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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: January 2nd, 2024

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  • As you’re out hiking with your cat, a lettuce, and a vacuum cleaner, you come upon a river blocking the path. On the side of the river, there’s a boat that’s just big enough for you and one other passenger.

    The cat can’t be left alone with the lettuce.
    The vacuum can’t be left alone with the cat.

    How do you get everyone across?


  • This time? There was no real opportunity for meaningful change. The Democratic party is far right economically, and they depend on the donations of plutocrats and megacorps. Regardless of either Democrats or Republicans getting elected, the donor class wins and working Americans lose. Some will say Harris attempt to appeal to the right wing is what made her lose, and perhaps there is an element of truth to that. Its unlikely that the Republican base she attempted to woo would actually vote for a Black woman running as a Democrat over the old, rich White guy running as a Republican. However, the owners of the Democratic party - the ones who immediately had millions of dollars to donate the day Biden dropped out - they didn’t lose. The only way the owners could lose is by appealing to progressives and winning an election.

    The time to begin doing something differently was decades ago, building power and organizing from the bottom up. Socialists need to begin running in and winning local elections, and pushing hard against First Past The Post elections.







  • Delta_V@lemmy.worldtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldOMG noooo!
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    19 days ago

    I think this take is mid.

    A doctor pulling in $400k a year is still working class. Even if they somehow managed to save 100% of their income, and invest it all in a portfolio that consistently grows 10% each year, and do so from age 18 to 65, then when they retire at 65 they would still not have even half of 1 billion dollars.

    The truly rich, the billionaires, can “make” that much in a few days, without having to work for it.

    I would prefer to tax the 1% until they’re working class again before we talk about taxing the top earning people who actually work for it.



  • While blowing, some of the fan’s energy is spent on increasing the pressure inside your dishwasher, which increases the density of the air the fan blades move through, increasing drag on the fan blades causing them to move slower and create less airflow.

    While blowing, you’re also pushing moist air to the back of the dishwasher, and after that air reaches 100% relative humidity, it can’t hold any more water and will not help dry your plates. Some of it will eventually escape around the sides, but some of the airflow your fan creates just circulates humid air around the inside of the dishwasher.

    Turning your fan around solved both problems. It increased the volume of air flow, and decreased the relative humidity of the air flow.




  • A lot of the electricity probably came from burning natural gas at the power plant, and then some of that (~5%) gets lost in transmission. If we assume the natural gas plant is 60% efficient at turning gas into electricity, then an electric heating element in a hot water tank at your house would be about 55% efficient.

    A typical gas furnace is about 80% efficient at turning gas into hot fluid, and a good one can reach 95% efficiency.

    Depending on the fuel mix of your local grid, there’s a good chance that burning natural gas at home will result in less pollution than using electric resistance heaters, either for heating water or the air inside your home during winter. Places like Washington state that generate most of their electricity from hydroelectric power plants will be exceptions.

    However, heat pumps can be higher than 100% efficiency. They don’t use electricity to generate heat, they just move heat from one place to another. You’ll produce fewer emissions overall by using an HVAC heat pump to heat your house, and a heat pump water tank for hot water. Even if you live in a place like Canada, you can reduce emissions by installing a dual-fuel system that will use electricity to run the heat pump weather permitting, and fall back to using gas when the outdoor temperature goes too far negative.

    Using heat pumps to move heat from outside, to inside your house, to inside your hot water tank is more efficient than using gas to heat your home and water, even when the electricity to run the heat pump is generated by burning natural gas.








  • there’s no feedback mechanism that will result in the promotion of instances with better moderation

    the federation system is inherently unstable - there’s a positive feedback loop where the instance with the most users attracts the most new users. new users have no to way to gauge the quality of moderation of an instance, and neither do disgruntled current users. additionally, members of smaller instances are less visible, which is an incentive to join a larger instance.

    “what instance?” is a rhetorical question, and the only possible answer is “never heard of it.” because there is no means by which a user could have become aware of other instances, regardless of the quality of those other instance’s moderation