Jobs paid enough so one person could stay home is how it worked

That’s a fantasy. In the 1800s and before there was so much at-home work to be done that it was a full time job for someone (virtually always the wife). She had to do the baking, cooking, mending clothes, cleaning, etc. all without any electrical appliances. That included no refrigerator or freezer, so shopping had to be done a lot more often. There were also no cars, so people either had to walk to do their shopping, or they used a horse. But, if they used a horse, then there was extra work related to keeping the horse alive and in good shape. Clothes were also a lot more expensive, so a lot more time was spent either making clothes at home and mending clothes that had holes, worn spots, etc. It wasn’t “to do chores and whatnot”, it was a full-time job involving more work than a typical a typical job from modern days.

Then there was WWI, then the “roaring 20s”, which is when electrical appliances first started appearing, and then the stock market crashed and the great depression hit. During the great depression, if either the wife or the husband could find work, they were lucky, and probably had to support the whole family. During the great depression, a lot of worker protections were put in place through the New Deal. But, the jobs weren’t there.

Then WWII hit, and for a while the US was manufacturing things for the rest of the world without being in the war itself. That helped the economy get going again. When the US joined the war, the economy was really going, but there was rationing in place so the workers who were earning money weren’t able to spend it. When the war ended, the US was in an incredibly strong position. Workers had savings to spend once rationing was removed. Every other country had had its industrial base smashed by the war. As a result, the US manufacturing was in high demand all over the world. For contrast, even though the UK was also one of the “winners” of WWII, rationing was in place until 1954.

So, high demand for industrial workers, worker protections left over from the New Deal era, labour-saving electrical appliances being available for the first time, cars everywhere… it was a unique set of circumstances that meant for maybe the first time in history a man could work a blue collar job and have a wife who stayed at home and just did “chores and whatnot”. That lasted a few decades. People blame Reagan for a lot of it, but really by the time he was elected that golden period for blue collar workers was already ending.

Also, keep in mind that strong protections for workers didn’t just happen. The government didn’t just decide that it would be nice to workers. Workers had to fight hard for those rights. The 8 hour day is the result of fights that were very violent. Bombs were thrown at cops. Supposed ringleaders were hanged by the government after show trials. FDR pushed for laws to protect workers because the alternative was rioting. If today’s workers want to share in the wealth, they need to riot, they need to be prepared to die. Nothing’s going to change if it’s just complaining that “this isn’t how it should be”.

Zen is a reskinned Firefox. Firefox depends on Google’s funding to stay afloat.

Everything else, other than Safari on Mac is either chrome-based or firefox-based.

The 2026 FBI recommends that you vote for Trump, or else.

NPR had some good bits about this.

Country music hasn’t always been the soundtrack of the Republican Party, according to music historian Lester Feder. He says President Nixon cemented the relationship during his years in the White House, and there’s a country album to prove it called Thank You, Mr. President.

https://www.npr.org/2007/02/18/7484160/the-conservative-evolution-of-country-music

This polling seems to work extremely hard to avoid noticing the elephant in the room: a company isn’t going to build a datacenter in the middle of Beverly Hills.

The data from the article seems to suggest that people in the top quartile of income resisted 14 DCs out of the 365 projects considered.

They then decided that that is a resistance rate of 14 / 365 * 100 = 3.836%.

Um. No.

The resistance rate is number resisted / number proposed for that income quartile. If only 14 were proposed in upper-income areas, and 14 were resisted, that would mean that the resistance rate for high income areas was 100%.

Could be 100x fewer, or 10,000x fewer. 5x fewer would mean that rich people and poor people resist DCs at the same rate, but that there are 5x fewer DCs in rich areas. But, my guess is that rich people would actually resist a lot more if someone dared to consider building a DC in their area… but that probably never happens, because why would a company buy up expensive real estate for a DC?

If Biden’s VP had been a staight, white man, he might have won. The US is a sexist, racist, generally bigoted place. If you ask someone on a phone survey if they would vote for a woman, many of them will say yes. They may not even be lying, they just believe they’re not sexist until it’s actually time to vote, and then they come up with some excuse to justify why they didn’t vote for the woman.

To be honest, I’m still surprised that Obama won. But, the whole Tea Party thing, and then Trump was all in reaction to a black man being elected president.

Could be that the site I had wasn’t accurate. If so, that just means the prospect of charging it using portable solar panels is even more out of reach.

Maybe not even make a civilian version, just allow people to buy the military version. When Arnold Schwarzenegger bought a military Hummer back in the day, they weren’t selling civilian versions. I don’t know how much he had to do to make his truck road legal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had to do something.

Schwarzenegger bought his because he wanted a unique vehicle, one that almost nobody else had, and that was a true military vehicle. Ukraine could probably raise money from people who wanted the same thing. Sell them the same bike that is being used on the battlefields of Ukraine at a significant mark-up, and let them show that by their purchase they’re also supporting the Ukrainian efforts.

Motorcycles, even more than cars, depend on a very energy dense power source. Putting enough batteries in a motorcycle to give it decent range, and still letting it feel responsive is going to be a real challenge. Maybe in something like a Honda GoldWing where you’re hauling around a huge amount of other weight, you could add extra batteries and not change the responsiveness too much. But, the kinds of people who ride GoldWings are not doing little commuter trips, so you’d need extreme range to satisfy them, which I don’t think is feasible with current battery tech.

If there were a way to swap out batteries at the charging station, that would change everything.

They say it charges from wall power in about 4 hours. Wall power in Ukraine is 220VAC, typical maximum current in Europe is 2.5A. So, that’s roughly 500W.

500W for 4 hours is 500W for 3600 * 4s or 14400s = 7,200,000J or 7.2MJ. That’s a pretty big battery.

With a portable solar cell you’d be lucky to get a sustained 100W, so it would take 20h, or multiple days to charge.

The best goalkeeper on the planet.

that during its 17 years of tracking presidents with YouGov

17 years. The survey started in 2009. So, the presidents included are Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump in his second term.

He’s the most unpopular president… out of 3.

I have no doubt that Trump is one of the worst, most despised presidents in at least modern history. But, I wouldn’t consider “modern history” to have started with the Obama presidency.

To be elected, someone needs to win the swing voters who aren’t rabid Republicans or rabid Democrats. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, Obama’s presidency, and Kamala Harris’ run for office shows that a lot of those swing voters are racist and sexist.

Even if Fox News went off the air tomorrow, along with Newsmax and all the various right-wing podcasts and streaming junk, there are a lot of swing voters who won’t vote for a woman, or won’t vote for a gay man, or won’t vote for someone without white skin. Many of them probably don’t even think of themselves as bigots. They just think things like “I support women, and I had no problem with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but commander in chief of the military is different, maybe if she had military experience…” Or, they’ll think “I have gay friends, and Mayor Pete seems like a great guy, he’s really smart and caring, but I don’t think people who choose that lifestyle really have the right values to lead the country”. Or they’ll think “I don’t have a problem with it, but people in Washington will, and they’ll never get anything done as president.”

Of course outlets like Fox News are always going to go hard after every Democrat, even a straight, white, male, christian one. Maybe that will influence some swing voters. But, it’s more about energizing enraging their base. I don’t think your typical swing voter is a fox news addict.

Vocational Awe

There are certain jobs that people really want to do. No matter how little the job pays, there will be people willing to do that job. Often these are the most important jobs.

That’s not a good match for a purely capitalist system where someone can’t survive on their salary. Unions are one way to fight this. Traditionally nurses had strong unions, but these days no union seems to be particularly strong. The other way is for the government to get involved and say that certain jobs are important enough that they get special exemptions from the purely capitalist system. That could mean different minimum wages, special tax exemptions, or all kinds of other things.

Overall, the general shape of the system makes sense.

Everybody receives services provided by the government, so everybody should help pay for that government. The FDA tests to make sure food and drugs are safe. The NHTSA makes sure cars and highways are safe. And, of course, the big one, the military protecting the country from invasion. The standard deduction exists so that people only have to start paying taxes once they get their basic needs met.

Of course, I know that in the real world it’s much more complicated than that. The US military might actually make Americans less safe by getting involved in all kinds of conflicts overseas. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th would probably never have attacked if the US had a defence-only military. The FDA is being corrupted by an antivax nutjob, and so-on. But, the theory of everybody contributing taxes to pay for things provided for the common good makes sense. The real standard deduction is absurdly low and almost nobody can actually fully meet their needs with that minimal amount.

It also makes sense in the abstract that corporations don’t pay taxes on money that doesn’t get distributed to the owners. If a Mom and Pop grocery store is doing really well and Mom and Pop pay themselves huge salaries, they pay personal income tax on those salaries. If they arrange to do it through corporate dividends or something, then it’s the corporation that pays taxes. On the other hand, if the store is doing really well and they want to expand, it makes sense that the government not tax them based on their revenues if they’re re-investing those revenues into the business. If they’re investing the money into making a bigger, better store to serve their community rather than simply taking the money out as profits into Mom’s purse and Pop’s wallet that’s good for the community. Also, if Mom and Pop made $400k in revenue but spent $390k on expenses, and that includes the wages of some cashiers, it’s probably unreasonable to tax the revenue before the employees are even paid.

The problem is really in the various loopholes and ways corporations claim to be re-investing the money. We wouldn’t want Mom and Pop’s grocery store to be unable to expand because they’re taxed before they can even invest. On the other hand if Pop buys a Porsche SUV under the store’s name and claims it’s a grocery delivery van, that’s not fair. Other people have to buy their SUVs with after-tax money. In theory, if Pop is caught claiming that SUV as a business expense but using it for purely personal purposes, the IRS will go after him. But, of course, the reality is that companies get away with that kind of thing all the time.

I think part of the complaint here is based in the reality that corporations get away with lots of things, and that taxes are a real burden on the poor and middle class. On the other hand, I think there’s also a lot of financial illiteracy where people really have no idea how the taxation system works. They just see ragebait on social media and get angry because something about it seems unfair.

And the money they spent on that bribe came out of the pockets of its customers. But, not to worry, with no IRS autofile, those customers now have limited options so Intuit can now raise its prices to recoup the bribe money and more.

Rape cases are notoriously difficult to prove, even if the victim goes to the police immediately and there’s physical evidence taken.

First of all, the supposed rapist can say “There was no rape”. At times, the physical evidence can make that seem unlikely. In particular if there’s evidence of violence and there’s semen, then it’s easy to believe that violence + sex = rape. But, if either of those is missing it’s hard to prove that a rape even occurred.

Second, the supposed rapist can say “It wasn’t me”. Before DNA analysis it was hard to prove who was at the scene. These days, if there’s semen at the scene at least you can say that a certain man was present and involved in something sexual.

Third, the supposed rapist can say “It was consensual”. Given that most of the time there are only 2 witnesses, it’s difficult to say which witness is lying and which is telling the truth. A jury might have a strong suspicion, but a strong suspicion isn’t “reasonable doubt”.

In the Epstein cases, you can at least sometimes eliminate the third objection. If the victims were underage, they couldn’t consent. But, that still leaves the other two major issues. Those are the ones that really require physical evidence. And, in these cases, the evidence is long gone. So, you can’t prove that a rape occurred using physical evidence, nor can you prove that a certain man was at the scene using physical evidence. What you’re left with is two witnesses using their flawed memory to recall details of something that happened a decade ago.

Maybe using flight logs and emails you can prove that Andrew was on the island at the same time as a victim. Maybe you can put Andrew in a photograph with the victim, showing that he had met her at some point. That’s enough to be very suspicious, but it’s not enough to get a rape conviction.

Now, you said “child sex trafficking” not rape. But, if anything, that’s even harder to prove. Step 1 of proving sex trafficking is probably proving the “sex” part, and that’s going to be extremely difficult a decade later without any physical evidence. As for the trafficking, you’d have to prove that certain people were moved to certain places. But, that would rely on accurate documents like flight logs listing everybody on a flight. But, we’ve seen that a lot of the flight logs are incomplete, or they don’t name the girls on the flights.

I’m sure there are powerful people trying to slow, stall or stop any attempt to prosecute anybody for what happened. But, at the same time, even if they were putting in a massive effort, it might not be possible to actually get a conviction anymore because too much time has passed and too much of the evidence is gone.

For me: Gnome + extensions.

The default Gnome feels way too locked down to me, and I don’t like some of the choices. But, with the right extensions “locked down” becomes “simplified enough to get out of your way”.

Also sleep in a poorly ventilated room, in a tiny hammock, with 50 other men. Don’t worry, you’d probably sleep well because you’d be so exhausted from the crushing physical labour. You’d be eating simple, unflavoured bread / crackers that are so hard that they need to be dunked in water for several minutes so they don’t break your teeth. And, speaking of teeth, your new job does come with healthcare, but that’s mostly tooth pulling and limb amputations. Anything else and you just need to suck it up. No sick days either, you show up for your shifts, 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. Sickness is probably pretty common. 50 men sleeping in the same crowded, airless room. No washing, no soap. Toilets are simply a plank with a hole above the ocean. No toilet paper either.

But, you do get to sing sea shanties.