Ocean acidification is the scariest aspect of global warming, it could cause an oceanic mass extinction that no amount of distance from the equator, coasts or forests could keep you safe from.

When we finally get our asses in gear to start the planetary-scale artificial carbon sequestration necessary to address global warming, we'll need to start by pulling CO2 out of the oceans, and the only good news is that this happens to be a very efficient way to do it.

Don't forget avoiding the number 4, to the point of not using it on license plates, room numbers, even skipping whole floors of buildings!

This. AI risk to workers isn't growing, it has already peaked, because we're going over the top of the hype cycle already, and the hype is soaring above reality. The next AI winter is coming.

The top 10% of earners made up almost 50% of consumer spending recently:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

That's about half way to being able to put the bottom 90% in Terrafoam dorms.

Also a private platform's definition of misinformation can not only be imperfect, but they're legally within their rights to remove far more than just misinformation, and could remove content by whatever criteria they please. There are audiophile forums that will remove documentation of attempts at scientific testing. Truth Social will ban you for criticizing Trump or saying things he doesn't like. TwitX will ban you for saying things Musk doesn't like (often things that could pose a risk to his vested interests). There are flat earth forums that will ban you for saying the Earth is round. The only alternative to any of this is the forced speech approach of forcing private parties to host content against their will.

From what little recent data is available, the COVID19 variants circulating now are at least in the same ballpark of mortality rate as all those that have been circulating since early 2022, although data from India suggests that variants circulating this year may have mortality closer to the early-pandemic peaks:

https://ourworldindata.org/mor...

https://ourworldindata.org/cov...

Also it's significantly higher than the mortality rate of the flu, so if your vaccination choices are based on the danger of contracting the disease, that would make you a dumbass without a logical brain:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/i...

There's no way you've had covid. It's not "the sniffles," it's the worst goddamn flu you can imagine. I've also had dengue fever and it felt pretty similar to that. And as someone who's lost some friends and family to it, including an uncle who didn't get vaccinated, fuck you. I hope you get long covid.

Factually incorrect, the maximum sentence for blackmail in England is 14 years in prison.

Without a minimum wage the floor drops out of your next-best-choices and large chunks of the population end up on starvation wages. This isn't a theoretical issue you need to estimate with graphs, it can be seen in practice in jurisdictions with extremely low or nonexistent minimum wages, or even in first-world gig work.

That makes sense, you don't believe that's the case because you just voluntarily and uncritically filled your head with a warm load of grifty bullshit "documented" by a couple of right-wing lobbyists. If you'd ever read a real history book focusing on workers' standards of living in that period, the way that the propaganda book you hopefully didn't pay for flew in the face of it would've set off some alarm bells. Here's something to get you started: https://www.crei.cat/wp-conten...

Look at the median home price vs. median salary in the '70s vs. now and the homeless guy might look like the only person who hasn't been totally hosed. It's the same for education costs, two things conveniently left out of inflation measures. Accounting for transfer payments doesn't change the picture either:

https://equitablegrowth.org/sl...

So you know, and at the same time think that most anyone who wants a job has one right now? How does that work?

People were often forced into the earliest mills because the (once popular) alternative, farming the commons and telling business owners to fuck off with their hellhole factories, was conveniently taken away. The alternative that people are choosing work over is usually not a lower-paying job but the threat of homelessness and starvation often worsened by the very business interests they're forced to work for.

Productivity alone won't do anything for workers, both the industrial revolution and the last half-century in the first world are proof of that. If you're worried about employers leaving for cheaper labor costs, good luck competing with every Chinese political prisoner.

They offer you more than minimum wage because of the existence of a minimum wage. Otherwise they'd offer you not $1 per year, but just enough to afford to return to work when added to whatever welfare they can squeeze out of government and society. Minimum wages do apply to salaried jobs as well. Check out what you can earn in countries that don't have them, and then thank a union. Or throw off the shackles of the minimum wage and get into a type of work that really doesn't have one, gig work, and let us know how that supply and demand thing works out for you.

The Luddites died in grinding poverty with all indications being that they were correct, it was their grandchildren who got the new jobs that came along as a result of the automation that ruined their grandparents. Wages and standards of living have been stagnant for a half-century at this point. There are people frantically applying to hundreds of jobs they're well-qualified for and not getting so much as an interview. Over 100 people are applying to each job opening these days, and likewise it takes over 100 job applications for an average applicant to get a job (both rather conservative estimates). If improving productivity led to rising wages, why are we not earning 40% more for the same number of hours people worked in the '70s? Why has going from mainframes and dumb terminals to present-day computing added approximately jack shit to ~90% of workers' pay?

Good for you! Especially if you work in tech. Sucks for the people who aren't part of your anecdote though.

Look up the history of the ones you don't think may have value and you'll learn about the workers who fought and/or died to get the laws in place that keep you from experiencing the same thing, which you now take for granted. Or if that's not enough, maybe you should experience a 996 work schedule in China, work alongside a nonexistent/laughably low minimum wage in a Caribbean country, or do some dangerous work in a Nigerian e-waste mine to get a taste of what happens without all those regulations.

And we pinky-swear we wont fsck you later.

Not using Plex is the gift that keeps on giving. Why so many people went for it when there were better open-source alternatives available, I'll never know.

Trade deficit as an emergency, I think that's the economic equivalent of declaring the color of a T-shirt to be an emergency.

There are quite a few Vinfast cars going around, I wondered if people were importing them individually but then I spotted a Vinfast dealership off the highway (401 I think?) next to a Lotus dealership.

Chile seemed to be making something similar work with early-'70s computer technology, until Henry Kissinger decided that democratic socialism was a threat worse than Soviet communism and had the regime overthrown and replaced with a murderous right-wing dictatorship:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit...