• 5 Posts
  • 104 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • There is a difference between realizing that the money you pay in taxes pays for stuff that benefits the citizens vs the govenrment is taking my money and using it on stupid things or wasting it.

    They also conveniently forget/ignore that because we have relatively low taxes in the US, all the benefits like state funded college, universal healthcare, paid family leave, etc are just externalized onto you in the form of private insurance, tuition, and no family leave. I would happily pay more in taxes if it meant that was nationalized. You could damn near double my witholding and I would still come out ahead when you figure in the cost of private health insurance.

    Our first kid cost $12000 out of pocket on private insuance that cost my wife and I $1400/month after my employer paid half of the monthly premium.

    I fully expect my kids tuition to be over $100k by the time they are in college unless something changes.




  • No one makes a 65+" oled monitor so before anyone suggests “just buy a monitor” you can’t, I have looked.

    Up until last year, I would have said get a good quality projector but even projectors have started getting infiltrated with smart “features” now.

    Digital signage was also an option but oled options are basically non-existent and they often have matte screens that make the colors kind of mushy.

    From what I have read online, the Sony tv offerings seem to be pretty unintrusive and don’t really care if you hook them up to the internet. The smart software is android tv based and can potentially be modded/stripped of google services. I have to do some more research though so don’t quote me on the above.

    Our current TCL/Roku tv is dying and has turned out to be really bad smart/privacy wise and has gotten consistently worse performance wise over time. I’m currently evaluating options for its replacement and the Sony 65" oled is looking like the best one so far.






  • All of that is true but there are entire genres of science fiction that people grew up on telling them that nuclear waste is scary green stuff that will do everything from melt your skin off to turn you into the toxic avenger. A major chunk of the population only knows about nuclear waste from that and doesn’t care what experts say.

    Modern nuclear facilities and storage devices ARE safe but when you bring it up, people will just go “Yeah but Fukushima/Chernobyl, happened, I don’t want that to happen in my neighborhood” completely ignoring the fact that the soviet design was flawed from the start, and the Japanese one was located in a Tsumnami zone.

    As for other industrial waste, its not visible to the average person so it doesn’t exist. We are finally coming to the realization of how pervasive in the environment some of these chemicals are. PFAS/PFOS is basically everywhere, coal fly ash leaks all the time, creosote is essentially on every railroad track, leachate is entering ground water from old land fills, dioxin and mercury so prevalent on the gulf coast that eating the seafood is harmful. But again, none of that is visible. The East Palestine derailment was visible and nothing changed afterwards.

    Humanity in general but industrialists in particular destroyed the planet and got paid go do it, then put the bill on the average person when cleanup came.

    Nuclear is going to be needed 100% but it is an uphill battle. I hope the battle gets easier and the safety record continues to get better.