In the game, you have to improve your properties to charge more rent. In reality, the monopoly can reduce quality and raise price at the same time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc’s_law

Lemmy is social media, too.

The problem isn’t social media. The problem is profit-driven monopolies incentivized to promote high-emotion content. The problem, more generally, is monopolies that no one has hindered since 1974.

People don’t use free & open source alternatives because their advertising is shit, and most people have never heard of the alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify.

Labor may be the source of your power, but consumption is how you fritter it away. Trade your labor for subscription plans, little conveniences that prop up the oligarchs, big luxuries like fancy car or home, and you lose your ability to withhold your labor in safety.

Withholding your labor only works if you can recruit a lot of like-minded people, each with their own safe ability to withhold labor. We can get there eventually, but you have to start with yourself.

The right hand graph only covers, like, the last 10-15% of the left hand graph. If this was really a supply issue, then you’d expect to see a divergence starting back in the 1980s, not just the last decade.

There’s so much spread in the ‘civil law’ countries that it’s hard to call this compelling evidence for supply-driven housing crisis. Definitely something different between the common & civil law groups, but it’s not supply. Or not just supply.

Pretty sure he just thinks he, personally, gets all the tariff money, because he’s incapable of distinguishing between himself and the organizations he runs.

She is still a true believer - she loves the racism, the sexism, the LGBT-phobia, the tax breaks for rich, the church-instead-of-school, the two-tiered justice system… She’s just also still on the Q-anon anti-pedophile train, where the rest of MAGA leadership is willing to overlook a few rapes if they get all the other stuff.

You can start by experimenting on your current computer. Install docker, get some service that sounds interesting, and just access it on localhost. You’ll miss out on anything the service does overnight or downtime, and you won’t be able to access it from off-site, but it’s a fine way to wet your toes and see how it goes.

Docker: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/setup/install/windows-install/

Photo library: https://docs.immich.app/install/docker-compose/

Some maintainers even provide handy windows installers

Media library: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/windows

They can still reject the application. This just means they will go through the motions of looking at it first.

My nephew has a new baby. Her parents are constantly waving their phones in her face; sending pics back and forth; generally doing ‘millenial things’ with their phones when not actively attending the baby. Then proceed to get all freaked out when the baby expresses interest or curiosity in the phone.

Kids mimic their parents behavior and interests. If you want kids with healthy internet use, you have to have parents model healthy internet use.

I guess you have to make a mastodon post of your thought, then screenshot it to /c/political_memes

From @ava@piefed.blahaj.zone source, the 10%/90% ratio went from 1.55 in 1989 to 2.14 in 2025.

Consistent with their criticism of choosing the top 10% vs the top 1-or-fewer %, the 1%/99% ratio went from 30% to 46%. The 1%/90% ratio went from 58% to 99, and the (10-1)%/90% from 97% to 114%.

ed: Initially did this without noticing that the default view of the Fed data only showed 2010-2025. Over that range, the (10-1)% have actually lost wealth to the 1%. Over the 1989-2025 window, the (10-1)% have gained, but not nearly the pace of the 1%

The ‘mostly safe 4% rule’ actually includes inflation. It’s based on the assumption that assets are invested in a mix of broad stock market and treasury bonds, and allows the retireee to increase their annual spending by inflation, It usually results in the retiree dying with substantially more wealth (inflation adjusted) than they started out with. The stock market is a natural inflation hedge and, in this day of multinational conglomerates, a currency hedge.

They’re always the minority. They require an enemy to continue, so they create ever smaller circles of ‘true believers’ and ostracize everyone else.

The trouble with living in a panopticon is that becomes suspicious to not be on a list.

If there’s multiple pieces, there will be seams, although they may not be visible in a video. This is one of the reasons people ‘fake’ bends: build up the structural wood from multiple pieces, which gets good strength while minimizing material usage, then cover the bent surface with a thin (ie, flexible & inexpensive) veneer, and trim that the to final shape.

Most of the methods mushroommunk described are good for curving wood along its long axis, making the visible/usable surface of the wood curved.

If you mean the desk top is curved, like a C-shape around the user, then they’ve probably just cut the curve into a big sheet or two of engineered lumber (eg. plywood), and covered that with veneer.

I saw a clip of…maybe Jordan Klepper…interviewing people going into a showing. All of them just full-on fan-girl with anticipation, and completely upside down from the entire rest of the world. All older white people, fancy dress, clearly wealthy; might have been a premier.

It left me thinking that someone should follow some of these people around for a while to see where their special reality comes from. Study them, like Jane Goodall with the apes.

You don’t think that individualized price gouging will improve life for Jeff Bezos?

I have a n ESP32 with a thermocouple stuffed down my (gas) oven chimney, so I can tell what temperature it actually is (about 40°F/20°C cooler than the dial).

I have one plugged into an addressable LED matrix, which has yet to get mounted, but will eventually be a closet/dressing light. There’s a few places where I’d like a ‘normal’ warm white light, with the option to switch to a blinding daylight for chores, and maybe a low-light, colorful animated nightlight.

I have a Pi-0w reading temp/humidity/CO2 in a grow tent that’s a good candidate for ESP32-ification. I have an air quality sensor plugged directly into a Home Assistant server that could go on ESP32 if I wanted it in a different location. Humidity in the bathroom, with a controller for the bathroom fan is another good candidate.

If I can come up with a good way to put them on battery, with a 6-12 month lifetime, then temperature in the attic, and on the input/output sides of the HVAC would be useful.