BeautifulMind

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

I landed in DeWalt when their cordless devices became as good as/better than corded tools; I standardized on their battery platform only for them to abandon my battery and roll out a new (incompatible) one. Shortly thereafter my batteries bricked and it seems the business model is to force consumers to buy new tools every so often

FML I hate it that they’re all proprietary and incompatible

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

It’s my bike, I ride my bike.

Indoors, I’ve got Zwift, which looks a bit like a game.

Outdoors the resolution is better, but the NPCs can be belligerent.

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

Yeah I remember when the cable tv folks pitched cable like there wouldn’t be ads, vs. public airways that had to be ad-supported because there wasn’t any subscription for it. When they turned cable into ad wasteland I felt that like the fucking betrayal it was

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

I’d take it today. I’m in my 50s, I’m an endurance athlete (I race bikes) and the calculus looks like: if I wait 20 years I get to experience body-age 50-70 twice, but if I take it now I experience 30-50 twice. Living my prime twice is better than enduring my decline twice, thanks

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

Prisons don’t make money

That’s just untrue. Private for-profit prisons were a multi-billion-dollar industry for too long.

Also, they made enough money to bribe judges to sentence more people to longer terms so they could make more money.

Private prisons promised to be ‘more efficient’ and cost less per prisoner than public prisons, but typically their pattern of operations was to cut costs as much as possible and still charge the taxpayer more per prisoner than public prisons- and it got so out of hand that at one point it cost the taxpayer more per year to incarcerate a criminal than it would have to send him to Harvard for that year. Also under private prison administration, no effort was made at all to rehabilitate prisoners- their business was really based on recidivism, it was very much in their interest for prisoners to re-offend and end up back in prison.

Convict leasing on top of that is plain slavery, and the prospect of money to be made leasing convicts slaves for labor has corrupted America’s justice system, particularly in confederate states, ever since the 13th Amendment was penned.

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

Reagan, like Trump and Bush43, was the face guy connecting to people while behind the scenes the wrecking crew drafted their EOs and delivered on their patronage’s shadow agenda.

A lot of what Reagan’s admin did was foundational- as head of the executive (which includes regulatory agencies) he had the power to quietly dismantle regulatory agencies, and in so doing hamstring America’s capacity to regulate its own affairs at the request of lobbyists that didn’t want their industries regulated. His legislative affairs team gutted budgets and raided social security while he charmed audiences and the media.

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

Simple jinx should cause most firearms to fail or jam In a universe where guns exist and level-1 wizards can cast magic missile/fireball and cantrips like firebolt, setting fire to things (like gunpowder), my bet is that low-level magic users aren’t going to be trumped by steampunk-grade tech that easily

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

mmm, salty https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1809ecee-98bc-4ad2-9926-c4c3d7122d17.png

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fe0d87ba-7dd8-42bd-919e-88e7834cbdb8.webm

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

DANG IT

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

Y’know, if you don’t bother writing the history after bothering to win the war and then letting the enemy go home and be governors, judges, congressmen and senators and presidents anyhow, you’ll end up how the United States did after its civil war.

BeautifulMind, 1 year ago

I’ll never understand why this isn’t a bigger story- it’s literally the keys to everyone’s quality of life