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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I find this is also a great way to decide if you even need it. I have a tab on my phone for stuff to buy. It collects so much crap I eventually deleted because the desire was fleeting.

    I keep a paper list of large ticket items that I actually need so I can save up for them over time. I spend a lot of that time while saving shopping for the best option. I saved a lot while furnishing my house by buying secondhand because I had weeks and weeks to shop around.



  • This is so so true. I cancelled prime ages ago so I don’t get fast shipping at all, and I only get free shipping if I spend over $35. Even in the cases where I decide it’s worth buying the thing on Amazon, I’ve got to wait to need more than $35 worth of stuff. Surprise surprise most of it just gets deleted out of the cart anyway.

    That being said, I have only been able to find filters for my vacuum on Amazon (some no name brand I bought off there a few years ago) so they’ll still get some money out of me, but most stuff I can just ignore now. Next vacuum will be a big brand name so I can avoid that, but it will be a while before there’s a next vacuum, hopefully. Because in my mind it’s more ethical to keep using the old one as long as it works even if some more $ goes to Amazon vs buying a whole new item I don’t actually need yet.



  • They go so far over budget because of lawsuits, usually. Vogtle was announced in like 2011 and didn’t even get to break ground until 2017, then got caught up in even more lawsuits, if I recall correctly. And while conventional nuclear plants will probably always have huge upfront costs that take 30 years to offset, SMRs are darn close to a full reality and those will be a lot cheaper, and will get cheaper over time, like solar panels did.

    There’s a plant in Phoenix Arizona that uses city wastewater to cool the reactors, so they can hold up to hot dry climates just fine if designed to do so. (Fun side fact, the plant has to clean the rad waste out of the water before they use it - the rad waste from medical procedures that get into wastewater would be enough to exceed their allowance of acceptable release).

    I’ll give you the waste issue, but it’s 100% a matter of politics. You’re going to have to convince a state to take it on and none of them will. But on-site cask storage isn’t the worst option. It’s worked for a long time. There’s also a lot of research going into other stuff we might be able to do with it. (In fact, waste isn’t an issue in France because they already recycle it; the US doesn’t because some of the recycled materials could be used to build bombs).

    By footprint (in terms of land and waste) nuclear is the best option still. It’s still the most stable output (save perhaps geothermal, but you can’t do that everywhere) One day we might have batteries good enough to make that less of an issue but right now it’s probably not a good idea to abandon nuclear.





  • Eh, I grew up conservative and I started swinging in high school (then admitted it to myself in college) mostly over gay rights, which were becoming more and more front and center debate at the time. At the time I would have said I was 100% straight and 100% woman, but I had gay friends and I wanted them to have all the things I could have. It was my first ideological break.

    Sometimes it you, sometimes it’s the people you care about which get affected. While it might be true that people with low empathy might have to be directly effected, the reality is that for most people it will be simply gaining an affected friend. This is why college makes you liberal, by the way. It’s not the teachings, it’s the fact that you spend time rubbing elbows with real people who turn out to be nothing like the caricatures you were told they would be.


  • I grew up very conservative with a very conservative father. I was severely depressed. My father straight up used to say that mental health issues were not real and believed therapy was bad thing. He once yelled at an allergist that prescribed me Zyrtec because he got it confused with Zoloft. 16 year old me would have killed myself before admitting to him or anyone else that I was thinking about suicide.

    I’m much better now, on the whole, but sometimes I do wonder how I managed to get through my teen years alive. I think I honestly was just stubborn. My father takes a much more relaxed view of mental health now, and had even offered to go to therapy with my mother before he filed for divorce (she was worse than him and refused to see a therapist even to save their marriage). But yeah, teens in conservative households are going to toe the line for what they are taught. Even if they know there’s something wrong they aren’t going to ask for help for their parents if they feel their parents reaction will be negative. This was my lived experience anyway.

    Happy to report I’m a raging liberal now and my father and I don’t discuss politics in order to maintain our familial relationship. Occasionally I’ll trick him into agreeing with a principal that conservatives say they support and then bring up some legislation from the GOP that directly contradicts that principal. I don’t press it though and he doesn’t seem to absorb it much, but that’s just how it is for people convinced the GOP are the good guys.


  • IamtheMorgz@lemmy.worldtoToday I Learned@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 years ago

    Obviously this guy is just trolling but the idea that conservatives (who one the whole are older and live in more rural areas with less access to healthcare) are more likely to be in good physical shape than liberals (more likely to be young and live in cities where there are wide healthcare opportunities) actually did make me laugh a little.


  • I just got started here after days of no reddit as more mainstream media picked up the protests and mentioned the Fediverse. Honestly, I love it for the reasons you outlined. Can’t imagine going back. There’s still some communities I don’t have here, but I imagine they will form up eventually, and if they don’t there’s nothing I’d really miss, or if I did I’d create it myself.

    I had eyeballed joining Mastodon when he-who-sucks took over twitter but wasn’t real comfortable with figuring out something new at the time (for personal reasons). Glad I’ve gotten the kick in the butt to join the Fediverse! It’s fun here!!