Are you that naive? Why are you defending Google anyway? Google most definitely has a backdoor filter to block FOSS and communist apps like Lemmy and fediverse in general. I also tested Gboard and I can’t gesture type Lemmy. This is proof Google is doing some shenanigans. And I challenge you to try it yourself, stop shilling Google dude!
My wife got me a kegerator a couple years ago. It’s amazing! Like $700. Fill up the keg with tap water when you run out (my keg is like 10 gal), refill the CO2 tank every 100 gals or so. I did a math a while back and it’s like 6 cents per glass, not including upfront costs.
Or you can get an adapter to use with a standard CO2 tank with a soda stream machine. Refill those CO2 tanks at your local home brewing supply store, which again is way cheaper than the sodastream CO2
Sometimes… no all times, I wish I also couldn’t taste Bitter 2. Unfortunately when you carbonate water, that is literally the only flavour it has. And it has alot of it. It’s one of the most disgusting flavours to people that can taste it, and completely non-existent to everyone else.
There was a questionable article written with that number not long ago. It’s completely bullshit though.
I’ll use my own experience as an example: I got approved for a mortgage of 125k (which is fairly low for my area, but there are still options) with the understanding that I’d be getting a house with a few issues that I can work on. My 30 year mortgage rate if I had managed to buy a house at that time would have been around 700 a month. If you double those numbers to 250k, 1400 a month and you earn 4x that amount your annual salary needs to be just under 70k.
Just for reference, there are a significant number of homes for sale for 250k or less, and I live in one of the top 10 most populated cities in the country.
$140k per year is enough to afford a mortgage on a $500k house. You’d have to make crazy money to buy a house outright on a year’s salary, so nobody evaluates it that way.
I’m sorry but this can’t be correct. I live within 30 minutes of two minor cities with plenty to do and me and my wife combined make around 100k. We live comfortably and have 50k in the bank in addition to retirement. We also have one kid. This is highly dependent on where you live. I am not saying the cost of housing,etc is not a problem but some of these numbers need to be put in context.
This one is easy. I would simply do what they tell me to do. After all, since they came back to see me, it’s certainly because the future me sent them back in time.
If it wasn’t me that sent them back in time, then it’s probably a set up, and I would be powerless to resist it.
If they insisted on my ordering them around, I’d have them bring back a copy of their Wikipedia from 50 years in the future, and then I’d try to use the rest of the time to figure out the physics behind time travel, and see if I can’t get plans for a time machine.
There are few theoretically possible technologies as overwhelmingly powerful as time machines. Even an extraordinarily weak time machine, for example, one that could only move you a few minutes back and forth, would be enough to make me insanely wealthy, assuming that it wasn’t cost prohibitive to run.
This was my thought a well. Just using the internet at all guarantees that we’re supporting Amazon, Google, and Microsoft because they host most of the content.
This conundrum points back to our need to have agency, and something OP will/should address. One way to lower anxiety is to understand where we have personal agency and where we don’t. No matter how hard or how long I beat on a brick wall with my bare hands I will not damage it, only tire and damage myself. This isn’t limited to man made/capitalism. I also cannot swim across an ocean. Recognizing when I can make a difference and accepting my personal limits allows me to focus my goals around things where I will succeed or produce results. They may be (globally) small, but they affect me and my community in a meaningful way. I might even use that brick wall to provide a brace for leverage or the water in the ocean for salt or brackish irrigation. Expending energy that I know will not affect change only lets them beat me twice.
I used to believe this stat too, then I looked it up. AWS is about 12.5% of their income. Online retail is about 50%. Your point still stands though, you can’t easily avoid Amazon’s revenue stream.
Then we’re both wrong. A deeper dive into newer numbers shows AWS REVENUE is 16% (12.5% is a year or two old). online stores REVENUE is 50%. The thing is that online stores recently started losing money so AWS INCOME is currently Amazon’s bread winner. (Edit: swipe type spelling mistakes)
Fusion generator reactors are getting closer and closer with each breakthrough. Countries are routinely putting big money behind these projects, and it’s conceivable that we see this within our lifetime.
Experiments were recently successful in freezing a rat kidney, thawing it out after 100 days, and surgically re-implanting it. It worked. This breakthrough could be the thing needed to allow for human hibernation aboard long term spaceflights. (Powered by cold fusion, naturally)
Quantum computing is very interesting, and could be a gateway-breakthrough that leads to all sorts of miraculous inventions. The ability of a super computer to precisely model interactions between molecules and protein folding, reliably allowing for the continued improvement to, literally, every drug we use today.
CRISPR, Genetic screenings, and the ability to regrow autologous transplants from host tissue is fascinating. Having to donate organs may become a thing of the past.
something that is objectively unnecessary but gives comfort or at least the illusion of comfort
i think of it like the laws of diminishing returns
think of a shitbox $3,000 used car. assuming the engine is more or less running, you get like 80% of the benefits of a car
it gets you from point A -> B - the primary purpose of a car
then you spend another $10,000 for a $13,000 5~6 year old Toyota or something. now you have A/C, that gives you an extra few % benefits. You get a carplay so you have a nice little screen for a GPS, another few %. you get a key that unlocks your car, etc.
so you went from 80% to lets say 90%. but that base 80%, getting you from point A -> B hasn’t changed.
that extra $10,000 bought you 10% extra
then let’s say you spend another $100,000 for a $113,000 car
you get all the benefits of the previous cars, but you maybe can speed up a little faster. you have heated seats. you have a sport mode or something.
that extra $100,000 bought you another like 7% so now you’re at 97%
Luxury is that last 20%. The closer you wanna get to 100%, the more expensive each % costs. This is a status symbol
you’re gonna tell me that a $5,000 bottle of wine is 200x better than a $25 bottle of wine? They’ve done many random taste tests and even the wine experts can’t always tell the difference.
the difference is the luxury. the garcon coming out and telling you about some fancy wine grown with special grapes in france. he pours it for you and your date. etc
illusion of comfort. the illusion is what is important.
sometimes there are differences. for example when you pay for an expensive supercar, it’s going to drive incredibly well. the money goes somewhere. but i think a large chunk is what i said, an illusion
No offense but i get an artist vibe off you. You got me thinking about the media, Artist, narcotics and crypto links. You can top it off with surveillance and psychological manipulation from the media.
I agree with your example, but I disagree that the luxury cutoff is at 80%. For me it is at 90% in your example. A car that only mostly runs is a liability and may even end up costing more per year than the 90% one because of repairs. At least it is like that here in Norway.
In a world, where a skilled assassin lives a public life as a barber to the rich and powerful. At night they pull of the most difficult hits that nobody else would take on.
I'm almost exactly the same age as you. If I've learned anything up to this point, it's that people would start to have better and richer lives as soon as they cancel their cable TV subscriptions, delete all social media accounts*, and delete all news apps from their mobile devices. I really believe smartphones are a huge culprit in making people miserable, and it's because we've let these things get totally out of hand instead of consciously making them as boring and utilitarian as possible.
The issue of being 'informed' or not can be covered by reading Wikipedia's current events page for a few minutes each week. That should also free up plenty of time for people to focus more on what really matters day-to-day, which is their local community, friends, family and neighbors. Useful information is actionable, and actionable information can be found when you're laser-focused on your local area and the ways you can help improve it.
IMO Lemmy's a new version of old-school web forums and link aggregators (which have been around since the beginning- kind of like Fark, Slashdot, etc). Using this site feels the same as using those sites.
Think social media's a very specific thing that started off in the early-to-mid 00s- i.e., a site / app where you keep a profile that's tied to your real-life identity and real-life social circles (myspace, friendster, linkedin, facebook). And that's where the harm kicks in, since suddenly you have to worry about having some kind of curated digital persona, which has some kind of real-life impact. So if we can't talk about the harms of social media in a specific way (i.e., the harm of constantly comparing your life to these idealized representations of other people's lives), then 'social media' isn't a meaningful term anymore.
My partner and I got scratch ticket packs for eachother for $38 total. I lost every ticket she won 20 dollar so we are starting the year 18 dollars short.
I was in line at a convenience store the other day, when the person in front of me bought a dozen or so scratch tickets. Normally, I wouldn’t have gave it a second thought, people gamble. But what made it stand out to me was that the person made the cashier just immediately scratch the QR code square and scan the ticket. Like, the person didn’t even touch the tickets. Just handed over the money, and made the cashier do the work. Not only that, but the cashier didn’t even bat an eye; as this seemed like a normal occurrence to them. And the person in front of me didn’t win anything, they just walked away with nothing.
So not only was it extremely sad to see this person, who is clearly addicted to gambling, waste their money. But, seeing how the industry has made it so easy and fast for someone to piss their money away was quite disgusting. These people don’t even play the game on the cards now. They just scratch off the code and scan it. Just sad all around.
Why not? They’re fun and benefit numerous good causes, such as services for elderly citizens and low-cost prescription medication programs. No one of stable mind really thinks they’ll get rich, but it’s nice to win a few bucks here and there.
Even though some of the money goes to good causes, taking advantage of people who are addicted to gambling is not cool.
Now, that’s not to say that every single person who has ever bought a scratch ticket is an addict, but the whole thing is designed to take advantage of those who are not in their right mind.
I’m so happy to be in a wealthy community with very few gambling addicts these days.
I sold lottery tickets in a very very poor community and I swear they’d blow everything they had and then try to bum the clerk to keep going.
The difference is absurd too. I would sell 3-4k (that’s low too) in lottery tickets every day in a poor community. In a wealthy community I rarely sell 100 dollars in tickets in a day.
I know a man who would be living like a king if he wasn’t addicted. He retired from a pretty high position in the military and then the post office. Every time he gets his money he spends the first 4 days of the month spending at least 4k on tickets. His wife makes him keep just enough to live in their tiny beat up house and take care of the terribly mentally ill adult children (all in their 40s).
Gambling addiction is so crazy to me, I could never tell if anyone was addicted though at the counter. I used to work at a pharmacy with a lotto machine so that probably determined customers a bit. The older retired ladies coming in with their pouches was kind of charming and they weren’t very big spenders overall, they seemed to just enjoy organizing and managing it all.
Slot machines in casinos really affect me in a depressing way though, seeing rows of people just pressing buttons over and over while they stare at the machine I find disturbing.
I’m in Virginia and about 6 months ago I had some guys pop on here trying to get me to install those slot machines. They told me how much money the store could bring in, blah blah blah. I told them I’d rather die than sit here with people drooling and throwing their lives away. I’d feel like shit for every penny it brought in. Funny thing is, not long after they came in with the big pitch, the machines were outlawed haha. They were trying to do a quick dump before the law changed, the assholes.
Fortunately my uncle (the owner) is very religious and principled about such things.
He sells the tickets, but he has little things in place these days that keep the hardcore gambler away. No purchases on credit or debit cards, standing and scratching is considered loitering.
We call them a “stupid tax” but infrequently buying them is pretty harmless. I don’t mind group lotto either it can be fun to buy in and run the numbers out over a course of a few months. There’s some charity lottos I’ve done before.
When I was 18, I worked in a convenience store. I was behind the counter with my manager and some lady decided to throw a few bucks at some dollar scratch tickets. I was behind silly and put my finger on the middle one and said it would get her at least five dollars. She laughed and took them out to her car. A few minutes later she came in looking like she saw a ghost. She asked how I knew and I just told her that I guessed. She won exactly five dollars on the ticket I pointed out.
As someone working in my family’s gas stations for the last two decades, this is something that happens at least a few times a month for me.
9 times out of 10 the big winners have sat and played on a roll until it hits something and they move on to the next making it nearly impossible for an average, non addicted customer to get anything. The gambling addicts will spend 200k to win 10k and jump up and down like the 10k winner is going to change they life.
Customers who always share their winnings, I point them to the ticket that hasn’t hit in awhile. Customers who aggravate me and bounce in front of people like someone pissing themselves at a slot machine, I lie and tell them a ticket hasn’t hit even if it has. It’s probably wrong, but my thinking goes that the longer a particular ticket has gone without hitting, the closer it is to a winner. Someone smarter than me can probably call me an idiot on that one.
Pointing people to winners (which is a total freak thing every time I do) has paid me probably 6k in the last 20 years. If decent folks think you assisted them in their luck, they always want to share in the luck.
I’m sorry I’ve pretty much just sat and typed nothing here. Too far in to back out now. :p
I just want good, cheap, and mass production ready solid state batteries of any sort. Right now, anything that’s on the market either isn’t good or isn’t cheap, and none of it is mass produced… Often all three.
If we get over the hurdle of something we can mass produce for cheap that’s as good as, or better than the existing lithium tech that we have, I’m in.
Soft recommendation for psychedelics. It’s NOT for everyone and you should do some legitimate research beforehand, but it’s done wonders for my anxiety
It took me a very long time to realise that there’s no point worrying about things I can’t control, I needed to find ways to mitigate the risks or consequences.
E.g. I used to get very very anxious about traveling, e.g. for a four hour car trip. What is there’s heavy traffic, what if we run late, what if there are detours, what if we need to stop, what if the car breaks down…
Then I started working out what I could actually do about these things? What is in my control? What can I do to make heavy traffic more bearable (music and water)? So what if I’m late? I have a phone I can call. I can keep my car well maintained, I can drive calmly, and so on.
It’s not perfect, it’s anecdotal, but it was a mindset change that helped me. I mean, medication helped too… it gave me the space to be rational.
In my case its that I just get stuck into repetative negative thought loops. My default assumption always seems to be that the worst case scenario is going to happen even though it never happens. I’m just really good at convincing myself that nothing is worth trying as I’m probably going to fail anyways.
When you catch yourself going into a negative loop, stop yourself and think of or write down the absolute worst possible scenario (and really, how bad is this, likely minor, negative thing in the grand scheme of things?), the most likely scenario which happens most of the time, and the best possible scenario (how good could it be, similar to the bad outcomes?). What separates those possible outcomes? Chance? Effort on your part? Other people?
If it’s effort on your part, it gives you actionable steps you can take and that’s great for anxiety, everything else being out of your control should actually help as well, though, especially when you intentionally step back and look for the most likely event.
I always have this sense when I’m driving home from an overnight elsewhere that my house will have burned down or my animals will be dead or something. I know it’s absurd, but more than that, even if that was the case, there’s nothing I could actually do about it, and I know one of my neighbors would call the fire department and text me if my house caught fire. So when I have that intrusive thought I stop myself and take a step back - logically it’s very unlikely it will burn down when I’m not home because I spend 99% of my time at home - if it is going to burn, it is likely going to burn when I’m here, and I literally never worry about that. So why do I worry about the rare occurrence?
It doesn’t help immediately, because you didn’t logic yourself into that worry, but eventually you can train yourself to be a bit more realistic which, while it may not fix the intrusive thoughts, does help a ton with breaking the rumination cycle.
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