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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • My claim is that alternatives with minimal drawbacks are going to be required in industrialized societies, yes, because plastic is very deeply ingrained in our industry, and has been critical to many of the advances that we’ve had in the last few decades (especially medicine and healthcare).

    If we’re talking about just the food supply chains, that’s a little bit different because people are more willing to suffer inconvenience if the perceived health risk is large enough (because health depends on our diets). The problem is that the perceived risk, for the vast majority of people, is fairly small. Plastic ingestion poses chronic issues, not acute ones (mostly). This means that we’ve already addressed most of the more acute toxicity concerns, and the chronic concerns are going to require more conclusive data to persuade people to care now and not dismiss it by saying “I’ll worry about that later, we have more important problems now”.

    That said, I never said we were “doomed”. In fact I think that we’re going to develop better and safer technologies, and plastic and how it reacts with living organisms will be better understood. But, I think that’s going to take some time. In the mean time, I think we’re going to start to go back to older materials (particularly in the food supply chains) where the additional cost is manageable. Plastic isn’t going to go away completely though. Not now, not ever. The best we can do is make it safer, and mandate other materials where it’s most important.




  • While I’m not going to say I’m “glad” she lost, which would thereby mean that I’m glad that there’s so much more fear and suffering in the country, I think there’s some merit to the idea that electing Kamala would have just resulted in more of the status quo that people were clearly becoming disenchanted with and, perhaps, in the long run, Trump being elected sooner is going to ultimately result in less harm as people are incentivized to push back sooner and harder because they’re less worn down than they otherwise would be.

    Really, idk though, I don’t have a window into the alternate universe where that happened. This is all just kinda shit. @DancingBear really should be making that point if that’s what they believe instead of being rude about it.


  • I completely agree, but your point is irrelevant to mine.

    Median household income is around 80k, which means that the vast majority of the population makes a lot less than 100k. I have little pity for the financial concerns of people who are having a hard time getting by with six figures, when so many people have to be content with far less.

    I will absolutely still stand in solidarity with them against the ruling class who make things far more difficult for all of us than it needs to be. That’s not the point.

    Asking me to have pity for the financial concerns of someone who makes more than double what I do (assuming similar circumstances) is like asking the average migrant laborer to have pity for mine.




  • Other comments seem to have covered the advice around checking insulation and system charge, so I’ll say that if you need to get a window unit make sure it’s an inverter unit; they’re typically advertised as ultra-quiet. The reason you want an inverter air conditioner is purely the efficient gains you get over a traditional on/off compressor; they use around half the electricity in some cases for the same cooling.

    All of the U-shaped units from various brands use inverter tech, but they might be hard to find because a lot of them are rebranded Mideas. LG’s ThinQ “dual-inverter” units are also very good, I have one that’s served me well for a couple years and it’s very quiet. You can barely hear the compressor start up at all aside from a faint electrical whine for a few seconds and the sound of refrigerant moving through the system. The fan moving the air is the loudest part by far (and it’s not bad).

    All of that said, consider replacing your central ducted unit with a multi-head mini-split system in the long run. For residential use they’re typically the most efficient you can get, and you have the bonus of being able to control room temperatures individually. A mini-split system uses inverter tech too just like the good window units. In fact, the U-shaped window units are just miniaturized mini-split systems in a rigid housing.