Activating your almonds, I see

Oh I totally agree about that, we need to move away from the ubiquitous use of plastics that don’t biodegrade in relatively short order

Ah fair, apologies if I misread the tone

Synthetic isn’t inherently bad just because some synthetic things are bad. Until we get more information on this thing, your snark is entirely baseless

Yer not gonna fool me with yer

checks notes

child safety laws, ya damn dirty communist!

I’m going to preface this with saying I don’t support communism or centrally planned socialism, so this isn’t me handwaving things away. It’s just that this is a nuanced topic and definitions are important, and the red scare has sucessfully lied to most people about what these words mean.

The government being in control of everything is not the sole defining feature of communism. Socialism is where the people own the means of production (business assets), typically through the government owning it all. Communism takes that a step further by removing currency and markets from the system and using some other system to determine how to create and allocate goods and services. And for the people to own the means of production through the government, they need to have an actual say in the government.

Basically to have centrally-planned socialism or communism, you need the government owning all business assets in addition to something like a democracy or republic form of governmental policy. If you don’t have a governmental policy that is controlled by the people, then the people don’t own the means of production and by definition you don’t have socialism or communism. You have one of the various forms of autocracy/oligarchy/etc.

The issue we see here with people conflating modern day China, the USSR, etc with communism is that the change in government started out as socialist or communist movements, but then got coopted by fascists who removed political agency from the people, but also decided to keep calling themselves communists. However, overthrowing a form of government and pretending you’re still that form of government doesn’t magically make it true. North Korea isn’t democratic or a republic just because the rulers call themselves it. Similarly, China’s government is defined by its actions: state capitalist and not communist.

China is state capitalist, not communist

I mean acting like Poland was communist or socialist under Stalin and the USSR is like saying north Korea is a democratic people’s republic under the Kims. Regardless of the merits of or against socialism, this argument is pretty silly.

In order to call yourself a capitalist, you have to own capital.

Nah “capitalist” in this sense just describes what economic policy the person supports. Same way socialists in the US don’t need to have an equal ownership in the means of production to be considered socialists.

A small power, they said. $100 billion, you said.

Being able to manually adjust my focus on and interest in what I’m doing.

No, we’ve known what to do with the waste for decades. Put it in cans, fill the can with cement, coat the can in cement, put the cans in a facility that is protected from geological events like earthquakes, and periodically check the cans/facility. In the US for example, The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was being made before political pressure shut it down.

The waste issue is and always will be one of political pressure and ignorance by the masses, not an actual logistical issue

Definitely a circlejerk outside of specific subs

Anything that requires long travel distances…

DnD isn’t the god of fantasy. Just because what’s physically a wyvern in DnD is labeled as a dragon in another fantasy universe doesn’t mean it isn’t a dragon in that other fantasy universe. It’s like TES calling dwarves deep elves. Just because dwarves aren’t a type of elf in DnD doesn’t mean they aren’t in TES

If counting the money was a problem to overcome intended by OP, they would’ve mentioned it. For the sake of the post’s intent I think it’s safe to assume the money is in large bills, which can be counted very quickly by a machine. Add to that that I can just use an ATM at the front of my bank, and things are much more fast and automatic.

Once it’s in my account, it’s in my account and I can use it right away

Bring it to my bank, deposit, then purchase online.

Though I’d leave it in my index fund, on average they perform better than actively managed accounts

and I prefer it to be water and dust proof.

Adding replaceable batteries does nothing to affect this. An o-ring with a clamping mechanism will make it just as water and dust resistant as before. Your phone’s charging port is more susceptible to water and dust than a replaceable battery will ever be

Is there a Moore-type law for AI I wonder?

Large amount of IT fields follow parabolic or S-shaped curves to their progress. It’s part of the reason technology has advanced so quickly over the past hundred-ish years

A Milli