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Cake day: June 29th, 2025

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  • Well yeah. Duh. The far right fiercely demonizes the concept of empathy, therefore exhibiting and teaching empathy must be far left.

    Their whole platform is to move money from the poor to the wealthy. They trick some of the poor into supporting this by being vehemently opposed to whatever the adults in the room want to do. Psychologically and mentally speaking, conservative voters are edgy, rebellious teenagers fighting against the tyranny of their dad without understanding that dad set the rules because they’re incapable of succeeding without rules being set for them, so they vote for their older brother to punch dad in the mouth and remove all the rules, and then the older brother just says fuck you, cook your own dinner, and btw that xbox belongs to me now since I’m the man of the house. But at least there’s no bedtime now, so that’s cool I guess? And their little sister now just goes to school, does chores, and isn’t allowed to go out anymore, but that’s fine because that’s her place, and if she wanted a better deal, she’d work hard to earn it, so she must just be lazier than them.



  • Big if true. They are claiming a lot of things, which would be exciting if I had any reason to believe that they’re anything more than claims, probably to juice investment. Sodium ion battery tech is infamous for being heavier per kW such that it’s less ideal for EVs, last for fewer power cycles such that it’s less ideal for EVs, and the cost savings to switch just hasn’t been enough to justify. Here, they’re claiming comparable energy density, 2.5-5x the power cycles, and under 10% of the cost compared to lithium ion, all without mentioning how they’ve managed to achieve all of this. I want this to be true, but I’m not jumping for joy until I see them actually selling this product that they claim will exist at this price that they claim it will be.

    I would’ve been on board with sodium ion tech for home battery solutions connected to smart power management on a market adjusted power plan before ever seeing a breakthrough like this. Imagine subsidizing your home power needs with a battery during the hot summer day and then charging that battery overnight at 2am when there are minimal power needs on the grid. That application doesn’t really care about weight, and if you could just call somebody to come swap out your batteries every couple years, then the power cycle limit doesn’t really matter either. As for cost, early adopters of the idea could inject the capital for these companies to scale up production which would drive costs down. Suddenly, 20 years from now, who the fuck bothers to have a gas/diesel backup generator at their house anymore? Now if these claims turn out to be true, every home and business could utilize this plan.




  • Yep, that’s more or less why I said I don’t put him on a pedestal. But as DOT secretary, he recognized the need for collecting tax dollars and using them effectively, plus things like the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment resulted in him directly, loudly, publicly raising awareness to the need to regulate these essential industries and sectors more stringently to prevent future disasters.

    I think he’s learned a lot in the past 5 years. I’m open to people having the ability to learn and grow if they’re showing actual evidence of it, and he is imo. I can’t hold his McKinsey roots against him forever. I worked at Walmart for a few months nearly 20 years ago, and that has very little to do with who I am now.



  • Yep, it certainly was.

    Who are you hoping will be the progressive Democrat that runs in 28 that proves that neoliberal policies are just a thing of the past?

    It just seemed like overconfidence to proclaim any sense of achievement in that arena without yet achieving anything or even naming names. I want you to be right, but fascism is very much on the rise and the opposition party isn’t doing much to signal any real opposition aside from leaving Texas to withhold quorum for the absurd redistricting vote and I guess not blocking Mamdani from winning the NY mayoral primary.

    Just feels a little like Bush’s premature Mission Accomplished banner 20 years before giving up and pulling out of the conflict.


  • Meanwhile the DNC finally bucked neoliberism…

    In 2028 we can have a progressive with no neoliberal baggage

    I’ll believe it when I see it. I fully expect the superdelegates to crown another milquetoast neolib as nominee. Newsom or Harris probably. There will almost certainly be some silliness in 26 and 27 to get some lesser-known names propped up some so that they can have a chance, but we’ll have a stage with 15 people on it and only about 3 will be taken seriously. Idk who specifically to even hope for right now. There are some good younger Dems, but they need more time in the oven before even attempting a presidential run. Fox News has done a good job demonizing certain names such that even people who aren’t plugged into it have heard and believe the attacks.

    For example, I don’t think AOC could get elected for anything other than her current district or maybe Senate. She might even hurt a ticket as a VP pick. She might be good on a cabinet, but that’s not elected, and that’s probably the end of her political career.

    Buttigieg has been doing the work of getting on right wing media to surgically dismantle attacks and explain how his policy positions benefit everyday Americans, and I think he usually comes off as intelligent and compassionate, not condescending. As with all politicians, I don’t put him on any sort of pedestal, but he’s putting in the work and proving he has effective communication, and that’s an incredibly important skill for a president to have.

    Idk. There’s still a little hope in the tank here, and I’ll vote in my primary to try to get somebody who isn’t ass garbage, but I expect something like Newsom v Youngkin/Vance if trump isn’t still alive and cancelling elections to cling onto power.


  • The question you’re asking is actually very complicated. Pretty much every for-profit media company will have a bias to the right since their goal is to profit today and survive to profit tomorrow. Lowering the taxes for the company and for the wealthy who own large portions of the company are obviously something that the company and the people running the company want, and the platform of the right is consistently to lower taxes on businesses and the wealthy.

    The wild thing is the way that the right has shifted in the past 30 years or so. Politicians would stir bigoted voters up with dogwhistle rhetoric while maintaining some level of deniability so that non-bigots would also still feel okay voting for them. This all changed with trump. Suddenly, it was possible to say the quiet part out loud and still get elected. Rather than using mild bigotry as a tool to get into office and then make bank off of bribes and carving out loopholes and conduct insider trading, now moron bigots themselves are running and winning, and they don’t actually know what to do or how to do it, so they mostly just shitpost and grandstand because they don’t actually know shit about governing.

    We’re now coming to a point where these companies are hopefully starting to realize that the right is so bad at governing and so damaging with their shitposting that they’re actually hurting these companies’ bottom line. I wouldn’t dare call Democrats “the left” because they’re factually a center-right party; the Democrats were posturing to be a sane, safe, profitable alternative. Like it or not, Biden steered our economy back in the right direction, and Harris would’ve continued on that track while also letting these companies continue to amass wealth. Media companies who saw the forecast and reported with some bias towards Democrats are absolutely not left-leaning. A real left-leaning media company would not be structured like a corporation or traded on the stock market. A real left-leaning media company would be advocating to eradicate the systems as they are and remake them with equity in the foundations. We live in a very right-wing America, and any positive reporting of capitalist America, or gentle criticism of small details of the colonial capitalism of America needs to be understood as right bias. Every time somebody puts the stock market or companies or government contracts or “the economy” over feeding the hungry and housing the unhoused and treating the sick, that is right bias. RATM hit on this perfectly in Bulls On Parade:

    Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
    Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
    I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
    Line up to the mind cemetery now
    What we don’t know keeps the contracts alive and movin’
    They don’t gotta burn the books they just remove 'em
    While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
    Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells

    TL;DR: the litmus of whether your news is biased to the left cannot be determined by whether they nudge for the center-right or the far-right candidate.




  • By this logic, why not buy 200,000 tomato plants with the million dollars?

    $50 in a few decades will be worth very little compared to now because of inflation. Take the lump sum and invest more on the early side. That’s how smart people successfully implement compounding.

    Edit:
    Also, that $6,250 times 52 weeks in a year is not $46M; it’s $325k. Not to mention that the $6,250 takes a year from initial investment, so it takes 2 years to hit that $325k. And that’s revenue, not profit. And it assumes dependable harvest. It’s a joke shit post that I’m taking way too seriously, right?


  • We can’t lay all of the blame on trump.

    The problem is conservatism in general. Every Republican president of the past 50 years has caused economic turmoil. When Republicans get power in the legislature, the only notable thing they work towards is tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, and gutting things that help people in order to pay for it.

    Trump isn’t singularly the problem here, but he is so fucking stupid that he’s speedrunning the economic crisis. A Republican with a halfway functional brain would know to move slowly enough that the economy falls apart as they’re heading out the door, not within the first 20% of their term.

    Start selling trump “I did that!” stickers of him pointing up at the eclipse. You’ll start seeing them everywhere soon. Gas pumps, grocery store shelves, car dealerships, etc.



  • I find it helpful to try to quantify the time I’ll enjoy with a thing before I buy it. Or maybe there will be some amount of cost savings if it’s a tool. You could do both with a motorcycle.

    Unless you get a shitty Harley, it will almost certainly be more fuel efficient than an ICE car/truck, so if you plan to commute by motorcycle at all, there is some cost savings there. That will probably offset the cost of registration and insurance, and maybe regular maintenance, so not really a net gain, but at least pays for itself to some degree.

    So after approximating the cost after those savings, then you can approximate how many hours per year and how many years you expect to enjoy the thing for. Divide the cost by that number of hours. Would you pay that hourly rate for the enjoyment you expect to get from it? If so, buy. If not, don’t buy.

    There are obviously some abstract things to factor in too, though. Would you make friends through your motorcycle? Do you enjoy working on stuff so in addition to the riding do you plan on doing aftermarket work on it? Is there a bucket list aspect to this?

    I can tell you that, as a former motorcycle owner, I would probably not get one again. They’re super fucking dangerous, almost entirely because other drivers are fucking morons. It’s impossible for me to ride without being on edge with the assumption that every other driver is actively trying to kill me. At this point, I would only get one as a fun time to ride once in a while, and the upkeep isn’t worth it for that. Even an electric one would be hard for me to justify for myself because of insurance, registration, and ride gear.

    That all being said, there are considerations that you and you alone will need to apply to this decision. I just strongly urge that if you do buy a bike, you wear all recommended gear. Never shorts. Never sandals. Never without a helmet and jacket. Dress for the slide, not the ride.