Supplying people with basic life necessities should not need to garner a profit.

This goes for food, water, shelter, but also electricity, healthcare, public transportation, and internet.

(Coincidentally, most of these are basic human rights.)

Society as a whole experiences net benefit (even am economic one) from those, so society as a whole should fund them.

Yes, this requires taxes.

I’d still disagree.

The core premise is that average worker productivity on eclipse day will dip by 1/24th (assuming 20 mins of “eclipse break” on a 8 hour workday).

And that’s BS on several fronts.

For one, many people have taken days off (PTL or similar) or move their break to the eclipse, which is already accounted for in the averaged productivity statistic.

Second, people in positions they can’t just leave (factory workers on an assembly line, cashiers etc.) will often have to skip on the eclipse.

And people who can leave (I’m thinking of white collar desk jobs here), are often spending a similar amount of worktime off-desk on other days, too, for a myriad of only indirectly productive reasons (networking, thinking on a thorny problem over a smoke…).

The formula assumes

• that all of the American workforce spends every minute of their 8 hour day actively working on their desk/station/etc.
• that every minute they don’t, is “lost”, work-wise.
• that all of that workforce is on the job during eclipse time, but will take a paid break during the actual eclipse

All of which are questionable at best.

OK, I’ll bite:

You appreciate civilization because you’ve lived in nature.

What’s the most danger you’ve lived in

People die of starvation in a world that literally has enough food for everyone - because speculating with food is more profitable than feeding them.

People die of diseases that have known cures with low production cost - because the market will only finance medical research if the resulting drug comes with a net gain price tag.

There are literal wars being fought and people being shot for economic gains.

Humanity doesn’t have a resource problem. It has a distribution problem.

And the current method of deciding distribution of goods is capitalism.

that you think getting rich is equivalent to predation?

Genuine question: Where do you believe a millionaire’s millions ultimately come from?

There is only so much net economic gain one can create with their own two hands. Everything beyond that is created by other people’s hands.

The genre is usually divided into “soft” and “hard” fantasy.

Cyberpunk is generally considered hard fantasy, as is stuff like The Expanse or Interstellar.

Star Wars is unabashedly soft SciFi, it’s a straight Fantasy story in space.

Star Trek is a half-breed - it pays some lip service to scientific “plausibility”, but much of it stretches that envelope beyond the breaking point. Scientific accuracy was never the point of the series to begin with.

The problem isn’t straight-out corruption.

It’s wonky incentivation.

Judges that are not measured by how many people they send to jail will always be, on average, less trigger-happy than cops who are.

Or did we become okay with being ruled by tyrants all of a sudden?

If so, what’s the point of federation?

The point of federation is not to prevent tyrants.

The point is the option to exclude or include any instance due to whatever metric you want.

If you don’t like tyrants, you can defederate your instance from any tyrant-ruled instance.

And, obviously, you can run your own instance as tyrannical or democratic as you want - users who don’t like that are free to leave, instance-owners who don’t like that are free to defecate from you.

If you’re just a user on the relevant instance, all you can do ist petition the people who have that power.

I understand that’s basically what you’re trying to do, but your argument shouldn’t be about federation or lemmy’s inherent structure - the question should be “is anyone else annoyed by that behavior?”

Depending on your definition, this actually is not peak performance.

Subways are.

Obviously, the tunnels are absurdly expensive, but nothing moves as many people as quickly around a city as a subway.

They’re also extremely reliable, meaning people are even more likely to actually use them, and their above-ground footprint is essentially zero.

This isn’t about guys’n’gals.

This is simpky about how people work:

If your peers (friends, colleagues, family) have an opinion (any opinion), their default expectation is that you share that opinion - this is what being a peer is mostly about.

You can demonstrate solidarity by agreeing - this is virtually always the safe option.

You can demonstrate backbone by disagreeing - this can generate respect or animosity.

You can refuse to weigh in - this is mostly a middle ground between the two above.

How it actual shakes out in reality will depend on a myriad of factors, many of which you’re not even consciously aware of.

Thus, this random internet stranger can give you only three pieces of advice:

• Trust your instincts on how to handle this. Your subconscious is very well wired to navigate social situations as best as possible.

• If you ever change your opinion or “change your opinion”, announce it clearly and give/make up a reason. People disrespect people who are inconsistent, but they respect people who can admit to mistakes / learn.

• Sometimes, you can’t win. Sometimes, someone will be pissed off, no matter what you do. It’s no fault of yours, some situations are just not salvageable to begin with.

Telekinesis. It’s not even a context

Telekinesis (especially at the “multiple tons” level) is an extremely flexible tool, a weapon, and a defense. There’s an endless amount of creative stuff you can do with it.

It can also still be used somewhat discreetly which is important.

Flight would probably be the most fun, though.

Suburbs can’t be a ponzi scheme

Genuine question: Why not?

While the article indeed barely touched on its headline, the way I’ve seen the “suburb infrastructure upkeep problem” described seems indeed reminiscent of a ponzi scheme.

The way I understand it:

Suburbs have a relatively low initial cost (for the city) compared to the taxes they generate. However, their maintenance cost is relatively high because Suburbs are huge.

Thus, US cities have long had a policy of paying the rising cost of their older Suburbs by creating new Suburbs - which is pretty analogous to a Ponzi scheme.

The ability to extrapolate what something would taste/feel like from mere looks is a learned one.

Toddlers don’t have it yet, which is why they’re stuffing everything into their mouths.

You might not consciously remember licking a carpet, but the part of you that’s holding up the “dusty”, “textured” and “CRUMBS!!” signs does.

It’s the quiet part that’s (usually) not said aloud.

Just take a look at the statistics of how i.e. criminal law is applied much more aggressively to conservative out-groups (PoC, poor, etc.) than conservative in-groups (white, wealthy, etc.). Then have a look at who is proposing politics intended to fix that imbalance an who’s talking about “taking a hard(er) stance on crime”.

Another, rather specific example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8769269/Former-abortion-clinic-worker-recalls-pro-life-women-justify-procedures.html

Once you look our for the pattern, you’ll see it everywhere.

To clarify:

Even if an unambiguous majority of Texas would say “we’d like to turn Texas into an independent country”, you’d rather force them to stay by force of arms?

Anyone who hits enter on a dd command without triple-checking it gets exactly what they deserve.

I don’t know about you, but to me, the fact that he showed genuine humility and willingness to step beyond his initial chauvinism (after some hands-on lessons about fighting women) had a lot more to do with that than his charm.