Startlingly awesome and refreshingly modest.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • There are two things you do when voting in a two-party system:

    1. Vote to keep out the candidates that would do real damage
    2. Vote to communicate your preferences for candidates with platforms that match your priorities

    I know it seems like a third party is the only solution to your current situation, but it’s not. The solution is to keep the idiots out by voting Democrat in general elections, and then to vote in primaries or with your campaign contribution dollars for Democrats who match your views on Israel/Palestine.

    You might also support candidates who are in favor of voting reform, including things like ranked choice voting, which also happen to be people who currently run as Democrats.




  • Short version for anyone wondering:

    Even assuming the absolute best, most rose colored glasses kind of outlook, lab-grown meat will be many times as expensive as meat currently is, and that’s notwithstanding the billions in investment it will take to get there. Currently it’s so expensive to produce that it doesn’t even really exist except as publicity stunts. But unlike other potentially paradigm-shifting tech like solar, there’s not an exponential downward-sloping cost-adoption curve to look forward to. As of right now, inexpensive lab-grown meat doesn’t seem difficult, it seems scientifically impossible.

    It would probably be much better to spend those billions on reducing methane in cow farts (seriously), using sustainable grazing to preserve and rejuvenate disappearing and desertifying grasslands, accelerating carbon capture, subsidizing Omnivore’s-Dilemna-style holistic farming, etc.

    Because, seriously, affordable lab-grown meat is not going to happen without several Nobel-worthy breakthroughs. Instead, it’s just going to waste a bunch of money out of the pockets of well-intentioned VCs and institutional investors who could be using it more effectively.








  • Third rec here for US Mobile. I actually switched from Mint after a couple of years with them (and Google Fi before that). Three of my family members are on the Verizon network through US Mobile, and one is on the T-Mobile network. Nice to have the split when we’re traveling because one of the two networks always has coverage.