• 1 Post
  • 483 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
cake
Cake day: April 24th, 2024

help-circle

  • Kid has a right hand with 6 fingers.

    Theres …some kind of extremely creepy … child sized, christmas doll… or christmas dollified child next to the dad…

    Dad is maniacally enthusiastic while mom is terrified and sobbing…

    And dad has a christmass doll / gremlin thing attached to his shoulder.

    … anybody notice any other nonsense?






  • Absurd levels of wealth disparity, beyond anything in recorded human history, breaking society and making a whole bunch of generally useful metrics now basically meaningless.

    Consumer debt levels skyrocketing.

    Housing/Rental prices still rising.

    Average college costs / debt still rising.

    Job growth isn’t keeping up with population growth.

    (Even after recovering from Covid, the Employment to Population ratio is still lower than what it was from 04 to 08. Its only 1% higher right now than it was at its lowest from the 08 crash, and its been headed downward since 23.)

    Trying to get a decent job without nepotism/networking is 5x harder than working a decent job due to completely insane requirements and ghost jobs… and nepotism.

    And real median income is basically flat since 2020, not rising by much at all.

    Your headline econ inflation stat does a neat job of not really reflecting the reality of what a common person’s budget looks like.



  • The even shorter, more direct version is:

    ‘Local community’ actually means ‘Official representatives of the local community.’

    EDIT: And ‘great relationship’ means ‘we do business with whatever entity regularly, and that business we do is more advantageous to us than it is to them’.

    … Also… I’m in America so… maybe this is somehow different in various Euro countries, but I seriously doubt it…

    There’s no way Amazon invests in local roads.

    I’m from Seattle.

    Our roads are absolute ass, I’m talking worse than the average road in a small town in South Dakota or Montana.

    They certainly don’t directly fund any roadwork around Seattle, despite having many logistics hubs in and near the city.

    They’re more likely to strong arm a city, even literally sue them, into upgrading their roads than they are to… like directly contribute some share of their revenue or profit directly into the city’s road maintenance or construction budget.

    0 chance Amazon directly funds building of any roads beyond the roads on their property.

    Provide computers to schools? Sure, I believe that.

    But I am highly doubtful that Amazon directly contributes to building local roads.

    Only way I can even see that kind of making sense in a roundabout way is if the city has some kind of specific tax on heavier vehicles or vehicles used in delivery/logistics…

    In which case … this would apply to any delivery/logistics vehicle of any kind that either transits through or is based out of the city.

    By that logic anyone that pays a sales tax or property tax in the city pays for new roads, likely significantly more, as a group.


  • “Amazon wont pay a living wage due to its great relationship with the local community”.

    So, taken by a normal person, not aquainted with corpo speak… that is some astounding anti-logic.

    But if you know a bit of corpo, what that actually means is something like:

    We have the local city government by the balls, greatly overexagerated the economic benefit our warehouse would bring to the city, got them to subsidize our construction costs, relax zoning laws or fees, change tax laws or give us a special carve out so that we pay less than if anyone else tried to build a warehouse here…

    … and now if the city gov goes for policies/laws we don’t like, we’ll just shut down this location, I’ll go work the same job somewhere else, everyone else is unemployed, and then we’ll tell the media that’s because of the city government, and they’ll likely lose their elected positions.






  • Other people have already pointed out that your conception of shotgun spread is essentially based in video games, where the spread is (in all but basically milsim games) greatly exaggerated.

    You’ve countered that drones can fly higher than an actual shotgun range.

    Yep. They can.

    … Did you read the article I posted?

    Shotguns are being used fairly commonly by both sides.

    It doesn’t matter what you or I think about how practical or useful they are…

    The people fighting the war think they are practical and useful.

    Nonetheless, here’s my attempt to explain the popularity of shotguns in Ukraine as anti drone weapons:

    This is not a solution geared toward being able to shoot down any drone, of any size or capability, at any range, at any altitude.

    Obviously a shotgun is not going to be able to shootdown a greyhawk or reaper style drone.

    Most of the small FPV drones that attack infantry or ground vehicles do so by basically either dropping a bomb or grenade or mortar round from maybe 25 to 150 feet in the air…

    Or just being rigged with some kind of an explosive to explode on contact or via a remote trigger.

    (Also, these cheap FPV drones do not really handle altitudes above roughly 150 ft that well (though this will vary by exact model). Unless its a dead calm day, gusts of wind easily blow them around, draining its limited batteries as it tries to keep its position steady, severly shortening the drone’s range.)

    These kinds of drones are extremely cheap, plentiful, and effective against infantry and many ground vehicles…

    When it comes to these kinds of drones, shotguns are also extremely cheap and plentiful, and practical self defense weapons.

    Shotguns are more useful against these kinds of FPV drones than an average assault rifle, due to the spread of shot.

    They are way, way more cost effective than using a tunguska or gephard or some kind of MANPADS platform designed to shoot down jet aircraft.

    Shotguns are also just more numerous, and don’t require specialized training/equipment like a dedicated AA platform or EM jamming and all the equipment that entails.

    You can just give a few out to every squad or vehicle crew, and thats way, waaay better than just hoping you’re operating near enough to an expensive friendly AA platform that exists in far more limited numbers, or being SOL if you’re not.

    Further, a shotgun is also just useful as a general combat weapon.

    Sure, buckshot has limited range, but sometimes fights occur within tight conditions… namely trenches or an urban environment.

    Also slug rounds exist and can give you more range than buck or birdshot.

    Also you can use door breacher rounds, or slugs in a pinch, to blow apart door hinges and locks.





  • I have a Walmart+ subscription, literally the only thing I’m subscribed to (beyond utilities or whatever).

    Why?

    I’m disabled, live off of only disability, my car got stolen.

    Walmart accepts SNAP, and a + subscription gets you free, same day deliveries from your local store, as well as free 3 day shipping for something they retail but don’t have in stock at the moment at your local store.

    Very, very useful for groceries when you have no means to get to a grocery store.

    A subscription costs a bit less than $15 bucks a month, and deliveries cost $10 bucks minimum each time otherwise.

    … Had I a car, I’d hobble to food banks. But I don’t, and am basically immobile, and still require food to not die.

    You know all those meal kit delivery plans you see everyone advertising on their youtube videos?

    Yeah, none of them (that I’m aware of) accept SNAP, even though they easily could, as they’re not sending you hot food.