Some airlines offer free wifi, but the ticket prices are usually higher. There’s definitely a pretty large cost to offer wifi on an airplane. Most of it these days is satellite based, and there are large antennas on top of the airplane in a dome shaped structure. This increases drag requiring a slight increase in fuel burn. Over time that adds up. The prices here do seem high, considering you only get a small amount of bandwidth. The 80MB option can be blown through just by viewing photos.
Yeah but data rate caps are money grab bullshit and everyone knows it.
If they really wanted to measure it per what it costs them it’d be unlimited with speed caps, just that doesn’t make nearly as much money
And like any right drag increase(by extension fuel) would be easily lost to favorable or unfavorable winds, the noise is so small considering it is a joke - the extra $0.01 per flight ain’t gonna cost them the $50 per passenger they’re charging (made up numbers but I’m not gonna whip out drag calculations just yet lmao)
They’ve already banned menthol in California and it did nothing. Alternatives are already being marketed and sold and some of the better ones recreate the exact same effect but cost $1.20 more per pack at the low end. To put it simply, this is dumb as fuck.
This way smokers have to pay more so the demand will decrease, tobacco industry gets less money, and the economic burden on public health and environment can be financed with the additional tax income.
Addicts will always find a way to justify their addiction. Price of smokes goes up? Welp, looks like Ol Johnny Blacklungs is going to buy less food this month.
So we shouldn’t tax cigarettes then? It sounds like you’ve identified that addiction can quickly become a public health crisis if wealth inequality could cause addicts to choose their vice over food. We could fund programs to help addicts get help, but we would need to raise tax revenue.
If the government insists on high rates of taxation for the reason that the product has a high potential for harm, then shouldn’t the use of that tax revenue be mostly, if not entirely, re-directed towards harm reduction programs around that substance or product? How can anyone possibly argue any other use for that revenue? When the revenue generated by ‘sin taxes’ is used for other unrelated purposes, they are effectively exploiting the users by recognizing that they will continue to be a source of revenue because the product is habit forming or addictive. The last time I checked on the revenue generated by tobacco taxes, only ~11% was spent on harm-reduction programs related to tobacco use and the remaining 89% was just paying for other government projects totally unrelated to tobacco.
To suggest that the solution is to further raise the taxation rates rather than properly allocating the current revenue is immoral and illogical IMHO.
There’s a reason why people tend to hit rock bottom before they finally kick their drug addiction. If they don’t have the means, they will attempt to find it. Your logic is flawed, and only serves to disproportionately impair the poor while bolstering the very industry you fight.
How the fuck do you hit rock bottom solely on nicotine?
Tobacco, the main ingredient in cigarettes, is more addictive than meth. If you can imagine somebody hitting rock bottom on meth then it should be easy enough to wrap your head around it. Especially when cigarettes contain added chemicals to make it more addictive than tobacco alone.
Also, I would be inclined towards believing that the habit is mostly spread through peers. Price as a barrier to entry wouldn’t be effective at preventing peer pressure if they’re your first supplier.
To clarify, the addictiveness of nicotine ≠ the addictiveness of tobacco. Even aside from the additives used by the tobacco industry, tobacco naturally contains an array of MAO inhibitors and other compounds that work in harmony with nicotine causing it to be far more addictive than nicotine itself. Pure nicotine is much farther down the scale of addictiveness, classed as a “weak reinforcer” in studies.
If you are interested in the subject, I highly recommend reading the studies and posts by Maryka Quik, director of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Program at SRI International. I first found out about her in an interesting article published in Scientific American — LINK.
Okay thanks, but we are talking about tobacco. I understand that I messed up the terminology, but why are you replying this to me and not the one that is denying it?
Edit: Wait…you do know that cigarettes contain tobacco right?
…why are you replying this to me and not the one that is denying it?
I repied to you because of your reply to Jake_Farm. Jake_Farm stated:
How the fuck do you hit rock bottom solely on nicotine?
To which you responded:
It’s more addictive than meth. If you can imagine somebody hitting rock bottom on meth then it should be easy enough to wrap your head around it. Especially when cigarettes contain added chemicals to make it more addictive than nicotine alone.
By inference you are claiming that nicotine is more addictive than meth and I’m just pointing out that isn’t correct — you can’t use tobacco and nicotine interchangeably in discussions, whether talking about addictiveness, harm, or just about any aspect of their short and long terms effects. The addictiveness is drastically different, the cardiovascular effects are vastly different, the effects on lung function are vastly different.
To your credit, the overall conversation is about tobacco and I should have clarified that my point applies to everyone in this conversation who is talking about nicotine and tobacco in the same breath.
Yeah I definitely flubbed the terms, but if you extrapolate what I’m saying it should be obvious I was talking about tobacco. And I feel like the people in this conversation are so eager to hate on me that they’ll just incorrectly use this as evidence that I’m wrong lol
No hate or downvotes from me, sorry if it seems that way. Perhaps it’s my current mood or imagination, but the Lemmy crowd seems a bit more reactionary and prone to strongly worded dismissive comments than Reddit.
I’m also seeing a lot more downvoting of comments here that don’t seem all that controversial. I’d rather hear why someone disagrees with a post than the rush to silently downvote, but I can’t control that either. People are wound up these days.
I completely agree. This is not even a subject that I’m particularly educated on and I’m still waiting for a single substantiated defeator for my opinions on the topic to change my mind.
Then you look at the downvotes and you’d think that you missed a comment that disproved your statement(s).
Okay so here we are speculating about this, but there’s data on this isn’t there? Is it not the case that countries who tax tobacco more have all but eliminated it? I’m not well versed on the subject, but I think it’s a bit silly to just pull this out of your ass as if it were fact. Here’s a link to an ncbi article that talks about it. I’m sure there’s plenty more out there to show one way or the other, so I’m interested to know whether you have anything to back up your stance.
Being that dependent on a substance suggests that practical decision-making and rational thinking, such as adding motivation to quit through price, is certainly not going to be the most effective way to reduce dependency while also further harming those that fail to break their dependency.
Edit: Also I just want to point out, again, that I was never referring to tax. From what I saw there’s not enough conclusive data for me to form an opinion one way or the other on the effectiveness of increasing tobacco tax . All of my comments are about this ridiculously assanine ban, or the increased prices that come as a result of this ban.
This is effectively a Pigouvian tax, and will absolutely keep some people from smoking.
Also higher prices do not necessarily mean the industry is making more money. Far more likely, given the saturation of competition, that they simply cost more to make.
Don’t forget a lot of the cost of a pack of smokes is often more due to taxation than the cost of the product, even if you include things likes all the overhead for marketing and legal and shit.
Would you like a citation on what Pigouvian taxes are, how the cigarette industry is flooded with competition, or that putting further regulations on products makes them more expensive to produce?
I assumed you could Google any of these but I can do it for you. Fair warning, you’ll be getting a “let me Google that for you” link.
Not one of these facts is even remotely controversial so my mind is a bit boggled that you’d even try to contest any of them
That’s not how capitalism works. If the tobacco industry could raise prices and get more money today, they would. Since they haven’t, you have to assume that any increased taxes or burden on them will reduce their profits.
Yes, it might increase prices to the end consumer, because the demand curve will change when the costs change. But that doesn’t mean the tobacco industry is making any more money. If it did, they would already charge more.
“That guy happened to tangentially mention tax so you must’ve been talking about tax, herp derp”
Edit: Is it really that hard to figure out that I started this whole thread in reference to the topic of prohibition as the title suggests? I’m not talking about taxes. I never mentioned taxes. I don’t care that anyone else is talking about taxes.
Prohibition has no net effect on demand, it simply enables black markets. Alcohol use after Prohibition was not higher than pre-prohibition, but did rise to the same levels fairly quickly.
Supply and demand do not have an inverse relationship. Demand exists, and when supply exceeds demand, prices fall. When supply does not meet demand, prices rise. You understand they are related but forgot the actual curve on the graph. Supply and demand can both be low, for instance, as is the case with mega yachts. Supply and demand have no direct effect on one another, though low supply does tend to encourage firms to increase supply to try to compete and meet the demand.
Data during prohibition is irrelevant to this specific discussion, because your claim is that demand goes up when goods are prohibited, which is false, as I showed with my link
I don’t believe you have actually taken Econ 101, given the things Ive seen you say here.
Thanks for proving my point for me. I appreciate it.
Your link shows an estimate of alcohol consumption during prohibition based on mortality, but there is. Zero. Accurate. Data. of alcohol consumption during the prohibition.
The important part of that link was not during prohibition, which is irrelevant, because regardless of demand the number of people with access to alcohol was lower, but rather that after prohibition, usage rates did not surpass pre-prohibition levels.
When supply does not meet demand, prices rise
This is not an inverse relationship between supply and demand. The supply is not affecting the demand, which is what “inverse relationship” requires.
i expected it to be like a long bar with exits you can open and close by computer and that way you could then control it… isn’t 5 planes a bit complicated?
You seem knowledgeable about this stuff… where can you go in the United States to see actual skywriting? I’ve never seen it, but I’ve always lived the middle of nowhere.
Just How stupid does one have to be to think all their woes exist with only one generation? There are far bigger monsters alive today in current younger generations (many in millennial) that are far more destructive to our lives and the earth. They’ve seen more $$$ than any boomer and will laugh at you while you live out of a garbage can.
And you’d still probably be posting stupid memes like this acting completely oblivious to the burning hell around you.
…as long as choice #3 isn’t apocalyptically bad, right?
Right?
That’s only true if everyone believes that, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Would really be fantastic to see just once, one time, everyone interconnects on social media and agrees to vote on a third party, as an experiment if nothing else, to finally prove/disprove that theory.
Funny enough these newer generations have this communicative interconnectivity of the Internet available to them, that previous generations didn’t have, but they don’t seem to use it, instead they just share mene pics/vids, etc.
Could you imagine the political earthquake though if a third party actually won? Would be glorious to see.
The problem there isn’t that we (assuming the US) don’t want third parties, it’s that our voting system encourages party consolidation rather than cooperation. That only gets more true the higher in the government you go.
The problem there isn’t that we (assuming the US) don’t want third parties,
That’s not true. People don’t vote for third party because of the self-fulfilling prophecy, but it doesn’t mean they don’t want it. They also want ranked-choice voting.
I would advocate to put that self-fulfilling prophecy to the test, even if just as an experiment one time.
I think you’re agreeing with me there. People want other choices, but they get ignored because they have no chance of winning.
It would be great if we couple coordinate and just try it one year, but change needs to be able to happen gradually too. Our system in practice actively punishes third party voting by your vote benefiting the major party you DON’T want.
I bet people would want ranked choice or similar if given the option. I think the establishment really doesn’t like that idea and actively works against it, though.
I just wanted to be explicit and generally push back against the notion that Americans don’t want other choices to vote for, especially in this election cycle.
Some people consider Pittsburgh to be part of the Midwest for whatever reason. I guess it’s because it’s a rust belt city that’s closer to Cleveland than it is Philly.
The Appalachians were historically the eastern boundary of the “midwest”. Considering that western PA is to the west of the Appalachians, those Pennsylvanians may, in fact, be correct.
I’m from Western PA, and while I wouldn’t say I see a lot of people calling themselves midwesterners, we’re more alike than we are different. Western PA is hard to classify in terms of region. Most of us just say we’re from Pittsburgh/Erie/whatever and leave it at that. But since it is hard to classify, 10% or so of us saying that we’re “Midwestern” does not surprise me.
Rust Belt works. Ohio is really part of three different places; the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Midwest. Maybe The Rust Belt isn’t considered polite anymore, I don’t know, but my mother’s side of my family is entirely from the Pittsburgh to Cleveland area so I mean no offense. My grandfather was a career engineer at Bethlehem Steel, for example. His joke was that he literally sold bridges for a living.
80% of the state is to the west of the Appalachian chain. We haven’t been midwestern since Ohio gained statehood in 1803. However, nearly 10% of my state has tied itself to an identity as a Midwesterner because for 20 years conservatives have been calling it “the real america”. It’s like Pennsylvanias flying the Confederate flag. It’s about identity, not history or reality.
They’d ripen faster in open air too. This whole packaging fruit trend is just stupid.
Unless it’s for accessibility. There are some niche prepackaged fruits specifically for people with arthritis and other mobility issues that actually can’t reasonably peel fruit, but these aren’t even peeled so obviously it’s not for that.
I’m not sure if that’s true as afaik bananas release some sort of heavier than air gas that causes both themselves and lots of other produce to ripen faster. The more airflow the less banana gas.
Having looked at sand under a microscope for many, many hours: kinda? These images are not just heavily curated but arranged. Yes I’ve had a bunch with random shell fragments and forams SOMETIMES but notice in those images the pieces are carefully spread out?
Most clean sand looks like the bottom right two images but even those are already filtered for interest. I have a bunch of stuff that looks like the bottom middle photo, which is a contentinal glacial sand deposit that is sorted by wave action to have more heavy minerals (pink garnet, black probably magnetite, a splash of green epidote and white qtz splashed in there). It’s usually a thin THIN layer found on some beaches. It’s like a “pretty” sand people know about and not indicative of the vast majority of sand.
Most sand even in a variety of environments is quartz and random lithic (rock) fragments.
I get a little annoyed when these images (usually the top 3) are shared and layman say, “look at how beautiful ALL sand looks! Appreciate the micro world blah blah some inspirational quote.” It’s straight up misinformation but because it’s “just sand” most people don’t care.
I care. Regular sand IS pretty and it’s neat to look at for a little bit. Stop making sand feel bad with unrealistic beauty standards :p.
This made me laugh but I can see why if you have interest you’d be somewhat annoyed by arranged and selected items. It’s not a natural sample. Sand’s not the only thing I’ve seen this done with. There are worse things in the world to be fussed up about tho’. And I do like the heart shaped piece 💜
But I did find this image of the garnet sand that would be a good example of the bottom middle picture in the post. You can make out the pink, black, and green zones and I think it looks rad.
I always think sand is worth looking at at least once, lol. Get a hand lens (like $10?) and check it out!
Also it’s probably pink not because of garnet but because of the oxidized bedrock. I’ve seen a ton of stuff that looked like that on the shores around the Lake Superior and it was usually some form of basalt, rhyolite, or rare sedimentary interbed. You’d probably see a bunch of smaller reddish pinkish sand grains along with darker gray ones and maybe some milky quartz. But IIRC Canadian Shield stuff is pretty diverse and I recall there being some gnarly meta stuff out there so you might find some glittery mica and garnets.
Do you know what the sand from elafonissi beach (Crete) looks like under a microscope? It really does look pinky when you’re there, and I was told it was because of a certain type of seashell that made up the majority of the top sand. I was a kid though, definitely could have been lies.
Never heard of it but sounds nice! Pink sands can happen for a variety of reasons and I’m not sure exactly what is going on in Crete. I collected some pink sand in the Bahamas that I found interesting and long story short, it was manganese stained fossil coral. It sounds like a similar process is happening in Crete with red stained foraminifera tests (tiny shells). Not sure what the red is in the tests in Crete without digging into it as I only did a cursory search but iron oxide and/or manganese aren’t horrible guesses.
Whoa you were not kidding about that being pink. Holy cow. I mean…the pink grains could potentially be garnet but I’m a little doubtful and unsteady at saying that for sure. They have conchoidal fracture and a vitreous sheen which could easily be quartz, perhaps stained by something else going on in the area (Mn? > Fe).
Those blue green grains are fricken neato, I don’t have a good explanation for them and can’t really get a good look from the photos.
I see a couple of green grains that could be epidote or some other green mineral, and one that looks a little olivine-esque but it’s hard to tell.
It’s one of those things that you poke and prod and rotate and stare at for a while before giving a broad, hand wavy guess.
It would probably be helpful to look up the location and the formation to get a better sense of what to expect.
mildlyinteresting
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