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Joined 1 年前
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Cake day: 2023年6月25日

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  • These fears are both true and (kinda) not.

    First, I would preface this by saying that many of those hobbies are functionally things which from the early-20th century / post-WW2 US wealth and population boom:

    • Having a CNC machine at home unrelated to your business? Unlikely. Farmers might have had machines needed for their labors, but dense urban populations were very unlikely to have had any machine at home which did not have either practical utility (i.e., spinning wheel)

    • Some were simply financially out of reach. “Hobbyist drones” and various chemical experiments for fun were far less available to the pre-WW2-era urban population.

    • Some are even directly related to the conceit of living on open, privately-owned land. (No land? No need for each apartment to have motorized snow removal thingies.)

    …now, understand when I’m saying this, I’m 100% with you. I love tinkering. One of my dreams is to set up a small machine shop for running various hobbyist engines.

    So, what can you do?

    Well, there aren’t any easy answers. Trust me, I’ve looked. Local makerspaces are hard to find, and pricey to boot. You can try to limit your housing search to locations which do have a suitable garage, recognizing that this will limit you. You could try and rent a garage or utility space from a local business or something.

    But one thing I would say is that if you’re using your garage for actual hobbyist purposes, then I don’t think you need to feel “car guilt”. Or, at least, I wouldn’t - at that point, you are paying not for a space to house a car (and all the associated issues), but space to house your hobbies.


  • Agreed. And it wasn’t just blind trust in his promises despite a lack of deeds, unlike Trump’s wild promises. Like I said, Long actually managed to achieve many positive things for the working-class Louisianian. I also didn’t mention it, but he was remarkably hostile to racism for a 1930s Louisiana politician; one of his issues with the Social Security system implemented by Roosevelt was that individual states might deny its benefits to African Americans.

    I do wonder if he would have remained so benevolent indefinitely - there is the aforementioned secret control of an oil company profiting from State-owned lands, whose profits Long used for political purposes - but at the same time I can’t deny he did a lot of objectively good things which helped the people who needed it the most, was rightly beloved for it, and didn’t seem to be stepping away from it in his future plans.

    If nothing else, he’s a fascinating study on how the political positions associated with populism have shifted over time in the US.


  • It may not be an exact comparison, given changes in both popular media and US culture, but Huey Long (1893-1935) is possibly one of the closer comparisons.

    A wildly popular populist demagogue, Long similarly set about expelling political opponents from the government system following his election and engaging in political maneuvering and strongarming which ultimately got him impeached (though, like Trump, the effort collapsed before before long). His efforts included setting up Louisiana state boards which directed the distribution of state money to political allies, a move to deny hostile newspapers “official printer” status, worked with a businessman to create an oil company which profited from public lands allotted to it, produced his own newspaper which published positive stories, and other similarly totalitarian moves.

    However, it must also be noted that unlike Trump, Long actually achieved many populist goals, such as dramatically expanding the road system and increasing school enrollment. He was hostile to Roosevelt’s New Deal, claiming it was actually insufficiently populist and overly friendly to businesses, but also was highly isolationist and opposed to US involvement leading up to World War II.

    Long was assassinated in 1935 by the son of a political opponent. Most believe he was shot by the assassin, though some believe his bodyguards accidentally shot him in confusion after the assassin missed.


  • I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.

    Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?


    Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.












  • Not really doing anything wrong. Unfortunately, hunting in wormholes is a very hit-or-miss affair at best, with more misses than hits. I can explain the deeper reasoning behind this in greater depth if you like, but the ultimate point is that the odds of finding a hole with active people in it aren’t super high.

    What you might be better off doing is finding a wormhole with a nullsec connection, and then hanging out in there. That way you can pop out and harass any locals, using the map to check for nearby activity if there’s no one else immediately there.



  • We were getting called in to HR one by one for unclear reasons. Turns out we were getting our annual raises, but my boss and his boss were both handing them out that day. I and a coworker go in first; on the way out, they ask us to send a third coworker in first.

    We look at each other and instantly know.

    We both walk up to her desk, stony-faced, and tell her “You need to go down to HR. [boss] and [big boss] need to see you.” She is nervous, but we insist she just needs to go, now.

    Ten minutes later she comes back and chews us out, but is laughing all the way.