Wolf314159

joined 7 months ago
[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 40 points 1 week ago (9 children)

In spirit I totally agree with you, but that kind of strategy just doesn't work anymore. Boycotting Apple is relatively easy. Boycotting Disney is a little harder, unless you're already a pirate, but not impossible. Then there's companies like Nestle, arguably worse than any of them. Companies like Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi are so diversified, with so many subsidiaries and shell companies spread the world over. It is damn near impossible for the average person to boycott Nestle in any meaningful way.

Network graph of major subsidiaries or global food and drug corporations.

Go ahead and try to boycott just one or two of the corporations in this image. Boycotts may still impact specific brands at a local level, but they have become pretty ineffective against corporations.

All of the boycotts in the world can't beat the apathy rotting away the foundation of democracy. Boycott one company or brand and another will step in to fill the political void. Apathy keeps young voters out of the voting booths in local elections. These companies have a vested interest in convincing you that your vote doesn't matter and that government regulation is ineffective. It's a lie to keep you apathetic and disinterested in politics because your vote is the only part of the system they can't directly influence.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 26 points 1 week ago

This is just one of the many reasons that the argument the right keeps repeating about all manner of privacy invasions and infringements of rights and due process that "the good ones have nothing to fear" is complete and utter bullshit.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Reading is about more than reciting facts and quoting sources. Sure, you can read, but you have utterly failed to comprehend the context or the article or the actual substance of my comments.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 0 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I understand that common names getting mixed use in families, genus, and species can be confusing, but you're being willfully obtuse here just to double down on useless pedantry.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 1 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Alligator is the common name for the family and also the common name of a few specific species. It's kind of like how all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. All caiman are alligators, but not all alligators are caimans.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 5 points 1 week ago

You're not really making your own bread unless you grow and harvest the ingredients yourself. What do you mean you don't mill your own grains? Refine your own sugar?Can't really even call yourself a baker unless you build your own oven. /s

Cooking and baking are basically ALL prep work and cleanup. The actual cooking and baking is overall a pretty small fraction of the overall effort that goes into making dinner or a loaf of bread. Go ahead and feel proud of yourself if you take on more of those preparatory tasks, IF it makes for a better end result. But that doesn't mean you get to act superior to somebody else on a different path of their own personal cooking journey. Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and saying "this is cooking, but that is not" is kind of like drawing a line between blue and indigo on a rainbow. It's arbitrary and adds little to good the discussion.

Go ahead and cheat on those components where it works. Not everybody has the time, space, energy, or skill to make every bread, sauce, or spice blend from scratch. If you can make something better by getting back to the basics and fundamental ingredients, go for it! But let's be honest when it's more about pride than the final product, enjoyment of the meal.

Personally, the biggest reason I prefer to avoid pre-prepared foods that only require heating is so that I can avoid certain common ingredients that are often pumped into those things in insane proportions, particularly salt and sugar. It's not so that I can feel proud of an arbitrary label.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 7 points 1 week ago

If you'd ever been really swarmed by mosquitoes or lived in a place where they are ever present you'd not be asking this question.

  • When they swarm enough they are nearly impossible to avoid.
  • When their presence is constant some people just stop reacting to the bites. I only ever notice mosquito bites on places that get chaffed (like the wrists and hands, around collars and cuffs). If they bite a place you wouldn't normally scratch and can avoid scratching the area after a bite, for some people a welt is much less likely to form.
  • They don't go after only people. Your irritation at a few bites is nothing compared to the diversity in the evolutionary arms race between mosquitoes and their prey.
  • Only the mothers feed on blood. Other mosquito eat mostly plant nectar.
[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah yes, the modern day equivalent of recording radio broadcasts to magnetic tape. Made a few mixtapes that way myself. They were absolute garbage quality and I never listen to them anymore, but it was an interesting exercise and my only option for some stuff at the time.

Now I just buy as directly from the artist as I can for things that are rare enough that they are difficult to pirate.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 4 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Find an online guide. Print to PDF or save as HTML/ODF/whatever you like. Annotate the document. Now notes and article are searchable. I guess a physical book might have an advantage if the power went out, but at that point you're going to have other problems implementing the things the book suggests.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago

Ask a lawyer for an informed opinion. They'll (hopefully) have the tools to determine what this easement means for you as a potential homeowner on the parcel. The Maine Geological Survey has an item in their FAQ of some relevance.

I don't know how common these kinds of easements are in Maine, but I would not purchase any real property that could be used and abused at the whim of a corporation with a team of well paid lawyers.

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