Explain Like I’m Five

Libro.fm for stuff not at the library

Lower Decks was my first star trek show. I’ve been enjoying The Next Generation so far. The first season was pretty bad. The second season was pretty good. The third season has been real good

Mexico is a bad example IMO. The Zapatistas are right there. That’s a pretty significant bit of territory the Mexican State has very little control over.

Because billionaires are morally good, hard working, and smart. If a poor person was all those things they wouldn’t be poor /s

That sort of thing can happen in extreme situations. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are the most prominent examples. Both examples involved not having enough stuff. When there aren’t enough necessary goods to buy and people have plenty of money you’re going to get inflation. Using the right combo of subsidies, government run production, purchase quantity limits, reserves, vouchers, and price fixing you can ensure the supply is stable and eliminate inflation even if there’s lots of money.

That’s true. That happens because people are stuck in the narrative of the government needing a balanced budget, just like a household. It also happens because the owners and the corpos use all their money and power to ensure workers pay taxes and thus decrease worker money and power.

Yeah, if the population was educated on MMT the ability to bring corpos to heel would be significantly increased. People arguing for it are fundamentally arguing for a change in how we think about money.

The nice thing about trials of corporations is discovery. We have evidence of Google intentionally making search worse, increasing the time spent looking for results, and this improving ad sales. All that came out in discovery.

Netanyahu has propped up Hamas for decades in order to separate the West Bank from Gaza. There hasn’t been an election in Gaza for 18 years so nobody there had had the opportunity to choose an alternative anyway. Hamas didn’t even get the majority of votes in that election. Finally, plenty of people who don’t support Hamas, like queer folks and babies, are being indiscriminately murdered by the IDF.

The people in this photo are making a not uncomplicated but ultimately moral stance.

LMGTFY In August, before the United Auto Workers strike, the Biden administration announced $15.5 billion in funding and loans to help car manufacturers redesign their factories for electric vehicle production.

Depends on the plant. Some plants, like plum or fig trees, have a lot of suckers poking out of the ground and putting up shoots. If they get disconnected from the rest of the roots they keep on growing.

That’s why I stopped using Google a few years ago. I moved to ddg and liked it pretty well. I switched to kagi earlier this year and it’s going pretty well. I still run into some captchas that refuse to let me pass. I usually just turn around at that point

Dams are scary too, I just hope people are able to decommission them slowly when the time comes. Otherwise the deluge is going to suck.

I will say my Fairphone is a good bit thicker than my work Iphone but honestly it’s not a significant downside for me. The weight is a bigger deal but still not worth the trade-off for a phone I can be confident I can repair myself

Looks like you can do it manually. Build your own Google flavor https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/134847/how-to-filter-out-a-long-list-of-sites-from-google-search

The ones that are successful at enshitification have captive markets. They’re a monopoly, monopsony, or in another kind of inelastic market. https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

The only book of his I’d recommend is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It’s quite Anarcho Capitalist, and sexist in places but it’s an interesting revolution story regardless and has some interesting ideas in it

I’m not as confident with chopsticks so I use a long set of stainless tongs and find them quite useful

I’ve got a Fellow Opus so I can make espresso, as well as less fine ground coffee. It’s quieter than other grinders I’ve used. I’ve also used a 1zpresso hand grinder and found it effective. Both are overkill for pour over or drip coffee

Individuals owning something you need many people to use, like a coffee shop, large tracks of land, or an apartment building.

Because fundamentally there’s nothing wrong with landlords as people. They live in an unfair system and they’re doing what’s best for them. That’s true of the vast majority of people. Change the system, create one where doing pro social things are rewarded, and landlords will become beneficial actors. Honestly, this is true for the vast majority of people. Very few people really need “the wall”