The NRA gave up their 'jack-booted thugs' rhetoric and started kissing Republican asses when Bush Jr. was president. Bush very publicly renounced his lifetime membership over LaPierre's--very, very reasonable and measured--stance that the feds were shitty people. The NRA caved rather than continue to speak the obvious truth, and they've had a fetish for licking cop boots ever since.
HelixDab2
joined 2 years ago
My experience certainly does.
I've worked with some really great people. But maybe 1 in 5 or so was a loudmouthed shitbag, and when you called them on being shitty, they either threatened you, or acted like it was all a joke or a big misunderstanding, and you were at fault for being upset, etc. I can't guarantee that the shitty people I've known have harassed women, but the probability seems high.
Good managers are able to allocate resources--particularly human resources--to complete a task. I know that it's a common trope to think that managers only take value instead of adding it, but it's simply not true; processes and production are less efficient without effective management.
People working in production shouldn't have to deal with clients/customers, nor should they be expected to coordinate with vendors, or even all other people involved in production. Production people are hired for their skill/expertise in production, so they should be left to do their job rather than taking on more jobs.
The flip side is that ineffective management can make processes and production less efficient than they would be without any management at all.
Drive to get groceries? You’re dependent on most of those same factors.
I said I wanted enough arable land to grow my own.
Water? Same. Even if you have a well, you still don’t want that well to be polluted by people around you.
See above.
Shelter? You presumably don’t want a neighbor’s rickety structure to fall over on yours during a storm.
See above. I don't intend to have neighbors within a mile.
Just pointing out that one mile is 5,280 feet, which is about 24,720' short of 30,000'. The fastest commercially available drones are around 80mph, which makes them about 1140mph slower than an F-35.
Oh, and how are they going to scramble their drone swarm in the first place if they can't detect the F-35?
Weeelllllll...
We're violating trade agreements with our tariffs. But giving tax breaks to companies that re-shore industry would also likely violate trade agreements, because it would create 'unfair competition'. Kinda like the way that China has given subsidies to certain industries--such as solar panel producers--has created unfair competition, since they have far lower costs than other solar panel producers. As such, tax breaks and incentives would probably also hurt our trade relations, because we would essentially be taking jobs out of other countries. ...But that would probably hurt out relations with other countries far, far less than what we're doing now.
Honestly, there's not a great way to bring manufacturing jobs back in a way that doesn't harm our relationships with other countries, or our national interests in some way. By purchasing shit from companies with lower labor costs/standards of living/higher levels of labor abuse/etc., we've undercut our ability to produce the same goods at a competitive price while also keeping our own standards. Even if we went back to pay ratios between workers and executives that existed 50 years ago (I think that lowest to highest ratio in large companies was about 150:1 in the late 60s), that wouldn't be enough to keep our living standards, avoid labor abuses, and still be competitive with shit we get from China.
This is compounded by the fact that we do have some of this manufacturing in the US, because it's more-or-less required by the Barry Amendment (USC 10 §2533(a)). But the costs are astronomical. Take a backpack made by Mystery Ranch. Their Black Jack 80--identical to the USSOCOM SPEAR Patrol bag they make, just with another name--is $1200. The version that's made in Vietnam and is not Barry-compliant, was about $400. The materials and craftsmanship were substantially identical, but the fabrics were sourced from outside the US, and the manufacturing was done outside the US. There's no reasonable way that the US gov't can subsidize those kinds of costs.
So what's happening here is that the carbonic acid in the carbonated water is curdling the milk. You can get the same effect by adding any acid to milk. If you're cooking, your recipe calls for buttermilk, and you don't have any, you can substitute regular milk that you've added a tablespoon of vinegar to (stir, wait about five minutes before adding).
Then what you’re asking for is a more fractured human society.
No, I'm saying I want energy independence. I don't want to be dependent on the vagaries of service providers, or politicians that decide one day that renewables are great, and then the next day fuck it all drill baby drill, or a utility--or government--that refuses to invest the necessary capital into infrastructure to maintain capability. I'll pay my taxes so that shit can get done IF that ends up being the will of the people, but I don't see the point of being dependent on a system that I both need and have no control over.
It doesn’t take advantage of economies of scale very well.
You missed my point; I was talking about being entirely off-grid there. So unless the homeowner in question also has a large industrial building with a flat roof, we're back to where I said that they didn't have enough generative capacity to not be reliant on a power grid, at least in part.
If what you want is energy independence from your local power utility,
No, I want energy independence period. Not just from the local utility, I want independence from a co-op as well. I want to have my own well so I'm not relying on someone else to deliver water. I want enough arable land to grow most, or all, of my own food. This isn't compatible with living in a city. (And part of the reason I want to generate my own power is so that I can use all electric vehicles.)
...Shouldn't that be the other way around...?
Without reading the article, I could already see what the problem was.
Unless you have capital to invest, you can't expand or improve the power grid. That capital can either come from the gov't--through taxation--or from private industry. If you, personally, have enough capital to do so, you can build a fully off-grid system, so that you aren't dependent on anyone else. But then if shit happens, you also can't get help from anyone else. (Also, most houses in urban areas do not have enough square feet of exposure to the sun to generate all of their own power.)
Fundamentally, this is a problem that can only be solved by regulation, and regulation is being gutted across the board in the US.
Simply understanding does not mean that you automatically change. Perhaps you have an anger problem because your father was a shitty person that lashed out every time something went wrong, and you unintentionally modeled his behavior. Great, now you know why you have explosive anger, but now you've also got 30-odd years of shitty habits to unlearn.
Understanding is only the first step, not the end.