TotallyHuman @ TotallyHuman @lemmy.ca

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2

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73

Joined

2 yr. ago

Does it actually annoy people? Wow, that makes it even funnier.

You can solve more than one problem at once.

Habits can be adaptive, but addictions are more about external drugs hacking the brain. And highly refined and addictive drugs didn't really exist in the ancestral environment. (Alcohol was first refined ~9000 years ago, which isn't enough time to evolve an anti-addiction mechanism.)

It's a good idea. I see two problems with it out of the gate:

First, if it isn't accompanied by other changes, it will increase the equilibrium price of food until the poorest are just as squeezed as they are now, or maybe slightly less. "Other changes" could include price caps (perhaps voluntary -- grocery stores which agree to the program must also agree to a set of pricing regulations, and they would agree because it lowers their prices for the public without lowering their profit, meaning they have more customers who buy more), breaking up monopolies, or something drastic like a Crown grocery store chain. There could be other ideas too, but you'd have to do something to avoid it just being a subsidy to grocery giants.

Second, programs which are limited to specific foods often take weird stances about what is "acceptable" for poor people to buy. Not only does this rob them of dignity, it's often very poorly-managed, results in a lot of administrative overhead, and prevents people from buying things like fresh fruit, certain (even cheaper!) brands over others, or food compliant with their dietary restrictions. I'd instead advocate for either no restrictions on what food is purchased, or a blacklist where the card works in every participating grocery store for every product except explicitly excluded ones.

Via is a crown corporation, though, so aren't the profits also socialized? Correct me if I don't understand how crown corporations work.

It puts an enormous amount of weight on two specific muscles. Those muscles are not meant to bear much weight for extended periods, so pain continually increases. There can be temporary damage to the muscles, but permanent damage can't really happen, so it's ideal for torturing people when you don't want any evidence.

Sending emails threatening to kill people is a crime, though she may or may not be prosecuted for it.

The way I see it, a farmer is one who operates a farm, and a farm is an area dedicated to the production of food or other plant or animal products, but that's irrelevant. We can use the word "homesteader" if you prefer.

Life as a homesteader sucks. It's very hard work with long hours. If you get a few bad crop years in a row, you starve. If you become disabled, you starve. If you become seriously ill, far away from decent medical care, you die. Of course the community can help you, but you're surrounded by other homesteaders with the same problems.

That is, more or less, the way it was for most of human history. These days, we specialize. We assign a few people to produce food, a few people to educate the young, a few people to treat illness, and so on. In most of the Western world, we organize this with money. If I opt out of the system to become a homesteader and work the land for food for my family, that is my full-time job. I don't contribute anything extra to society, and so I have no (or little) money. My life becomes essentially that of a peasant. Oh, sure, I have vaccines and civil rights and maybe running water, so my life isn't as bad as that of a medieval peasant, but it's still fundamentally similar: I give up most of the advantages of living in a modern, industrialized society.

Well, you're not becoming a modern farmer. You're becoming a preindustrial farmer. Modern life has its problems but I'd rather not become a peasant, thanks.

I was in the counter-protest in Edmonton and it was a chaotic mess. We need to get organized soon and we need competent people to organize things. I don't know where to find those people though.

Can? Yes. Should? Yes. Will? Probably not.

Rimworld is awesome. But I guess I was thinking in terms of "all crops" being one type of food source. In Rimworld, you can't get multi-year droughts that make growing anything almost impossible. In real life, you can.

New Brunswick tried to use it to mandate vaccination in schools, but the law didn't pass. In Saskatchewan, they briefly used it to override a court ruling that held that the government couldn't provide funding for non-Catholic students to attend Catholic schools, but the case was overturned on appeal so the notwithstanding clause became moot.

Interesting! I didn't know that, but it makes sense.

Still better than first-past-the-post.

I would suspect a correlation more with climate. If it's temperate, you don't shower as much as when you're hot and sweaty all the time.

Also, geothermal power exists.

Oh no! The people we pay to train to kill others might use gasp mild swear words!

The Romans were really, really good at making concrete. Like most "ancient secrets", it's been overblown by sensationalist pop-historians, but they were still really good at it. IIRC they figured out that if you mix volcanic ash in with your concrete, it becomes stronger when exposed to water, not weaker.

edit: exposed, not exposed

Deathists I guess?

I don't know where it's going. We're in the middle of a hype cycle. It could be anywhere from "mildly useful tool that reduces busywork and revolutionizes the clickbait industry" to "paradigm shift comparable to the printing press, radio, or Internet". Either way, I predict that the hype will wear off, and some time later the effects will be felt -- but I could be wrong.