Flat earther-ism used to be satire, too.
Now we have people killing themselves in attempts to “prove” that the Earth is flat.
Never doubt the ability of satire to fly over people’s heads at 10,000ft, and for those people to swallow that satire uncritically; hook, line, and sinker.
At the same time, those towns are hella compact, such that 90+% of residents can walk to pretty much any retailer or store or other resource within 15-20 minutes. Yes, some people (farmers) live outside of town and there are some American-style housing in clumps outside of the town, but everyone mostly lives in tight clusters.
And even the tiny towns well away from other larger towns have busses that move people between towns on a fairly regular If infrequent basis (15-20 minutes apart). Only the larger population centres can afford to have public transport that comes every 5 minutes or so.
You also have to understand that in North America, a “significant separation between towns” is something like 100+km. In Germany, that term qualifies with as little as a 10km distance. It’s rare to find any population centre that is more than 20km away from its nearest neighbour.
Companies have also become so adverse - and I would even characterize it as hostile - to investing any effort into employees that they want to have any new hire to “hit the ground running”.
Ergo, they interview over and over again, using wildly diverse testing methods and querying for every possible needed skill, and getting tied up in analysis paralysis in their attempt to find the “perfect candidate”.
With the very predictable result of all the good candidates withdrawing for other opportunities - because the smart companies don’t conduct torture via incessant interviews, they jump to provide offers once basic thresholds have been met - leaving only the mediocre and substandard applicants.
This is why you hear certain companies lament the low quality of applicants, or descend clear down to “bUt No-OnE wAnTs To WoRk!!1!” when their toxic interview methods chase everyone away.
Libertarianism requires its members to engage in due diligence in order to execute their libertarian ideals properly and make the choices that are correct for them.
This, unfortunately, excludes the lower-60% of all Americans, who are so ground down, economically terrorized, and mentally overwhelmed with their daily struggles to survive that they have little to no opportunity to approach any major choice with anything even vaguely in the realm of due diligence. They just don’t have the headspace to do so, and are forced to spend all their available mental efforts on just putting one financial foot in front of the other.
This is why having social support frameworks enforced/provided/funded by the government is so important for so many working-class people - it allows them to put those issues on autopilot, significantly reducing their own cognitive load and allowing them to better process the most important issues in their lives.
Ergo, libertarianism is a wealthy person’s toy. It is something that they can champion, because only they have the economic options and financial freedom to fully and properly engage with it.
Until everyone has vanishingly few catastrophic-level issues on the horizon (like one missed paycheque leading to homelessness, or a sudden illness leading to medical bankruptcy), any attempt to implement libertarianism will only bring mass amounts of misery and destroyed lives to anyone beneath the Parasite Class.
And when you have those kinds of widespread government-provided supports that lift all boats - and not just the megayachts - why bother with libertarianism? We should continue to use what got everyone into that safe state in the first place -- socialism.
Remember, the Parasite Class already uses socialism for themselves. It’s called grants and bailouts and subsidies, and allows the Parasite Class to privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
It’s just at a scale that makes it impossible for working-class people to leverage.
That is a practical request to help avoid damaging the rubber surface of the playground. High heels would punch holes in that surface, dramatically shortening its life, reducing its protective capabilities, and likely even twisting/snapping an ankle if the heel remains jammed in that rubber and the wearer is moving quickly.
LOUDER, for the parasite-class business owners and their bootlickers in the back.
As a Canadian looking from the outside in, it really does seem to be trending in that direction… any further Republican wins will mean the end of democracy, with America sliding into a ChristoFascist Autocracy.
I fear for my American neighbours, but we have similar problems up here; we just happen to be a decade or so behind you folk.
This is the current state of American healthcare.
Canadian conservatives have been taking notes for years, and have begun the privatization of our single-payer healthcare, with Ontario and Alberta leading the charge.
I fully expect this dystopian nightmare to hit our country within the next decade if the Federal government doesn’t take healthcare out of the province’s hands and make it a public utility or crown corporation that legally cannot be sold off or dismantled.
DotNet Core as a whole (C# + F# + other languages that are being ported to compile down to a DotNet binary).
Because it has all the things Java promised us - frictionless, painless, cross-platform programs - but is implementing it far better than Java ever could.
Honestly, DotNet Core is now at least a half-decade or more ahead of Java in terms of the base platform and C# language functionality/ease-of-use. The only advantage Java has at this point is it’s community ecosystem of third-party features and programs.
Cable management doesn’t matter if:
This seems to be an “ESH” (everyone sucks here) situation. Yes, Hamas sucks more. But Israel isn’t far behind.
As much as I applaud this focus on just one broad OS architecture, as it will greatly speed development, leaving out Windows is likely to cut off 85-90% of all early adopters. I just hope that the benefit of a simplified target will outweigh ignoring the vast majority of the market.
And honestly, methinks they should focus on Haiku OS before Windows, as it is closer to a Unix heritage than Windows is. And Haiku OS desperately needs a native modern web browser with all the bells and whistles.