huey_m

There are also plants specifically adapted for wildfires. Sequoias (and I think redwoods) need them to open their cones and they can’t propagate in their own leaf litter, they need to be cleared by fire.

I’m not going to find them now, but if you’re interested, there are a lot of studies that look at how money moves through the economy and which dollars are more impactful. While dollars saved do get reinvested in a roundabout way, their economic impact is pennies on the dollar compared to direct spending or investment into business. It’s just far better for any market economy to prevent dollars from pooling into savings beyond simple prudence and is far better to put them directly to work via spending.

Well, sort of. Fascism is more precisely a marriage of nationalism and a police state with a corporatocracy where one aids the other in their goals. Which you could definitely argue is what’s happening in the US, but isn’t really what my point was (and certainly shouldn’t be read as an endorsement!).

But yeah, that deal with devil is definitely a complicity. They’ve been willing to hand vast amounts of money, and rights, to the ruling class because they’re been being paid very well to do so. And I don’t see revolution happening until there’s either a critical mass of people reaching starvation levels of poverty, or the middle class sees all that wealth they traded their rights for evaporate.

Even from a capitalist perspective this makes sense. Money pooling at the top is money not moving through the economy; 100% taxes encourage reinvestment and philanthropy to avoid the tax.

But that number is “only” ~25 million out of over 340 million, or about 7% give or take (double checked my numbers; slightly off, but still under 10%). And they’re likely in the worst position to do anything politically because they’re too busy surviving. There is a crisis of under insured, but most people don’t feel that pressure until it becomes a real problem, then they’re in the group that is too busy surviving to enact change. For most Americans, that disposable income number includes healthcare. There’s just a stupid amount of money in that country. And while there’s a huge gap and most goes to the top, enough goes to the middle class to keep them pacified.

I’m definitely not endorsing the US system; it’s a system of haves and have nots and embraces a wealth divide and can be pretty bleak. But most Americans just aren’t feeling as much of a financial punch as the complaints might let on.

(This isn’t to invalidate Americans who are struggling… been there, been homeless, it’s awful. But middle class America, even by European standards, is pretty ridiculously wealthy.)

Honestly? The average and median American still has I think the highest disposable income in the world even after accounting for cost of living short of places like Luxembourg. While they’re complaining, rightly, about their lot being worse compared to years past, most of them aren’t feeling a sort of financial squeeze that’s usually needed for that kind of revolutionary action yet.

The US has made a sort of deal with devil that’s still mostly paying off for the average citizen. Until the middle class specifically really feel the squeeze, and not just compared to themselves historically, I don’t see any revolutionary action happening.

Not true. I’ve had my eye on a pair for awhile that has no camera, only microphone, but has a HUD. Having navigation, an irl minimap, without having to keep your phone out is nice and has some actual positive safety implications. Also, this might mean less to Americans, but as someone living in Europe, having in line translation is really, really cool. Could almost sell it on that alone. I’ve heard some deaf folks are also using it to help understand people by augmenting their lip reading (which usually doesn’t get all of the information across by itself) with summaries that the mic picked up.

I’ve only held off because the pair I was looking at seem like it isn’t quite there yet in reliability, but there are definitely some pretty big use cases I can think of. I would 100% get some of these without a camera.

I’m really interested in the non-cam models. There’s a set out there now that has a HUD with notifications, navigation, translation on the fly, notes for meetings, etc.

The recording audio surreptitiously could be… problematic, but I think somewhat less than video and the in-line translation is legitimately useful and cool feature.

I’ve also been saying for years that augmented reality games could have some real potential, especially for getting exercise while playing games… imagining like running through a field competing with other players collecting coins or a cycle path. Not sure some cool games is worth the tradeoff of having cameras everywhere though. I’d definitely support legislation that says a visible light needs to be on when recording anything.