After reading this news story that half of Americans are skipping meals because of affordability and a bad economy, I have to ask how are you all doing out there?

I heard from a real estate agent of mine that REOs, i.e. bank foreclosures on home mortgages, are going up like crazy, which is a sign of bad times, like the recession of 2007-08.

I have heard from others about rents not being paid, lack of jobs, etc.

Every day, there’s more news of corporate layoffs, moreso than usual.

I live in the economic bubble of the SF Bay Area, where tech wealth more-or-less insulates me and mine from the most serious consequences of a bad economy, but how are things elsewhere?

how?

Where do you see us going? Everything is shit and going to shit.

I honestly see no way out. Capitalism is never going to die. We are never going to get UBI. Unemployment is going to keep on rising. AI is just destroying jobs left and right. The wage gap keeps increasing. Consumption is ever increasing as well. More and more bullshit is created and bought. We are destroying the planet.

Let me get this out of the way: Humans fucking suck. In recent fascist vs moderately-left elections, you see fascists winning or the moderately-left winning by just 1 or 2 percent. See US and Brazil. How?

Look at what is happening in the past 2 days or so: Market is down with the Epstein donators going into the red. And I still see tons and tons of people saying "I will buy now! seems like a good time to buy!". Absolute lunacy. Do people not understand that the only way to collectively win, is to not play their game, at all? Like, stop playing their fucking game.

How can we be so fucking bad? People seem to only care about themselves.

Anytime there is news about poor people receiving some sort of help, you see people making arguments such as "oh, I paid my taxes and now poor people are getting help and I am not? I should avoid paying my taxes so I also get help". There is very little empathy, compassion and kindness. It seems like every human is in it for him/herself.

The rich keep breaking laws and nothing ever happens to them. Look at some recent hacks by OAI's AI. Look at Epstein's...everything. Look at AI companies just plainly stealing data from everywhere and everyone.

I have 0 hope. Maybe I just need to touch some grass, and hug some trees, while there are still trees around. They won't be around for much longer, it seems... It appears we are waging a war on trees and nature.

We could, hypothetically, get our shit together. By that I mean, it is possible, it is not in the real of impossibility. We are not breaking any laws of physics. But it seems like we'd be breaking some biology laws? Is it in our genetic make up to be this fucking horrible? Is it just humanity and humans that will never allow us to cooperate for a better life?

Ya, sorry for the rambling.

Like come on, people are otraged about the most minor stuff, but somehoe can't be bothered to boycot or change the situation with convenience pricig, where same stuff you buy at a store is 10-20x the price per unit.

"Youre taking advantage of my tiredness, making me pay more of my hard-earned money for the privilege of being too tired to prepare my own food/drinks myself, essentially making me work more hours for having worked too many hours and being tired as a resilt of it. So: making me more tired for being tired already"

What are you guys doing for Halloween? Any cool costumes!?

Note: I'm not asking for legal advice. Rather, it's a thing in some countries (like Japan or Indonesia) as I recall watching a video depicting an Australian tourist in Indonesia witnessesing people pursuing the phone snatcher by ganging up on him in which they eventually caught the dude & undercover cops managed to arrest him. Now, the question remains: are people in the US allowed to conduct a citizens arrest in the US?

I have a big no soliciting sign on my door, when sales people knock anyway I make it a point to waste as much of their time as I can and not buy anything.

Nostalgia isn't only a hell of a drug, but it's a hell of an addiction too. Chasing times when you last felt good or when you felt things were right. Getting in touch with old flames that you forgot that there were reasons you moved on from, until you read the painful endings as to why those connections died.

Having those rose-tinted shades aren't always good for you.

Finally bought my first home but have no idea if my electricity use is normal or not, it seems off to me. Any electricians out there that can suggest if it seems normal?

My electricity provider says that we typically use 30-40kwh per day with some days up to 80kwh. I have no idea why the usage is so high. Almost all of the lighting is LED, and almost every appliance is natural gas. The only appliance that is electric is the clothes dryer.

Natural gas furnace, fireplaces, hot water tank, stove, etc.

It seems to be higher usage in the winter despite having three r2d2 air conditioners running in the summer time and almost all of our heating being natural gas in the winter. We have one plug in oil filled heater outside in the detached storage / workshop area.

We do have a well for our water system and that involves a water softener and UV filter and whatnot. Not sure how much power a well pump uses.

Does 30-40kwh average use with up to 80kwh sound normal or on the higher end?

I worry that something on the property might be siphoning power or something. We also suspect the previous owners of the property were probably growing pot, the outdoor workshop has a 200amp service and a breaker box with like 20 empty breaker slots that were filled in with just 3-4 remaining for the lights and plugs.

Any info appreciated!

My cousin, through work, has access to the search history of a Fortune 500 CEO and noticed it was full of exactly what you'd expect: searching a liquor store site for their most expensive wines, private jet bookings to small private islands, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, we all knew that! I'm not talking about luxury experiences and displays of power.

But what are the strange parts that regular people wouldn't guess?

For example, someone on reddit recently posted that their job is to duplicate a wealthy person's home items across multiple cities. Clone their house meticulously so their boss just travels with a phone. It's pragmatic but egregious.

Usually a lurker on most platforms. Never really been into social media. Even in the Msn, Myspace and early Facebook days, something just didn't click with me. Been using Reddit for years, but lately, its beginning to feel more and more like any other social media. Asked Claude for alternatives, landed here. I don't know why I immediately felt a sense of calmness that I can only remember feeling back in early 2000s internet days. If this site is so similar to Reddit (or at least what it used to be), why does it feel so different?

please dont be too personal to yourself

but mine is that i began to dislike big tech and corporate social media

i am a new user on the fediverse but what is the thing that in Big Social

but the fediverse is not prepared to replace

Heyy, I'm learning programming and trying to choose a focus, I saw you can make web/backend w node, desktop (bloatware but discord uses it so if it works it works), games (not AAA and not optimized for performance but it shouldn't matter for indie too much) Is there anything that compares? I wanna focus on one thing instead of spreading myself over a ton of languages, I do feel js is interesting for this, but I'm just starting out, so looking to hear some thoughts of people more familiar with programming.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1499200/why-don-t-countries-add-harder-requirements-for-becoming-a-president-like-having-a-decor

It seems to me the obvious next step.

I mean if other jobs requirements like IT and even accounting had started asking for more certifications and experience to work, then why the heck shouldn't presidents get asked to be more qualified for their jobs?

"Craziest" could mean pretty much whatever you want it to. Good, bad, intricate, simple or whatever. As long as the moment you saw it you knew you wouldn't forget it. I knew a guy at my old job who holds this place for me. Giant white dude and his white wife dressed as Puerto Ricans. It was crazy racist/stereotypical. Added context, this was 2 years ago.

That nobody cares about you unless you're sharing memes and being silly. People have a very obscure way of handling any ounce of negativity and struggles one is going through. They're there for your victories, but aren't there for you, for your losses.

The country is small:

It's less than 10 000 sq km in area, has fewer than 1 million people, and GDP less than about US$50 billion. It might have a coast. It's a liberal democracy, or at least mostly a liberal democracy. It's been independent for almost 100 years, attempts a strong neutrality, and is thus generally non-aligned.

I suppose the country's currency is hard, or reasonably hard, enough that it can be freely exchanged.

In this country you can bring a gym bag with US$1 million (say 10 000 $100 bills) in or out of the country. There are banks there which you can deposit the money, and while they might be required to report this to the government, the government won't tell the governments or other international organizations about it.

What would be the consequences for such in international relations?

Thank you.

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Edit (probably over 20 minutes after posting):

However, I should have added, that this generally occurred between 1998 and 2004.

So far what we got in a CD:

• Bobby (Boris) Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers – Monster Mash
• Jumpin’ Gene Simmons – Haunted House
• The Five Blobs – The Blob
• Ray Parker Jr. – Ghostbusters
• Neil Norman and His Cosmic Orchestra – Twilight Zone
• Sheb Wooley – The Purple People Eater
• Vic Mizzy – The Addams Family
• Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – I Put a Spell on You
• Lewis Lee – Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
• The Ran-Dells – Martian_Hop
• Dracula Theme
• Bram Stoker's Dracula Theme
• Francis Haines – Trioxin Theme (from The Return of the Living Dead)
• Unknown Artist – I Put a Spell on You
• John Carpenter – Halloween (1978) Theme
• Danny Elfman – Main Titles (from Beetlejuice)
• Michael Jackson – Thriller
• Santana – Black Magic Woman
• Andrew Gold – Spooky Scary Skeletons
• Goosebumps Theme Song
• Andrew Lloyd Webber – The Phantom of the Opera Theme Song

Any other songs you all recommend?

to all the elders one , i want t ask what experiences one should not miss out . it could be anything u want to share like travel or something else . how to enjoy your 20 s ?

The older the internet gets, the more it's like a city that keeps building on top of its own ruins. What's is your favorite bit of internet archeology if memes are like artifacts and relics?

Does anyone know of any attempts out there of building more ethical AI models for things like text LLM, image or audio processing?

To clarify, I am talking about an AI model which is trained on a dataset of public domain, creative commons, licensed, or more intentionally fair use sampling methods.

Personally, I believe that the way the modern AI industry has built their giant models is incredibly exploitative, unethical, toxic to society and culture, and arguably not even consistent with the letter or spirit of the existing rules by which we have all been asked to play.

As a tool, machine learning may not be fundamentally bad, but who, if anyone, is out there trying to do it in better, more legitimate way?

i don't defend targeted ads since they are bad (i use uBlock)

but what monetization system is a bit more ethical than targeted ads but can last unlike donations

how would you solve that issue