Diamond Straws currently employs 15 people but is anticipating an uptick in business in the wake of President Trump’s executive order declaring that the US is “going back to plastic straws” and moving away from paper straws.
You could one day aspire to be the 16th factory worker in the plastic straw factory. Unless, of course, those jobs are automated away by AI.
Congressional subpoenas are traditionally a good way to force the DOJ or some state agency to acknowledge a particular kind of misconduct is occurring. But the power afforded to the executive branch has so outstripped that of Congress (by design, as handing authority off to the President lets him be the scapegoat while Congresscritters get to complain) for so long that there really isn’t a ton a minority party can do except shut down further legislation.
Amnnnnnd he can’t do that.
When you’ve got your little gremlins crawling through Active Directory and deactivating people’s security badges and login Ids, he absolutely can.
This is the dream of the Silicon Valley “Network State”. One in which individuals can be fully segregated and insulated from one another through digital security protocols. In a heavily surveilled, digitized, and highly authoritarian workplace like a federal bureau, the people in IT hold immense direct personal control over the rest of the workforce entirely through their handle on the security hardware.
Republicans may see a shutdown as another opportunity to devolve power from the legislature to the executive branch.
Everytime the government has been shutdown. The party in opposition has been blamed by the public.
Its more complicated than that. Government shutdowns that are focused on gutting entitlements (as during the '13 shutdown lead by Ted Cruz and his House GOP lackeys) have been unpopular because the goal of the shutdown was unpopular. The GOP got the blame because they took the credit and insisted shutting down the gov to cut popular programs was good politics.
By contrast, the '07 threat by Dems not to raise the Debt Ceiling unless Bush agreed to timetables to pull troops out of Iraq was popular because the occupation had become such a rancid policy for Republicans to defend that extreme measures seemed justified.
At least we know that Trump and Conservative media aren’t good at crafting a message of who to blame.
They don’t have to craft the message. The message is crafted by the corporate hacks in Silicon Valley and piped through their social media / tabloid newspaper periodicals of record.
By contrast, Dems have gone out of their way to divorce themselves from friendly media - whether its left-wing podcasters or TikTok influencers or Daily Show anchors - for fear of facing any amount of criticism from a left wing source.
That’s what is really eating into the Dems’ reputation. They’re an entrenched minority party, perpetually safe in their gerrymandered districts but without a popular agenda to rally anyone behind. They’re a fully controlled opposition.
just like we don’t use communal bath houses, or community heating, or unfortunately mass transit
Spas and apartments and buses/trains do absolutely exist. Only the former is considered “luxury” in the US, though.
Yes, group services can be a lot more efficient and more reliable but they’re also out of your control
Wasn’t Solar City’s whole gambit to effectively buy everyone’s roofs and lease them back for a fraction of their real market value?
I don’t think you escape “Own nothing and be happy” just by throwing up a few hundred watts of solar on an extension cord.
If you generate the power where it is used without pollution, we should.
Generators take space, require maintenance, and have a certain optimal capacity that isn’t necessarily hit on a given roof.
For wind energy in particular, the bigger the turbine, the more yield per $ spent. If you go out to Corpus Christi you’ll see these enormous turbines - $10M to $50M / ea - that generate on the order of $24 to $75 per MWh, or $.024-.075/kWh. Home wind/solar don’t get anywhere close to that.
Prime placement of units, distribution across a wide area, and a degree of storage capacity means you’re going to get better and more consistent yield.
a historic ally of ours is doing something bad… We will speak out against them.
Was that what the police were doing on Columbia and UCLA?
You’re being boxed in. Elon bought the liberals under Obama/Biden. He’s buying out the conservatives under Trump.
Clearly these two things are the same.
Now we’ve got a guy who’s excited for ethnic cleansing
Damn. You’re right. The real virtue with Joe Biden was his lack of enthusiasm.
Crazy that Village Idiot is one of the most coveted jobs in America.
There’s no reason to arrest him, he didn’t break any laws.
By unfurling a flag that represents an enemy nation and its people, he is threatening the reputation and profits of the NFL franchise. This is a more dangerous act than the violation of any law (which - hey, fuck it - not like people don’t get away with doing that shit all the time).
He’s lucky he left the stadium with a pulse.
only can they decide to ban him for that but they may be able to sue him for breach of contract or something.
It was, without a doubt, a brave and revolutionary act. Americans hate that shit.
Why would DeepSeek supposedly get more downloads from the app store?
Just for starters, its been in the news non-stop for weeks.
being on the side of the rule of law
Except when you override prohibitions on arming a county in defiance of the ICC because it’s Israel.
Who even does? Ad rot has diminishing returns
Patreon has it’s own internal hosting, yes. But is it still leaning on Azure/AWS? shrug Probably.
I’ve been getting NewPiped down, myself.
But it’s nice to see alternatives floating.
I think @TranquilTurbulence pretty neatly established one big different - Americans produce far more waste than any actually impoverished country.
We just live poor in order to afford all those extra landfills.