activistPnk

This thread is relevant:

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How about this as a fix:

The excess solar energy goes to a battery charging vending machine for EVs that sits in the driveway. Someone with a low battery for an e-bike/scooter or nanocar books a battery and pops by to swap their low battery for a full one. That would perhaps be a way to profit from selling the excess energy instead of getting ripped off by the grid.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

schools and farms cannot use their own solar energy production and must sell it to the grid at a low price and buy it back at a significantly higher price.

The thing is, they are feeding the grid when the sun is hitting hard (mid-day) which is the time of day when the grid needs the most help. So they are helping to flatten the consumption peaks. They should be getting the best sales price at that point. So it’s like they are getting boned for improving the grid and giving the powerplant relief.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

Political ads are not designed for targetting unpersuadables. Over the very long term propaganda that over and over blames undocumented people for problems starts to take a toll which could pull someone out of the unpersuadable demographic. But to a great extent they influence pursuadable voters in swing regions.

You say you would not switch to voting for Trump, and yet the sole reason Trump took power in 2016 was precisely due to advertising. Read about Cambridge Analytica and Peter Thiel. If Peter Thiel had not introduced Cambridge Analytica to the Trump campaign and bought Facebook data, Trump would not have taken power in 2016. THAT is how important advertising is. C/A master-minded indentifying the most important pursuadables, did a deep analysis of exactly what issues would be of interest to those individuals, and targeted them surreptitiously.

I strongly recommend you watch the PBS series “Hacking your Mind”. This episode in particular:

https://www.pbs.org/video/weapons-of-influence-gpuj68/

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

Well to be more accurate, boycotting is the practice of fighting harmful use of money by witholding money. Of course that stands to reason. If your money spent in a certain way is doing harm, you can prevent the harm your money does by not putting it on the harmful path.

I’m not sure what specifically you mean by getting people to reason better (whether you are talking about voting w/money or voting on the ballot in that context). Of course ads work. Political campaigns have started leveraging the same manipulation by ads that works to get people to buy goods and services.

What we certainly know does /not/ work is people thinking they are immune to ads. Everyone thinks that, and marketers prove them wrong over and over again. Advertising is specifically designed to exploit vulnerabilities in the human mind. You have no hope of creating an advertizing-immune population. It would be an ocean-boiling type of endeavor.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

The most stark demonstration of money buying politicians seems to be with AIPAC. It happens often enough that a US politician who goes against Israel gets ousted that there’s even verb for it: AIPACed. AIPAC blows a fortune on the campaign of whoever runs against anyone who opposes Israel in any way -- and they apparently get their way every time.

Also interesting to note that most American Jews are liberal democrats who oppose AIPAC. But what can you do against a massive war chest like that?

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

money is only effective as the voters who react to it.

Money is always effective because you always have voters.

It can’t literally make votes it can only advertise.

Of course. The job of the money is not to make votes, but to influence the pool of voters. Advertising works wonders on people. Voters and influence on voters are independent variables, both of which you will always have.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

if you don’t vote any other action becomes meaningless in the us.

US elections are a battle of huge war chests. What if Elon Musk and Peter Thiel did not vote? What if they continued to dump fortunes into the republican war chests (along with Russia) among their various other manipulations? Musk and Thiel’s influences does not lose effect if they neglect to cast their own drop-in-the-ocean votes. There is no dependency or association between the war chests and how a particular individual votes.

If that’s still unclear, consider that Musk and Thiel’s influence is not self-influence. It’s influence on other people. It’s important to realize this because all non-enfranchised people have an opportunity to indirectly influence US policy by boycotting republican feeding corps. People in Ukraine can boycott FedEx and UPS on the basis of their ALEC contributions (ALEC funds republicans). You cannot reason that such a boycott is “meaningless” on the basis that Ukrainians do not vote in the US. If that were crippling enough to UPS, UPS would dump their ALEC membership to keep Ukraine business. (FedEx is a bit different.. hard-assed; they would likely shrug off the boycott, keep ALEC, and cut their nose off to spite their face).

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

If you are talking about voting in elections (as opposed to voting with a wallet), I’m eligible to vote in two countries. In one country, I vote every opportunity because it’s a good system with no assault on privacy, no barriers, no exclusivity, no voter intimidation. You need not even be a citizen. In the other country it’s a shitshow in just about every aspect you can consider. It’s a moral duty to vote but the gov takes many steps to hinder you and block you. Luckily influence is not limited to elections. You can vote every day with your wallet.

I don’t simply neglect to vote in the shitshow of a broken election system. I write letters to civil liberties orgs and politicians to say why I am not voting. Because if I were to vote, it would send a misleading signal (that the voting system is working).

When I do vote, I also write letters to those I am voting against to state why they lost my vote.

activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

That’s interesting.. I thought a Scandinavian country was known for banning ICE cars. Though apparently Ethiopia is getting credit for the first to enact the policy.

Though in principle it would make sense to have an exception so that someone in Ethiopia could to do ICE→EV conversions if they wanted.

activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

I think liquids are heavier to transport than solids because solid detergent is more concentrated (no water). Liquid detergent (which comes in all viscocities) still has its place: for people with hard water. But apart from that I think solid detergent is the best for the environment.

There are those solid tablets which are like powder pressed together. Sometimes those are in a plastic wrapper that needs to be removed before use (yikes), and sometimes they are in a disolving gelatin like the liquid pods. But I guess the sacks of powder need not be as thick as the liquid ones.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

Some detergents say “septic safe” on the container. My folks bought the cheapest option which did not say one way or another, so I had to call the supplier, who then said it was septic safe. It’s a shame that in the 2020s we still don’t have transparency on what we buy.

activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

I recall someone in #chemistry (on freenode) talking about measuring detergent. He could have been a nutter, but stressed the importance of measuring the right amount, saying get a scale and weigh it according to the manual.

The manual for one of my machines is shit.. says look at the program table for detergent amount - then it’s omitted from the table. But what was useful was the manual said what the numbers meant. The lines marked “15” and “25” are for 15cm³ and 25cm³. The brim is 40cm³ and the prewash cup is 5cm³. Those are volumes, not weight. So I calculated the weight I needed at one point and IIRC it turned out that 15g of powder came out to 15cm³ (lucky me!). I don’t recall how I figured out that I needed 15g.

Anyway, these are the variables that influence the amount of detergent to use:

load size (some manuals make that a factor, but it’s unclear why because it’s always the same amount of water in the tub. The guy in #chemistry seemed to think it was important)
water hardness
program selected (I have ~6 or so programs plus a ½-load button, so effectively 12; some have a prewash cycle, some not)
type of detergent

Some of the short programs imply that slow solving detergents (tablets) should be avoided.

I still have not figured out what the ½-load button really does. Manual just says press it if you have less than half a load to save on water and power. That’s it. WTF? So I asked the manufacturer and they repeated the same useless answer, but said fill only 1 rack. WTF.. which rack? I wanted to know what the ½-load button actually changed the program so I could use it wisely. How does the machine know which rack I chose? I think the “load only one rack” answer from the manufacturer is bullshit. I’ll probably sprawl out my partial loads. The manual should be telling people how much water is used with this setting. I have no idea how it saves on energy since the program choice dictates a fixed water temp. Maybe it just comes down to the fact that it has less water to heat. In any case, I should probably use less detergent on partial loads but the manual doesn’t give the calculation or even enough info to be able to calculate it.

Too much detergent → etching (and waste of detergent)Too little detergent → repetition needed, which wastes water, energy, and detergent

If you don’t care about etching, then using too much is probably not a big deal.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

In the past couple months Google has become quite hostile toward front-ends that previously made it possible for Tor users to reach their content. And I don’t have a good connection so I can’t do videos anyway.

But indeed, it’s hard to find proper detergent. I have to go to a big store of a big grocery chain to get it. But it’s worth it on the basis of price alone. Buying a couple kilos of powder gives the most loads for the money. IIRC the pods were twice the cost of powder when comparing a promotional sales price on pods.

(edit) Oh, but speaking of youtube, video rBO8neWw04 (which I have a saved a copy of) goes into pods. The guy makes an interesting point: pods discourage the use of detergent in the prewash. Though I think he over stresses that.

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activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

The pics are a bit deceiving. They make it appear as if you get uniform thicknesses, but is that often the case? I doubt it. When a building is demolished, it’s disturbing how sloppy and chaotic they are. They just smash it to bits, producing all different sizes and shapes. I wish they would think about reuse. They could take a cutter and cut uniform blocks off the building which can then be used like building blocks. Instead you got a gnarly mess of blobs with rebar sticking out.

Anyway, I think it’s common to buy much less concrete than you need for a driveway, then mix urbanite with the wet mix so a large portion is reused. I’ve not done it myself but probably entails soaking the urbanite in polyvinylacetate (PVA aka wood glue). I once had to repair a broken concrete step as well as patch some existing stucco. If I had just put new concrete where needed, it would not stick to the old concrete well. So many bonding layers are needed. You water down PVA and paint that onto the old surface. Then when that’s ½ dry you do it again but with a little concrete in it. It’s like a sloppy slurry.. gets everywhere. Then again with a thicker layer. Then you also add PVA in the new concrete mix. That’s how to make it bond. So it’d be the same idea with urbanite. It would only trust that for non-structural projects though. Probably wouldn’t want a foundation relying on it.

activistPnk @slrpnk.net 1y ago

We are indeed.