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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Do you really think Harris’ platform was all that liberal?

    Did you listen to her DNC speech, where she insisted on having the strongest military in America’s history, not mentioning Palestinians plight in Gaza and the West Bank, and promising to have a Republican in her cabinet?

    Harris actively chased after the right and their voting base right up to election day. Democrats did nothing to counter Trump. If they had, they would have actually followed through on the Tim Walz pick and promulgated actual, progressive policies to win over the self-interest of their base.

    Harris using a stick to get her base to vote was not enough. People need carrots. Her campaign was utter shit man.


  • The most consequential issue for voters this past election was the economy. People are feeling inflation, whether that’s through food prices, rent prices, or all of the above.

    Harris didn’t campaign to that. Instead, she catered to families with children - a diminishing subsect of society - and small businesses. Yes she advocated for a first time home subsidy, but no young person believes they’ll truly have enough money to own a home in their lifetime.

    Harris ignored the working class. And so they ignored her. Plain and simple. A political party has to fix its constituents’ problems, or at least lie about it. She did neither.

    Stop making this about voters.





  • What do we mean by effective?

    One might say that the effectiveness of reddit is its niche communities that allow each and every user to find somewhere they feel like they belong. Not only this, the complexity of niches gives rise to interesting information that bubbles to the surface and front page of the platform where more users have exposure. One might contribute this to the quantity of users on reddit’s platform, and also the discoverability of the platform itself.

    Personally, I think Lemmy is decently effective now aside from the saturation in political and tech news and memes. I think things will get better as for-profit companies squeeze more and more people out of their platforms, and people look to alternatives rather than dropping their digital consumption habits.

    I do think discoverability is still a downfall of Lemmy, from both internal and external views. I want to better find /communities from inside the platform and via a search engine should my use and value of Lemmy increase. Wonder how development has gone on this front.

    Ultimately, the FOSS nature of Lemmy is one of its greatest strengths. It can improve over time, ripping features from the big players without the destiny of being killed eventually if not profitable. I think this characteristic alone gives rise to the potential of Lemmy to be very effective over time.



  • Steel decays via rusting as its outer coating is sacrificed to corrosion. Civil features decay as erosion degrades it over time. Wooden power poles decay as their treatment degrades and fungi/insects attack them. Outdoor wiring decays if in direct sunlight due to any sunlight resistive coating degrading over time to UV radiation. Oil used as lubricant in motor vehicles and as insulating fluid in electrical equipment degrades over time due to thermal cycling, oxidation, and moisture.

    The point I’m making is that things degrade naturally. Plastic is no exception, although engineers have been able to make certain decisions with it such that constructions can last for decades.

    If we can make plastic by default biodegrade naturally, and at a much faster time scale than today’s oxo-degradable and biodegradable alternatives, then it still allows for scientists and engineers to select for plastics that have been specifically engineered for the application via coatings and whatnot, comparable to steel and wood.

    It’s possible to do so. We just need to flip the script and make biodegradation the norm and not the exception


  • Plastics are also used extensively in the electricity sector as insulation for conductors, support structures, etc.

    We need our vendors of these products to start addressing this issue, and unfortunately I don’t think this is going to come from the consumer end. Maybe for alternative insulating liquids for transformers and whatnot like with Cargill FR3 or Shell MIDEL products, but clearly more needs to be done. Schneider Electric is a good example of a company leading the way







  • There are other ways in which we sell our bodies in exchange for resources. A lot of people point to soldiers, but for those of us in knowledge work, we sell our brains in exchange for stress and depression if things aren’t in balance. Think about construction workers who break their wrists drilling down floorboards, or caregivers that expose their immune systems to a high quantity of kids who are likely to spread any bugs they pick up because they don’t know better.

    Sex work just involves people selling entertainment or enjoyment in a more intimate setting. The fact that it is intimate doesn’t change that it’s work, and that resources can be exchanged for service.

    I think this all comes down to stereotypes specific to a certain culture. Hoping I see my culture in America make it more legal so we don’t have some of the issues that come from this market not being legal