agegamon @ agegamon @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

It doesn't help that carmakers get incentivised to go big by fucked up fuel standards. Here in the US the CAFE standards were gutted during their creation to carve out looser standards for obese pickups and hummer-sized SUVs. The bigger they get even within a given segment, the less stringent the requirements are.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popularity-federal-policy-pollution

Plus people "feel safer" and all that other jazz when they drive them. It's just... It's so stupid to have to watch people continuing to chose shit like this.

IMO it's such a multi-faceted problem that at this point about the only thing that makes sense is to switch lanes (heh) and focus on other transit methods. More people will take transit or bike if it's easier than parking their mile long farm vehicles in tight urban spaces and being helplessly fumigated by standstill traffic.

Yeah I was going to say, phones are currently growing bigger after hitting a sort of "peak small" lol.

They're getting so huge that it's hard to find a small one without ordering an old model. I like to be able to see things and all but at a certain point they don't fit comfortably in my pockets

"Too broke to play PC" is a vanishing argument IMO. People have been saying that forever, to be fair, but given how bad Xbox and Playstation have gotten I don't anyone who's actually into gaming purchasing a new one today. Maybe used, that might make sense if it was really cheap.

A budget gaming PC can check out at slightly over 600 now. PcPartPicker has two recommended builds priced right at 600, though honestly there might be even cheaper ways to arrive at that level of perfromance. Compared to 300-400 for the less garbage Xbox, and there's not much argument to lock someone into the xbox's ecosystem vs something you can upgrade for much less.

Now I think it's a different matter if it's a hand-me-down or given for free. There's no reason not to do that.

I gave my last console away and got a friend of mine into gaming, then helped them build a decent PC when they actually wanted something new.

Advertising campaigns that straight up lie ("now you're cooking with gas" and that kind of shit) don't help. Nor do the substantial natural gas subsidies that some states offer ng suppliers.

Then again, it's only been very recent that electric induction ranges in north americ have been offered at sane price points. Up until recently it wasn't easy to find an induction range for under $1k, whereas now it's a bit more realistic.

People also get unreasonably attached to their cheapo $25 nonstick (even if it was marked up to $200 with some bougie brand name) and will refuse to ditch it for actual quality cookware when they find out that their $25 pan isn't induction compatible.

The US Navy hates this one simple trick!

It's weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don't have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it's so freaking nice.

About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That's refundable too, at least theoretically, so it's not that bad.

Hmmm, I've never noticed what you mentioned on my recent phones. That said you should test a newer android yourself before making a purchase!

More of my personal experience... I have a Pixel 7 XL and a work Iphone which (edit) is an Iphone 12. Generally they are the same in terms of having no scroll lag or input lag at all. But, there is some lag on both when they are overheated, especially on the Iphone if I put it on a higher power charger (I trickle charge both when I can).

From a design perspective the biggest difference I notice is that my Pixel feels significantly smoother because of the 120hz display, and just the larger display in general. While I said neither of them have much lag, the Iphone feels noticeably less speedy. That said, I'm sure if you compared my Pixel to a high end Iphone results would be flipped. My work isn't shelling out for whatever pro max stuff they sell (and neither would I!).

Beyond that, I can't offer guidance. In my personal experience the Iphone UI is so frustrating that I can't judge which one performs "better" or not, because only the Android feels comfortable to me. Between that and the lack of labels in some places (like the pull-down settings menu) it is impossible for me to daily drive the apple.

Tipfenestrating.

NYT crossword for me (just because it's there next to wordle, not specifically because I love nyt or anything)

Also has the cool added side effect of raising my blood pressure and make me feel progressively more stupid as the week goes on. I don't even try the Friday ones anymore.

Democrats touting a road widening project... why celebrate a carbrained regressive idea. No it's not murdering people in Gaza or Ukraine but seriously folks, not the right move. May be democrats in name but not progressive in practice. That's increasingly why I'm frustrated with dems and the two-party shit system.

What's really happening here is that advertisers can use the Reddit Ads Manager to create normal user posts and then pay to make them appear prominently on the site and in the app as promoted posts, aka adverts.

Look it's not exactly revolutionary or new, google search has been littered with promoted ad results for years. But I still hate it. Fuck off, reddit. No respect intended. Icky. So glad I stopped using it.

Unlike sane people, regressive leaders do not need or care about reality in order to get people removed from the ballot. It absolutely does not matter that progressives have not invited insurrections. They'll be removed anyway if that precedent is set simply because they are an alternative option, and the voting population is sufficiently decieved or deluded to support it.

For those like me who automatically pictured an industrial fruit/vegetable farm (i.e. only plants) when reading the title "factory farming," don't worry. I believe they are concerned about industrial animal farming.

I just skimmed the article and agree that it's misleading without context or data. I didn't look hard to see if it actually gave any.

That said my personal experience is that I get far more exercise with my ebike because I'm in the saddle more often. I rode my normal bike maybe once or twice per summer. I'm not into it as a sport or hobby, and there are too many hills and stop signs/lights that you actually have to stop at, which means struggling to get going when you have to jet out between cars. I don't have billions of hours training my thighs into galactus legs so I can take off uphill in 6th gear. And let's just be honest: I'm never going to.

My ebike solve those problems. As a result I've packed in a couple hundred miles in just the first year I've had it. So for me it very much is a case of fewer calories per mile but more miles overall exercised.

Yeah, I agree that there aren't many budget cargo-in-front options yet (none that I could find in 5 sec of googling).

Smith said he purchased the Sun with his own funding, independent of Sinclair. The Sun (1/15/24) advertised the purchase as “the first time in nearly four decades that the Sun will be in the hands of a local owner.”

Let's see how many days his alleged "private ownership" of the Sun takes to turn them into another regressive media turdfactory.

Remember in 2018 when sinclair forced hundreds of TV broadcasters to air pro-trump fake news bullshit? The same incident mentioned in Fair's article above? Yeah. YEAH. That feels like just a little flex in hindsight.

I'm guessing less than 60 days personally.

I didn't know chatGPT could spit out sources, that's neat. I'll have to give it a shot some time. Did you specifically ask for that or did it do that on its own?

The PET vs Glass study is fascinating, especially since the result favors PET by a significant margin. That's a massive disconnect from the findings of the OP study. It basically makes PET out to be a fantastic option, but assuming it can be so clean, it's even more infuriating that so little plastic gets recycled. I also wonder what the breakdown of PET recycling is, vs plastics in general? Is it just a tiny portion of plastic waste overall, or does it fail to reach the recycling stream? Something about that situation stinks, and not just of uncleaned bottles.

Considering that we have to reduce virgin material use in every sector, the more recyclable option should be the clear winner. Its frustrating to see this level of waste.

Crushed recycled glass (aka cullet) actually decreases the amount of energy required to create new glass products, as well as demonstrably lowering their CO2 impact. While it's easy to assume that there's a lot of waste because there's a lot of heat involved, keep in mind that virgin material requires far more processing and even more heat and energy to result in a final product.

Unlike plastics, the problems with achieving a profitable (remember, capitalism) glass recycling stream are much more cultural and intrinsic to the subject nation. Here's some further info on why the US, where I live, is dragging so far behind in this area: https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6

Putin might as well just say the quiet part out loud at this point. Classic sociopath dictator, gotta pretend blood isn't on his hands.

Rest in peace Navalny. You and your people deserve better than this.

Republicans say the repeal will lead to Michigan becoming less attractive to businesses and will lead to forced union membership. House Republican leader Matt Hall said in statement following Whitmer’s signing that “businesses will find more competitive states for their manufacturing plants and research and development facilities.”

Translation: Regressives want businesses to be able to abuse employees, and they're afraid that not being able to abuse employees quite as easily will put up some reasonable guardrails on maximizing profits.