It also pollutes the mind of ignorant people with misinformation. Not that that is anything new. But I do think objective truth is very important in a democratic society. It reminds me of that video that used to go around that showed Sinclair Broadcasting in like 20 some different ‘local’ broadcast news all repeating the same words verbatim. It ended with ‘This is extremely dangerous to our democracy’. With AI being added to all the search engines, it is really easy to look something and unknowingly get bombarded with false info pulled out of the dregs of internet. 90% of people don’t verify the answer to see if it is based in reality.

Underdeveloped is right there

They are the same picture meme

Do you mind sharing what company and country you when with for the VPS and why?

Walking to a friend’s house is nice as long as there’s not a big multilane highway with no pedestrian infrastructure dividing the town in between. Car dependency is a big problem in most of the US. Portland is probably a bit better than other places in that regard, but I’m sure they have still have some issues with it.

I would think this would be a good use for VOIP landlines since lots of places are probably doing away with dedicated phone wires.

Not sure, but I’d bet it’s less than flipphones / dumbphones. For the average person, smartphone and android/apple are probably synonymous.

Why can’t the people we vote for represent us?

Politicians were never meant to represent us (the people). We the people was war propaganda to revolt against the English and their king. They have, since the founding of the US, represented the business owners (landowners). And even after giving women and black people the right to vote, the system still mostly represents the interest of the business owners.

Bug report closed: System works as intended.

For the politicians to actually represent us, we the people would need to have some sort of broad agreement on what we do and do not want. But unfortunately, the people don’t have the needed experience or education to come to that agreement. So instead we get 2 different flavors of politicians serving the owners and none serving the people. Pick your favorite team, but they do not currently represent the people’s interest, instead they represent the business owners’ interests.

As a people, our job is to attempt to bend the politicians and business owners’ to our will using what we currently have at our disposal: our actions and our words. But that still won’t get anywhere without many other people backing up our actions and our words with their actions and words. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary if we want to shape our societies future. If we don’t do it, we get shadowy groups like the heritage foundation doing it for the business owners and pushing it on our leaders.

Also the politicians’ job is largely dependent upon them listening to the demands of the businesses lobbyist as of now. If they don’t follow their wishes they can expect a harder battle to keep their seat. They would get less big campaign donations and stronger primary challengers as a result of their noncompliance. This makes our job harder since it is difficult to get them to understand something when their job and salary depends upon them not understanding it.

Hey now, don’t be dissing rocks. We can trick rocks into thinking, the people on the other hand I’m not so sure.

if they think they can get away with it.

You missed this apparently.

Also stealing wages via tips is different than not paying the difference between tipped min wage and regular minimum wage when there isn’t much business. Maybe there was some confusion on your part about what I was referring to there.

Both are forms of wage theft and both do happen, but I wasn’t referring to stealing tips in my OC. Perhaps I could’ve worded my comment better to make that clearer.

Why the hostility and insults to unskilled essential workers? Those jobs are often worked at by young workers who don’t necessarily know their rights. I agree it’s bad business practice to do it but it absolutely happens.

Its not your employer’s job to babysit your paycheck.

LOL Yes, it literally is.

dolts like you … If you arent reporting discrepancies, thats on you

Nice insult, very constructive. What would the capitalist business owners do without people like you putting down workers and defending their shitty business practices? Also ah yes it is the workers fault for that they are getting wages stolen from them not the owner’s or manager’s.

And lots of employers will refuse to pay more than the tipped rate on slow days stealing wages from the workers if they think they can get away with it.

I don’t think of it as an insult generally, but it reads like an insult in this context to me since you certainly weren’t using it a clinical sense and it doesn’t land as a joke imo; now you can say that’s all on me if you want but communication has 2+ parties involved. Even if it wasn’t meant as an insult, it is still ableist language in this context imo and I will call it out even if it makes people uncomfortable.

I really don’t understand why people find it acceptable to make a joke where the punchline is accusing someone of having a mental illness.

To me there is very little difference between that and putting someone down.

Why is it funny to accuse someone with making a minor correction of having OCD?

Sorry, I didn’t mean to strike a nerve. Also sorry to hear you and your spouse have some difficulties with mental and physical challenges in today’s world. I hope you can find some understanding people to cooperate with.

Intent deducing should also go both ways, I did interpret your posts in a somewhat light-hearted manner in line with the comm vibe, but it also just doesn’'t sit right with me using real disorders people have as an insult. I replied in it in the same format as you did but you seemed took offense when I did it even though you used the same format in your comment.

Anyway, I wish you good luck in your journey and thanks for reading.

Also I wonder is that spelling intentional pedant bait? Probably not, but it is in my head canon :)

^ This is a person using OCD as an insult and helping to spread ableist language.

Yeah I looked it into a bit recently, and found it very interesting mostly on the basis of production per acre. Are you planning on solar for the home’s energy or some other source? Now that I think about it something like biomass would work quite well as a supplemental energy source for the winter when the sun isn’t out much. If you are going for solar will you have a battery system as well for evenings / winter or are you grid-tieing for that?

Processing the biomass could take some planning if you produce it on a large scale. I ran some rough numbers for total energy production per acre per year for giant miscanthus and it is quite shockingly high. It takes 2-3 years to get established but once it does it is a powerhouse. It can produce 15-20 tons (short) of biomass per acre depending on growing climate/conditions once it is fully established. With 20t/acre, it has a 17 MJ/kg LHV(heat from burning) and it would contain about 85,679 kWh of energy; At 40% electrical conversion efficiency, you can expect around 34,271 kWh of usable electrical energy. That’s enough to power and heat 3-4 houses if you burn it in a CHP power plant.

So you could potentially plant 1/3 - 1/4 acre of a home’s yard and have easily have enough biomass to heat and/or power a home. Definitely could be worth looking into giant miscanthus (wiki link) depending on the area and site. Being a plant, it tends to produce more the warmer the weather is in the area as long as it has sufficient water to grow. At that scale all you would probably need is a scythe, a shed, and a fireplace for heat. A small hay-baler might be nice too, even if not strictly necessary. It may not be as efficient per area as solar but I imagine is a whole lot cheaper.

I also read that with torrefaction it could be a drop-in fuel for existing coal plants which would be stellar from an environmental perspective. I think it would compliment solar well particularly in the winter when you burn excess harvested sun for heat so you could have a battery / fuel usage then for when you can’t produce any energy. Anyway I hope you / someone finds it useful. I hope I didn’t overshare, I feel like I wrote a book lol.

Edit: I’d also be interested in hearing about your planned house. I have read about house building some from an energy use / conservation perspective and found it interesting. Have you read / heard about Passive House’s? I suspect they overlap pretty well with carbon negative housing in general.

Good suggestions. Speaking of carbon negative and biogas digesters, have you heard of Giant miscanthus? It is both carbon fixing a great feedstock for biomass energy. It is a lot more productive per area planted than a wood would(heh) be since it is a fast growing perennial grass. It stores a lot of carbon and nutrients in it’s roots which it then reuses to regrow when warmer weather comes.