I wish people would realize that humans only got to where we are because we are a COMMUNAL species. We developed complex language and tool usage BECAUSE we work together. Being “off the grid” is usually isolationist and therefore extremely dangerous. We need community in order to develop and manage the resources we need to survive.
The current infant-clothes to steak exchange rate is unfavorable. It would be wiser to hold off till the late autumn, when steak futures usually fall and clothing values skyrocket.
Yeah let’s all go back to subsistence agriculture! Every time my mind wanders and I find myself romanticizing an age of simpler times and communal living I remind myself of the realities of that sort of lifestyle.
Well, why aren’t we practicing that communal specialty into you know, bettering society from it’s current dumpster fire state? Or is that just too tall of a task?
It’s dangerous to go full off the grid, but in reality it’s never complete isolation. In Leave No Trace/My Abandonment (based on a true story) the father relied on disability checks to buy goods and educated his daughter using encyclopedias… In Walden Thorough is living alone in a remote area, but it’s not like he’s completely cut off from the benefits of society and has visitors somewhat regularly. I think there’s a difference between trying to minimize the brunt of society 24/7 vs going full isolation.
I’m a world of growing instability where the inputs for modern lifehave their supply consistency threatened, learning some basic survival skills is not a bad thing. Many countries will likely have huge energy, food, and water shortfalls in the coming years. Germany is burning what amounts to wet coal to make up for losing Russian oil. Ukraine was one of the world’s biggest wheat producers. Russia produced a lot of the world’s fertilizer. There are reasons to learn how to live without the entire support network most of us take for granted.
Though you should be pretty decent at living off grid before commiting to it.
Don’t assume that you’re cougar-proof or that 40°F and below weather with no real insulation is something you can save yourself from with enough bootstraps.
Also, we’re living in kind of an unprecedented part of history that enables is to be independent of other people in ways never before possible. So that gives people a very distorted sense of that, a lack of any notion of the importance of community. And of course this “independence” is achieved by a complete dependence on this huge ubiquitous economic machine.
I think sometimes it’s the extreme dependence that makes the attempt at off the grid freedom seem more attractive; it’s weird how the technology seems to both take away so much freedom and yet make people feel independent at the same time
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of consumer prices that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve fell last month to its lowest level since March 2021, the latest sign that inflation in the United States is steadily cooling from its once-painful highs.
The inflation report that the Commerce Department issued Friday also showed that Americans’ willingness to keep spending, despite two years of high inflation and 11 Fed rate hikes over 17 months, remains a powerful driver of the economy.
Consumer spending rose 0.5% from May to June, up from 0.2% the previous month.
This can occur as persistent consumer demand enables more companies to raise prices, thereby keeping inflation above the Fed’s target and potentially causing the central bank to raise rates even higher.
Powell declined to offer any signal of the central bank’s likely next moves.
The Fed’s policymakers consider core prices a better measure of where inflation might be headed.
Except Mastercard is lying, FinCEN has specifically issued guidance for national finance institutions (banks, credit cards, etc.) to be able to accept cannabis transactions in states that have legalized. Most of these finance institutions are just unwilling to accept the additional cost of complying with the regulations. There’s a reason why Valley National Bank is so popular with cannabis companies - it’s a national bank that follows FinCEN guidelines. It comes at a higher cost, but a lot of companies feel it’s worth it.
And this FinCEN guidance wasn’t just issued - it was issued in 2014. The only reason the cannabis industry doesn’t have widespread access to traditional finance, and why banks keep lobbying for the SAFE Banking Act, is because the banks don’t want to have to do the extra work to comply with the FinCEN guidance.
Note - I agree it’s stupid that cannabis is federally illegal and think it should be legalized (or at the very least deschedule it and let states decide if they’ll allow it). But Mastercard could choose to follow FinCEN guidance if they wanted to.
Kinda an incendiary headline when it’s just Mastercard complying with the law. From the article: “The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems,” Really the issue is that Marijuana should be legal at the federal level.
When polled, majorities are in support of legalization. If people would show up to vote more than once every 4 years we could make some actual progress on this issue. But since at least half of registered voters sit out every race, well here we are.
Worth noting that even some conservatives support legalization!
And yet I bet I can buy mortgaged backed securities
AND shares in pot companies. How fucking illegal. Maybe the federal government can stop these pot companies from being traded openly considering how illegal it is.
Nah maybe the federal government can stop sucking off Goldman Sachs cock and start looking after the people who it claims to represent and who are paying taxes.
Because they, as a corporate entity, don’t want to mess around with the law over something that won’t personally affect their bottom line in a massively positive manner.
He needs a couple promotions until he's on a similar level as His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order, Military Cross, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.
Years ago I bought an Infiniti truck that advertised 18 mpg. After owning and driving it I only got 9 mpg.
I wish the government would crack down harder on this sort of blatant misleading “advertising” so gas or electric, we’d have a better idea of what we’re purchasing.
Yes but I can usually walk to a gas station, buy a gas can, fill it up, walk back to my car, pour gasoline in the tank and then drive away.
What am I supposed to do if I own a Tesla? Walk to the nearest Lowe’s, purchase a multi fuel generator, attach it to my car, then walk to the gas station, buy a gas can, fill it up, walk back to the car, fill up the generator, crank the generator, hook it up to my car, then drive away?
This is decades-old hypothetical that just doesn’t happen in the real world unless the driver is an idiot. Never in the quarter century of driving gas vehicles did I ever run out of gas.
Likewise you don’t just suddenly run out of charge in an EV. In Teslas you get automatically routed to superchargers, and if somehow you’re too far away from the nearest one, you get miles and miles of warnings about having an insufficient charge to reach it if you, I dunno, somehow camped for days with the A/C on in the middle of nowhere.
In that catastrophic event, you stop literally anywhere with any AC outlet, you plug in your mobile charger, and wait less time than it’d take to hike to a gas station to charge enough to make it to a DC fast charger. Or better yet, someone tow-charges you through regenerative braking for a couple miles and you end up with more than enough to make it to a supercharger.
The article is about total range advertised vs. real world range, and you can go literally anywhere in the lower 48 and be in easy range of a DC fast charger, let alone a 120v outlet.
All of them ... or at least most of them. The numbers given are based on limited variables and almost never include qualifiers like proper tire pressure must be maintained, easy acceleration vs flooring it, usage of AC, etc etc ... which all affect fuel consumption rates.
It was a QX56 before they renamed it, but like that other guy said, it’s pretty much all of them as the car manufacturers are incentivized to give you the absolute best case usage scenarios for everything, and then slap that on a sticker as if it’s real world data.
Reading the article it sounds like this woman unfortunately just spent too much time on social media reading all the doom and gloom of the media and people amplifying it in places like reddit, Twitter and Facebook.
wanted to live in a land disconnected from the world, which she viewed as chaotic and dangerous
she and her teenage son could be happy and safe away from the news, the viruses, the politics of modern-day America
had been “discouraged with the state of the world”
Rebecca Vance’s fears intensified during the pandemic
Consuming too much of this crap has really affected peoples mental health, from Trump, to BLM riots, racism, covid, it’s broken some people who spend too much time on social media.
So much so that they think the only way out is to hide away from society.
Reminder, friends, to take frequent and extensive breaks from social media for your own mental health.
she and her teenage son could be happy and safe away from the news, the viruses, the politics of modern-day America
Just close the apps. That’s literally all it takes to avoid like 90% of the crap that she’s talking about. But the viruses… did she think those don’t make it to the forest or something?
Please, I knew people who were exactly the same back in the 90s, there are always people who go down the paranoia rabbit hole and don’t come back out.
Lot of them were praying for the collapse because that’s when God would raise them above the wicked heathens and sodomites because they’re secretly special but everyone else is too evil to admit it.
The article said the poor kid was homeschooled, which is often a hallmark of religious fundamentalism. Not trusting the world and thinking it’s out to get you is also a hallmark of fundamentalism - but also of mental illness.
She’s from Colorado Springs (massive conservative area) and she became concerned about the world and wanted to live off the grid in 2022 (when Trump lost). The writer of this article sure does beat around the bush and struggles not to say whether she was a right wing nut.
And remember that despite some unique large scale issues we have today, there were much, MUCH worse times to be alive. “Majority of Americans live a peaceful life and die at 70-80” is not reportable news but still largely true.
Things are far from perfect, there are major issues, but I’d choose to live today than almost the entirety of human existence previously.
There were definitely way more violent times in the US: there were pandemics, there were revolts, there were wars. We live in an amazing time but it takes a bit of grand perspective to realize that all the bad news is easy to see in a matter of minutes. You can have death and destruction delivered right into your home in a matter of milliseconds. It’s much much harder to see all the wonderful things happening in the world
100%. Some people exploited the riots to break into stores but they were the significant minority, and additionally some were outed as bad actors who actually didn’t support the movement.
You can’t lump in blm riots in there, those were protests stoked to violence by police officers, so what you should be saying it’s, corrupt police forces resulting in blm protests
Maybe I’m being too generous, but I was reading it as this person consumed too much media, including lies and exaggerations, and it warped their world view. I guess I read it as a topic like and not calling them riots themselves. Kinda like the “race riot” in Tusla, but idk.
I’m guessing Texas is an at-will state, but just going to a show of any kind in your private time should not be a firing offense no matter where you work. I don’t care if you work for the Southern Poverty Law Center and go see a minstrel show on Saturday. You’re doing it on your private time.
Religious institutions have a little more freedom in certain areas regarding who they can hire and fire depending on their job duties.
For instance, a preacher for a Baptist church can be required to be Christian as a condition of their employment. But they can’t fire a janitor for religious reasons because their faith has no impact on the work they perform.
For teachers, they probably have a policy regarding public support of the church and its doctrines that was violated when the teacher posted about attending a drag show.
It’s stupid, but it’s legal.
I have similar restrictions at my job in municipal government. I’m not allowed to get involved in local politics or advocate for or against candidates openly. As a public official, I’m always at least somewhat on duty.
Hell, I have to be careful about what I text, because my personal phone is subject to Open Records requests.
I think it’s much simpler than that. Texas has been an at-will employment state since the 1800s. As long as it doesn’t violate civil rights, you can be fired for pretty much any reason in Texas. They can fire you because they don’t like your face.
Absolutely, but for religious institutions they can even ignore civil rights in some instances. You can be fired for religious reasons, which is usually a big no-no.
And at-will isn’t just a Texas thing. All 50 states and DC are at-will employment.
As long as the thing they don’t like about your face isn’t it’s color. But seriously American employment laws (in most states) allow for companies to fire people for any non-protected reason (protected reason = gender, race, age, etc). If a co.pany does illegally fire a person it can be a real up hill battle to prove it because at-will is so permissive.
I can’t say a firing like this one sits super well with me personally but it’s almost certainly legal.
Yeah but in your position it kinda makes sense. I don’t think career civil servants should be out there with even the hint of their office support endorsing candidates.
Kinda interesting however that you are following strong ethical rules than all these powerful people above you.
Most civil employees stick hard and fast to their rules regarding politicization with a giant exception for police who get away with (sometimes literal) murder.
Politicians are expressly political. The difference is that politicians can be voted out of office by the public. I cannot be directly voted away. Even City Council or the mayor cannot directly fire me - the only staff members they have direct hire/fire authority over are the City Manager and the Municipal Judge.
Seriously, though, are people still pretending Christian organizations are filled with decent human beings? You can just point to the majority of western history as an example of the kind of people running these orgs.
Regarding Rule 6, this seems to say that the same story with a different source is okay. I don’t think this should be the case. The same story regardless of source should not be reposted unless it adds new information.
It’s not meant like that. But the automod won’t leave a message if you use a different source.
The final rules will be collapsed, so you would only see:
rule 6: No duplicate postsIf a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
So what does “a source” mean in this rule? So long as the article text isn’t a 100% copy of a story that’s already been posted (like with AP articles that get reprinted in dozens of papers) we’ll be ok to post it, right?
Getting multiple perspectives on a story is a big part of why I come to forums like these, and I worry that it’s just going to get ugly if we have a situation where you’re removing the NPR article about something because someone posted the Wall Street Journal coverage of it first (or vice versa).
We discourage spamming the same story over and over again, but sometimes different sources bring different perspectives on a story. So it will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
The bot can ofcourse not detect those duplicates, so moderating it will be more difficult.
“moderating it will be more difficult”. So does that mean it is allowed or not? If you “discourage spamming the same story over and over again”, do you mean from the same person, or from everyone? So if ten different people posted the same story from different sources, is that allowed or not? The rules are not clear, and your further explanation still isn’t clear to me.
If it ever comes to a point where the same story get’s spammed to an annoying degree, we will communicate that we won’t accept any more of those posts.
But we probably won’t moderate before that.
We can always alter the rules later if that turns out to be a problem.
I disagree, different perspectives from different reporters almost always add at least some new information and seeing how many outlets are reacting to a story gives me a sense of how “big” the story is. I’d make an exception if the article text is 100% identical because it’s an AP reprint or something, but otherwise I think the mods should leave this alone.
e; apologies for double post, having some site/app instability at the moment
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