Yup, they deliberately ran it into the ground. They took out loans against Kmart to buy Sears and sold Sears and Kmart properties off to give themselves money via stock buybacks.

And what’s worse, because it worked, you can see similar actions happening to other major retail outlets. Target, in particular, seems to be following directly in the footsteps of Kmart.

Agreed, very well done.

https://theconversation.com/nras-path-to-recovery-from-financial-woes-leaves-the-gun-group-vulnerable-to-new-problems-201144

Looks like the bankruptcy was killed. But yeah, the NRA has been bleeding members and is spending it’s money on legal flights. They are in a pretty bad state

2A absolutism is a recent invention in modern politics started by the NRA. Restrictions on guns and gun ownership have been in the law books since pretty close to the founding.

There are already restrictions on who can own guns and what guns can be purchased by the public.

When I say 2A insanity, I’m talking about Republicans blocking all common sense gun legislation. I don’t think that will stay forever. I don’t believe a repeal of 2A needs to happen to make things significantly better. You could, for example, make it illegal to sell/own guns under 30. You could ban magazines. You could limit the caliber of bullets sold. You could make gun manufacturers civilly liable for the advertisements they put out.

Before even addressing if 2A is a good amendment (it isn’t) we can do all this

I sort of wonder how much longer 2A idiocy will last in the US. The NRA has gone bankrupt and since they aren’t able to funnel Russian money to politicians like they used to be able to, their influence is basically zero at this point.

With them out of the picture, there’s really not a powerful gun lobby getting right wing media to talk about Democrats as gun grabbers.

If you peruse conservative spaces like I do, you’ll notice that talking point has evaporated.

Israel and its supporters did a GREAT job of linking anti-israel sentiment to antisemitism. That alone made reporting of its messed up actions and history taboo. Certainly does not help that neonazis are also frequently anti-israel.

But… Shit… I mean Israel was founded on white jewish supremacy. Real hard to have a state founded on racial supremacy not turn into a fucking nightmare.

It’s ok, just think of all the 4 year old hamas terrorists they killed!

usr does mean user. It was the place for user managed stuff originally. The home directory used to be a sub directory of the usr directory.

The meaning and purpose of unix directories has very organically evolved. Heck, it’s still evolving. For example, the new .config directory in the home directory.

Corporate media likes elections to be close and exciting because that draws ratings. Hence the reason they put on kid gloves for the idiot fascist.

There are premium brands that do well, but there are also non premium brands that do pretty well. GE, for example, tends to make fairly reliable product (even today) for roughly the same price point of samsung/lg.

An insulated box with a decent compressor does not cost 10k. Making a compressor that fails after 2 years is actually hard to do, something both LG and Samsung spent time and money to achieve.

Consider, for example, that nearly every car manufactured with an AC. Which is exactly the same tech as a fridge. Yet you rarely end up needing to replace the compressor on your car. You might need to recharge it or clean it, but not replace the compressor. 10k of your car price isn’t the HVAC.

There’s some appliance breakdown vids (idk if Rossman is one of them) but the gist is Samsung and LG like to put cheap plastic parts in high wear locations which inevitably fail.

Fridges are dead simple appliances. A compressor and evaporator coils with a temperature sensor. There’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t outlast you and everyone you love.

It’s insane these “premium” brands are built to fall like they do.

2 tips.

1. Negative air pressure is your friend. If you open the windows upstairs and down and blow air out of the house it’ll suck air from the downstairs to the upstairs cooling the entire house.

2. Bernoulli’s principle is your friend. Rather than having fans right next to the windows you’ll move more air if you back the fans a meter or so from the window. https://youtu.be/BhWhTbins_A?si=9LGd0_EmfPFBNnDJ

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I think we are on the same page. I completely agree that EVs aren’t enough or even the best solution.

Where does your power come from?

Right now? Primarily hydro with a strong solar and wind showing. Roughly 10% of my power is from Fossil fuels.

You are just shifting the shit elsewhere

Even with a pure fossil fuel grid, EVs still end up producing less CO2 than ICE vehicles. However, grids aren’t pure fossil fuels which means EVs are far cleaner than Fossil fuel vehicles. Especially in my current circumstance.

Less than 8% of energy consumption in the US comes from renewable energy. Another 8% come from nuclear.

13% while being one of the fastest growing energy production sectors.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

That’s petrol / natural gas / coal powering your home, factories, shops, and restaurant

Not mine because I live in the Pacific North West which is the greenest grid in the US.

At least in the US, it’s not just Netanyahu that’s an issue. A lot of the mainstream media is making the same conflation.

That’s why you’ll see in articles like this one https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/nyregion/columbia-university-campus-protests.html which focus far more on students saying dumb shit at a protest and less on the ongoing genocide.

And you have to take what is being claimed as “antisemitic” with a huge grain of skepticism. I’ve seen claims that statements like “free Palestine” and “from the rivers to the seas” are “antisemitic”.

This is problematic because even if you wanted to address antisemitism, focusing on people protesting a genocide is not the way to go. Instead, let’s focus on the avowed Nazis parading around CPAC. Or maybe the Nazis in favor of Israel’s genocide. Maybe we should wrestle with why antisemities are so often pro Israel.

Yup. If you are going to own a printer, get a laser black and white printer and keep it forever. Do not get an inkjet printer. And if you need color prints (you don’t) you can literally just do those at walgreens, cvs, or a bunch of other stores that will do color prints.

The only time you should get an inkjet printer is if you are a busy photographer selling a bunch of prints and you’ve hit the point where doing color prints through a store has become too expensive.

We may never know exactly how many people israel has butchered over the last 6 months. They are currently planning on building luxury condos over the mass graves of Palestinians.

The 30,000 confirmed dead is almost certainly under counted by a factor of 10x. And the genocide isn’t over yet. They are starving the survivors.

Yes and no.

Some salts are easier to work with than others. Kosher salt, in particular, is fairly hard to over season with because you can visually see just how much you’ve thrown onto a steak or such. Fine salt, on the other hand, is a lot easier to over season with.

But then it also depends a lot on the dish. Sauces are really hard to over season. The sea of fluid can absorb a fair amount of salt before it’s noticeable. Meats are similar. A steak can have a snow covering of kosher salt and it won’t really taste super salty.

Bread, on the other hand, will be noticeably worse if you throw in a tbs of salt instead a tsp.

But salt wasn’t specifically what I was thinking when I wrote that. Herbal seasoning garlic, rosemary, thyme, sage, etc, generally won’t overpower a dish if you have too much of them. Especially if you aren’t working with the powdered form. (Definitely possible to over season something with garlic salt/powder).