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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2025

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  • Not to be overly morbid, but what’s the point in saving up for retirement if the job is killing you? Financial security is important, but so is your mental health. And based on your general field, I don’t think I need to explain that stress has real, quantifiable consequences. I wouldn’t be surprised if reducing your stress level actually raises your ability to do some stuff for yourself that you’re currently finding pretty impossible. Less stress at work might give you more energy to exercise, cook healthy meals, better maintain your home, etc.

    You might need to adjust some of your “extra” spending to make it work, but if that’s the only real sacrifice in the switch, I’d say make the switch. You’re obviously unhappy with what you’ve got or you wouldn’t be looking at other options and asking the internet.

    FWIW, I’m in my mid 30s and changed careers ten years ago. I was a chef and loved what I did, but I had a boss that completely killed my passion to grow or even sustain. I literally got a raise when I quit for a job scrubbing toilets. I found my footing in power plants and now I’m an operator in-house. It’s never too late to make a change. You’re never in too deep. And in many cases, it’s gonna take a step down before you have a chance to rise up higher. Never stop learning and growing. Cheers and good luck :)


  • I know you phrased it as “losing” here, but it still made me think of that moment in Firefly when somebody refers to Mal having fought on the wrong side in a battle, and he says “May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”

    When a person has convictions and is put at a certain sort of fork in the road, they would rather do anything else before ever seeing themselves transform into the sort of person who would take one of those paths. Some would sell their souls to survive, and some know that their cause is worth several times more than their souls are worth, and the bill comes due at some point.

    A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.



  • Big if true. They are claiming a lot of things, which would be exciting if I had any reason to believe that they’re anything more than claims, probably to juice investment. Sodium ion battery tech is infamous for being heavier per kW such that it’s less ideal for EVs, last for fewer power cycles such that it’s less ideal for EVs, and the cost savings to switch just hasn’t been enough to justify. Here, they’re claiming comparable energy density, 2.5-5x the power cycles, and under 10% of the cost compared to lithium ion, all without mentioning how they’ve managed to achieve all of this. I want this to be true, but I’m not jumping for joy until I see them actually selling this product that they claim will exist at this price that they claim it will be.

    I would’ve been on board with sodium ion tech for home battery solutions connected to smart power management on a market adjusted power plan before ever seeing a breakthrough like this. Imagine subsidizing your home power needs with a battery during the hot summer day and then charging that battery overnight at 2am when there are minimal power needs on the grid. That application doesn’t really care about weight, and if you could just call somebody to come swap out your batteries every couple years, then the power cycle limit doesn’t really matter either. As for cost, early adopters of the idea could inject the capital for these companies to scale up production which would drive costs down. Suddenly, 20 years from now, who the fuck bothers to have a gas/diesel backup generator at their house anymore? Now if these claims turn out to be true, every home and business could utilize this plan.


  • The question you’re asking is actually very complicated. Pretty much every for-profit media company will have a bias to the right since their goal is to profit today and survive to profit tomorrow. Lowering the taxes for the company and for the wealthy who own large portions of the company are obviously something that the company and the people running the company want, and the platform of the right is consistently to lower taxes on businesses and the wealthy.

    The wild thing is the way that the right has shifted in the past 30 years or so. Politicians would stir bigoted voters up with dogwhistle rhetoric while maintaining some level of deniability so that non-bigots would also still feel okay voting for them. This all changed with trump. Suddenly, it was possible to say the quiet part out loud and still get elected. Rather than using mild bigotry as a tool to get into office and then make bank off of bribes and carving out loopholes and conduct insider trading, now moron bigots themselves are running and winning, and they don’t actually know what to do or how to do it, so they mostly just shitpost and grandstand because they don’t actually know shit about governing.

    We’re now coming to a point where these companies are hopefully starting to realize that the right is so bad at governing and so damaging with their shitposting that they’re actually hurting these companies’ bottom line. I wouldn’t dare call Democrats “the left” because they’re factually a center-right party; the Democrats were posturing to be a sane, safe, profitable alternative. Like it or not, Biden steered our economy back in the right direction, and Harris would’ve continued on that track while also letting these companies continue to amass wealth. Media companies who saw the forecast and reported with some bias towards Democrats are absolutely not left-leaning. A real left-leaning media company would not be structured like a corporation or traded on the stock market. A real left-leaning media company would be advocating to eradicate the systems as they are and remake them with equity in the foundations. We live in a very right-wing America, and any positive reporting of capitalist America, or gentle criticism of small details of the colonial capitalism of America needs to be understood as right bias. Every time somebody puts the stock market or companies or government contracts or “the economy” over feeding the hungry and housing the unhoused and treating the sick, that is right bias. RATM hit on this perfectly in Bulls On Parade:

    Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
    Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
    I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
    Line up to the mind cemetery now
    What we don’t know keeps the contracts alive and movin’
    They don’t gotta burn the books they just remove 'em
    While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
    Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells

    TL;DR: the litmus of whether your news is biased to the left cannot be determined by whether they nudge for the center-right or the far-right candidate.



  • I find it helpful to try to quantify the time I’ll enjoy with a thing before I buy it. Or maybe there will be some amount of cost savings if it’s a tool. You could do both with a motorcycle.

    Unless you get a shitty Harley, it will almost certainly be more fuel efficient than an ICE car/truck, so if you plan to commute by motorcycle at all, there is some cost savings there. That will probably offset the cost of registration and insurance, and maybe regular maintenance, so not really a net gain, but at least pays for itself to some degree.

    So after approximating the cost after those savings, then you can approximate how many hours per year and how many years you expect to enjoy the thing for. Divide the cost by that number of hours. Would you pay that hourly rate for the enjoyment you expect to get from it? If so, buy. If not, don’t buy.

    There are obviously some abstract things to factor in too, though. Would you make friends through your motorcycle? Do you enjoy working on stuff so in addition to the riding do you plan on doing aftermarket work on it? Is there a bucket list aspect to this?

    I can tell you that, as a former motorcycle owner, I would probably not get one again. They’re super fucking dangerous, almost entirely because other drivers are fucking morons. It’s impossible for me to ride without being on edge with the assumption that every other driver is actively trying to kill me. At this point, I would only get one as a fun time to ride once in a while, and the upkeep isn’t worth it for that. Even an electric one would be hard for me to justify for myself because of insurance, registration, and ride gear.

    That all being said, there are considerations that you and you alone will need to apply to this decision. I just strongly urge that if you do buy a bike, you wear all recommended gear. Never shorts. Never sandals. Never without a helmet and jacket. Dress for the slide, not the ride.