Pro tip: If you find large mysterious eggs on a derelict space ship, ALWAYS inspect them very closely. They tend to contain some really cool stuff. Mind-blowing, transcendental best stuff ever. I’m talking, like, way too legit to be legit, feel me? If you see movement inside, be sure to place your head close to the top of the egg. You should try to smell the egg or even give it a lick.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 19th, 2024

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  • Ouch! That would be a very cyberpunk move.

    See this rich part of town here? Yeah, we’ll leave it alone, and ensure they will always have power even when there’s a blackout in the rest of the city. Oh, and they get their own clean water system with top tier filtration system.

    The rest of the city though… I guess we’ll use the cheapest filters. Only a single water pump should do it. Who needs water pressure in the shower, amarite. If there’s a blackout, we’ll just cut power from the poor neighborhood first, to make sure the wealthy supporters of the mayor stay happy.

    Oh, and the new wind farm? Didn’t really find enough empty space for that one, so I guess we’ll just scatter the eye sores all over the poor town. Who knows, maybe they will help with the smoke coming from the 13 trash incinerators.





  • Hmm… maybe. On the other hand, you can do totally messed up stuff because you’re the absolute dictator of the city.

    See that suburb there? Yeah, we’re changing it to a highway intersection, so everyone living there will just have to relocate. I don’t care where. It’s their problem. I’m just designing a highway system here, and couldn’t care less what happens to the people who happen to live in the wrong place. It’s their fault they decided to live there.

    See this hospital here? Yeah, we’re relocating the whole thing somewhere, because it’s in the way of my new monorail system. We need to put the station right here. Oh, and that residential block needs to go too. There should be shops right next to the station. Not my problem if you liked to live here before.

    Another day in a growing city, and this was just the tip of the iceberg. It can get so much worse.




  • Are the cheaper batteries better than the expensive ones? If not, dewalt is charging you for a superior product, which is fair IMO. Is the difference big enough to justify the difference? That’s up to the customer to decide. If the difference is not worth it, just buy the cheaper one instead.

    Is any of this ethical? Probably not. I suspect both manufacturers have poor labor practices and a negative environmental impact. The way I see it, consumers are destroying the planet through indirect means for the most part. Directly, if you’re burning gasoline, and indirectly, when you’re buying stuff from various companies. Those companies are directly destroying the planet buy burning stuff, leaking toxic chemicals into the groundwater etc. If you’re worried about ethics, you might want to look into the environmental impact these two companies have. If you’re serious about this, you might need to do a proper life cycle analysis of the entire production chain, but that’s a topic for another thesis.




  • I agree with most of that, but I think I still need to bring up the benefits of centralised health services. In simple cases, you don’t really need that, but in tricky cases you might. For example, if you need an MRI scan before surgery, you just can’t rely on travelling doctors. Those machines are expensive, so you’re only going to have those in large cities where they can be used more frequently.

    Surgery also benefits from being a centralised service. You can’t expect a traveling surgeon to carry all the stuff you need for keeping the whole room clean. Besides, the room itself needs special equipment. A simple scalpel and a steady hand aren’t enough to make it work.






  • As others have already said, it’s probably very low or even zero. However, if we allow a chain of events to count, then that number should go up. In that case, you could say that an ant was among the many factors that contributed to the death of a human.

    Let’s say you’re tired, driving in the middle of the night, it’s raining sleet, your car has worn-out summer tyres, etc. It’s a recipe for a disaster already, but then you realise an ant has sneaked onboard and is now walking up your leg. You swipe it away, get distracted, and hit oncoming traffic. A truck carrying huge steel beams plows through your 1986 Nissan Micra like it’s made of thin cardboard. Did an ant kill you? Kinda, but not really.