Notices by 🏞:usasos: (daveflater@infosec.exchange)

@catsalad they should use that video in an ad saying look how easy our treadmill is to operate

Inspirational Skeletor @skeletor poses a riddle today with "there is no righteous path."

There is a fatalistic interpretation that comes in times of war: every side is bad guys and nobody escapes with their morals intact. But that is not inspirational.

There is the interpretation that Duck Duck Go finds. It's a reference to Supernatural, a TV series. Castiel: "Now I realize that there is no righteous path. It's just people trying to do their best in a world where it's far too easy to do your worst." Fair enough.

I would elaborate: there is no predetermined plan, no deterministic set of rules, that will ensure that you are always doing the right thing. No law, no priest, no holy book, no influencer can give you a recipe that will keep you on the right side of history. You cannot get there by following someone else. A sense of what is right must be cultivated within yourself, given regular feedings, and allowed to grow with you for as long as you live. If you make the right choices along the way, the path will look righteous in hindsight.

@slashdottir further thoughts:

On most durable goods, I do not have a choice between US or China manufacturing. It is made in China and not in the US. The only choice I have is between ordering direct from China or paying a 10x markup to get the same thing from a redundant middleman. The whole narrative about undercutting US manufacturing with cheap labor is a red herring when there is no US manufacturing. The option to pay more to support a US worker does not exist.

In Europe I saw consumer goods made in Europe for sale. I don't see that here except for luxury items in foo foo shops.

On domestic food production, the market is set by large corporate operations with efficiency of scale and favorable government treatment. A small family farm simply cannot hit the same price point. They can easily deliver better quality, however.

US manufacturing is
- "Defense industry" weapons and ammo, bombs and bombers
- Auto makers that have been repeatedly propped up and bailed out by the federal govt and protected by tariffs (hence not viable without artificial life support)
- Very small and highly specialized industries that you've never heard of that can disappear overnight when their business model gets smashed by changing conditions

No textiles are made in the US. Outside of the defense industry, very little electronics manufacturing happens in the US.

@slashdottir general opinions: 1. The political -ism matters less than you think to what actually happens. 2. USD is way overvalued.

Manufacturing always migrates to where their profits can be maximized. This is not necessarily determined by the political -ism and doesn't mean that they are going to lower their prices.

Labor is poorly paid because it can be. Big business is more effective at wielding power and getting governments *of all flavors* to do them favors. Labor rights on paper, be it a US law or a socialist constitution, are worth nothing if they are not enforced with seriousness, and the trend everywhere has been for those in power to permit those rights to erode.

The premium paid for the US Dollar is insane. Everything is just expensive in the US. This seems destined to end, but it has already gone on longer than I thought it would. Compared to Warsaw, buying stuff in the US costs 4x as much and the quality is absolute shit.

* A strong dollar should make imported goods cheaper. And yet living here is still very, very expensive.

@slashdottir Price gouging and inflation are different phenomena, but we are getting both.

We are getting price gouging on non-discretionary things like food and medicine because the industries have become so consolidated that they can dictate prices and the government is not doing much regulation anymore. There were some shock effects from Covid and the war in Ukraine, but they should have settled out by now. Food still costs 30% more.

We are getting inflation, which is an overall devaluation of a currency on all sides, because governments allow the monetary supply to increase. They do this because it is an easy way out of fiscal crises in the near term, such as are caused by, for example, underwriting every single war on the planet or running a deficit year after year. Assuming that wages do rise along with the price of necessities, inflation is effectively a tax on savings, which destroys retirees trying to live off their previous earnings.

We now have economists arguing with a straight face that national debt doesn't matter if you're America with the almighty dollar and American exceptionalism, bald eagles and all that. Sigh. People will believe anything.

@slashdottir I parroted the official figure. In the last month I've learned that web hosting will go up 75% and gym membership will double 2025/2024.

#SilentSunday

@Gargron that's interesting, there's a News tab if I go to infosec.exchange with a web browser but I can't find it in the Android client Tusky. It's not even under Settings > Add tab

So where is the Fediverse replacement for r/news?