Politics

As long as you don’t use a DE on it, a pi3 is great for experimenting with server software. I still use my 3b for plenty of things.

That doesn’t sound like it would work. Ben would continue to treat Beth poorly, and your relationship with him wouldn’t improve in any way. Don’t ditch your principles for the sake of revenge.

Either distance yourself from Ben, or try to have a serious talk with him. Be the adult in the room.

My wife calls them her emotional support tabs.

A couple things we can gather from these sources:

1. Being near a banana is likely a much lower dosage. The BED article notes that eating a lot of bananas doesn’t give linear dosages, as the excess potassium is discarded. And if you’re not absorbing much radiation from it being literally inside you, I can’t imagine you’re getting much from having it further away (even at high quantities).
2. According to the xkcd chart, we receive a yearly dosage of 390uSv from the potassium naturally in our bodies, and living in a stone, brick, or concrete building for a year results in only 70uSv. I’m not sure what the equivalent exposure would be for injecting those materials, but the picture I’m getting at this point is that external exposure to bananas would likely be less fatal than the sheer mass of what would be required to give a significant dose.

Relevant links:

• Banana Equivalent Dose
• Relevant xkcd

Based on the chart, even if you got a full 0.1uSv dose from each of the 10,000 bananas, it would be 1mSv, which doesn’t seem fatal.

I’ve worked with lots of college students in my time. One thing I recommend to them is to pick classes based on the instructor, not based on the course content (something I wish someone had told me).

A good instructor can make any topic engaging and enjoyable. And people have different preferences for how information is conveyed (for example, I gravitate toward instructors that use diagrams and other visual aids, it works best for me). So look around until you find someone that really clicks with you.

The other thing that works for me is having some sort of end goal. I find it easier to stay engaged when I get to do something meaningful with what I’m learning.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to learn more about these topics? Understanding your motivation might help to figure out something that works for you.

Holy generalizations, Batman!

My purpose in making the distinction isn’t to be pedantic, it’s to help clarify the nature of the class warfare we’re dealing with. I don’t care if you want to use the term “middle class”. I only bring up the distinction because of the nature of the original post, which was explicitly noting the false narrative of the “lazy poor”.

Tax the rich, restore the middle class, use whatever terminology you want. But understand that the poor are not the enemy of the middle class, and they’re not the villains. The rich people are.

Wealth does messed up things to our brains.

Nobody wants to believe they’re the “bad guys”, or “privileged”, or anything like that. So when you have more wealth than 99% of other people out there, you (consciously or subconsciously) come up with ways to justify it.

In this case, the multimillionaires believe they are the “normal”, middle-of-the-road class, because they compare themselves against the ultra-rich. And anyone who has less than them must be lazy, or bad with money, or some other moral failing. Because if the millionaires aren’t morally superior, the only other explanation is privilege or greed, and they can’t live with that.

There are a handful of wealthy people who haven’t succumbed to that as much. Dolly Parton is a great example–one article I read suggested she’d be one of the wealthiest people in the world if she weren’t donating 90 to 95% of her income for most of her career. But when you have empathy and a lot of wealth, you end up with just a little wealth and a lot of grateful people.

I mostly agree. They’re synonymous today, but I think there’s still an important distinction.

The term “middle class” is distinct from the “lower class.” But those two are more or less the same when compared to the “upper class” (what I would call the “wealth class”). Both lower and middle classes need to work in order to survive, while the wealth class has enough money to live without working (many of them still work, but it’s optional for them).

Any distinction between lower and middle class ends up harming both, and allowing the upper class to hoard more wealth. I generally try to promote the term “working class” because it doesn’t divide us, and more accurately portrays the differences between classes.

An illustration in this vein:

This is a recurring theme in American politics in all sorts of areas.

I’m Canadian-born, and went through the process of a TN1 status, to a green card, to citizenship. There is an astounding amount of ignorance around how that works.

For example, the vast majority of Americans thought I would be granted citizenship when I married an American. Nope! The only advantage marriage gives is that you get to skip the green card lottery.

But the process still takes months, dozens of forms, and several thousand dollars (and I did the paperwork myself–those not fluent in English or not as confident in the paperwork will end up paying over $10,000 easily). And citizenship takes years and even more paperwork. People who think immigrants are just coasting along enjoying the easy life need to turn off Fox News and get out and talk to people.

You’re right, but that’s not middle class–that’s working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of “middle” class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.

There’s never been a middle class. The illusion of the “lazy poor” is fabricated by the wealth class to divide the working class.

Fortissimo?

Touche

Yeah, like I said I’m not knocking any of these activities, and they all have some reason behind them. On the “prepper” side, lots of people recognize the value of things like emergency plans and even having a go-bag packed. There’s value in it, for sure.

I guess I’m not as concerned about some data being lost, just as I’m not as concerned about prepping for imminent nuclear war.

Ah, but does Kiwix have that ridiculous labrynth game?

Fair enough. But when people find out I’ve never seen Forest Gump or some other classic, I get the second reaction.

Usually I don’t know about my knowledge gaps until someone fills me in, so it’s hard to say.

There are a lot of movies that I’ve never seen that apparently everyone else has seen. I usually just smile and nod when people talk to me as if I’ve seen whatever they’re referencing, it’s easier than dealing with the incredulity and making false promises about getting around to seeing it.

Also, relevant xkcd

🫥 Their “repository” is a OneDrive folder copied from the last guy’s laptop