!homelab@lemmy.ml can easily become very involved.
But for other activities, fishing, watercraft (motorized or not), woodworking, ham radio, and civic advocacy (ie public transport, housing, anti-corruption). All of these can easily be a lifetime's worth. All but the last one do require obtaining equipment, but the best part is that the equipment is often readily available on the used market.
One thing which isn't immediately apparent, even to Americans themselves, is that the large American political parties are less equivalent to individual political parties elsewhere, and are closer to "uneasy coalitions", like those found in Europe involving multiple parties trying (and maybe failing) to form a government. That makes it harder to draw broad conclusions like "USA Democrats would be right-of-center" because progressives and "DINOs" (Democrats in name only) within the party would be left-wing or right-wing, respectively. Logically, the same applies to the Republican party, although ranging from right-wing RINOs (Republicans in name only) and "moderate Republicans", to the far-right factions of the party, like neo-Nazis and MAGA.
With that said, what you're describing sounds similar to social democracy. Not to be confused with democratic socialism, which is generally further along to the left than social democracy, with the goal to reform the state (or specifically, individual US States) away from private ownership of the means of production and away from capitalism. When Bernie Sanders of Vermont says "I am a socialist", his positions align well to European social democracy, even though he originally described himself as "democratic socialist".
For an example of democratic socialism activities taking place in the USA, consider that the state of Virginia purchased a 35 mile (56 km) freight railroad west of Alexandria, in order to stop paying rent to privately-owned Norfolk Southern railroad and to enable expansion of the existing state-sponsored Amtrak commuter train service serving that region. The acquisition was both cost-effective and still preserves freight train access, but now it's the state that controls what goes on those rails, much like how they regulate the weight and dimensions of what travels on the public roadways.
But I must reiterate that the precise definition of political ideology is less important than community-building, since that's how ideology becomes reality. If you can find a party whose well-stated values you support, then do what you can to help them achieve their goals. That's going to be more valuable than taxonomy.
Direct link to Guardian Bicycle Company's submission to the Dept of Commerce's request for comments: https://downloads.regulations.gov/BIS-2025-0023-0686/attachment_1.pdf
Essentially, the CEO writes that American bicycle manufacturing has dwindled since the 1940s, with ancillary focus on lost capabilities for drawing wire, extruding tubing, and bending metal from sheets. And since 86% percent of bicycles are imported from China -- he says; citation needed -- the adoption of the proposed 50% tariffs in derivative steel and aluminum products would :
eliminate over 200,000,000 pounds of imported steel and 40,000,000 pounds of imported aluminum into the United States annually
And:
will promote fair competition, enhance domestic supply chain security, and support national security.
He also attempts the nebulous task of back-calculating the current tariff burden on imported bicycles, trying to justify even a 50% tariff increase would still be a small pittance, "insufficient to reshore production and sustain capacity and demand for bicycles made with American steel and aluminum"
Needless to say, the CEO's letter is all over the place. And even if I believed every assertion as true, I'm left wondering what exactly is the position of the company. Do they want tariffs more than 50%?
But with that summary out of the way, this is how I see things: a bicycle company is seeking to intentionally increase the price of all bicycles in the USA market, for reasons of market protection for themselves, with full knowledge that -- by their own assertion -- over 80% of bicycle sales will be impacted. I don't give any credit to their claim that the tariff would only add $13 to each bicycle, because the reality is that a rising (tax) tide lifts all ships, and when everyone has to increase prices to pass on the duty, that makes it easier to pad out the price for a nicer profit margin, with zero extra value to the buyer.
I am disgusted. And not only that, I only see short-term vision from this bicycle company, which would give me pause if I ever came across their products in real life. After all, a proper bicycle is not a consumer good but a durable mode of transportation. A bicycle should last decades. If this company's advocated policy is a myopic view of how bicycles deliver value, then there's no way I can see them actually producing a long-term, durable product. I wouldn't buy such a thing.
In my world view, value is delivered either by being cheap but exactly as advertised, or being pricey but worthwhile because of its longevity. I personally prefer items from the latter, but I acknowledge that items from the former also deliver value because they're more accessible. Here, this CEO wants to rob every American of cheap-value bikes and of long-term durable bikes.
I hope that everyone learns of Guardian Bicycles, for the terrible reasons they've decided to lay out in public comment.
unthinkable danger
This phrasing is so very telling of a moral panic.
Concrete example of threat modeling: if someone found out I was using Signal, for any reason at all, would that cause problems for me?
If yes, then Signal is not a good option. If no, then Signal may be appropriate. Why? Because in their documentation, they explicitly state that while messages are confidential, the fact that you're using Signal cannot be hidden, and so they don't make that guarantee.
Tbf, can't the other party mess it up with signal too?
Yes, but this is where threat modeling comes into play. Grossly simplified, developing a threat model means to assess what sort of attackers you reasonably expect to make an attempt on you. For some people, their greatest concern is their conservative parents finding out that they're on birth control. For others, they might be a journalist trying to maintain confidentiality of an informant from a rogue sheriff's department in rural America. Yet others face the risk of a nation-state's intelligence service trying to find their location while in exile.
For each of these users, they have different potential attackers. And Signal is well suited for the first two, and only alright against the third. After all, if the CIA or Mossad is following someone around IRL, there are other ways to crack their communications.
What Signal specifically offers is confidentiality in transit, meaning that all ISPs, WiFi networks, CDNs, VPNs, script skiddies with Wireshark, and network admins in the path of a Signal convo cannot see the contents of those messages.
Can the messages be captured at the endpoints? Yes! Someone could be standing right behind you, taking photos of your screen. Can the size or metadata of each message reveal the type of message (eg text, photo, video)? Yes, but that's akin to feeling the shape of an envelope. Only through additional context can the contents be known (eg a parcel in the shape of a guitar case).
Signal also benefits from the network effect, because someone trying to get away from an abusive SO has plausible deniability if they download Signal on their phone ("all my friends are on Signal" or "the doctor said it's more secure than email"). Or a whistleblower can send a message to a journalist that included their Signal username in a printed newspaper. The best place to hide a tree is in a forest. We protect us.
My main issue for signal is (mostly iPhone users) download it "just for protests" (ffs) and then delete it, but don't relinquish their acct, so when I text them using signal it dies in limbo as they either deleted the app or never check it and don't allow notifs
Alas, this is an issue with all messaging apps, if people delete the app without closing their account. I'm not sure if there's anything Signal can do about this, but the base guarantees still hold: either the message is securely delivered to their app, or it never gets seen. But the confidentiality should always be maintained.
I'm glossing over a lot of cryptographic guarantees, but for one-to-one or small-group private messaging, Signal is the best mainstream app at the moment. For secure group messaging, like organizing hundreds of people for a protest, that is still up for grabs, because even if an app was 100% secure, any one of those persons can leak the message to an attacker. More participants means more potential for leaks.
When I see E2EE and XMPP mentioned, I think of this blog post by Soatok, outlining some very odd cryptographic choices in XMPP + OMEMO: https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/
I would very much like to see a richer playing field than just Signal for private messaging, but it's a tough nut to crack. For exactly which aspect that turns me away from XMPP for E2EE, I think this nails it down:
you only need check whether OMEMO is on by default (it isn’t), or whether OMEMO can be turned off even if your client supports it (it can).
When the competition is Signal, these sorts of details matter a lot.
There are several different types of microcars available, but the Canta is currently the only one considered a mobility aid
As the article suggests, micro cars are intended to serve a different population, which would be people who don't have the full mobility needed to ride a standard bicycle. And while I do recognize that handbikes, recumbent bikes, and all sorts of other variants of bikes exist, and that people with disabilities do use these, I reject the notion that these should be the only option available to them.
The availability of micro cars gives people with disabilities a choice, in a country where the bike infrastructure investments exist even in rural areas, where public transit options become more limited. The balance of mobility vs risks to other cyclists is well-thought out in these rural areas, but makes less sense within cities. And as the article describes, that's exactly why Amsterdam revoked the use of micro cars within the city, where basically every other option is available, including the streetcar system.
It was bicyclists that started the Good Roads Movement at the end of the 19th Century, and it seems we will have to rise to the occasion once again. A century of paving innovations has proven insufficient to stave off the damage caused by car dependency. The sheer amount of road maintenance associated with suburban sprawl threatens municipal budgets and leaves us all with worse surfaces on average.
Either these damaging road users must pay their fair due, or the roads must be reallocated to users that cause less damage and reduce the ongoing maintenance costs, if there is to be any hope of fiscal sustainability.
When doing comparisons of the nature posed by the title, it is all-important to establish the baseline criteria. That is, what does the landscape look like just prior to implementing the titular policy?
If starting from the position of the present-day USA, then it is almost certain that free-at-time-of-service universal health care would cause the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to rewrite their projections for medical personnel jobs, in very much an upward trajectory. After all, middle- and upper-class people that already had decent won't somehow need more healthcare just because it's free, but people who have never seen a doctor in their adult life would suddenly have access to a physician. More total patients means more medical staff needed, both short-term and long-term. The latter is because the barrier to annual checkups is all but eliminated, which should also yield better outcomes through early detection of problems and development of working rapports with one's physician.
If, however, the baseline situation is a functional but private-payer healthcare system in a place with a low Gini coefficient -- meaning income is not concentrated in a few people -- then it's more likely that healthcare is already accessible to most people. Thus, the jump in patients caused by free healthcare may be minimal or even non-existent. It may, however, also be that free healthcare would benefit different segments of this population through access to a higher standard of quality care, if removing the private-payer system results in dismantling of legacies caused by racism, colonialism, or whatever else.
After all, that's one of the tenants of a universal healthcare system: people get the treatment they need, with no regard for who they are or what wealth they have (or not).
PLUS the extra weight of the machine and empty battery pack
In a lot of ways, there are parallels here to how 4WD on a motor vehicle has a tendency to get people into more pickles than out of one, due to human psychology. The go-to example would be snowy weather: the driver of a 4WD automobile can use their car to go deeper up an unplowed road, but then get stuck further from help. Meanwhile, a 2WD driver would have turned around earlier, and might just wait out the snowstorm with some hot cocoa by the alpine hotel's fireplace. The fact is that 4WD has an advantage by using all wheels to get the car moving, but has a negative advantage when stopping, since all cars have brakes on all wheels.
All good treks into nature need to be well-planned, and although I support the idea of getting more people out and about, I also agree that lowering the barrier to entry means some people will indeed bite off more than they can chew, when things start to go wrong. With any hope, they build an emergency beacon into these things.
I'd love to personally see if people that use ebikes only, have any stamina for actually biking or of it's made them lazy and weaker.
Not a direct answer to this scenario, but I recall seeing some early research that does indicate that riders of even throttle-only ebikes do exert modest effort, raising their baseline bodily parameters. If I had to guess, it may have to do with the activity of balancing a two-wheeler. Though some follow-up to that would be whether motorcycle riders have the same benefit, and whether the increased heart rate isn't due to something anciliary, such as the increased fear of being struck by a motor vehicle (specifically in the USA).
You might consider posting to !indiegaming@lemmy.world as well
For a second, I thought that thumbnail was of the world's littlest skyscraper.
IMO, motorcycle haulers are readily available, handle weights well in excess of typical ebikes, can accommodate fattires as needed, and have the only drawback of requiring the bike to be secured using tow straps or chain. Though depending on the weight of an ebike, this may very well be preferable.
Having previously been on the reviewing side of job applications, if you have GitHub/Codeberg repos with your work, please, please, please include those links somewhere on the resume, ideally spelled out and also clickable in the PDF. It's a neat trick to showcase more work than what fits on a page.
Although the non-technical recruiters might gloss over links, the technical reviewers very much look at your code examples. Why? Because seeing your coding style and hygiene, Git workflow and commit messages, documentation, and overall approach to iterative improvement of a codebase is far more revealing than anything that AI-nonsense coding tests can show.
So while this won't necessarily get your resume past the first gate, always be thinking about the different audiences whom your resume might be passed around to, within the prospective organization you're applying to.
I use LibreOffice has my word processor, and no substantial amounts of automation to speak of. And each time I intend to submit a resume, I save off a new copy and tailor it specifically for the recipient employer. After all, what's relevant and worth highlighting (not literally!) to one employer won't be the same as for another.
Yes, I'm aware that a lot of recruiters/reviewers use LLMs as a first-pass filter, but that's precisely why my submission should be crafted by hand each time: if it's an LLM, then I want its checkbox exercises to be easily met, and if it's a human, I want to put my best foot forward.
In days of yore, where paper resumes were circulated by hand to prospective employers at career fairs, having a bespoke resume for each would have been difficult to pull off. But with PDF submissions, there's no reason not to gear your submission to exactly the skills that a company is looking for.
To be clear, tailoring a resume does not mean adding fake or hallucinated qualifications that you do not possess. Rather, it means that you copyedit the resume so that your relevant skills are readily apparent. If you already listed an example project from a prior employer or internship, but a different project would better align to the prospective employer, consider swapping out the example for max appeal. Bullet-points are particularly easy to rearrange: if you have web-dev skills and that's desirable by the employer, those should be moved up the list of bullet-points. And so on.
Although resumes are now mostly PDFs, the custom remains -- both as an informal fairness criteria between applicants, but also because it would be more to read -- that one's resume should fit on a single sheet of US Letter or A4 paper, barring unique exceptions like professors that have long lists of published papers or systems architects that hold patent numbers. And so the optimization problem is how to most effectively use the space on that sheet of digital paper.
I'm informed the British do read the time 6:30 as "half six", a shortened form of "half past six". So "inch an a half" might become "incuax", pronounced as "in-cha" and containing the unnecessary U, and an X for that Norman/French faux lineage.
Naturally, Americans would instead pronounce it as "in-coh", which would destroy any understanding when also speaking about Incoterms.
Oh, also: 1 1/2 inches is 1/8th of a foot. 3/4" is 1/16th of a foot.
It's not often that I'm surprised by some of the divisors that appear in US Customary or Imperial units, but I'm now shuddering to imagine what sort of horrific system of unit names have been built atop this fact of twos-powers fractions of a foot.
Knowing the English, they'll likely have invented a name during the medieval time for 1/8th of a foot (1.5 inches), like dozebarleycorn, since a barleycorn is already 1/3 of an inch. And then 3/4" might be a demidoze, or some such insanity. The horror, the horror.
Although I suspect this particular quirk of dimensional lumber stems from the British, the result is not too unexpected for modern-day America. After all, we (insanely) deal with sales tax the same way, where the advertised price is pre-tax, and consumers have to do math if they want to compute the final bill before reaching the checkstand.
So having to measure the lumber to acquire its actual dimensions is entire above-board [pun intended] for anything beyond putting together a wood-frame structure.
It very much depends, I think. Ham radio was really helpful to me during 2020 because it was a social activity that was compatible with distancing requirements, and is a great way to talk with people afar. As in, other continents but also local folks as well.
Fishing, watercraft, and woodworking all have different prerequisites, like a nearby body of water or the space for equipment. They also require some logistical planning, like fishing licenses, how to identify and prep fish, and where to source wood. These things are often easier to learn if you know someone who already partakes in the activity.
But for civil advocacy, that one has no tangible result that you can put in the living room, earns no awards or points, and puts you directly in the public spotlight, ugly as it may be. And yet, despite all that, it has the potential to impact the greatest number of people in the most accessible way. Paraphrasing a Greek proverb, to commit to this endeavor knowing full well that it will never serve to yourself a benefit, that is a sign of a great and virtuous citizen. Such actions speak loudest.
All the activities I've listed are activities that hone personal development, and can be passed on to another generation, just in case you wanted even more engrossment. I'd say the greatest challenge is just getting started, taking that first step, whatever the activity may be.
Mistakes will be made early on, but this isn't amateur aviation or bomb disposal where the consequences are dire. Sometimes you just have to send it and keep at it.