Depending on where you live, rent/mortgage is generally 20-30k a year for people who can even consider this. Add in utilities, property tax, etc and it is not that much higher. And if any meal plans are included in this, it is potentially cheaper than what a lot of the FIRE crowd would be expecting to pay.
That said: After cruise ships became literal plague ships in 2020, I do not know why ANYONE gets on a frigging cruise anymore.
Please don’t use ableist hate speech.
Here is a handy map of some of our nukes as of 2006 https://uploads.fas.org/sites/4/NotebookMap.pdf
But also? The expertise to maintain and build nukes are very much California and New Mexico as that is where the three major NNSA labs and their support facilities are.
I mean… as long as California takes Colorado and New Mexico with it, I see no real issues with that. We get the economy, the nature, and the nukes.
Make sure to actually understand how those “non-profit” websites and services are functioning.
It costs money to power servers and to maintain them. Most of the fediverse instances like to claim they are run on donations and so forth. But… think about how angry people get at the idea of tipping for ANYTHING and then wonder how many of those are throwing significant cash at your favorite lemmy or mastodon instance per month.
Everyone is always shocked when they find out how social media or a “free” vpn or whatever is funded and where there information is going. But hey, I am sure it will be completely different this time.
Which is kind of the point.
Apple paid a shit ton of money over the years to get their devices into enough tv shows and movies and even students at universities to do that. They want to be the default so that you have that “Oh, wow. Gwart has a Dell?” moment. And they want the writers to know that so that… frigging Gwart has a Dell.
As for covering it up? The prop department doesn’t care about Apple’s image, they just do what the production team tells them. And the production team doesn’t care about Apple’s image, they just want to make Apple pay for it.
As for in real life? I know a lot of people who put stickers over anything that is an LED that lights up when you use it. And I’ve personally always put a sticker or two on my work and personal laptops just so that I can identify it at a glance. You haven’t lived until you have watched people have to check the lock screen to figure out which laptop is which.
… So he would do worse in the solid blue states but better in the purple states because… red leaning voters are secretly socialists but blue leaning voters are neoliberal scum?
I go back and forth, but I do think Sanders would have had good odds in 2020. We had the same “I can’t vote for the status quo” non-arguments going around and a semi-populist candidate arguing for all the things people desperately needed (a socioeconomic safety net, basically) at the height of COVID and civil unrest would have done well. That said, an old white guy who was “warm and safe and was in the same room as Obama a few times” was probably still the right play.
But yeah. In 2024 when all people care about is “not the status quo” and “why eggs expensive”? A guy arguing for MORE government programs does not fair well against “Yo, what if we got rid of all taxes and government funding? Don’t ask where the money is going”
Just to expand on the phone thing because it amuses me:
In a past life myself and a few others had access to cell tower records for a specific company. As a research project, we applied what we would now call AI/ML concepts to sanitized data (basically all customer IDs were mapped to a different ID set and then the mapping was thrown away).
For poops and giggles I checked the tower nearest the local happy ending massage place. And, lo and behold, we were able to immediately get a list of everyone who turned their phone off for 30-60 minutes.
The fundamental issue is still giving people a false sense of security. It is why it is INCREDIBLY important to be very very specific about what you do and don’t get from various actions. Otherwise you have the same problem as all those people in countries where being LGBTQ was criminalized who realized elon musk owned their DMs.
Also: Putting your phone in a farraday bag half a mile from a protest doesn’t take much effort to detect.
From a quick skimming, it looks like their genius guides boil down to
If you actually care about your vulnerability, look what ACTUAL journalists on the run from a government or megacorporation do (dedicated hardware that can’t even power up within a few city blocks of your other devices, for one). And understand that most of those boil down to “They know it is me and they are hunting me but I can live off the grid long enough to get this story out and then maybe they won’t kill me afterward”.
I mean. Him being a pedophile and a pimp was always a plus as far as republicans were concerned.
The problem is that many are asking for exactly that now
another group of people decide that your land is their ancestral homeland, your land is now the useless desert while your coastal home is no longer yours. Imagine not fighting back after this.
All of the “from the river to the seas” and insistence that Israel leave is exactly this again. Because the median age in israel as of 2023 is 29.1 years old. Much like most of the people in Gaza didn’t even “vote” for Hamas, most of the people in Israel had nothing to do with the bullshit in the 50s.
This is the issue with basically any “I watched a youtube” level comment on colonization and imperialism. Yes, the modern day occupants have a LOT of advantages and benefit a lot from what their ancestors did (even if it is grandpa). But is it “just” to have everything taken away and given to the people who grew up disadvantaged because grandpa was a dick?
And are you at all surprised when there is push back to that?
And that extends to how all of this is being handled. “We” have more or less learned to distinguish between Hamas and Palestine because, outside of the dumbfuck tankies, nobody is stupid enough to think Hamas at all cares about Palestinians. But there is no similar acknowledgement for the IDF/Israeli Government and the people of Israel. Instead, we get disgusting stupidity like this topic chain where “Well… I am not going to say you deserve it but you totally deserve it” is the theme at hand.
It is the exact same idea about being anti-zionist without being anti-semitic and how so much discourse is failing at that. Which… makes it a lot harder to garner the level of support that would allow politicians who are very dependent on “the Jewish vote” to make it clear they are condemning a government and not a people.
Personally? I see no way that even a two state solution can work at this point. Ignoring the issue of land and resources, it will be Hamas and Islamic State assholes who take power in Palestine and that will just be pushing this off. But I also see no way that the Israeli Government will stop at anything short of genocide. But all of this not even veiled “Well, maybe you should have thought to not be born in Israel you colonist prick” level commentary is just making sure that there is no solution other than genocide by the side with the bigger guns.
deleted by creator
And you have those threats with other viruses. There is a reason there was always such a strong push to get people to get flu shots. Plenty of people die from pneumonia and other complications.
Covid is/was a global threat because of the combination of being highly contagious, having dangerous symptoms, and being something most people have no antibodies for. Vaccination, as well as mutations, have negated a lot of those. This is why getting covid in early 2020 was a potential death sentence and would leave you curled up in a little ball unable to function. Getting covid in late 2023 is often so mild that people may not even think to test.
And if you have a compromised immune system or are otherwise at risk? You really should be masking up and avoiding crowds anyway. Because influenza is still a thing as are plenty of other colds. The only difference is that the vast majority of people won’t bat an eye if you wear a mask to the supermarket these days (aside from the hardcore republicans who may scream slurs at you).
These threats didn’t start in late 2019 when we were starting to hear about some weird “coronavirus” that was totally going to be the next Y2K joke. Like, I remember my cousin (rest in peace). She didn’t need to live in an outright clean room but she generally avoided going to crowded spaces because nobody knows how to sneeze into their arm. And when we went to visit, we were expected to reschedule or stay outside if we at all “felt sick”.
In a perfect world? We would have learned from covid that you cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze and to try to avoid being near people when you are sick. Instead… we at least semi-normalized wearing a mask?
That more or less seems true globally.
But, if you have been keeping up with your vaccinations, covid is fairly mild these days. There is still the risk of complications and “long covid” but that is true of a lot more illnesses than anyone wants to acknowledge.
Personally? I still mask up when I go to the store or on public transportation. But I am not going to avoid eating out at a restaurant anymore and generally don’t bother at airports or conventions since I am going to eat at some point and I am likely fucked regardless. But it is also less about covid specifically and more about just not wanting to get sick period.
It really depends on where you live.
Between living in a smaller town and never ending supply chain/distribution issues: If I need something I can’t get at the local store, it is a bare minimum two hour ordeal. I can usually justify that on a weekend but if my mouse dies and I need one now? Suddenly I need to figure out what else I can grab to get free shipping or if I need to just eat the costs and overnight it.
I have been doing the math and will likely stick with amazon prime. Admittedly, I increasingly don’t bother to even watch the amazon shows I like (the boys and reacher) because I have increasingly become spoiled by a proper blu ray or UHD (… ripped to my plex).
Maintenance for the f16 is far from zero and a lot of the components are made with very outdated processes.
I assume the adjusted for inflation cost is still higher. But there are reasons countries are upgrading even if the f35 is of questionable value
Tormented like having to ask King Chuckie to send out the Gestapo to arrest anyone who mentions the diddling again
If you JUST want to read pirated ebooks? Kobo is probably the best bang for your buck. But you can also pretty easily sideload ebooks to any kindle via the email interface (which I believe Calibre can utilize).
That said? I have a mix of ebooks I got from legal and less than legal sources. And some of those legal sources include amazon kindle because the prices are REALLY good.
So I like my Onyx Boox. Yeah… it is jank as hell and it allegedly comes with a free 5g modem so be wary of what personal info you put on there. But it works well as I can use the kindle app (which also syncs with my phone) for amazon stuff and the native ereader for any epub files. And because I use a webdav to sync my notes, grabbing new books is as simple as remembering to
scpa folder to my nextcloud periodically.