I don't like the idea of centralised digital ID for the obvious surveillance/privacy arguments and think that side of the conversation needs to be focused on. BUT, I also think that the Social Media experiment has shown that social media in general really, really sucks. It sucks for adults but it's objectively damaging to kids.
So like, I am all for restricting kids from it, and honestly I'd happily see it regulated out of existence entirely.
Yeah, but should the state really be this deeply involved in the personal choices of it's constituency? We don't stick our hands into similar activities such as religion, political affiliation, or dietary habits. Sure you can make a slightly better case that children need greater protection but the evidence for the harms of social media are contentious at best. There's no scientific consensus on social media, but there is pretty strong agreement on calories and sugar, but we're not banning sugar for children. This to me just seems like a power grab.
I’d like good social media regulated into existence. Let people take their data, move to a different service, set up redirects, have some meaningful ways to customize or reject algorithms, etc. I don’t think it’s likely to happen but one can hope.
That would be nice. Maybe take it back to a time when it was about forming and maintaining interpersonal connections rather than 'following' influencers and peddling ragebait.
Yeah I like this framing too. Personally I like parts of social media, and there must be ways to achieve a good balance. I just imagine it wouldn't be 'profitable'.
Social media is objectively damaging to the interests of the ruling class, who have been objectively damaging to western civilization during the past decades in which they had near-complete control over the flow of information. It'd be batshit crazy to go back to the times when information flow was centralized in the hands of a few corporations, just because a some neurotics can't handle the increased flow of information from decentralized media.
Isn’t the information flow being controlled by the few major social media players another form of centralisation where their algorithms decide which decentralised voices are heard?
> Social media is objectively damaging to the interests of the ruling class,
Maybe double check who owns and controls most social media platforms, and then think a bit if you'd categorize them more in the ruling class or working class.
On this note: It was recently reported that Electrified vehicles in general outsold conventional ICE powered vehicles in Australia, claiming it has reached a 'tipping point' with consumers:
Consumers don't realize they are getting the worst of both worlds with added weight, complexity, repairs, inefficiency, and costs along with potential reliability (ex-Toyota) Not to mention studies that show PHEV owners frequently don't plug in.
Well those owners are idiots. That says nothing about the car. You can't exclude Toyota when you make the claim that hybrids are unreliable and inefficient either. They have proven that they can be reliable and efficient.
Hybrids aren't running around doing 30 miles a day with a 300 mile battery like most EVs. Talk about inefficient!
How many miles of long trips? A quick search gives me half of them are long distance (50+ miles).
Since the short trips can all be done very efficiently on battery (recovering all the braking, too), I guess the weight isn't much of an issue for commuting if you can have the rest -half of the total driven miles- on EV with a full battery vehicle.
I wish I could find numbers on eCO2/miles for the short vs long trips.
The problem is the limited charging infrastructure. Hybrid owners don't need to plug in for the vehicle to function so they yield available chargers to actual EVs. To get past this you would need ubiquitous charging infra.
PHEV owners only need to charge at home (and if they can’t, don’t need a PHEV) and use electric power for local commuting.
The future of BEVs (and the most practical today) is also charging at home, and available chargers can grow slowly with BEVs used for road trips. Tesla is pretty close to there already. So, chargers don’t need to ubiquitous, just a bit more available on less common road trip routes.
My main goal with buying an EV is to give the middle finger to the oil industry as they have meddled with the world too much.
They screwed public transit and entire nations just for profits. I love my Subbie and I'll keep that until it breaks apart and replace it with an EV. Maybe today there's many downsides to an EV, but I hope it evens up and maybe becomes even better to get one.
Indeed. I cannot charge my car at home so I drive a PHEV. I use public chargers when one is available on my street. If not, no problem. I’d say about 80% of my daily driving is done on the battery, which is a lot better than 0!
My Outlander rarely needed repairs and I always plugged it in. The car even complained about me needing to use the gazoline in the tank because it risked getting old in the tank and needed to be replaced. That was a great car. My new EV, a Subaru Solterra is great too though.
That’s simple not true. Studies have shown that historically hybrid vehicles have fewer issues than any other type, possibly because reducing the ICE use increases reliability overall more than adding the minimal EV complexity.
>Hybrids, which combine a gas engine, electric motor, and battery, have 15 percent fewer problems on average than gas-only cars. EVs and PHEVs have about 80 percent more problems on average than gas-only cars.
>“Many of the problems with EVs and plug-in hybrids are because they are newer designs compared to gas technology, so some kinks still continue to be worked out,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “By comparison, hybrids have been around for nearly three decades, and the technology is tried and true.”
"He participated regularly in paying money to force
me to ___ with him and he was present when my uncle murdered
my newborn child and disposed of the body in Lake Michigan. "
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/12/27/a.... This mentions the Trump angle. It also mentions that the report came out before the 2020 election and could be fake. I'm a little confused because the report itself says nothing about Trump so don't know where the Free press gets that and they don't tell you what the source is or I missed it.
Edit: Oh I get it. The woman's statement Donald Trump is named as one of the witnesses. She says that he watched the murder. He wasn't the uncle. He is listed as a witness to the murder. This is highly highly suspect in my opinion. Seems very sensationalistic and no reason given it as to why Trump was there. His name is just thrown in.
The allegation is quite clearly that Trump participated in [ redacted ] this pregnant 13 year-old.
> [Trump] participated regularly in paying money to force me to [ redacted ] with him
The reason he was allegedly there was probably to [ redacted ] a 13 year old... That's what convicted rapists with deep connections to child sex traffickers do...?
I would expect a large portion of the remaining records to be internal emails about memos about the process of building a case around evidence, rather than the root evidence itself.
Not that that would excuse the administration's unlawful behavior so far, or indicate the unreleased 99% can't have some big bombshells.
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