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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • You know what really irks me though? Even if we didn’t go green. Those 40,000 jobs are going to vanish. Coal doesn’t grow like trees. That mine will empty one day and it’s going to get shut down without warning, without any severance packages, the company is just going to run. There will even still be coal in the mine, it’s just no longer cheap enough to mine it.

    Historically, that’s how it happens. Even in this day and age the moment a better mine opportunity is found, they’re gone. They make the town dependent on them, they use the town in every way they can, they donate to the schools and municipal water supply, and then they vanish without warning leaving the town in the lurch. Happens with copper, happens with gas, happens with silver and it happens with coal.

    At least the green movement will give you a date, a head start, and at least an iota of sympathy.



  • You know, genuinely I have no idea. Especially because due south my GOD is Iowa completely NOT progressive in any way, shape, or form. If you ever drive through Iowa and start flicking through the radio stations it’s terrifying. One radio station saying that “so and so democrat is the antichrist” is one too many but there were several.

    Because my first thought would be urbanization, but really Wisconsin and Minnesota population distribution is not that different. It’s also not bleed over from Canada because we’re both about as connected as the other. Large forests and lakes between us. Prince was genuinely propping up the local music scene a TON before he died but… I don’t think a single industry could be responsible for it. (it’s a difference though) Then we even elected Jessie Ventura Governor, which… maybe scared other politicians to get in line? I genuinely don’t know. I grew up in an incredibly conservative town in Minnesota but at the same time I had enough info to go “some of this sounds like utter bullshit”. I remember listening to Joe Soucheray as a kid (even showed up on his radio broadcast at the fair once) it’s not like conservatives aren’t there, but not in the numbers.






  • I hate the idea of hints. Because A. You then have to make the person your interested in make their own way towards you, and B. Then they have to notice it and then take a risk. I think it’s FAR better, to give your crush an opening, serve them a line on a silver platter.

    For example:
    My wife was interested in me and she opened with:
    “Am I too close?” To which I could’ve replied “nah you’re good” or “yes, a bit” without any fuss. but, since I was also interested, I replied.
    “Oh nonsense, if anything you’re not close enough” which, can easily be dismissed as me being silly, but nope, she’s interested. So she responds
    'OH really? So how close can I get?"

    Like, set up a romantic line. If there’s a romantic line to be had. If they’re interested, they’ll take it.


  • No, I think the comic is making you think about the system at large. It’s not the anchors that are the problem. Anybody in any position can be where she is.

    You could be getting tons of money… not to produce anything or to improve the world, but to maintain power for an upper echelon. It could be a lawyer, it could be an influencer, it could be a pundit, a politician, a programmer, a security guard, a military contractor. There’s this idea that a large paycheck is because you deserve it, because you are providing what’s needed. In reality a high paycheck can be given to you because you’re part of a problem that someone wants you to maintain.


  • Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.

    However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.

    … Are you suggesting that we increase inequality to make the world better? Like we need an overlord, be it robot or human, and the rest of the population needs to be placated, worked to the bone, and easily replaced?

    I gotta assume I am just vastly misunderstanding something in this argument, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Is it just sarcastic?


  • I mean, it’s a primary so you should vote your heart.

    I really wouldn’t try to game theory a republican vote simply because I don’t think there is a single non-trump candidate in the same league as him. Niki Haley couldn’t even beat an uncommitted vote so… That Koolaid is getting served whether we like it or not.

    As for @Dagwood222 's argument. Trump is always going to say that people are/will be edging away from Trump. Trump is always going to say Biden is corrupt, senile, attacking him purely for political purposes. Right now you get exactly one chance to say how you feel about the current political predicament and 4, 8, 16 years from now people are going to take your vote and try to use it as a statistic for how popular these two absolutely unpopular candidates are.

    Don’t overthink it. It’s just a primary, do what you want. And if Trump wins against Biden in the general, you shrug and say “you warned 'em”.



  • point #1

    No, it wasn’t. We didn’t keep the secret. USSR successfully stole secrets. They also knew we were up to an atomic bomb. I don’t know why you think they didn’t.

    Point #2

    Imagine if someone told you that Europeans never went back to the New World after Columbus.

    That would be ridiculous because there was good free unclaimed land. While it’s never explicitly said, free unclaimed land requires oxygen, food, and water. Otherwise it’s not land you can live on, it’s land you can work on while someone keeps you alive.

    We should have the Moon setup like it was in the Sam Rockwell movie: Moon by now.

    Why? In the arctic we can measure the weather of the poles, study long term isolation of humans. We don’t need to provide water or air, transportation is cheap compared to the moon. The marianas trench allows us to study formation of the earth, genetics of crazy offshoots of earth biology. Evacuation procedure is UP, taking hours. Moon trip is 6 days round trip, can’t be cancelled or evacuated. Both are drops in the bucket in price vs the moon.

    With the moon you can… well what? A telescope could be awesome but if you’re going that far you could also just drop one off at a Lagrange point of the earth. Mining sounds great until you realize that bringing the resources home require either an entire manufacturing hub on the moon to launch resources at earth. You won’t see returns for decades, any fuck up could ruin it all. Telescopes are unmanned, so drop it somewhere and it lasts as long as it lasts.

    I believe the moon landing was faked.

    • The USSR acknowledged that we made it, there’s no reason for them to lie.

    • We plopped retroreflectors on the moon, so you can shoot lasers at them and bounce them back.

    • multiple groups were able to track the missions via radio transmissions, which isn’t someone saying “oh look they said they’re in space so they must be” It’s mutiple locations saying. “I’m recieving this signal from this direction at this time. Judging from all this data, they’re halfway to the moon.”

    • Why would we lie about it? If it’s about stealing the money that went into it we already have 60% of the pentagon budget unaccounted for. If it’s about deceiving the soviets how could we possibly trick them? If it’s about raising nationalism why not pull an FDR and minimize poverty?

    just… no. If you want to push this then you need some hard evidence. You’re the one making the extraordinary claim.

    As an aside, do you also think the James Webb telescope fake? That is as nuts as the moon landing, and is still friggin THERE.