Telecommunications. Administration for a company that constructs fiber networks.

I’m a bit cynical here and I think the country is headed down the same path whether Trump or Biden wins in November. We’re seeing pseudo-fascist rhetoric increase in frequency. We’re seeing authoritarian and militaristic policies pass virtually unopposed through our political system. War is virtually guaranteed with either candidate.

I know this opinion may be unpopular but I don’t think this election matters very much. There are of course potential differences- such as access to abortion. If Biden wins, maybe there’s more hope. But that’s really it- just hope. Democrats have had majorities dozens of times since Roe V Wade was ruled and never wrote abortion into law.

I don’t think it’s suddenly going to change in the next 4 years which looks to be a potentially very dangerous period of time geopolitically speaking. Biden isn’t going to have very much political capital to spend and the Overton Window is gradually shifting right.

Instead of looking only at this election, look at the next. And the one after. Do people think MAGA will go away? The world is in economic and geopolitical restructuring- instability breeds radicalism. The problem will likely only get worse. Especially with another weak Democratic administration.

Which brings me to the answer to your question. I have dual citizenship in South America. The only reasons I would leave the US are if there is a WW3 scenario or some sort of clear descent into a form of fascism. We’re toying with it right now, but it can get a lot worse.

It probably won’t be much better in my home country if I’m being honest, but there will be less chances for war. Any global war will inevitably involve the US in some capacity.

There are benevolent kings every once in a while. Doesn’t mean monarchy is a good system in the long term. Nordic countries have some of the highest wealth inequalities in the world. They keep the working class content with the programs and benefits. They have been able to afford it up to now, but the system is straining.

In the long term they cannot sustain this and we see it with their indicators slowly falling over time to match other Western European countries.

French & UK citizens are not fans of their government.

Less power the government has unnecessarily, the better. Doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t have power, just we need a mentality that we always need to be trimming the fat.

What do you mean? You think I don’t support taxes or something?

I consider myself a libertarian and I believe in free healthcare. I think certain industries should not be run for profit. It creates perverse incentives that harm the common man. For example healthcare.

If there’s a profit incentive in bealthcare, there is incentive for drug companies or hospitals to raise their prices. This would mean less people getting treatment or more people in medical debt.

Another industry I think shouldn’t be for profit is education. We want an educated population. It should be encouraged, so it should be free for anyone who wants it.

In my view, libertarianism is a perspective that the government should interfere with the personal liberties of the individual as little as possible.

Every single government action should be heavily scrutinized and challenged. Some actions are justified. For example regulating healthcare I think is justified. You are taking away the liberty of starting a hospital - but the benefits outweigh the costs.

I believe that cooperatives should be encouraged if not explicitly mandated for large companies.

I think to Chomsky’s conception of anarchism. Look at all hierarchies of power and challenge them. Some are justified - the power a father has over his child. Some are not - the power a cash advance place has over their customer base.

I think governments often make mistakes and through heavy handed actions end up screwing the average person. By dramatically limiting government action, you help prevent this.

Remember the government is not your friend.

I’ve lived in a few different states and I was born in a foreign country. I absolutely love Florida. South Florida is an amazing place with great weather and great people.

It all depends on the cultural lens which you use to look at it. One shopping plaza looks different to a Jew then it does to a Brazilian then it does to a Haitan. The Jew may come for the hummus lunch place and the Brazilian goes for the Brazilian nightclub. They exist in the same physical space but it’s like a parallel universe because they don’t see each other. I find this so fascinating.

When you take the time to really explore you see a massive depth of different cultures. I love living among immigrants, including many fresh people right off the boat.

Up north it simply isn’t the same. In Chicago there’s a lot of Latinos, but they’re virtually all Mexican. In South Florida you get every single type. Brazilian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Central American… Mexicans are a minority.

I don’t know if there’s another place in the world that has such a diverse mix of people from around Latin America. So many opportunities and interesting things to do.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I hate the government, but I refuse to move.

If this is evil then any company offering a job is evil. I offer you a job working from 9am-5pm. You have a certain schedule such thaf you cannot meet those terms. I am evil because you have no choice but to work for me or starve.

See what I mean? And sure, capitalism is exploitative. But I don’t see how this specific arrangement is any more or less exploitative than any other.

Factories need workers around the clock because it is expensive to start and stop operations. So you develop strategies in order to keep everyone happy.

Sort of like how oil rigs or deep sea fishing does the x months work y months home thing. Work for 3 months, take off for 1. Etc.

Last time I felt helpless was a little less than a decade ago when I was in active heroin addiction. I knew I had a problem, I really wanted to quit, and I tried hard to quit… and I kept ignoring myself and using anyway.

I ended up finally succeeding in staying clean after like 5 or 6 relapses, with each clean period lasting longer than the previous. Now I’ve been clean for a little over 8 years.

I haven’t felt powerless or helpless since.

Here’s my advice. Put one foot in front of the other and walk forwards. Just take it a day at a time and worry about what’s immediately in front of you.

tl;dr/conclusion: just flush your urine. this post isn’t accounting for the increased used of cleaning products caused by urine stains, so really all of these numbers are even lower than they appear. if you actually want to reduce carbon emissions and energy usage, your energy is better spent on political actions. and if you insist on reducing consumption, stop buying avocados and turn off your air conditioning - that’s gonna have magnitudes more of an effect than not flushing.

Let’s do the math. Average toilet uses about 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³) of water per flush *ᵃ. Flushing doesn’t actually use energy, but it takes energy to both

1) treat the water before it gets to your house and

2) to pump that water to your house

It takes about 1 kWh to treat 1,000 gallons of water (3.785 m³) *ᵇ. That translates to about 0.0016 kWh per 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³). So it takes 0.0016 kWh in order to treat the amount of water your toilet flushes in a single flush.

It takes about 3,300 kWh to pump 1 million gallons of water (3785 m³) *ᶜ. That translates to about 0.00528 kWh per 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³). So it takes 0.00528 kWh in order to pump that 1.6 gallons (0.00606 m³) of water per flush.

If we add those two together, we get 0.00688 kWh needed to pump and treat the water every time you flush. Let’s try and put that amount of energy into reference.

Microwaves use about 1000 watts (1 kW) when running. Therefore, 0.00528 kWh could run a microwave for about 0.318 minutes (or about 19 seconds)

Computer Desktop: Assuming a desktop consumes around 400 watts, 0.00528 kWh would power it for roughly 0.0132 hours (or about 47 seconds)

Toasting Bread: A toaster might use around 1 kW of power. Therefore, 0.00528 kWh could power a toaster for about 0.32 minutes (around 19 seconds)

So, let’s see how much energy we would save if every single household in America flushed one time less per day. There are about 125.7 million households in the US *ᵈ. That would translate to about 864,816 kWh per day, assuming every household flushed exactly once less than they usually do. Let’s put that figure into reference.

In 2022 the total US consumption of electricity was 4,271.88 TWh *ᵉ which is about 11.7 billion kWh per day. This means that if everybody flushed one time less (meaning 864,816 kWh less), it would reduce total energy consumption by about 0.0074%.

Bitcoin globally consumes around 150 TWh per year *ᶠ, which translates to approximately 411 million kWh per day. 864,816 kWh represents about 0.21% of the total energy spent on Bitcoin mining per day.

Air conditioning consumes approximately 6% of the energy in the US *ᵍ. Since we know that total US consumption in a year is 4,271.88 TWh, that translates to about 702.23 million kWh per day. 864,816 kWh represents about 0.123% of the total energy spent on A/C per day.

sources

a: https://www.savingwater.org/indoors/toilets/how-much-water-does-your-toilet-use/

b: https://www.esmap.org/sites/default/files/esmap-files/FINAL_EECI-WWU_TR001-12_Resized.pdf--

c: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/water/us-water-supply-and-distribution-factsheet

d: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410222

e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Electricity_consumption

f: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

g: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/air-conditioning

I only see one argument for not flushing urine, and that’s for the environmental impact. However, you also must consider that not flushing urine will force you to clean the toilet more often as urine will stain the sides of the bowl. Without a detailed analysis we can’t know which one is worse for the environment, but personally I will always flush.

It takes next to no effort to flush and it keeps the bathroom cleaner.

Many jobs get filled through networking. Basically every single job I’ve had since I worked at a pizzeria as a teenager. If you want to find good jobs, you need to network.

I’m currently in telecom and we post things online but it’s mostly for show. When we need someone we call around.

“o que é um peido pra quem já está cagado?”

What’s a fart to someone who already shit himself?

If you’re already 30 minutes late, don’t speed recklessly to save 3 minutes.

We need more transparency and community engagement. I think instead of someone being banned or their comment being removed, it should go up for a vote between a random selection of users.

Sort of like the criminal justice system. Be judged by a jury of your peers. Not just some arbitrary official who decides your fate and you have zero recourse.

It’s a drink that makes you feel good and I drink a lot of it

If someone had a gun to my head I would have said your username is obvious a reference to the cyrillic alphabet and I guess I’d be dead.

Yeah there’s a lot to talk about. I think however that if Paul didn’t exist, Christianity would have remained a Jewish cult.

Paul was the Don Draper of the 1st century. He effectively took an illiterate desert people’s religion and molded it in such a way where it would be approachable to the gentile and educated Roman citizens.

He was a Greek Jew who understood the gentile world. And he made fantastic stories. Iirc in his earliest letter, which became one of the Bible books I don’t remember which, there was nothing about immaculate conception or the 3 day resurrection, or the 3 wise men, etc

But adding all that stuff adds to the legend and mythology and it helped really spread the religion.

I think in a lot of ways, Paul is the founder of Christianity. Of course, Jesus is important. He must have been a fascinating figure in his time. Pontius killed thousands of Jews a year, but we really only talk about one.

That statistic is wild. I don’t understand how people have such a hard time finding girlfriends. I feel like you give a girl a little affection and she sticks to you like glue.

I think incels specifically it makes sense because they have a warped and negative perspective on the world. And nobody wants to spend any significant amount of time with a negative Nancy, much less a deluded one.

I read Zealot by Reza Aslan and I thought it was a very interesting look into historical Jesus and early Christianity. I’m likewise not a Christian (I grew up as one, but became cynical at around 12 years old), but I do find fascination in the religion.

Some people are disciplined and can follow a self-made study course. Ie Duolingo, books, flash cards, etc.

Most people don’t have the discipline or the interest, realistically. Learning a different language is a difficult thing.

In my opinion, the best way to learn a language is be forced to use it. So for example if you move to Germany, you’re going to be forced to learn German so you’re subconsciously and consciously paying much more attention.

You don’t have to move anywhere necessarily though. For example I know Americans that speak fluent Portuguese. Why? They married a Brazilian.

I learned Spanish working with Cubans that didn’t speak English. I already knew Portuguese so it was a lot easier for me, but I couldn’t speak Spanish for most of my life. It was only when I had incentive to learn, did I learn.

It’s going to be impossible to define “better” here because that’s a subjective opinion. But I will make a couple statements.

In most of the world, Chess is much more popular. However in China, Go is much more popular. In 1997 an AI manages to beat the Chess world champion for the first time. It wasn’t until 2016 that AI managed to beat the Go champion.

That implies that Go has more permutations and is a more “complex” type of game that is harder for computers to brute force. Does that make it better? Up to you.

I prefer Chess but likely just because I grew up playing it. If I were Chinese I would likely prefer Go. I’ve tried playing Go before but couldn’t get into it because I didn’t understand it fully.