jmp242

You're not engaging with my actual argument that I know plenty of Capitalists who I would not classify as "scammers". The whole thing that started this was someone claiming that anyone who buys into capitalism is inherently a scammer. Clearly there's a difference between a con-artist and a regular employee at a company. There's an obvious difference between a scammer and a self employed person. Right there are 2 pretty hard to argue examples that people who buy into capitalism aren't inherently scamming anyone.

I'm actually excited about this. Generally like Kagi, and lots of people have wanted someone to try and tackle lemmy searches.

This sounds like a good idea, but is basically getting rid of LLCs entirely and going back to partnerships or some other structure. That said, having LLCs kind of lets people just do bad stuff and no-one is responsible. I think the idea of LLCs was potentially OK (hard to get stockholders if every investor is personally liable for what the company does), the people making decisions on a daily basis need to not be shielded IMHO. And / Or we need to get more comfortable with a corporate death sentence where courts just regularly revoke the license / charter if the company is bad enough.

Trademarks aren't copyright or patents. The entire point of trademarks is to identify a brand. That said, I don't really understand trademarking LOTR at all, it seems like it's copyright, but IP laws are used so broadly now to just stifle things that who TF knows, and I have no idea about NZ law.

Lord of the Rings has nothing to do with food or chicken wings trucks, so seems like it shouldn't apply. Usually trademarks are in the same industry, so you wouldn't want someone else writing a knock off series of books called Lord of the Rings and trademark would help there.

That said, the other thing that seems suspicious to me is trademarks in the US are pretty specific - it has to be the exact wording which is why so many companies "mispell" the names, well that and in the US you often can't trademark a generic word (though Apple threw a wrench in that one). Or the graphic design has to be extremely close.

This is so hard to specify because it really depends on a lot of factors. It's usually more like there are specific models that are really worth getting, or pricepoints or brands depending.

Like, I don't think cordless drill/drivers that are sub $100 are really worth it if you're ever going to do more than screw into pre drilled or pre made screw holes. But a Bosch (blue), Dewalt, Milwaukee, Makita, etc are all pretty good. They're just usually over $100.

You're right about blenders - I never had a use for Oster blenders, but a BlendTec in 2008 changed my life (well, not really, but did do things that I have uses for at least).

Ohh, pressure cookers - I don't want to risk it exploding, so I avoid the $70 and under crowd. Actually, I went Kunh Rikon which is pretty expensive, but also really hard to screw up (like 6 layers of safeties), and easy to get refurb parts for seals and such.

Lots of safety equipment - there's all sorts of ... "fake" in that it won't actually work stuff at super cheap prices. I'm thinking like laser safety glasses or chain saw safety pants. Mid range is def worth it there.

Dishwashers IMHO. I've used cheap ones before and they clean poorly and are extremely loud. Depending on your house, you won't want to be in the next room to them. OTOH, Bosch higher end ones, like the 800 series, cost a pretty penny, but are darn near silent and actually live up to the washing claims - shit just comes clean in them. I'm usually surprised in a good way. Oh, and that third tray for silverware - I'm never going back to the basket (though lots of brands have that now).

Stand Mixers - especially if you want to get into bread or attachments for grinding things. I strongly recommend the Bosch Universal Plus. That thing is like a power tool for the kitchen. We've abused it for over 10 years and it's not slowing down. I know many people online who have had them for 30 years.

Vacuums - look into Sebo.

That's usually actually down to technique - you need to fill "normal" blenders in a specific way to have enough liquid on the bottom to make the vortex.

You have to be very careful with KitchenAid mixers - I think the 700Pro is the only currently made one that's worth very much - the gears strip out in most of the cheaper ones, and all of them made from like 2000-2014 or so. At least if you mix anything in there you couldn't do about as easily with a hand mixer that's $20 on Amazon.

Some are expensive for filtering reasons. It can take some engineering to build HEPA or similar filtration along with seals that actually have the filters work, plus managing motors or filter designs that aid in the high speed airflow needed for a vacuum.

Sure, but I'd also avoid Shark at all costs because they're not really made to be serviced. Also bagless, which generally suck in a bad way. I'd suggest something like a Sebo model with the electric brush head. Easy to service, last a very long time, use bags which are just cleaner and avoid needing to think about cleaning out dust storage areas to keep airflow up, and have great canister options.

I mean, it's not how I travel, we usually take about 10 minutes every 2.5 hours if I'm with others, by myself I usually do 4 hours without stopping. The main thing is not that EVs will never be there, it's that right now the infrastructure still isn't there. I'm literally just starting to see chargers at WaWas and that's not guaranteed, and I have no idea what they work with TBH. The great thing about gas is I know every gas station works with every gas car. We finally just agreed on a charger, but I still will wait a few years to see if it actually pans out to be the USB-C of cars.

And we just haven't yet gotten the chargers where anyone wants to stop. They're in strip malls as far away from the stores as possible. They're in downtown parking garages. This in some ways is great, but also TBH backwards - they're where locals, you know, the people who really ought to be charging at home - would make the most use of them. (at least around me in rural southern NY and northern PA) It's the places you avoid like the plague on a road trip because you want on and off the highway fast, not to investigate the local downtown. They're also not by the convenience stores or food places where you might realistically spend 15-40 minutes.

The other thing that I hadn't thought of till seeing some other road trips (though they were in the UK) was - plan your trip is great, but what if something goes wrong? An unexpected detour? A traffic jam? Until the chargers are in way more places, you could really feel unsafe if you go below 50% charge. I don't like going below 1/2 a tank of gas to have a buffer. And that's going to change things also. Because worst case with a gas car on a trip, I can call AAA and get 2 gallons delivered to me on any county road forget about state roads etc. I have no idea - am I getting a tow or something with an EV?

I'll also say, if I'm driving 18 hours, the last thing I want to hear is I'm going to intentionally make it 19.5 hours.

Yes, capitalism is shitty. I will not say it's a good system, just that it seems to be the least bad a large scale society has managed to implement. Large attempts to explicitly be anti-capitalist didn't work out better than current day late stage capitalism by any metric I'm aware of.

But all of that is irrelevant to the main point that saying there cannot be scammers because capitalism inherently makes all participants scammers is just incorrect.

From what I've read, she copied multiple things verbatim, or with tiny changes that would never have flown when I was in school to avoid plagiarism, nor that would seem to satisfy the standards in place at the time, much less now. I'd say that's proven to the standard that would get students a 0 or other punishment, as reported by students from Havard in a recent school paper article. Hence my point that the issue to me isn't what she did so much as the "rules for the but not for me" response from Harvard.

Of course, what I'd argue would be a better discussion is whether plagiarism (as defined in most schools now) is the huge issue academia makes it out to be. It seems like many (maybe most?) professors don't think strict plagiarism is an issue, yet schools and colleges continue to use it as something they can "easily" check for via text scanning tools. I think the problem is how anal places have gotten over what they think constitutes plagiarism to be far less than is actually a problem.

And of course, I think this is actually all to get her on something for the horrible performance in front of Congress a la tax evasion for Al Capone rather than an actual moral panic about plagiarism.