admiralteal

admiralteal , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to worldnews in Yellen says China's rapid buildout of its green energy industry 'distorts global prices'

Outside of the US, you can get a 10k or less electric mini-van, mini-truck, or mini-car which would serve 90% of most peoples' needs. Most US trips are under 3 miles after all and giant fast luxurious vehicles for those bike-range trips is just totally silly.

Meanwhile the cheapest new car in the US is what, a Mitsubishi hatchback for $18k? It's ridiculous. The US Automakers are in a tacit conspiracy to squeeze us as hard as they can by refusing to sell anything affordable -- by inflating sizes and bloating features to justify way higher MSRPs. Meanwhile the French have access to cheap ICEs like the Skoda Citygo and even ultralight city EVs like the Citroen Ami for half that price while still being easily 90% as capable for most people.

Or for roughly the same price as that bottom-of-the-market US ICE car you can get a totally workable EV like the Dacia Spring.

The US subsidizes huge vehicles in a million pointless ways. I absolutely refuse to believe that vehicle inflation is just caused by some cultural woo. It's mostly just that we create giant roads, giant parking spots, giant highways, and have automakers that intentionally go as big as the market can bear because bigger means more money. And sprinkle on some bullshit tax loopholes and state agencies/NHSTA being ultra-conservative and you have a disaster. Smaller cars thrive in the old world because the old world doesn't make it as convenient as possible to have a goddamn road yacht. They'd go big too, but it would just be a nightmare dealing with those huge cars because their governments don't prioritize making way for them in every way possible.

And that's not even getting into the frankly fine $2-3k EVs you can get in China. This is all just Europe.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to technology in Chatbot letdown: Hype hits rocky reality

They are very useful for outlining and similar "where do I start" writing projects. They help break the dam and just get some damn words on the screen, at which point it's often easy to continue and flesh things out to a complete thought.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to technology in Windows Notepad’s midlife renaissance continues with spellcheck and autocorrect

The entire reason notepad still exists is that it edits and saves to plain text files. I do not see how an opt-in spellcheck or autocorrect interferes with that -- though honestly, I don't see who the possible customer is for those features either. It's a waste of time, but it doesn't undermine the application.

What reason, honestly, did Wordpad have to exist? Who was clamoring for an RTF editor but thought any of the free the full-featured ODF editors or online service a la Google docs were not up to the task? Seems a lot of people are salty that Wordpad was dropped, but I just don't get who was using it. This from someone so frustrated and annoyed by pretty much all WYSIWYG doc editors that I've lately been doing more stuff in latex despite how irrational I know I am being.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to technology in Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent

I did the same thing twice.

Two different employers that really deserve to be absolutely thrashed but as soon as I got to the point where it was asking me my true identity I realized there was no hope it wouldn't come back to bite me in the long run.

I understand why in their business model they want to be able to verify employment. I'd even say it's reasonable. But the Privacy implications of it are just too tremendous and they I've never been practically or systemically trustworthy.

And knowing this about them means they aren't a reliable place to be warned off of a bad employer either. The primary purpose of their site is completely undermined by this bad policy.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to mildlyinfuriating in Amsterdam testing system that can remotely slow e-bikes down

There are no US roads I am aware of where the speed limit is over 80mph.

Why can a stock US car go faster than 80mph, then? Why does NHSTA approve of cars that can go double, triple that speed? Makes no sense to me, for sure. Especially when similar agencies are doing idiotic and pointless shit like banning Kei Trucks for "safety" reasons when these vehicles are objectively safer and better for the public than any current-model "light truck" 120mph+ road yacht.

Europe approached this same question with a pretty straightforward answer: Intelligent Speed Assistance. It'll be mandatory relatively soon for all new cars, as far as I am aware. It's already mandatory for new cars in the EU. There's some nasty privacy implications of it, obviously. Very possibly nasty enough to bring me to a "no" overall on the idea. But the safety considerations are without doubt correct.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to mildlyinfuriating in That gourmet luxury blend...

Assuming the label isn't inaccurate, there is at minimum equal parts of the honey and corn syrup. The list must be in descending order by weight. I'm not sure what the rule is for equal quantities; I'd assume alphabetical, but there may be no such requirement.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to news in Poll shows US public support for LGBTQ+ protections falling for first time since 2015

It's also the logic of TERFs. Somehow, tolerance and acceptance are a zero sum game to them. Giving basic dignity to one population somehow requires taking it away from another.

It's utter horseshit, but they believe it firmly.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to news in Poll shows US public support for LGBTQ+ protections falling for first time since 2015

A centrist on gay rights likely sees that marriage is legal, culturally it’s acceptable, so why should they fight for more rights, they’re already equal?

But they factually aren't equal. It's legal to discriminate against gays in a variety of ways -- including in employment and, apparently, when selling business services. They are not a protected class in most places. They are directly targeted by hostile, criminalizing legislation all over the place. They aren't fighting for MORE rights, they're still fighting for equal rights and are far, far away from winning them.

Which means the centrist position, by your logic, is that gays should remain second-class citizens because they already got everything they need, even though it's still factually legal to discriminate against them? That's not actually different from the far right's position that it should be illegal to be gay. It's far, far away from the liberal position that people have a right to not be discriminated against. There's no moderation in that position. It's still the "kill some gays" position.

So no, I'm not incorrectly simplifying. I'm cutting away the bullshit. If you or anyone you know is a "centrist" on gay rights by the logic that they "already" are safe, those people are monsters. The only way to be a "centrist" in the way you have described is to be upsettingly ignorant. And if the entire philosophy of centrism is that these people are too ignorant to form a cognizant moral position, what are we even talking about?

admiralteal , 3 months ago to news in Poll shows US public support for LGBTQ+ protections falling for first time since 2015

The moderate/centrist position between "kill the gays" and "don't permit the killing of gays" is "kill some of the gays."

That's all there is to it. If you are a moderate on this issue, you're a violent bigot.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to world in Trump's plan to end the Ukraine war is to totally cut off funding, says Putin's closest EU ally

Every non-NATO state on the border will be targeted and incorporated either directly or by being turned into a loyal authoritarian state a la Belarus.

And if the US leaves NATO, that undermines confidence in NATO. The alliance will fall. At that point, either the EU will have to step in and supplant it -- in which case the US will no longer be even be PART of the mightiest diplomatic alliance in the world, much less influential in it -- or else there's no reason to think Russian aggression will stop endlessly escalating until all-out war between nuclear powers is on the table.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to news in Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender ID under 'Don't Say Gay' bill settlement

The entire purpose of this law is to define being anything but straight and cis as "sexual" in order to diminish these groups as part of an overall genocidal campaign against queer.

The criticisms you are making have been made since before it was even proposed. But the enforcement was ALWAYS intended to groom children to only know and believe in "traditional" values.

That's part of why the complaints sort of have to flow from parents in these rules; they trust the open-minded types aren't going to report Mrs. Johnson for talking about having a husband, but they know the Moms for Liberty folks are their loyal foot-soldiers and will be out with torches and pitchforks the moment Mr. O reveals he has a husband.

The long view of these laws is to continuously criminalize any kind of identity other than the tribe of straight white christian conservatives. Continue pushing the overton window over, a little bit at a time, until all ideas of civil tolerance and acceptance are dead.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to showerthoughts in Calling things "fat" or "heavy" is fattist. We should all say "rotund" instead.

Cool, that's nice. I'm on a different instance than you. It took hours for your comment to even federate, so the implication I'm trying to gotcha you through a self-correction made within 3 minutes of my original post and over 10 minutes before yours is totally bad faith and you know it.

Let's just be clear about what happened here though. I posted something correct about the entire idea of fat-phobia. That is, the way you avoid being fat-phobic is by just not feeling a need to whip out a soap box and tell fat people it's their fault and they've behaved badly to become that way there while knowing nothing about them.

And what did you do? You replied to me, immediately whipping out your soapbox to say that fat people are not "actual" vulnerable groups because anyone who's body doesn't doesn't match your subjective standards can "do something about being fat".

Then started this absolutely moronic verbal diarrhea about how being respectful of other people is somehow a zero sum game where if you treat one population with basic respect, it somehow waters down another group's need to be treated with dignity? Idiotic. Just idiotic. That's the "logic" used by TERFs.

Next time, just shut the fuck up. Seriously, all you had to say was nothing. This is a personal characteristic about someone and you just don't have expertise in it. You don't know what effort they have or haven't made. You don't know what other medical issues may be linked or causal. You don't know whether it's negatively impacting their health, and even if it were, it's still none of your fucking business. All you know is what you can see. Don't worry, the fat people already know you don't like looking at them, so this kind of signaling is unnecessary. Instead, leave them alone and don't preach about their lives of sin.

You want to talk about addressing things with "external stimuli"? Let's talk about the entire skin-bleaching cosmetics industry in SE Asia. The vast apparatus of plastic surgery in places like South Korea designed to change Asian-presenting eyelids to more culturally preferred western features. And don't even get me started about hair care products targeted at Black Americans. The long histories every country and population has pursuing goals to "pass". Telling people they must change to match the subjective standards of idiots for their own good, irrespective of what harm might be done to them along the way.

But what, all that kind of shit is bad and bigoted, but telling an otherwise-healthy but fat person they should get medical interventions because they look fat is fine? Leave people the fuck alone, dude. If there's medical problems going on, that's between them and their medical provider if they so chose.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to showerthoughts in Calling things "fat" or "heavy" is fattist. We should all say "rotund" instead.

Here would be an almost textbook example of what I mean when I say shaming people for not putting in the effort, for any onlookers that are curious.

Of course, the actual clinical data shows that it is nearly impossible to make permanent lifestyle changes that reduce weight for normal people -- all diets studies have almost hilariously high dropout/failure rates -- and that nearly all people who are not fat are not putting in any special effort to not be fat. But this guy's an expert.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to showerthoughts in Calling things "fat" or "heavy" is fattist. We should all say "rotund" instead.

The word "fat" is not a slur any more than the word "black" is. Sure, someone can use it with an intent to hurt, and if the only thing you know about a person is this single adjective you probably shouldn't be talking about them, but the word is just a description. And just like for "black", all the euphemisms offer nothing helpful and are largely spread by people who have not lived and understood the experience.

If you're worried about being fat-phobic the thing to be worried about is treating fat people like shit based on their physical appearance. Up to and including shaming them for "not putting in the effort" or lecturing them about how unhealthy you think they are based on the single point of evidence of their apparent weight.

And I have to say, I'd be WAY more fucking mad at someone calling me "rotund" then fat. Holy shit you have missed the mark on this.

admiralteal , 3 months ago to worldnews in [Poland PM] Tusk: Time of peace in EU is over, we live in pre-war times

Only if NATO agrees it happened. Nations just have to find pretext or plausible deniability to avoid escalation -- which they will when the alternative is inevitably nuclear escalation.

Russia is proving that the systems of NATO are highly vulnerable to a bad faith and cynical actor's aggression. NATO needs to change to prove Russia wrong. And the USGOP, among others, are proving him highly right.