Yeah, this is what I came here to mention. Environmental damage and power consumption are what bitcoins cost, but those costs don’t give bitcoins any inherent value.

It’s actually a pretty appalling example of human ingenuity. We’ve managed to invent something that has a disproportionately terrible impact on every person on earth through its environmental effects, while simultaneously producing no practical value to anyone other than those wealthy enough to be in control of it.

Yeah paywalls suck, but that’s probably why their journalism remains consistently high quality. I listen to their podcast every so often, and it’s clear that they work their asses off. They just took their first week off since founding the company, because they were worried if they stopped constantly releasing new articles they would quickly go under, so they waited a long time until they were sure they had enough subscribers and had built enough trust to survive a week’s vacation without pissing everybody off.

I certainly don’t have that kind of work ethic, and I still expect my paycheck.

Yeah this is why I’ve stopped using Craig’s List. Most of the listings, last time I was looking, were scams. I lost a few ”application fees” and was always ghosted. I’ll never again respond to an ad that has any fees whatsoever until I can see with my own eyes that the property is real. Hunting for a place to live sucks so much.

Yep, same here.

These immigration raids and terror tactics are terrible on their own, but it’s especially absurd when Native Americans get caught up in it, and it just fully exposes how disingenuous and transparently racist the whole effort is. So I’m sorry that your peoples have to suffer even more because of this racist mindset.

From a January article:

”If you can’t say, ‘we’ve been here for time immemorial,’ then you’re an immigrant. You’re not from here, so who are you to classify our Indigenous people? These lands have been a melting pot for many ethnicities,” Hatathlie [a Native Arizona state Senator] said.

I heard another more recent example of a car full of Native Americans being pulled over, aggressively questioned, and asked for their papers, but I can’t seem to find it. It’s utterly shameful how we treat people.

I have two of the same pair of glasses, one with normal clear prescription lenses, and the other with prescription lenses that are tinted brown and polarized. I often forget to switch them out because the sunglasses make everything look so damn good, but I carry them both with me and usually switch to my clear glasses if I’m indoors for more than a minute. But if I pop into a gas station or something for 30 seconds then I’m definitely not taking them off.