SkepticalButOpenMinded @ SkepticalButOpenMinded @lemmy.ca

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506

Joined

2 yr. ago

Well said. This feels like an existential election for Taiwan.

Is it “mere talk” when Biden says US support for Israel is unconditional? No, we can and should criticize him for that because those words encourage Israel to act without restraint. But, conversely, when the US signals that they will not support actions like forced relocation, we should also see that as a corrective, not “mere talk”.

To your point, in IR theory, there also exists phenomena such as the paradox of empty promises, where making unfulfilled promises can worsen human rights. But that claim is more nuanced: the problem occurs when promises are empty. That doesn’t mean all promises are empty or promising doesn’t matter. Public declarations are a necessary step (but insufficient on their own) to justify further action.

Why is Consumer Reports considered a rag?

This might be the first time I’ve heard a demand imposed on Israel from the US during this recent escalation. Hopefully, the first of many.

As I understand it, natural gas might be better than coal, but it’s surprisingly not that clear cut:

Methane is 34 times stronger than CO2 at trapping heat over a 100-year period and 86 times stronger over 20 years.

It’s only better if we keep leakage under 3%, but currently leakage is well above that in the US. We need strong regulation and oversight for natural gas to be worth it (which thankfully the Biden administration recently announced). But there’s no replacing moving away from fossil fuels.

Yes, strong agree! Medium density is also the most affordable to build per square footage, compared to low density detached single family homes and high density super tall glass and metal towers.

Sure you can dig your heels in, and there’s apparently nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. You haven’t addressed my analogies to other similar expressions, so it sounds like we’re not even really having a discussion anymore. Are you also defending “China is a terrible country”? Who knows!

The article says “China’s brutal treatment…” where “China” is clearly a metonym for the Chinese state. But “China is a haven” is not a metonym and doesn’t refer to specific state actions. I don’t see any similar usage in the headline, “Chinese” is an adjective, so that’s a real stretch.

Yes, I suspected you might go this route of saying "well, the shitty place is made shitty by the government, so it's really a claim about the government after all." I find that as dubious as saying "Africa is a shithole. That's a claim about their governments, nothing racist against Africans!"

Look, I think the Chinese government is authoritarian, immoral, and repressive, and what they're doing in Tibet is genocide. But you're turning a blind eye to anti-Asian racism if you're doing mental gymnastics to defend racist generalizations against Chinese people. Another person in this very thread said, "China is a terrible country. There’s no discussion to be had here". Are you going to make excuses for that person too? Maybe they meant the government too, and not the country or culture? That would be absolutely beyond naive.

Frankly, I’m not even sure how someone reads the comment that “China is a shitty haven for cheats and liars” as directed mostly at the government, and not about the country, people, and culture in general. The government is a haven? The government is a cheat and liar? These readings are a stretch even at the level of syntax.

Look it up anywhere: everyone describes Sears catalog homes as pre-fabricated. So your categorical insistence is contradicted by actual usage. If that makes you uncomfortable for whatever reason, feel free to use whatever term you like, so long as, on actual matters of substance, we understand that we’re talking about homes where some significant portion of the construction is done off site.

It’s important to say “Chinese government” and not “China”. That’s not a minor point. Saying “country X is a shithole” is the kind of racism we criticize Trump and the rightwing for, and for good reason. I’m surprised by this rhetoric on Lemmy.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but a non-Chinese person calling China a “shitty haven for cheats and liars” is obviously not comparable to an American criticizing their own country. Likewise, a white person saying a black neighborhood is a shitty haven for cheats and liars is different than that white person criticizing their own neighborhood.

Are IKEA dressers pre-fabricated? I would say that having plans, everything cut to size, and all the hardest parts done for you counts for a lot.

For Sears catalog homes, everything in the kit was measured, cut, numbered, and packaged in a factory, including electrical and heating, and the kits were advertised as easy and fast to build for people with no expert skills. Pre-fabrication is a spectrum, and all pre-fabs require some degree of construction on site.

Pre-fabricated homes are not all mobile homes. I wrote this elsewhere, but a lot of those charming 100 year old homes on the east coast and midwest are pre-fabricated Sears catalog homes.

I dunno. "Don't attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by stupidity." I can totally believe that the average police officer has not thought this through. "5 hours of footage! We don't have 5 hours to look for one bike."

Yeah, I suppose I'm questioning even the potential. Some technologies don't pan out, which is why we're not all riding around on our Segways. Underestimating future technology is certainly one risk, but the other risk is assuming every technology is inevitable progress.

Given how new this is, I doubt anyone knows how much this will cost at scale, even the manufacturers.

modular houses are nice, but they’re all similar to each other

I'm not so sure. New American and Canadian houses are famously similar to each other. We build big neighborhood blocks of almost identical looking track houses. If I could, instead, order a house from online catalogs, that might actually increase aesthetic diversity.

We used to have more diversity in housing styles, which is why older neighborhoods have lots of different home styles. But a lot of those 100 year old neighborhoods are actually full of Sears catalog homes. Basically, pre-cut, pre-fabricated modular homes!

But then you need to do significant construction with that material. And it’s not just one material: there are pipes, electrical, insulation, flooring, etc. It’s only replacing a few admittedly major parts of the material. Everything else still takes tons of labor. I could be wrong, but I’m not convinced the labor savings are greater compared to modular housing.

Is 3D printing houses a gimmick? Why not good old modular houses made in factories and shipped?

Yeah my first thought too given how much that’s been in the news.

Might be like how it is here in Canada. Pro-immigrant, but much more contemptuous of the indigenous population.