I’ve lived in left leaning areas for decades. Solar is everywhere, from rooftops to open fields. We don’t have a ton of wind, but there’s a lot of offshore farms and quite a few in the hills. Nobody is “taking” land, it’s sold by the landowner.

If right wing areas are blocking renewables it’s far more likely to be done so it props up the fossil fuel/power generation companies and has little or nothing to do with any actual drawbacks of renewables or their installation.

It keeps trying. I keep denying it.

I would far rather pay a fee for an OS, like I did for every computer I built up to Win 7, and not have to deal with M$oft’s BS and ad-pushing.

Starbucks hasn’t been decent for a decade, and it was debatably decent before then - you either liked their coffee or didn’t. I have definitely noticed a downturn in their coffee quality. Bland and indistinct. Same with Dunks, they used to have a distinct flavor, but that’s gone in favor of a watered down generic coffee.

They’re both suffering from enshittification, where prices go up, variety and quality go down in favor of propping up the quarterly report.

Anyway, point being, corporate coffee chains suck. Just buy from a decent local shop. Coffee and pastries, or even a real decent breakfast sandwich, can be had and taken on the go. Taste way better and supports a local business.

I thought Edinburgh was two different places because of pronunciation.

I always read it as pronounced like -berg, but there was this other, similar town pronounced -bruh or -boro that people talked about.

Just one of those place names that didn’t come up often at all, so I never compared them in my head and wondered if “hey, these might be the same place…” It came up and bit me in conversation far too recently where my misunderstanding was worth a laugh among friends.

That, and I thought we’d elect basically decent (as far as politicians go) people to the presidency that would at least honor tradition and the institution. Boy, was I wrong about that.

Fuck the private restaurant business. Just tons of fuckery on taxes and wages. From underreporting tips to working off the clock to writing off trips to France as a “business expense”. Glass of wine or 3 at a vineyard and now it’s a wine-buying-and-research trip.

My point was the that labeling certain areas as “bad” can create problems, even if it’s an area known for carjacking tourists. What defines a “bad” area? Petty theft? Drug arrests? Violent crime? Homelessness? How much crime does it take to be labeled “bad”? Unfortunately a lot of those areas are tied to poverty, and all too often poverty is tied to minorities. So say we start labeling areas, now traffic is reduced and maybe it even starts impacting local businesses because people are now checking the box that says “avoid bad areas” and routes people around a place that maybe got drive thru traffic at the coffee shops or gas stations.

You can easily see how difficult this is a policy to make. I’m not dismissing the problems these people encountered, but implementing this in popular guidance apps isn’t going to be easy.

Thanks for the rec, but unfortunately I’m on iOS.

I loved RSS feeds. But I’ve given up on them. And it would seem so have many of the sites I used to frequent. I read RSS offline, so right there I have a problem as the vast majority of RSS apps expect an internet connection. Sites used to write content in such a manner that it was easily readable in RSS, now they don’t. The decline in popularity of RSS has meant that after I get comfortable with an app it stops being updated and no longer works as the developer decides it’s not worth keeping up. Sites make RSS feeds harder to find, if they even have one.

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Yeah, but if you start labeling neighborhoods as “bad” on a mapping program you have a different set of problems.

People need to be aware of their surroundings and not cluelessly follow programs like this.

Just a scam to grab investor and preorder cash, then bolt. Repeat.

No, it’s not hypocritical. Yes, anyone with half a brain knows China makes a huge chunk of the world’s stuff.

A nation can make choices as to what energy sources they use and China went balls to the wall with coal. That wasn’t a choice the buyers of Chinese products made.

What the F, TJ? Want to make a loyal customer of 15+ years quit? This is how you do it. We’re a union family, we vote with our dollars too.

I’m curious how they implemented this. The air completely has to be replaced with nitrogen, no breathing in a mix of nitrogen and outside air, no oxygen at all. People that enter confined spaces with no oxygen pretty much just drop and are dead quickly, so this doesn’t sound like they did it right.

I would really need to see the math on this. All of the numbers. Plenty of people bitch and moan about taxes, but there’s no way income tax should result in a continually smaller paycheck because the recipient got a raise, nor should a raise be consumed entirely by taxes. Anyone who tells a story about losing all their raise to tax isn’t telling the whole story most likely, like filing for too many withholding exemptions on the W4, paying less tax, then getting slammed with a tax bill “consuming all their raise” or something.

Now, I have heard of people running into issues with the AMT, but that’s for people already making a pretty good amount of money, and that limits (crudely explained) says even though you made a bunch of money more and have a ton of write offs/deductions, the AMT floor won’t let the filer get all the deductions so they pay more tax. That also might come up if one sells a house or something and brings in a bunch of money. But that’s not a situation most people face, and they shouldn’t see it regularly. It was intended to prevent wealthy people from skipping out on taxes.

“To be fair,” no it can’t, at least not in the US. The top tax bracket for income I think is around 37%. And the next lowest is in the high 20s, but I don’t know what the $ amount is, but I think you gotta clear a half mil + a year before you get to that 37%. So make a mil a year? 37%. 2 mil? 37%. No matter what you’re making you’re not getting to 100%. So I don’t know where you live, but here in the US there’s no way to hit 100% on personal income tax, the tax that’s being discussed.

Then that would have been a good clarification to include in the statement. But when someone said their raises are eaten by taxes, one immediately assumes income tax.

That’s not possible. That’s not how tax brackets work at all.

Doc Martens are now Chinese made IIRC and don’t last.

Solovair is the the company that used to make Martens and you can still buy that style there. I hear they’re much better than Martens, but also occasionally a mixed review that they didn’t last very long.

I’ll offer a mixed review for carhartt…while they used to be strictly workwear, they’ve started putting up retail spaces in designer clothing areas. Prices have shot up. I had a belt from them that fell apart pretty quick with normal wear. Got a work shirt that’s doing pretty good though. IMO they’re headed down the same road as a lot of brands that get popular - price hikes with decreased quality.

It doesn’t matter what you want. What matters is if corporations can extract $ from you, gain an efficiency, or cut their workforce using it.

That’s what the drive for AI is all about.

Seconded. I hate that information these days revolves around someone getting views or being spoon fed at their pace via video. I can read a list or a summary in a minute or two.