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Cake day: December 16th, 2023

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  • scoobford@lemmy.ziptoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldWhat. the. hell?
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    2 days ago

    This is all riot control gear. US universities usually have their own police departments, so by extension they usually have their own riot control gear as well.

    You wouldn’t use any of this stuff in war. It isn’t designed to kill people (although it can and will, especially if used improperly).


  • It depends. I think it’s definitely less common here because it just isn’t needed most of the time. Even a working class retiree should have a pension or 401k, social security, and some kind of savings from their life as a working adult.

    To require the support of your children, you’d have to be unable to work, not entitled to substantial amounts of social security, not have paid into a retirement plan, and not have saved any money from when you did work.

    I know a couple of people who support their parents, and they either spend their ENTIRE lives in poverty making sub-minimum wage (which is pretty uncommon), or they just straight up blew all their money because they assumed their kid would take care of them. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the second category.






  • What is your budget and needs? Used thinkpads from a certain time period are very hardy, but they’re getting old enough now for performance to be an issue for anything beyond basic web browsing and word processing.

    Framework also makes laptops with the explicit goal of being more repairable. Even if you decide not to work on it yourself, it would be trivial for a repair shop to fix most things that could go wrong.



  • It is true that nobody pays the cartoonishly high bills that you see posted online. It is also true that we spend way more on healthcare than basically anyone else.

    My company offers very good insurance. Anything “in network” is free after the first $3000 every year, and the monthly premium is around ~$330. Note that this is a company that intentionally offers very good health insurance so they can be less competitive when it comes to salary and time off. I’d say in a given year, I spend around $7,000.

    But really, one of the biggest practical issues with our healthcare system is its opacity. Most people are unable to figure out what most things will cost them before they consent to care.








  • I don’t think so. People need homes, but not all people can buy homes. If you can afford to maintain the property to a reasonable level without completely gouging your tenants, I think you’re providing a valuable service to your fellow citizens.

    We don’t get along, but my landlord is an old lady who bought 2-3 blocks of apartments after her husband left her a bunch of oil money. She keeps up the grounds (for the most part) and my rent has been pegged to inflation since I moved in. If people like her didn’t exist, people like me would be stuck renting from a big property company.