I’m a lot less likely to report a crime after the George Floyd murder. Granted violent crime, like murder, tends to get reported regardless of a person’s personal feelings about police, and reported murders are down

I like eco-dent I have some jagged spots on my teeth that most floss snags on. This stuff doesn’t snag and it uses wax instead of forever chemical

The nice thing about trials of corporations is discovery. We have evidence of Google intentionally making search worse, increasing the time spent looking for results, and this improving ad sales. All that came out in discovery.

LMGTFY In August, before the United Auto Workers strike, the Biden administration announced $15.5 billion in funding and loans to help car manufacturers redesign their factories for electric vehicle production.

Dams are scary too, I just hope people are able to decommission them slowly when the time comes. Otherwise the deluge is going to suck.

I will say my Fairphone is a good bit thicker than my work Iphone but honestly it’s not a significant downside for me. The weight is a bigger deal but still not worth the trade-off for a phone I can be confident I can repair myself

Looks like you can do it manually. Build your own Google flavor https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/134847/how-to-filter-out-a-long-list-of-sites-from-google-search

The ones that are successful at enshitification have captive markets. They’re a monopoly, monopsony, or in another kind of inelastic market. https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

Groups of humans have lived beneficially with other life before. Plenty of folks are doing it right now. The endless need for consumption and extraction are manufactured for the benefit of the few. Eliminate the system that requires endless economic growth and we can start making decisions that won’t destroy ourselves and others

When both parties agree on something it’s almost always bad

Say her name https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia

This is a tangent but I really enjoyed Changing Planes. It’s a collection of short stories. Each one covers a different world with different aliens.

Fairphone is also quite hackable. Hard to get in the US, only distributor is Murena. In Europe they’re pretty easy to find from what I hear. Sd exists but you need to power cycle the phone to access it so maybe not your best bet. Still, if I need to transfer stuff quickly USBC is really fast.

100%. Unrealistically effective is a better way to say it. Cops are bad at solving societal problems. Bad at solving murders, theft, and other crimes. However, those shows basically make the case that cops are the only ones capable of solving those problems.

That would be nice, but how? They have 50 years of excellent, unearned, PR. 20% of scripted television is about unrealistically wonderful cops. When a local government has a problem their first response is always to throw cops at it. Any time they get the slightest pushback they threaten to stop doing all the things the municipality thinks they’re doing. Every time a cop’s ability to do whatever they want, including nothing, is threatened a massive media reaction rises up to defend them.

That’s why I think we need alternatives. We need to replace cops. The people who solve problems cannot think of themselves as sheep dogs protecting the sheep from the wolves. Someone protecting a potential DV victim from assault might need a gun but someone handling traffic enforcement does not. People running welfare checks don’t need guns. People responding to a public mental health emergency almost never need guns.

Citation needed and Behind the Bastards cop episodes are excellent background if you’d like to know why I’m so jaded when it comes to cop reform.

The system is designed to fail the vulnerable. Cops are domestic abusers, racists, and fascists. We need to develop ways to protect ourselves and our community. Wilkinson should have had an option other than the cops. She needed people who had been victimized in the past or at least would believe her and stood to protect her. Folks who would take turns keeping watch over her or give her and her kids a safe place to stay.

I don’t think the cops can be reformed but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep each other safe.

You can get a lot of rice and beans for 75 dollars. Definitely sounds like a rough couple weeks tho

Mirror for folks on voyager: https://web.archive.org/web/20240208172049/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/business/economy/commercial-real-estate-banking-industry.html/

They should regulate the weight of cars. There’s no reason passenger vehicles should be as heavy as they are. For EVs they honestly shouldn’t have as much range as they do. 150 miles and improved charging infrastructure, make charging easier for folks who park on the street, is a better way to go. Folks who need to drive more than that a day should have a hybrid or ICE vehicle. Ideally a small fuel efficient one. Folks who need pickups for work should be able to buy the small European versions or work vans.

Honestly tho. ISIS was born in Abu Graib, a US run prison. The Taliban was a reaction to the warlords the US funded in the war against the USSR. Hamas has been funded by Israel, a US supported ally, for years. All the alternatives to Hamas in Gaza were suppressed. And this is just the middle east. The same pattern is repeated in South America and East Asia.