It’s been a nightmare seeing tech companies move into the utility space and act like they’re the smartest people in the room and the experts that have been doing it for 100 years are morons. Move fast and break things isn’t viable when you’re operating power infrastructure either. There’s a reason why designs require the seal of a licensed engineer before they can be constructed. Applying a software development mentality to any kind of engineering is asking for fatalities

Crazy inefficiencies is why not. If you’ve ever worked a large infrastructure or construction project you’d see why this doesn’t work. There are advantages of scale. A single company being able to handle the land acquisition, and all engineering alone for a large project is going to be like 10000 people, and that’s without construction. If I had to work with 15 other companies to get a thing built I’ll tell you right now that things never gonna get built. Big companies aren’t the problem, small ownership is the problem. Employee owned (socialist) companies are the solution. It’s not about not scaling, it’s about ensuring that the workers own the means of production. If you want renewable energy, high speed rail, and sustainable district engineering we need to leverage economies of scale. It’s just that we need to set up economic systems that distribute the profits to those doing the work.

They’re mostly not being used for that and they come at a huge cost

I don’t like the idea of limiting company size - there are a lot of advantages of scale. Instead let’s say any company over 1000 employees must be fully employee owned

Every interaction I’ve ever had with police I’ve been the one attempting to de escalate. Literally 100%. What’s frustrating is you speaking calmly and clearly pisses them off even more because they feel like you’re speaking down to them. They feel like they are supposed to be the reasonable ones and you’re making them look bad. Which of course you are, because they’re not.

They weren’t invited by the states governor

Engineer out the electricity?

Yeah if you’re gonna do a fraud at least put the minimum thought into it. It’s disrespectful is what it is. Gives honest grifters a bad name

Did they say anything inaccurate or does reality just make you uncomfortable?

Actually when you live in a democracy it is. Or at least, if you don’t you still get the consequences when these kids start voting.

Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans

Yeah remember that being an inflection point where I stopped being excited about updates and started dreading them.

Honestly dude I don’t know what they are teaching in history classes these days, no one knows anything. How do they think the Hebrews fended off the hittite reptilian calvary?

Not just different things, but whether those things even exist

Like, I’m all about debating the best approaches to fighting climate change. I’m not about debating whether it exists.

You can’t debate solutions when you disagree about what the problem is

I think you’re missing their point. They aren’t saying they are going to do that, or that it’s a good idea, they’re saying enough people are going to react that way for it to be a problem. It’s not good enough to be correct, you need to be convincing. Just because I can hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil doesn’t mean I’m not concerned that not everyone will.

So dumb. Also insanely naively hopeful/optimistic.

I remember when I was a teenager and starting to question religion I talked to my sister about it a little. She was certain that if we didn’t have Christianity that everyone would just be going around raping and killing each other. I was super confused at the time (cause I was a child) but a little later realized oh, she has no empathy or morals, no internal sense of right and wrong…and she doesn’t know that other people actually do. The convo was confusing because at the time I didn’t understand her at all when she asked things like ‘without hell what would stop you from killing people?’. A little later I started thinking about how many people thought this way and if it was possibly enough to f up a democracy. Anyway here we are

I accepted it when I was a teenager. What’s difficult is getting people that grew up in loving families to comprehend that I’m not anti family, and would love to have a family I could talk to, but the one I was born into are unempathtic narracisstic Nazis.

‘Have you tried x? Have you tried y? I don’t think you’re trying z enough’

One close friend recently married into a similar family and it’s been super eye opening for them.

When I meet magas one of the questions I like to ask is something along the lines of describe your ideal healthcare system. 90% basically describe Medicare for all. I clarify, get more detail (basically make them really think about it as much as possible), and then ask which candidates or party they believe is in line with them. Obvs I want to avoid backing them in a corner so don’t say ‘Aha you’re a socialist!’. Rather, I work though it with them, google candidates and see what their policy is. Bonus points when half the R websites don’t even have policy so they can see that. Anyway we generally get to the point that they think they might be left of both parties on that issue. And then I try to plant a seed that this is a totally normal process for figuring out who to support and get out of there while they feel some mutual respect between us. It’s harder these days when the fascism is so blatant but I don’t know what else to do when I find myself living in a democracy with a bunch of insane people

I recognize you’re doing some form or devils advocate and I appreciate that. I grew up in the ruins of one of those cities and it really helped define my political beliefs. I think it’s important to not suddenly frame NAFTA as this wonderful thing just because trump opposes it. There is a real reckoning we need to have as a country when it comes to rebuilding our industrial base. Are tariffs the answer? Almost certainly not, but that doesn’t mean that the people asking for them are completely delusional. Trump is capitalizing on a real pain that people are feeling, and have felt for a generation now. I wish we had a proper progressive to reframe the debate. It’s not about us vs Canada, it’s about the disgustingly wealthy vs everyone else. You don’t want people to support tariffs? Then we need real left wing populist arguments.

I know it’s stupid. Being right should be good enough. But it’s not. We need to be convincing. And not ‘republican lite’ convincing - more like teddy Roosevelt f’ing come at me unabashed progressivism convincing.