Pohl

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I agree, though I am super disdainful of any argument that is sort of reskinning “other people are really stupid”.

On the other hand, participation in a congressional primary is pretty low and should weed out the casuals. Nobody who is going to the polls without much info is probably going to show up for these right?

Further, when you have “safe” districts for your party, you sort of invite people from the entire political spectrum to participate in your primary. The parts of the American electorate that WANT muscular support for Israeli military operations are on the right. If those folks skip this primary, they have no influence over their representative at all. Activating conservative voters is probably easier than changing minds.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (5 children)

As a voter you are compelled to vote for the candidate with the largest campaign budget. Oh… wait, that isn’t true at all.

Money is important, but you still need to find voters that are interested in your message. If you have the money to activate them you can win, but they have to be there in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

If there is somebody willing to pay more for what is ultimately a limited supply of potatoes, why not sell to them. If the price per ounce of chips is too high for you, you’ll buy less chips. People who just can’t live without those chips might buy less candy to make sure they can afford them.

All the while people who make chips are asking for raises because the chip market is hot and the boss just can’t get enough people into the plant to make them. The workers know their boss needs them badly so they are comfortable asking for more. The boss relents because he needs them in there making those chips or he’s gonna lose money with potatoes rotting in the warehouse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Sellers raise their prices because they have buyers ready to pay that higher price.

Say your have the best restaurant in town and you have a line down the street and everyday you sell out of food before lunch. If you raise your prices the line will get shorter as some of your more price sensitive customers decide to go elsewhere. Keep raising them and your shop will be empty as nobody wants your food at those prices. The “right price” is where you get the most money you can for the work that you do in a day. Right?

You should be looking at your wages exactly the same. Ask for 10k per hour and you’re going to be jobless. As for 5 per hour and you’re gonna have lots of offers but not make enough money. Try to find the “right” wage. This is why wages have been going up faster than inflation pretty much every quarter since some time in 2022.

And no, we shouldn’t punish you or our hypothetical restaurant owner for setting your prices properly.

Also, taxes don’t remove money from the economy so it would be neutral from an inflation standpoint. But that’s a much longer story.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

A pretty good number of these are just pointing out differences between colloquial language and specific language.

Botanical language is useful for botanists to communicate with each other but I’m not putting tomatoes in the fruit salad. Thinking of tomatoes as veggies in your kitchen isn’t some MYTH! Calling a tall plant a tree is useful for you and I to communicate. That does not mean we are deceived or attempting to undermine the work of our botany friends.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (8 children)

The sugar one drives me nuts. Like yeah sugar doesn’t cause DSM-5 “hyperactivity”. Like of course not! It does give a little energy boost. And the rugrats will use the highly available energy and become a hilarious unmanageable dufus for a half hour or so.

If you actually thought that candy was going to give your child a diagnosable psychiatric condition… you’re a huge fucking idiot. If you haven’t ever noticed that giving a kid a bag of sour patch kids gets them riled up, you haven’t spent much time with kids.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

This comes from a memory of a digression during a lecture in an ecology class I was in 20yrs ago… so you know, grain of salt.

From this particular professors point of view. Symbiotic was the term to describe mutualism until recently. And then. A few papers started using symbiosis as an umbrella term for all relationships with sub-terms to describe the “benefits math”. This, to him, was annoying pedantry. But eventually all the textbooks adopted the new hierarchy of terms and the world moved on.

If you took a biology class with a text published pre-2000s, it’s very possible that your book described symbiosis as a mutually beneficial relationship between species.

Long story short: the language is fluid and ever changing, even in science fields.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

My people are here!

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Nvidia is making a thing and selling it. No matter what happens with AI tech, they are going to keep their winnings.

Everybody else… well they borrowed/raised and spent a FORTUNE on R&D, chips, and electricity to make a product that has no realized commercial value (yet?). They are either going to figure out where the money comes from soon or the bills gonna come due. The next 12 months are going to be popcorn worthy if you like watching the tech industry.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I have to know what the Detroit soccer team did to get so high on that list. Somebody here must know. Please!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I mean the problem is that on an international level might will always make right. You cannot solve that unless you force every human being on earth to submit to some single authority…

So I suppose it will be solved up all nice and tidy if an alien race comes and enslaves us. Until then, we surf the rising and falling waves of human empires just like we have been doing for 10s of 1000s of years.

Making institutions that have “authority” but no power to enforce that authority except against the defeated isn’t really doing anything except encouraging some of humanities worst instincts (revenge, feuding, and making all conflict existential)

If you want to maximize peace and safety for civil populations, you de-escalate conflict by offering face saving off ramps to the belligerents. Affording grace and forgiveness to people who are probably complete shitbags who don’t deserve it. Humanism is hella hard though, I’m not sure we’re up to the challenge.

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