This is what Land Trusts should be used for. Unfortunately donations often allow for this kind of fuckery

Functionally, I guess so. Materially, absolutely not.

It actually is all new cars. You have to go back almost 20 years to find anything not internet connected

Some (although inexplicably not all) small cap value funds dont include the mega cap tech companies at all in their indexes. Going extremely heavy small cap value could get you a portfolio without any exposure to these criminals, depending on the options available through your manager. That may make for a more sound financial strategy than pulling everything out of the market entirely.

You might think that, but settler colonialism has always worked this way.

I’ve talked to some folks around the Cedar Rapids area where there’s a Google data center being built. Apparently they’re pulling in electricians from out of state and paying them 1/4 million dollar salaries +350$/day per diem for this two year project.

I’d bet the majority of that cash is going to the local strippers

Edit: and they deserve every penny 🙏

So glad I got mine on sale last year

Isnt Lemmy.sdf.org back in the last week or so?

I got that idea from the times when I couldn’t stream to my TV in my home while my internet was down. Switched from Plex several years ago though

Easier sure, but it comes at the expense of all traffic (even streaming to a device on your local network) going through their servers. If you have an internet outage or their servers go down, you can’t even stream media locally with Plex. No such issues with Jellyfin.

Edit: apparently my frustrations about this were based on something I set up incorrectly, so +1 point for Plex working locally without internet, -1 point for ease of use/setup if I had this wrong for years without knowing it or finding the fix on my own.

I find it funny, in that context, how the human characters in SC almost universally deride the minds and drones as machines, scap heaps, buckets of bolts, etc at some point. Like, they recognize fully that their way of life is 100% dependant on the minds, but in no way does that mean they deserve respect the way a human would. In the same chapter you’ll have a description of a drone’s personallity or how they do something very human like keep secrets for fun or whatever, then you’ll get the human character outright call the drone an annoying pile of gears or describe how it’s social suicide to have a drone follow you around all the time.

It’s at the same time a very different context than what we know of as AI, while also mirroring how many people feel about AI today. I’ve only read the first few culture books, but it hits that wonderful mix of fantastical SciFi and at the same time very relatable on the human element.

I started reading the Culture novels recently and have been quite enjoying them. Even though technosocialism and intelligent machine utopianism havent really appealed to me IRL, i think the way he uses them as literary devices to highlight the human (or pan-human/post-human as the case may be) stories is actually really brilliant. His prose is also very highly regarded for it’s beauty, but that takes the back seat compared to the stories for me.

Well the NEC still uses wattages from old incandescent bulbs for general lighting load calcs, plus there’s always a reasonable amount of overspeccing built into the calculation.

You would then add any large loads specifically. Clothes drier, oven, fridge, HVAC, anything that comes with a nameplate wattage rating should be included in the load calc.

Most utilities these days will also just round up to a 200A service for anything larger than a trailer. Big houses would get multiples of 200A services if needed.

Lighting load on new construction homes is calculated based on square footage.

This is really neat. Feels like something from the StumbleUpon era, in a good way

So we’re just giving out bonus actions now? /s

The surge of Chinese accounts logging in during February is because of Chinese New Year, not bots. Most Chinese people get like two weeks off work for the holiday, so the number of Chinese people playing at gaming cafes (which are exclusively windows) spikes like that every year.

Some of my friends use “yes them” jokingly to replace yes sir/yes ma’am. Certainly not correct in any grammatical way, but it does flow well enough and is kindof funny as long as the person being addressed doesnt mind.

Phone numbers havent been required for at least like a year or so

Does every person not wish for the betterment of their lives and that of their community? When people’s needs are universally met, for what purpose would someone act out of greed or malice? And why do you suppose that a robust and flexible societal structure couldn’t handle such hypothetical bad actors appropriately? The practice of anarchic principles isnt some fictive utopia, but a process by which people (actual, real, living people right now) actively work to improve the lives of those around them.