Hey, it's only 120ms, but... Yay! It's funny, I just built a new AMD rig (5600G/A520) running LMDE 5 and the thing *cold boots* in like 4 seconds, but takes more like 30sec to resume from hibernation, though compared to the last linux system I built (years ago), it's a vast improvement, since suspend/resume actually works!

Childless group living is a serious option for people making $30k/yr or even substantially less than that for groups larger than two, even in the most expensive places in the world, but I don't think that concept would rank high in economic policymaker circles.

If a human devotes 1/3 of each weekday (or more) for an hourly or salaried position, they absolutely deserve enough income to live on. I don't care what the "value" of their labor is. If there are jobs that aren't "valued" enough for people to work full time at them and be able to at least scrape by, then those jobs aren't "valued" enough to exist, so they either need to go away, or businesses (and by extension) societies need to reevaluate their priorities, otherwise the system has failed us, and we're literally doomed.

In 2023, ~30k/year is enough for many people in the developed world to live a reasonably comfortable, but probably frugal life. It's not enough to support a family of five, without extreme frugality, but a single person can probably make it on that everywhere but the most expensive places, which includes pretty much every major city in the world now, so it *is* complicated, but at the core, it's really simple, if you dedicate your life to a job that takes up nearly half your waking hours, it should be possible to live on that: anything else is wage slavery.

I realize this is somewhat of a tangent, since most of the balances over a quarter mil probably belong to companies, rather than individuals, but if it *is* a case where actual individual people are depositing more than $250,000 in a single "SAVINGS" bank (e.g. a checking account or savings account), why not just make that literally not allowed, and/or make all these money shuffling shenanigans illegal. That should be what "INVESTMENT" banks are for, though even then, I'd think the smart money would want to be as diversified as possible, but what do I know. Anyway, I guess this is (one of the many reasons) why we need Glass-Steagall back.

Further: if multi-millionaires and billionaires want to have their deposits over $250,000 insured, let them buy their own fucking insurance. Raising the cap would essentially be a regressive tax, since 90%+ of Americans probably don't have $2,500 in a bank account, much less $250,000.

The financial landscape is *completely* different now compared to when the FDIC was created, since back then, many people actually *had* savings, so a good chunk of the money in banks was held by "regular Joes", so a "run on the banks" could actually happen if a lot of people were to withdraw their savings, whereas now almost all of it is held by the extremely wealthy, so they're the only ones that can create a meaningful "run on the banks" anyway.

That's not the only reason. The US EPA banned their production in the US not long ago, though has not banned importing them or using them. The thing is that most of these PFASs have been 'GRAS' chemicals for as long as they've been known about, and *were* considered inert for all that time. Problem is, they're not inert. Some of them (notably PFOA) are now (as of 2018) known carcinogens. It's uncontroversial at this point, even at fairly low concentrations, they create elevated cancer risk. Some of them are endocrine disruptors and can cause kidney and thyroid disease.

Sometimes there's a GOOD REASON why people want to ban shit. This is one of those times. Don't take my word for it. Look around. 3M is going to get a slap on the wrist, even though they knew all this shit was nasty decades ago and they covered it up to make a buck.

For some of the PFASs there may be no immediate *cheap* replacement, and the industries that depend on them are going to have to shell out for whatever it takes to either keep using them while minimizing the risk (keeping as much of them out of the groundwater as possible) or find something else, even if it costs more. However, we *certainly* don't need to keep using PFASs in retail packaging, make-up or ACTUAL FOOD.

Huh, that's funny. Here I was thinking that it's billionaires that are the biggest threat to human civilization (such as it is) -- oh right, who is it that's developing all that super-dangerous "AI" again?

I use Thunderbird constantly. It's been my email client pretty much since it came out. I really like that it's easy to copy (and back up) a profile folder to another machine (the profile folder is even cross-platform) with a fresh tbird install and be up and running instantly. I have a few nitpicks and things I'd like to see updated: the biggest one being that there's no way to make it auto-mark an email as read when you reply to it. But other than that, and maybe a couple other little things, it works really well, at least for me.

I don't understand why people think it's "bloated" or whatever. I literally never wait on it for anything, unless the server it's talking to hiccups. Maybe it's people that are trying to run windows on 8GB of RAM without an SSD? I've got a 10 year old $800 machine with 16GB RAM and both tbird and FF work literally perfect for me, performance-wise. My tbird profile folder is like 14GB. It's currently using half a gig of RAM, but so what? That's what RAM is FOR.

I *really* hope they don't bork the redesign/refactor, though I guess I would just keep using an old version or a fork.

I thoroughly enjoyed both series, while I was reading it, years ago; though now that I remember back, I find my memories of it are pretty sparse, other than the last couple books (which were profoundly weird) -- so it definitely qualifies as a "popcorn" read. I do remember the first couple books were a bit of a slog, as the reader is as much in-the-dark about what the heck is going on as the main character is, but it's very much twisty-turny action. It is a super easy main-character-oriented read, which is probably what made it a page-turner. I would probably read them again if my new-to-me book list ever gets empty.

If they give the TV show the full GoT treatment, it will suck. For me, the best part of the series wasn't the violence or intrigue-laden plot, it was the dialog: both "inner" (that goes on in the characters heads) and the conversations the characters have with each other, which is often humorous. That's often very hard to translate to the screen without a *really* good screenwriter. I'd hope the series has a style and tone more like Doctor Who than GoT, since for all the "dark" themes in the books, they're really kind of fun and light-hearted, in a weird way.

That definitely seems to be a thing, along with the increase in refined sugars in *everything*, around the same time they took the butter and lard out of everything and replaced it with margarine (yuck). I use butter and/or olive oil in cooking. Avocado oil is nice, but expensive, and probably not the best use of avocados. There are a few other oils that are probably OK, but it seems that we really shouldn't be eating food with a lot of added oils, except sparingly (like in baking).

Canola (LEAR) oil is probably OK in small amounts, but I generally avoid it, and very young children shouldn't have any at all, although most of it in North America is grown from Monsanto seed, so for me it's a non-starter.

Canada has that too, except they call it "Canola" -- my understanding is that for the most part we shouldn't really be consuming seed oils at all, except in tiny amounts. Biofuel for the most part is insane. Arable land should be for growing food, not fuel.

I'm less familiar with the agriculture situation in Europe, though I'm not surprised that it's less bad than it is in the Americas.

Cover cropping is a big deal. Mulching too. Leaving bare soil exposed is bad for everything. If you've ever flown over the American midwest, you've seen the giant brown patches where fertile grassland used to be. Monoculture kills. Cover cropping creates life.

Yeah, Gabe is the real deal. He talks about that: trying to get policy changed from the "top down" is impossible, because it's all insanity. We basically have to just stop buying the products that are killing us, which is easier said than done, though it *is* becoming a little easier, at least in some places with local food production and distribution actually happening again.

Growing up in the 70's my small rural town still had about 20 working farms. By 1990, there were zero. Now there are 4 full time farms and many smallholdings, including people slowly creating permaculture systems. There are a lot of problems still, but there is some small positive change already happening.

Politicians and business men try to dictate what nature is or isn't, but it's ultimately always the other way around.

Precisely! At least in the US midwest, for the past 100 years or so, typically the only thing that was tilled back into the soil (other than virgin grassland) was the previous crop (especially with corn) which seemed fine for a long time, particularly because the soil in some places was meters deep. Soil compaction by very heavy machinery is also a contributor to soil damage.

Careful tilling/plowing and soil amendment with manure/straw or other organic matter along with rotation and cover cropping is the "way it was done" for centuries, and it was fine (and probably would qualify as "regenerative" today) at pre-industrial scale and demand.

Regenerative agriculture is partly just going back to that model of continuously enriching the soil with organic matter and other amendments. "No-till" isn't a new idea, it's an old idea being brought back with modern scientific understanding.

Here's one example I'm personally familiar with:

https://www.csuchico.edu/regen...

I can dig up others if you'd like to see more.

It's not nonsense at all. Prior to the 20th century, tillage was accomplished largely with muscle power, and was much shallower, so it didn't completely destroy the microbial communities in the soil, and only needed to feed millions, not billions. Also, crop rotation was standard practice for millennia, as was letting fields go fallow (to "recover", often with cover crops) and/or convert to grazing, otherwise the land would become infertile. The cycle of topsoil loss *did* begin in the 19th century, however, the process was very slow compared to what happened once heavy equipment, high-nitrogen fertilizer and monoculture cultivation began to make letting fields go fallow seem "optional". Pre-industrial farmers were very clever and used knowledge gained over millennia to manage land without destroying it.

It's not tillage *per se* that is the problem, it's the fact that 20th century farming practices started using up topsoil at an unsustainable rate.

21st century no-till regenerative agriculture is already here, and it will likely become the primary way crops are grown within a generation. Simply because it's more efficient and (ultimately) leads to higher yields and more nutritious food. The fact that we finally have a basic understanding of soil science and ecology is what's driving it. Already more than half the small farms in North America are doing it, and even mega-farms are getting there. It just takes some long-term thinking and interest in preserving fertile land for future generations. The article (which I hadn't actually read) is more-or-less talking a bunch of crap, and as I mentioned, there is a lot of stupid in the "We have to do something NOW!" crowd, but mega-scale topsoil loss is no joke.

The issue of all the fertilizer that is created with the Haber process is a *symptom* of the larger problem of extractive agriculture. Tillage increases fertility by releasing nutrients in topsoil, but once a patch of wild (living) soil has been tilled a few times (or even once for some soil types) there's virtually nothing left alive, so nitrogen-fertilizer is added for subsequent crops on the same land to achieve the same (or higher) yields. The past century has seen a reduction in global topsoil by some 100 trillion cubic meters (or more). Exactly how much is left? We don't really know. If we keep on that same path, we definitely won't be able to feed 11+ billion people.

There is no single solution to this problem. A multi-factor approach is needed, and (fortunately) that is already happening, though, unfortunately, like so many "solutions" to large-scale problems humans come up with, it is, in some cases, being forced into place by politicians and bureaucrats without sufficient knowledge, preparation or wisdom, so there are areas where attempted solutions have made the situation worse instead of better.

There's a ticking clock there that will make "peak oil" and climate change look like relatively minor problems. Will we make it? I hope so, but it's difficult to see how with things being as they are.

Agree about the lack of nuance in public policy. However, I agree with the original poster. Ending the "Schedule 1" classification for all substances needs to happen. It should be up to pharmaceutical researchers and (ultimately) doctors to determine what drugs are useful for what patients, not law makers. Of course there are downsides to drugs. There are big downsides to most existing "Schedule 2" drugs, but doctors are allowed to prescribe them. There are potential downsides to ALMOST EVERYTHING, but that doesn't mean there should be blanket prohibitions on everything with a downside. Most "Schedule 1" drugs should really be in "Schedule 2" but if medical professionals want to DO BASIC RESEARCH or prescribe them to patients, there should be a way, which should include some strict regulations for transparency and accountability. When it comes to "street drugs" (of which many, like Fentanyl, one of the worst, are already Schedule 2) if there were a legal way for addicts to obtain them (that doesn't enrich unscrupulous doctors) combined with accessible treatment programs, it would create a badly needed "pressure release valve" in our society, and the solution already exists: see Portugal. Accidental overdose deaths would (largely) become a thing of the past, cases of drug-use-associated communicable diseases would plummet, and getting people into treatment programs becomes a lot easier when addicts are left with only the (medical) problem of being an addict, and not the (legal) problem of felony charges.

The whole "If it's legal people will think it's safe!" argument doesn't hold water. We are literally *surrounded* by unsafe things. Most of those things are labeled as dangerous, but we can all obtain them, usually easily. One of the most dangerous drugs is ethanol, and that's mostly because of its widespread use and cultural significance. Heroin is never going to have that kind of widespread use, and as we've seen in Portugal, smart laws make the problem of heroin addiction (and a number of its knock-on-effects) easier to solve, not harder. So labels and ACCURATE education about drugs (which is chief among the failures of "The War on Drugs") more-or-less solves that problem. Will people still do stupid things and get addicted? Of course. Will there still be unscrupulous people who will take advantage of vulnerable populations? You bet. But at least public policy won't be egging them on and literally creating the black markets where they can thrive.

I haven't even scratched the surface here, in terms of how much the "War on Drugs" has harmed the people of planet Earth, and how much ending it will help us, but suffice to say that most of it (like most wars) has been driven by emotion, politics and vested interest, not logic, science and good will.