FWIW, I’m in the process of starting a grid-tied solar installation. Total cost, without batteries, will be about $70,000. That’s a 17kW system, that should produce an average of 30kWh/day in the winter.

If I had been doing this last year, it would have been sharply less; tariffs and the drive to kill solar has driven costs up, and the end of the solar tax credit on 31 December means that everyone that wants to do it is trying to do it now, which drives up labor costs.

He’s not a psychopath; he’s psychotic. Those are very, very different.

Psychopathy and sociopathy are functionally identical; they’re personality disorders where a person largely lacks the capacity for empathy, and hence remorse. Being psychotic means that you’re experiencing delusions; you may be hearing voices, or having uncontrollable impulses to do things that would be out of character. His behavior, based on what he’s saying, is entirely delusional; he doesn’t even have internally consistent logic in his actions.

this at least has real links to tangible asset worth,

Well, kind of. But the worth of those assets is largely due to perception, rather than real utility value. Like, real estate is stupidly expensive in many places, but it’s expensive because people believe that it’s expensive. When real estate bubble burst, you see the ‘worth’ of that real estate drop sharply. The utility value is having a place to sleep, but it’s often treated as an investment. So you would still see currency value fluctuations. Currency issue by gov’ts largely has worth because the gov’t says that it has worth; it’s not tied to anything. (BTW - tying currency to a tangible asset limits your ability to add currency when necessary. It will tend to lead to depreciation–the value of the currency rising–which is usually a bad thing.)

The other problem is that corporations and banks go bust; if they were issuing currency, that would mean all your money would instantly be worthless.

I guess that I would have thought that you could isolate those individual compounds, and then reproduce them, rather than hoping that you can find a lucky ball of whale puke.

I dunno, I’m pretty sure I’m not their target audience.

For sound reproduction, I prefer my wired Shure SE-315 with sound-isolating ear tips. But Shokz ar much more comfortable for all-day wear.

So, I tried wearing earplugs with my Shokz. Disappointingly, the sound became very, very muffled. I don’t think that it’s true bone conduction, because if it was, then earplugs shouldn’t have had a significant impact on the sound. They’re still nice, just… Not as cool.

Firefly is solidly decent. It’s not great, it’s not terrible. It had real potential, and then got cancelled after 12 (?) episodes. Babylon 5 was arguably a better show overall, but I can see why Firefly still has a solid fandom 20 years later.

Pretty sure that HK-47 called humans meatbags.

It’s already a problem. People are outsourcing their thinking to LLMs, and LLMs aren’t capable of thinking.

Makes me wonder why whale puke still gets used in cosmetics…

I believe that he also invented the first silencers.

When they gained voting rights none of them knew how to read well so the racist made a law saying you have to pass a reading test or some shit so they couldn’t vote.

Not correct. Literacy tests weren’t testing actual reading ability and comprehension; they were explicitly intended to deny the right to vote. White people would be passed because they had grandparents that had been permitted to vote, and literally got grandfathered in. Non-white people would be given tests written in, for instance, latin. So even if they could read, the odds were very poor that they’d be able to read the language the test was in. Or they would be given tests that had very ambiguous questions, and any way they answered could be considered ‘wrong’.

Yes they should. But at the same time completely ignorant people should not.

Jesus. You’re literally arguing for removing franchise from the majority of citizens. If they primarily reside in an area and will be affected by the policies, they should be able to vote on them, whether or not they’re ignorant.

The problem is that you can very, very quickly arrive at the conclusion that if someone just had enough knowledge, they’d vote like me, and strip the vote from everyone that doesn’t agree with you. Except that people can, and do, have different beliefs, even with the same knowledge.

Ideally, no one controls it. It’s just exists as a medium for exchange.

There are both good and bad points to currency have value that can be adjusted by gov’ts; crypto currency solves one set of problems, but has it’s own, inherent issues.

{Diatomaceous earth (/ˌdaɪ.ətəˈmeɪʃəs/ DY-ə-tə-MAY-shəs), also known as diatomite (/daɪˈætəmaɪt/ dy-AT-ə-myte), celite, or kieselguhr, is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that can be crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth)

If you inhale it in significant quantity, you’ll end up with silicosis.

Probably something like, “found dead in his bedroom when the nurse went to check in on him in the morning”. My MiL died in hospice, at home; she wasn’t hooked up to a ton of machines, so we don’t know exactly when she died. She was dead when my spouse woke up from napping.

AFAIK, pedophilia refers specifically to the sexual attraction to children. When it’s used as a weapon per your scenario, it’s both a war crime and child rape.

Like, if adult men as sexually assaulted as part of war crimes (and that’s distressingly common), the perpetrators are likely not gay or bi-; they’re ‘just’ committing atrocities.

The system is currently 237 years old, which would make fucking the system the opposite of child molestation.

AFAIK, child molestation victims are not more likely to become pedophiles or molest children; usually they’ve got a lot of PTSD.

The only treatment that’s available is chemical castration (to largely eliminate sexual urges, although that creates a ton of health issues), and therapy that reduces the probability of criminal offenses against children. It’s not treating pedophilia per se, it’s helping people learn to avoid triggers and spaces where they’re likely to feel overwhelmed by sexual impulses. There’s no cure.

Depends.

Pedophilia is likely an inherent sexual attraction, much like being straight, or LGBTQ+. It appears that the sexual attraction is not something that the person has control over. There’s no good evidence that it can be changed. Some pedophiles are also sexually attracted to age-appropriate partners, some appear to be exclusively attracted to children. Moreover, it appears to split into nepophilia (infants, toddlers), pedophilia (pre-pubescent children older than toddlers), and ephebophilia (pubescent children and post-pubescent children younger than the legal age of consent).

Epstein appears to have been attracted to post-pubescent girls younger below the age of consent, but he also seems to have had sexual relationships with adult women. E.g., he wasn’t exclusively a pedophile.

Child molestation is a completely different matter. Child molesters can be pedophiles, but they can also be opportunistic sexual predators. A significant amount of child molestation is also incest, e.g., a parent or close relative (almost always male) using a child for sexual gratification because they can (proximity, opportunity), rather than preferring children. Either way, child molesters that sexually abuse children are very high risk offenders; they are often very, very likely to commit the same crime repeatedly.

So, I’d draw the line a line between someone that’s sexually attracted to minors, and someone that acts. The child molester? Yeah, fuck 'em with a chainsaw. Pedophiles that haven’t yet done anything (including grooming!)? No.

What version of windows 11? I’ve been using Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC and haven’t had too many issues.