you to stop. Direct that energy locally, or if you think a fascist rightward lurch is truly impossible there and the left is ascendant forever take that argument to FinnPol or whatever.Blue Footed Booby posted:I remember goons who did door to door outreach for Obama posting stories about white people literally saying "we're voting for the nig." People can be racist without recoiling from POCs like vampires faced with crosses, and without it being their sole decision-making factor. TDD is right here, when people talk about the Dems losing the rust belt with the Third Way taking over and exporting those jobs to increase profit margins, this is what they're talking about. It was a slow enough process that people could pretend it wasn't happening but now it's complete and cannot be ignored. These people didnt vote for a white woman or white man when the Dems offered them either. How the Dems win them back is ultimately up to the Dems, who lost them in the first place and getting people to vote for them is their whole job. Epic High Five fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 16:07
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TheDisreputableDog posted:Georgia’s a pretty good model. Focus on the populist economic policies the left champions, downplay the social justice stuff, treat defund the police and reparations like they’re radioactive. I'd argue that without a Trump this strategy is unlikely to be deployed widely as it's also a significant reduction in the scope of what they can promise or deliver, which has the potential to drive away as many people as just having the same positions as the GOP on whatever the conservative-leaning media decides voters should be most concerned about this cycle. In my own opinion, I think the only thing that could really save the Dems are the left that they are demonizing making their votes strictly conditional so they either have to become a party with a coherent identity and core of beliefs, or they be a little more honest about things ala UK Labour and its purges and massive incompetence. IMHO they'd already be there if Bernie had won the nom either time. I genuinely, deep down, do not believe that a party that has no problem with flexible beliefs on those topics would have any problem with Trump winning over a tepid SocDem. But it's all just a datapoint despite my feelings, and it's all lessons to be learned from. My actual hopes here are that my fellow travelers have actually learned that lesson for next time the begging bowl comes around.
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Apr 4, 2023 16:32
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DarkCrawler posted:Uh, I can back anything I say about Republicans with actual evidence-based data and studies if they are requested. They are not requested. That's fine, all I ask is that people here engage with American topics in an American context, and I recognize that our seat at the imperial core makes this a lot trickier a proposition than in any of our forums' proper regional threads. You shouldn't wait for someone to demand you support your own arguments, you should do it when you make them. With my mod hat on, I'm also saying that disown your granny stuff is your own personal ideology and I would like to avoid this thread once again derailing into a fight about the right-leaning and fascist parties of Finland and that not every discussion that includes Republicans at all is appropriate for it, especially this one which is fundamentally about bigger stuff than what any individual idiot thinks or wants. We get that you really, really hate Republicans and trust me, as someone who actually lives under them, I get it too, but class issues are a messy nest here and most of the people participating already don't vote for or support them. Mellow Seas posted:I mean, what’s the opposite of the tragedy of the commons? Unless everybody goes at once you just end up with far right control. This is something that would not work under any conceivable circumstances. Even if it was theoretically possible to get that message from the left across in one disastrous election, there would be a strong bias among many Dem strategists to discount or ignore it. A bunch of their candidates in close and red districts would be pushing the same stuff they do now, or go further right, and then where is your coherent party identity? Far right control is already an inevitability, the system itself is designed to ensure that. Fundamentally, I believe that some degree of revolution is going to be required but that we as a culture are not capable of it, and since a cultural change would also require revolutionary conditions it's more the same. My efforts have been focused locally for this reason, but at the national level this is what I think would work because the march rightward by the center has been dependent upon the left still voting for them despite the declarations of hatred and total marginalization within the structure of the party, and the center moving right is a forfeit win for the right regardless of whatever else happens. It's not terribly new ground, I don't have anything new to say on the subject that hasn't been said here before.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:00
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Mellow Seas posted:The problem is that there is no revolution that is going to eliminate the fact that some percentage of people seem to be, for the lack of a better term, immutably pro-suffering. It is, if not hard-coded into human societies, something we have never had any success in addressing. With all due respect to the CIA I think that’s a big reason why the world has had a lot more socialist revolutions than it has active and thriving socialist paradises. If it were true there wouldn't be a CIA to give due respect to. Even coups and color revolutions require massive outside support to keep going. People aren't isolated islands of pure thought and reason, with enough media and institutional control they'll believe what they obviously have to to get along day to day, and with enough of that and they will believe it genuinely, and revolutionary conditions aren't famously bereft of enemies to focus on because indeed enemies there shall be. Why do you think the right is so obsessed with controlling all messaging and is taking over every media outlet they possibly can?
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Apr 4, 2023 17:13
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Harold Fjord posted:This sort of sounds a lot like how Stockholm Syndrome works too. Obviously it's considered to be maladaptive in a specific context but the basic functioning seems right Stockholm Syndrome is, as I understand it, not exactly an uncontroversial theory. It's just basic psychology, people will come to believe the prevailing norms they're immersed in. We're an adaptable, social species and this fact is being constantly used and abused to shape our ideologies and forms the basis of a lot of game design and all marketing to boot. Mellow Seas posted:The Soviet Union managed to collapse into totalitarianism before the OSS existed or before the US even had the desire or capability to perform their Cold War interventions…. Can’t really blame the US for that. And when the small vanguard succeeds it will bring a lot of the squishy middle along with them. Combine that with the runup most likely being the squishy middle doing purges of the left to show willing and you've got everybody. If you think all the interventions and stuff started AFTER the USSR fell that's just an incorrect understanding of history, as they were a well-established duty of intelligence agencies even before Operation Paperclip made them all official national policy. How will a socialist government do that when capitalist regimes failed to? Hard to say, especially since it's hinging on a nebulously defined premise here that we only even arguably have at all and only believe we do because of the aforementioned propaganda campaigns. It's just as likely to be as simple as dissent is tolerated so long as it's not a threat, and things are still good enough on average that it is rarely actually a threat. Cuba revised their Constitution to protect LGBT rights and personhood, are we capable of nearly as much? Maybe I'm just in an especially grim mood today.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:47
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Main Paineframe posted:I think these are some pretty wild assertions to throw out there without any further specifics. Not only are they rather inflammatory and extreme, but they're also so vague that it's difficult to read them as specific claims rather than vague ideological throwaways. I'm aware of the counter-arguments but my beliefs are my own and are as I presented regardless. Nationally, we will be mitigating harm while on the back foot until the harm is too great and then there will be a drop in living conditions sufficient for a great regression in human life and liberty, probably oil approaching 1.0 EROI, the same pattern as has become established as a feature of the liberal democratic mode elsewhere. Like I said, I'm focusing locally so not giving up to nihilism or whatever. I don't speak for the left, but for the most part they're totally bought in on voting blue so a lot of the complaining about them is just projecting failures of the party. Nobody gives a poo poo about the tiny fringe of people who are dubious as to the possibilities of enriching landlords to stop landlords from landlording where I'm at. Edgar Allen Ho posted:The Soviet Union reverted to enforced Russification and homophobia before Lenin was cold. The Freikorps didn’t do that, the westerners didn’t do that, the whites didn’t do that, homophobic and xenophobic Russians did. Which part of my post is this in response to? We just struck down Roe and half the country is going hog wild implementing whatever reactionary stuff they can ram through. What's hundred year old revolutions on the other side of the world have to do with that? It's a bipartisan fact that we are not a socialist nation in any way, shape, or form and that socialists are in fact the worst people on Earth, check House Concurrent Resolution 9 for confirmation on this. We are the counter-argument to those failures of the past by our own proclamation, what's the mirror tell us? Why gloss over the actual example I included?
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Apr 4, 2023 18:10
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Randalor posted:Have they started saying that persecuting Trump for what he did in the past is pointless because it was so long ago, but also persecute Hillary for her e-mails, yet? I've always "enjoyed" the cognitive dissonance of those two thoughts when they start spouting them back to back. I think this has been a standard line since 2015, when whatever he did in the past was egregious enough that "well that's why he's such a good businessman" or "just boys being boys, product of his time, etc etc" wouldn't pass muster
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Apr 4, 2023 18:27
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Randalor posted:Oh, no, I meant at the protest today. Oh, sorry I misread. Honestly I'd be surprised if they're going to be so veiled if opening up with picking fights like birds call in the morning is the mood of the day. His bad stuff was good because he got away with it which means he's strong, which is why holding him to account because it upsets the natural order of things of him getting away with it because he's strong! None of it is in good faith obviously but some of it can be too boring or droll.
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Apr 4, 2023 18:34
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So focused we're fighting about cheese and dairy
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Apr 5, 2023 01:11
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I think regular Whoppers also don't come with cheese, so that's just the item being consistent. The Impossible Whopper has been chugging along just fine for what has to be at least over a year now, if McDonalds couldn't make the McPlant work it's almost certainly because they didn't want it to. McDonalds puts cheese on its fish sandwich, the McPlant was never not getting cheese.
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Apr 5, 2023 16:25
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Well the report isn't demanding total prohibition or anything, it's just confirming that alcohol is not in fact ever good for you and is always bad and you're always better off not drinking it. If pointing that out bothers someone that's for them to sort out. The arguments in favor of aren't alien to me, I know drinking and being drunk rules which is why I had to stop, but at least I never told myself I was doing something healthy and it's nice to have confirmation that such an obvious lie can be put to bed. THC ain't as good but it's got staying power and is cheaper
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Apr 5, 2023 17:21
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Not an alcoholic, but I think quitting alcohol would destroy my social life. Do you know how boring most recreational activities are? How boring the average person is? Naw it's fine, I just order a water or diet coke if I'm feeling fancy, nobody gives a poo poo if you're drinking or not. 100% of the people who have given me grief if I'm not drinking are just unhappy because me abstaining is reminding them that they should be but aren't. There's far less dangerous drugs that help people socialize if it's just an anxiety killer for you, and if you generally just think recreation and other people are dull then booze probably isn't helping as much as you think it is. Every person is a huge weirdo about something, just gotta figure it out.
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Apr 6, 2023 00:25
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IIRC, a good chunk of the team refused to attend at all, but it wasn't anything to do with the menu.
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Apr 15, 2023 18:55
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Just buying everybody who is currently driving a semi a brand new electric one is actually probably the least problematic outcome. These are big expensive items and anybody who doesn't have that kind of money up front, which is most truckers, is financing them through what are basically legal scams. If someone who wanted to haul stuff just got a truck to do it with, a lot of really lovely players would be driven out of the industry. This is something that is so obviously not going to last the next Republican that gets on the throne that anybody getting angry about it now just smacks of asking for payment in advance for a job you know is going to get cancelled. EV trucking within 9 years is probably possible for drayage but good luck finding someone who'll stick their necks out for those drivers. For long haul, I've seen nothing that convinces me we'll be replacing every hydrocarbon joule burnt with anything cleaner and even "stations with a big diesel generator that's used to charge the trucks" is both insufficient and too weak to stand on its own. This isn't even the foremost of my infrastructure concerns, after all how much does an EV semi weigh? Freightliner seems to have the most serious contender that isn't in production yet (though Tesla seems to be better at SEO) but the listed weight is so much higher than just what I'd expect a cab to be that I think it's not what I'm looking for.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:35
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I'm not actually convinced that the average semi-cab will be much heavier than its ICE counterpart, batteries are heavy but there's a lot of really heavy poo poo that is required to make a big engine move a load like that, that isn't necessary for electric. The average consumer car doubling in weight to 8,000 pounds is going to do far, far more damage to stuff and the 20% heavier semi's are going to be the final straw or bridges and roads alike. Blindeye posted:My guess is will start seeing a lot of the overhead power trucks like those being tested at scale in Germany. Electrification of our highways to allow trolley buses and trucks isn't the worst thing. It's a beautiful dream but unlikely, a lot of cities used to have this and held ceremonies to rip it out and those same people and their fellow travelers in ideology are still in charge. If you've already got wires overhead so things can operate without gas or batteries, why then people will demand trams and trolleys and more buses because they'd just slot right in at that point.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:48
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Class3KillStorm posted:I wanna thank Mellow Seas and Epic High Five for piping up since that article was posted - I feel like I'm learning so much more about commercial trucking and its implications than I ever would have expected to in my lifetime. I can't speak for Mellow but everything I know is picked up from Bar Ran Dan and a few other spots on these forums, it's a real education sometimes. edit - and a few years working in a diner with some truckers but all I can say for certain as a result of those conversations is that build quality is garbage now and even brand new engines are held together with spit and string TheDeadlyShoe posted:These issues are only really for long haul trucks, right? Short haul trucks - also in the bill - seem like they can convert to EV without nearly as many issues. I don't think there's any issues that one will have but the other won't. I think the short haul (drayage) sector is the easiest to fix in theory but that's not going to be the same as practice, but it is certainly more focused than the broader issues long haul face in electrification which are less fine details and more "is this sort of project even something we, as a society, are capable of anymore" I was being a bit tongue in cheek but I do expect traditional car companies to oppose overhead or non-battery electrification specifically because that'd be the exact same system that would make replacing cars entirely much easier.
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Apr 17, 2023 22:22
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cr0y posted:It's. Always. Projection. What I believe is the non-Krassenstein source:  just in casehttps://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1648026562422272006 Fuentes is tied up in it too apparently to the surprise of nobody.
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Apr 17, 2023 23:12
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Nothing quite like a bunch of links about meat processing to strengthen my decision to stop buying meat.Inferior Third Season posted:Turns out, CEOs getting dragged in front of Congress don't actually have much effect on the timeline of implementing overdue technical upgrades that need to be integrated into live, antiquated systems which are already overloaded. Who knew? Yeah I've basically tuned out all hearings and scathing op-eds and whatever, if nothing comes of them then what good were they, and if something good does come of them then that's the point where my interest is piqued. If I wanted to spend my day watching rich, powerful people sniping at each other before bemoaning my rent as I try to get half as much rest as I need for the rear end kickings of the next day I'd play 2021's GOTY Wrestling Empire
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Apr 18, 2023 17:33
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Oh so Fox News will now be viewed as disreputable by anybody who doesn't instead just claim the fact that they're still operating the same as always means they won the court case, it's just a huge W for Fox News of the dodged bullet type for me. If they didn't consider a settlement a huge win they wouldn't have proposed it. Extremely disappointing that all the most explicit "I did this crime and here's why, and here's me admitting it was a crime I did" evidence and admissions in the world still couldn't rise above the level of a fine, is this the best promise of justice that can be offered by the system? A sad sort of admission that you can do whatever so long as you're rich enough?
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Apr 18, 2023 21:56
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Eletriarnation posted:I think the key here is that it wasn't a crime in the criminal law sense, but a tort - this was a civil lawsuit, right? What outcome were you expecting from a civil lawsuit that doesn't in the end amount to "a fine"? I wasnt expecting anything to happen to anybody except now some donor has to foot some operating expenses for awhile, maybe, but that doesnt mean I'm happy to be right
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Apr 19, 2023 01:39
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Tucker Swanson Rasputin Carlson
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Apr 26, 2023 16:36
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Is there a drug that does the opposite? My partner has this problem and as someone who likes to cook it's a bummer. THC gummies or Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength
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Apr 27, 2023 17:01
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:My personal pet theory is that any number of the various chemical compounds in our food and water are going to turn out to be the equivalent of lead in the Roman aqueducts. Microplastics. Back when it was lead in everything frying brains people knew and were saying as much but they were ignored and now we pretend it was a mysterious thing. It'll be the same for microplastics. Other stuff is pretty nasty but cannot possibly be as omnipresent as microplastics are.
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Apr 27, 2023 17:55
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We definitely dont have the technology, but I can say that if the conditions and pay weren't abysmal I'd rather be in a kitchen than doing data entry or doing 20 minutes of real work a day in between posting on the clock. I think people would be surprised at how quickly "lovely" jobs get volunteered for under an alternative system, and in fact realizing that our hosed up priorities is why I had to pick between supporting myself or using my love of and skill at cooking to better the world a bit was a big radicalizing moment for me.
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May 6, 2023 17:01
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Mellow Seas posted:Well - maybe not precisely, but we’re pretty close. You could certainly replace a lot of staff. Robots and a person managing them can run a store where you drive to a window and get some lovely food. Not with the same flexibility as human staff but you could make it work. It would definitely be worse. I’ll give you that. You're not wrong but we're already at the minimal staff maximum technology point, it's not a future one, it's the tech level for food service we have now. Steps beyond this one are steps toward what people actually going out to spend $$$ on food don't actually want, at least not at prevailing prices (I'm pretty sure people would be fine with "nothing made to order" automats if the meals were a quarter) Technology can indeed replace loads of workers in food production, but especially at the restaurant level it already has - back of house now looks pretty much the same as it did when I got into the industry in the early aughts, and we can indeed put out a huge amount of food with a minimum of labor inputs thanks to technology. The key thing is that the differential between input and output isn't being reinvested or returned to the community in the form of more and cheaper and higher quality food, it's being stolen away as profit, and since the tenancy of rate of profit is to fall, it means the industry finds itself in a perpetual self-cannibalizing crisis. Technological progress for the last few decades has largely been on the supplier side and focused on centralization of production, which being more efficient means it is more profitable, but we're coming up on the limits of even that as we fill our slaughterhouses with the children of migrant labor and lock facilities down like nuclear silos to prevent the public from seeing the true face of the free market. If the work itself was the reason for these conditions, running a prep table at Wendy's would be on par with being dropped into a commercial kitchen with raw inputs and spending a couple hours churning out a couple hundred pounds of finished meals, but the two are indeed very different ways to spend an afternoon.
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May 6, 2023 18:02
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There 7 types of love according to the Greek philosophers everybody, plenty of room for everybody's favorites in the other 6 even with Steiner being the obvious king of Eros. Beatrix is a very lucky lady.
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Nov 8, 2023 03:21
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brugroffil posted:I'm wondering why the kept the "with husband" in there instead of implying something more scandalous Unfortunately the GOP at all levels seems incapable of running personal attack ads like this without making the target sound way cooler than they actually are
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Nov 8, 2023 03:28
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