I’d love me one of those Talos2 boards. $$$$ though.

The particles spewing from both ends also don’t help.

Disagree. UAW’s high profile cases are a good example of effectively run established old-style unions getting big wins, and unionization is occurring at high rates compared to the historical mean of the past fifty years worldwide, even in the face of total hostility from government and the owner class.

Many unions are currently in a place where they need to hand over the reigns from an older generation that got way too comfortable with cost of living adjustments and cosy relationships with management to a new generation who have been directly blocked from power most of their working lives by that older generation.

Things are going to get much spicier, just watch.

On-and-off smoker here (mostly off)

In my experience, nicotine is great for moderating rage and resentment. It can help in bad situations and also provides a space where one can effectively shut distractions out and enter a somewhat meditative state to work on issues. It performs this task very, very well.

It is not the same as “just taking a walk” or “standing outside”. Absent-mindedly smoking provides a different experience. I am envious of people who can go to the park and get the same kind of effect out of it, but for a raft of different reasons I can’t reach the same experience.

I know smoking damages nearly every part of your body. I know it’s addictive. I know many smokers aren’t considerate of others, and blow smoke all over people downwind, in through windows and leave cigarette butts everywhere. I know wildfires start from improperly extinguished butts. I am not one of those people, and take pains to enjoy a cigarette where I will impact as few people as possible. And when my life looks up? I quit, because I don’t need it anymore, and it serves no useful purpose.

Unfortunately, there seems to be less and less room in the world to create the kind of space where one can take a few minutes such as this. And that I think is the crux of the resistance here.

We keep asking for more out of everyone, and usually to no benefit for themselves. We keep making organizational decisions which result in people feeling stressed, angry, resentful, and then in turn quite deliberately fail to understand when people pick up a vice that is harming them… and then try to ban that behavior, or sanctimoniously tut away that they are somehow selfish for wanting a break from it all for five damned minutes.

There’s so many different instances under which this theme plays out. I doubt this law will be enforced evenly, and it seems predictably authoritarian and counterproductive like many substance control laws. We can’t stop people stuffing a bunch of plants into a pipe, or into a paper wrapping and smoking it. It’s simply too easy to do, and it provides too much utility as a temporary respite from life for people to stop.

Want to solve it? Try finding ways of making life less terrible for the critical mass of people so that they won’t feel a need to smoke. And even then some still will, maybe out of spite, addiction (medical/psych treatment could be offered?) or downright contrarianism; but maybe few enough that it won’t matter. That’s the hard, and proper, fix for this. Smoking cessation drives are quite effective, as well as reasonable limitations on where one can smoke, and I think that is a fine policy balance.

I think cigarettes, especially manufactured ones, should be available and taxed appropriately for the healthcare burden they will produce later in life. Everyone should be aware of the health considerations in no uncertain terms. I think it’s appropriate to limit smoking around areas where at-risk populations live and congregate (incl. Children), and the rest really has to be allowed to work itself out in the ad-hoc grey area loosely defined as “Community”, “Consideration”, “Conscience” and “Respect”.

The Law is too heavy handed a tool to be expected to succeed here.

Anyway, I’m sure they’ve already thought about all of this and discussed it at length. Just like taxing older diesel cars without considering the consequences to folks the rural south who were unable to afford new vehicles.

In other words, the internet-of-things was a really shitty idea.

Weird that now the EU has a pressing need to re-industrialize all of a sudden these stories are popping up. Without much evidence to support them.

Show me the teardown of the hardware, please. Until a story is posted with specifics, this is hearsay.

It’s also worth noting that proper sourcing, production standards and chain of custody processes for critical infrastructure are the reason for the oft-ridiculed 50-dollar-screw in the US military.

He’s too busy working out how to do more for his real constituency: israel.

my organization rto’d very early on after the pandemic, and promptly lost 40% of their staff who retired. It’s an old place, demographically. I can guarantee that everyone forced back in was refusing (and continues to refuse) to buy anything for lunch and brown-bags out of spite, especially given some dummies were stupid enough to claim that as the reason. Lots of eateries continuing to shut down in the area, and you know what? nobody cares. In attempting to “save” something, they’ve practically guaranteed its demise by pissing off an entire generation.

because the state and fed levels are corrupt as hell. the local level seemed more amenable, although i suspect the nyc mayoral elections will be thoroughly fiddled.

This is because everything about nuclear energy is long-term. You can’t build a nuclear power plant with snap of the fingers, and if things go sour in your country whilst it’s operating, you now have a massive environmental and public health liability to deal with.

CDL drivers have been required to speak English since 1936, though.

Nuclear energy is a terrible idea in both a physically (climate change) and socially destabilizing world.

Even Gen4 proliferation-resistant reactors still represent a lethal threat in the event of a release of fissionable materials into the local environment. Building a nuclear reactor without a cast-iron guarantee that there will be a supply of engineering staff, components, materials and clear strong regulation to keep it running safely is a surefire path to disaster.

Whilst the technology and physics behind it are well understood, we have shown time and again in a few short decades of utilizing this technology that we lack the responsibility in our administrative structures to properly manage the risks.

It would take just one full-on reactor meltdown or disaster to poison an entire continent. We have consistently demonstrated that we cannot responsibly assume that risk, which is why there is opposition to nuclear power.

If you want to avoid bad things from happening, do not deploy a dangerous technology and instead focus on what we can do. Renewables are more than capable of providing for our energy needs, and the big kicker here is that they can do so without putting the literal power “off” switch in the hands of the grid or plant operator.

Thank you for the information. My (incorrect) assumption was the oft-paraded “gun show” loophole.

I think consistent effort is required to erase any misconception about the availability of firearms.

What a foolish bill.

Road trip to Georgia and back, basically.

Well, minus an effective central bank…

US global influence is already well into decline. This is the USA’s Byzantine period as we shift from a unipolar into an increasingly multipolar world.

And here I am stuck in an apartment in NYC with one option… spectrum cable. That’s it. I mean you COULD get Verizon DSL (lol) or some horrendously overpriced LTE thing, but realistically you’re at the mercy of whatever bloodsucking landlord thinks you deserve.

They’re actually quite annoying, the documentation is there but makes a lot of assumptions about what you already know.

I prefer podman systemd generate…just makes more sense to me.

I snagged an old fiber LTO5 drive… just got to work out how to get it powered and then spend hours fiddling with silly old tapes.