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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: November 4th, 2023

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  • I’m strongly in favor of laws restricting how many 1-3 family homes a company can own. I think that limit should go up and down the chain of corporate ownership including parents and subsidiaries. There should be exceptions for things like worker housing, but single family homes should not be an investment opportunity for large corporations. All that does is drive up the prices and makes it harder for average people to own a home. There is no overall benefit to society.



  • I would agree with something like this, but focusing on residential properties. I also think there should be limits to how many residential properties a single company can own. I don’t mean like apartment buildings, I mean like single-family or two / three family houses.

    1 to 3 family homes are a resource that should be for the good of the American people. I’m not against somebody making money as part of that, but when the opportunity for investing starts pricing people out of the market then we need to have a hard think about whether the investing market is more important than the people or not. I don’t think it should be.


  • Where the hell are you getting that from? I didn’t say anything about immigrants.
    This has nothing to do with race or nationality or citizenship. I am saying if you have no rights to a building, as in you don’t own the building and you don’t have a lease there, then barging in and locking the door behind you should not automatically grant you any sort of special treatment. You are an illegal intruder, and the police should go in and arrest you. I think that should apply in situations like this and it should apply in situations even if the owner of the building hasn’t been around in a month.




  • What you see in movies is bullshit. Any explosion creates a huge fireball and people go flying in every direction. Actual munitions aren’t like that. Especially munitions that have to be carried on light little drones. That includes most hand grenades and air-dropped bombs.

    I’m concept, an explosion that creates that big fireball puts most of its energy into spreading burning fuel around to create that big fireball. It’s visually impressive, but not actually very destructive. In warfare you don’t care what it looks like, you want it to be destructive. And the best way to get bang for your buck so to speak with an explosive that has to be lightweight, is with shrapnel. An explosive wrapped in shrapnel is not visually impressive to watch, but it basically sends little bullets flying out in every direction and those bullets are what does the damage.

    So consider it this way. If I walk up to the jamming device and shoot it with a pistol, it’s not going to be visually impressive. Nothing is going to fly apart and explode in a shower of sparks and flames. The jammer device might not even move at all, it just now has a hole in it. But it is in fact quite thoroughly destroyed because the bullet from my pistol destroyed all of its internal workings.

    Same thing is true with the grenade. The hand grenade is designed to be light and effective, so a soldier can carry it without getting weighed down. Thus it is a small explosive wrapped in a lot of shrapnel. Soldier throws it at the enemy, enemy casualties come not from the explosion but from shrapnel wounds. Drop one of those grenades next to a piece of equipment that isn’t armored, and it may not even appear to move, but it has been quite thoroughly punctured by shrapnel and is thus destroyed.


  • Don’t participate in wanton consumerism.

    This is the answer. And it comes with other benefits also.

    I do okay financially. I don’t have problems affording necessities. But I have found there is also a lot of satisfaction in being more self-sufficient, in relying less on supply companies to deliver my every need. And it saves a ton of money.

    Food is a big one. I used to spend a ton of money on takeout, delivery, junk food. But here’s the thing, basic cooking really isn’t that hard. It doesn’t have to take up a lot of time, especially if you meal prep. And the resulting food is both better in quality and better for you.

    On that same thread, the grocery store is not always your friend. Especially if it’s one of the big national chains. You will find much better quality produce at your local farmer’s market, and it’s often cheaper too. Certainly way more flavorful, the vegetable that was in the dirt yesterday tastes way better than the one that’s been in a warehouse for a month. Happier chickens lay tastier eggs. Etc.

    And there’s a lot of stuff you can do yourself. A vegetable garden is a great place to start, if you have even a tiny backyard. Think folding table size. Plant yourself some tomatoes and put up a net frame so animals don’t eat them, they will be the best tomatoes you’ve ever had. But planting and growing stuff is one of the most efficient ways to get food- Stick it in the dirt and water it and you get food for free!

    Then think about all the shit we buy. How much of it do we really need? How much of it ends up in the landfill in a year or two? When purchasing things, think about the product entire life cycle and how each step will affect you. IE, Don’t just think about the dopamine rush you’ll get from unboxing your shiny new toy, or the novelty of using it the first couple times, ask yourself is it going to enhance your life owning it over the long term, and is that amount of enhancement worth its purchase price and the space it consumes?



  • This is not particularly interesting news From what I have read, North Korea is constantly sending extreme threats to South Korea, we will annihilate you, we will kill all your citizens, we will destroy your government, there will be nobody left when we’re done, etc etc etc. And by constantly I mean on a near weekly basis, to the point that South Korea basically stuck a trash can under the fax machine and stopped paying attention. North Korea can barely even feed its own citizens. And when you see the photos of Great Leader inspecting their amazing new military technology half the time it’s computers from the 1990s that aren’t even plugged in correctly.





  • It’s actually not that hard. Microinverters have taken a lot of the danger out of it. Every one or two panels has an inverter, they can be individually controlled and tie together with 120 volt AC wiring, so you avoid the issue of 100+ volt DC strings that can’t be turned off. And on the physical side, there are now rack systems that install very easily and look good. Designing and installing the system isn’t hard. Just look up the documentation from Enphase or someone similar, you just need panels, micro inverters, a combiner panel, and maybe one of their computer management units. There’s other manufacturers too but the concept is the same. Installing the solar is the easy part. Getting permits is the hard part. Municipalities throw up a ton of red tape and utilities throw up even more for any sort of grid connected system. So what would be a basic concept that a technician level person could design, ends up being this complicated thing that needs engineering sign-offs and stamped plans that have to be approved by the town and the power company and inspected 18 different ways. This leads a lot of people to do off-grid systems, that is, set up your own solar panels and batteries, and run some portion of your house off at using extension cords rather than hardwired. If you’re just putting panels on the ground or on your deck and running extension cords, no need for permits.