Listened to a podcast with a person who lived in the ussr when it fell and was comparing it to current day America. Basically they were saying that people are becoming more cynical and don’t really believe in the project any more and are waiting for something to come along and fundamentally change things.

With gorbachev it was a turn to democratic liberal capitalism, with trump its a turn to autocratic neo-mercantalism.

Both could bring down the great empires of the twentieth century.

X is years of experience , y is a combined axis, technical knowledge for the green line and salary for the red line

Implying that the Democrats are now “the party of big business” is arguably true (and very boring)

While true in some scenarios, in anti-trust Lina khan’s ftc has done significantly more than trump ever did. Biden keeping her over the protest of countless business execs and daily articles in the wall street journal on how she’s ruining America shows some commitment to prosecuting big tech.

Meanwhile, trump’s anti-trust moves were mostly based off petty issues he had with the ceos or the platforms having a “liberal bias”. Now that every big tech ceo has fallen in line and given him $1 million for his inauguration I doubt we’ll see much movement on that front.

Biggest shock on here is Israel isn’t blue. I guess this as much of a fuck you for ruining my presidency Biden could muster on his way out.

That’s French guiana which is part of France. Not even some weird colonial situation like Puerto Rico, it’s a full department (province) with all the rights of mainland French departments.

zippo lighters

I’ve never had any luck with zippos, whenever I tried to use it it wouldn’t work and I had to refill it. I hear you have to use them often but I’m not a smoker or arsonist so will only use a lighter maybe once a month. Any tips or recommendations for lighters that you don’t have to use often but will last longer than a cheap disposable one?

It’s the thin blue line flag , you’ll see it all over the US by right wingers who think police are the only thing keeping us from murdering each other.

This article goes over a bit of both if you trust npr more than some random socialist propagandist but The trends for both are nationwide. Police staffing has been going down since BLM became a thing and public respect and love for cops went down. This one doesn’t give years but it says 5% over the last couple years. The change is bigger in larger more liberal cities. Chicago is down 13% since 2018 , san francisco which inspired this meme is down 20% since 2017 while at the same time seeing a ~30% decrease in crime over the past year.

Crime is also down all over the country, home break ins have been steadily declining since 2018 when the police staffing “problem” started. Murders have also dropped 12% over the past year along with alot of other crimes

Not saying less cops = less crime, just debunking the classic thin blue line narrative of less cops = more crime

You could maybe argue that if the drop was only in small petty crime. Yeah a shopkeeper may stop reporting shoplifting after the 10th time the police don’t respond. That under reporting goes down as the crime gets more serious. Your probably going to report a home break in to the cops even if you know they won’t do anything since you’re going to need a police report for insurance, home break ins have been steadily declining since 2018 when the police staffing “problem” started. This seriousness holds very true for murders which have dropped 12% over the past year

That’s assuming the victims would be under reporting, if you’re saying the police departments, government etc. Are under reporting then that’s getting into conspiracy territory. Especially because we’re seeing this trend reported across the nation so the conspiracy would have to be massive.

Also if the government had the ability to do this why would they start now? This idea isn’t too complex so someone could have easily come up with it and started doing it a while ago. If that were the case we’d never see crime rates go up as the politicians would just under report every year and make it look like crime is going down. But we have seen reported crime go up, noticeably in 2022 , and instead of hiding that many politicians and police departments showcased it as a reason to Crack down on crime and increase there budgets.

Police staffing has been going down since black lives matter became a thing. They dont get the same unquestioned respect and love like they used too so no one wants to be a cop any more. This one doesn’t give years but it says 5% over the last couple years. The change is bigger in larger more liberal cities. Chicago is down 13% since 2018 , san francisco which inspired this meme is down 20% since 2017 and all the mayoral candidates are falling over themselves to say they’ll solve it even though crime is down.

Revolutions by Mike Duncan. It’s a history podcast with each season about a revolution, American, French, South American etc. with a huge backlog

Already listened through once but now I put it on to go to sleep, cause it’s fine if I miss something now.

By a truly unbelievable coincidence, I was recently out for a walk when I saw a small package fall off a truck ahead of me. … Inside, we found the latest versions of the Cellebrite software, a hardware dongle designed to prevent piracy (tells you something about their customers I guess!), and a bizarrely large number of cable adapters.

I guess it makes sense signal works with the mafia

Id recommend disc golfing. You can start if with just a mid range disc and that’ll cost ~$15 then your good to go. Most major cities will have at least one course that’s free at a park so you don’t need to spend more after that. It has a pretty low skill floor so you can pick it up pretty easily but a very high ceiling so there is a lot to learn and grow which can help with depression. Also gets you walking outside in nature which can help with depression too. It can be as social as you want it to be, you can invite friends, or just go solo, and even if your solo you can strike up conversation with the people in front of you and sometimes they’ll even let you throw with them.

Car prices haven’t gone up, the average purchase prices of cars has gone up but that’s because people are buying more expensive cars, Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, higher trims etc.

If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn’t changed much and has even gone down. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067

Auto workers wages have gone down but they’ve steadied in recent years in 2004 hourly wage was $21.71 or $36.07 adjusted for inflation, in 2014 it was $21.38 or $28.17 adjusted for inflation now they are around $30.

So since 2004 the price for a car has gone down 24% and auto wages have also gone down 20%. The recent UAW contract wage increases with little to no increase in price shows there is some room for workers to get more out of that $25,000 cost pie, but there would be no room if that pie is shrunk to $10,000 to compete with Chinese manufacturers.

The average purchase price has gone up because people are buying more expensive cars, eg. Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, high end trims etc. not because cars are getting more expensive.

If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn’t changed much. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067

None of those are close to the $10,000 cars coming out of China because you just can’t make a car for that cheap in a country with high labor costs like the u.s., or even Japan or Germany.

Lemmy:

Go UAW, fight for higher wages and better working conditions

Also Lemmy:

I demand the cheapest car possible, I don’t care if its built by slave labor in xinjiang. If western companies can’t compete with third world labor costs then they’re obviously inefficient and don’t deserve to exist.

Trump defrauded rich investors as well, one of the big cases against him right now is about him using a Forbes article to lie about his net worth to get loans.

Where did you get this from? Yeah KiB means 1024 and KB is 1000 but that’s not a difference between metric and imperial, judging from the Wikipedia article it seems it was just a matter of using 1024 for technical purposes and 1000 for marketing / simplicity. If anything the article says the metric systems(SI) rule of kilo meaning 1000 means KB is metric.

If anything this shows some of the weakness of metric and it’s use of base 10. Yeah it works great in science and some math when we’re usually talking in base 10, but that’s not the only base you can use. In base 2 some of the imperial measurements are easier to deal with and convert between then metric for example

1 liter = 1111101000 ml 1 gallon = 10000000 fl oz

1 kg = 1111101000 g 1 pound = 10000 oz

The reverse of the above metric conversions, and all base 10 negative exponents, is a repeating number in binary which has to be truncated and leads to inaccurate calculations.

Systems of measure are arbitrary, there’s no superior logical one because different systems of measure work better in different systems of math.

Yes, if rail were so good all the families and normal people who value there lives could take it, meanwhile the interstate could go turn into no speed limit chaos where all the rich people with huge egos and small dicks can crash their Porsches into each other without killing an innocent person whose just trying to get to work.