Ignore the safety announcement with my headphones in and continue fucking around on my phone uninterrupted until I lose signal.

50% of lemmy is mostly normal high functioning autists who have crippling social anxiety about the idea that anyone might find them creepy.

The other 50% are creeps

Seriously. I wouldn’t be surprised if rock stars in the 80s bragged about how many teen girls they fucked on tv. And then everyone watching would nod along and think “yes, of course. That is what rock stars do.”

Oh… that’s how I do math in my head anyway?

That’s like saying Atticus Finch isn’t a hero in To Kill A Mockingbird because you, personally, are racist and don’t think fighting for the rights of black people is a noble persuit. A character is a hero in a story if they are good according to the morals implicit in the story’s world.

Also, I don’t usually see these questions asked in an overly critical sense, but rather with a sense of humor or with an eye towards world building. It’s about having fun

Sure. But also some of my favorite media is podcasts, and many of these exist because of the low barrier to entry. Eg:

Econtalk - a hypernerdy, super in-depth, and sometimes winding and verbose semi-academic economics podcast that sometimes dips into poetry, philosophy, political science, and anthropology.

Hardcore History - Dan Carlin’s much-acclaimed history podcast where he gives book-length lectures on gruesome historical events.

The Power Company Podcast - a podcast exclusively about training for rock climbing

There’s no way any of these shows would have been syndicated on old radio stations. But the freedom of podcasting let them create something awesome and find their niche audience.

Its not even trolling. It’s just british level deadpan

I thought this was gonna be, like, a comminity for clearing out you life todo list of various chores… but nope. Vidya 😮‍💨

DADADUH

Imagine being so difficult to deal with that someone would rather swim across an entire sea than interact with you…

Mr Bushby, who wants access to a service tunnel separate to that used by the trains, said: “If I have to swim across, I obviously will. But it will be colder than the Caspian.”

I mean, obviously

You don’t.

I mean, maybe you are different. But I’m someone who loves spending time in nature, and who does pretty well alone. I’ve thru hiked ling trails alone, including the OHT, during which I saw maybe 3 other people the whole time. I’ve solo’d big wall climbs completely alone. I’ve taken solo bouldering trips where I wandered the forest alone for days at a time.

The thing I’ve found - being alone, in general, fucking sucks. Simply from a practical perspective, you have no one to turn to to say “hey hold this for a second, I need another pair of hands”. If an animal or bad person attacks you, you’re fucked. If you take an unexpected fall and sprain your ankle, you’re fucked. If you become ill and are too weak to travel, you’re fucked.

Then add to this the psychological issue of being alone. The world takes on a ringing hollowness. You can go through the motions, sure, but with no one else around to reflect your experiance back to you, all your actions feel empty.

You might think you enjoy being alone because you can go days at a time talking to no one and scrolling the internet. But that isn’t really being alone. Being on the internet, playing video games, watching tv, all scratches the social itch you have. Not perfectly. But it scratches it. But strip that away, and being alone suddenly takes on a new meaning.

Not to say that you shouldn’t do this. Sure, go ahead and go backpacking solo for a weekend. A week. Maybe two. I think it is a good experience - both the good and the bad parts. But just don’t mortgage a little cottage in the middle of fucking nowhere until you’re really sure that’s what you want.

This doesn’t make utilities cheaper. Utility prices are almost universally set, in one way or another, by the government. If the government wants to lower utility prices, they can do so easily by just voting.

This ignores the issue of how we actually pay for the actual cost of utilities. That’s a whole other thing. But long story short - NO, you should not expect utility prices to come down if your government builds solar capacity.

I believe this is an idea most legitimately championed by Nick Bostrom. Here is a video explaining his perspective.

I feel like, at least from the stance of abstract philosophy, he makes some good points. And I’m not enough of a philosopher to refute them (though I’m sure some have). Personally, my stance is “I’ll cross that bridge when I arrive at it” - I expect to die before that happens.

For one thing, they took away parking spaces, which are already extremely scarce.

Parking spaces should be scarce in NYC.

Secondly, because they are slightly raised, they made for a perfectly safe little living space for vermin under the floorboards

Lol, are you seriously trying to blame NYC’s rat problem on these? The problem has more to do with the large piles of garbage sitting on the street.

Thirdly, none of them were built with any kind of permits or regulations

Ooooh noooo, an unpermitted shed, noooo 😭

Land in a city should be put to its highest and best use. Are these little seating areas the highest and best use? Maybe, maybe not. But the highest and best use definitely isn’t parked cars.

Hence why I said “in all likelihood”. There are always exceptions to the rule. Apparently you are one of them.

Tbf, a lemmy user is far less likely to be a bot, so… yes?

This is really a huge oversimplification of a complex and nuanced topic. But the main thing worth mentioning is that your utility bills, in all likelihood, are already insanely cheap if you compare what you get to any other time in history. Like, keeping your home temperature at a perfectly pleasant temperature 24 hours per day probably costs you only a couple hours of labor each month. Compare this to gathering sticks in the forest and lighting a fire inside a mud hut - which, btw, also gives you lung cancer faster than cigarettes.

Should the government invest more in renewables? Yes, obviously. They should also fund the infrastructure necessary to make renewables work at scale, and research to improve renewable generation, transmission, and storage tech in order to close the gap between what is practical now and what we need to achieve. And while they are at it, they should introduce improved pricing schemes to head off increased wasteful usage. But will any of this actually have a direct impact on consumer pricing…? Probably not, since almost all utilities are already state owned or else heavily regulated. The cost of electricity is determined more by committee and political maneuvering than the actual price of, say, coal or solar on a day to day basis. The actual mechanism of paying for power to be generated and delivered to your house on demand is a combination of the price you pay per kwh, property taxes, government revenue in general, debt taken on by the government or utility, investments made in the past, etc. If you actually want a cheaper price per kwh, the solution is simply petitioning whatever regulatory body is in charge to lower it.

Of course, the problem with lower prices is that they encourage wasteful usage. If electricity becomes free, then aunt Ethel will start blasting the AC while leaving the windows open, because she likes to be comfortable while listening to the birds chirp. Without appropriate pricing schemes, people and companies will use up as much additional renewable capacity as is built as soon as you finish building it.

His silence is deafening