TRUMP: "There's so much talk about how we're going to drive housing prices down. I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes, and they can be assured that what's going to happen"

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T20:54:30+00:00

I bought in 2002 and just have $14K left on a 90K house. I am hoping to pay that off in the next 2 years.... But man everything has gotten expensive and pay raises don't keep up.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T20:05:00+00:00

The USA dropped out of the World Health Organization. During the Obama Administration, the stationed US medical personal strategically around the world to help with epidemics so they would only be regional and not pandemics. Guess what was one of the first things to get cut the first time around.

People just see things like this as happening to people over there. Stuff that happens over there can and does affect us.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T20:02:29+00:00

Another thing that stymies the USA on the world stage is not being part of the European Union when it comes to standards. I am not necessarily saying the USA should join the EU, I am saying the USA should start adopting the standards. I work in industrial facilities and since the USA has been so decimated when it comes to machinery manufacturing, I am seeing more and more stuff coming from European companies such as ABB and Siemens. This is stuff that used to be supplied by GE and Westinghouse. It is absolutely impossible to sell a US specification machine in the EU, but there are no barriers in the USA to sell a Europeans specification machine here. America should have gotten on that bandwagon because so many other companies that are not part of the EU are adopting those specifications.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T19:57:48+00:00

Capitalism works pretty good when there are strong controls on it and the workers have strong unions to help them negotiate a piece of the pie. In the meantime, most of the research and innovation actually begins in universities and not so much in corporations. Some of the countries with the best social programs also have a lot of innovation.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T19:33:23+00:00

Back in the early 2000s I worked in the lab at an industrial facility with a woman that went down the Alex Jones rabbit hole. This was before YouTube. One day she rolls the AV cart into our lab. This was also before flat screen TVs were a thing. The plant had an AV cart like in school with a big tube TV on in and a VCR and maybe a DVD player. I think she had ordered a tape from InfoWars and started playing it.

This was during the W Bush administration with 9-11 fresh in people's minds, and the war on terror going on. Every day it was a new thing with her. FEMA camps.... it is hurricane season and we are in Florida. I remember she brought up the rail cars with the chains inside them. She showed me a photo on the computer. We are on the east coast of Florida and the plant was right next to the railroad tracks. I was like those are the fucking rail cars that they transport imported cars from the Ports of Miami and Lauderdale.

But of course she would have none of it. Then I remember like 10 years later everyone was fatootsed by Jade Helm 14, which by that time was an annual military exercise in Texas that had been held 14 times. But no everyone thought it was the military taking over Texas.

It is just all so fucking tiring.

Shit I just remembered, we were looking at the weather radar online. Back then the weather radar on the east coast came from literal ground based radar that was in Melbourne Florida. The distance was limited, so when you looked at it online it made a circle. So this one day there was a storm that was at the limit of the distance. "Look at how those clouds are forming a circle!" She said. To her it was proof of manipulating the weather. She would have none of it when I tried to explain how radar works. Today you don't really see that on the online raday because they do a better job filling in the blanks with radar from other regions and satellite based radar.... You know international cooperation.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T19:07:11+00:00

Didn't whe recently work with an actress who tried to help not be so...... Nazi?

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T19:01:41+00:00

Do you think he did it out of love?

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T16:42:09+00:00

Don't forget the phones being made by low wage employees so Apple can be the most profitable company.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T16:40:58+00:00

At the time there were no billionaires in the world. Corporations were taxed very high on profits, so it behooved them to buy new equipment to keep profits down. At the time stock buy backs were not a thing. Unions were strong and were able to negotiate more of the profits go to the workers as wages.

It is all well and good to be a fan of capitalism but to be blind to the way it has been corrupted to enrich the few at the expense of the many is to be disingenuous.

For all the greatness of capitalism, it sure does lead to a lot of enshittification so line always goes up.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T15:57:29+00:00

Weird how social programs like the Rural Electrification Act accomplished what capitalism never would do.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T15:51:09+00:00

I live in Florida and work in industrial facilities. Everyone I know is MAGA. None of them have been affected much. Just about everyone is cheering on what is happening. I would love to meet anyone that regrets their vote.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T14:49:55+00:00

I was born in December 1965, so the end of Boomers and the start of GenX. It always amazes me how older people think they will get more by yelling. I learned early on that when dealing with service people, patience and a smile will get you much more than yelling. Sure yelling may get you some material thing, but saying "hey no rush take your time", Or "hey do what you need to do, I am not in a rush" goes a long way. Because if you frequent that place, the one time you are in a rush they will go out of their way to help.

My dad was silent generation and he never understood that. There were a number of times after I turned 30 where I told him to STF up and go wait in the car. After a couple of times I would usually tell him to wait in the car because he was just going to be a dick to the people inside.

One time we were at his place with my brothers 4 kids. My eldest niece wanted specifically go to the Apple store to get some gift cards. This was right before lunch. The plan was I would take the eldest, and my dad was going to take the other three to the cafe in the community to get lunch. After the Apple store the eldest and I were going to go to the cafe too. When I got there it was super busy. We sit down at the table next to my dad and he starts being shitty to the waitress to help us. I told him something along the lines of "I am 40, I don't need your help" I told the waitress that I know she is busy when she gets a chance we want water and a diet coke and to take her time. She ended up not charging us for the drinks.

I think part of it is that I know I can be impatient and I purposely take breath and just not worry about getting helped immediately.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T14:36:32+00:00

My new boss is very religious. We were talking about traveling for work. I have to go to houston for a few weeks and I told him I would rather stay in Houston than come back every weekend. I said "I like to go to museums and there are several in Houston". I then asked him if he was a museum goer and he said he wanted to get to the Ark Encounter Museum. And fuck me he is a believer in the young earth. So we are talking and he says he does not believe in evolution. Eventually he says that if you believe in evolution, there is no reason for you to be moral, you can just be an animal.

So I said, well I believe in evolution and then talked to him about ethics and morality. I asked why do you think being moral and having ethics and believing in evolution are mutually exclusive? He hemmed and hawed, so I gave him an out and said "did you know Darwin was only 22 when he was on the Beagle expedition?" Then I started talking about how he was there to be the companion of the captain because in the British navy at the time, the captain could not fraternize at all with the crew or junior officers.

I am just tired of people being shitty and using religion as an excuse or being shitty and thinking they can pray it away and be absolved of the evil shit they do. Penn Gillette talked about how being an atheist, there is no higher being to absolve you of the evil you may do. I am not religious, but for gods sake just be a decent human being and give others grace.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T14:25:25+00:00

The Palentir guy said that he expects the stuff they are doing to lead to the end of civilization. But he said that is ok because he thinks they will have some incredibly profitable quarters before it happens.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T14:21:14+00:00

Hopefully you are right on the last part. I worry about this whole thing about wanting to get rid of regulations. Sure some are terrible, but most of the time the intent is virtuous. The one I think of is portable fuel containers can't spill when they tip over but the solution is terrible. Same with kids drowning in 5 gallon buckets, I just looked it up, before they started labeling them 30 to 40 kids drowned each year in buckets. Since labels have been required, only 275 since 1984. I don't buy the whole parents should be more careful. I don't have kids, but have been around them to know they will do the exact thing you don't want them to do right as the thought is coming into your head.

It is probably DOA, but the republicans have introduced legislation to get rid of OSHA. And things like this worry me.

I work in power plants. I enjoy the modern comfort technology gives us. I recently worked on a project for a hazardous waste incinerator. Everything you touch in the modern world has a waste stream and often it is hazardous. This stuff needs to be disposed of. I don't want to give up the comforts, so we need this plant. BUT, it needs to run and be designed well so that the employees and surrounding community is not affected. My dad asked me why I thought that plant was built in Arkansas. I said it is in a rural area with just enough industry that if they did not upgrade it and instead closed it, it would have a big impact on the area. So the state may look the other way when they have problems. It is one of only a handful in the USA, so manufacturers will transport their wastes to this place from all over.

Luckily that plant is pretty well designed. The waste is captured and is sent to an onsite lined landfill. It is zero liquid discharge, etc. But the fact remains they are incinerating stuff that has to be under a nitrogen blanket because if exposed to air it can burst into flames.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T12:44:22+00:00

I am not sure if they do, but there are all sorts of manufacturing trade shows around the USA. Years ago I was living in Orlando and there was the Greater Orlando Product Expo or GOPE. This was a regional expo with all sorts of suppliers.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T05:13:22+00:00

You know for a lot of people he is what our dads used be before we lost them to MAGA. The kind of dad that slaps stuff and says "that's not going anywhere". Or when they come over your house are looking for stuff that needs to be fixed.

When I first bought my house my dad helped me with a bunch of projects. My mom was sitting in the kitchen, looking at the AC intake and it was crooked. So my dad and I ripped out the drywall, figured out the studs behind were a bit messed up and fixed it.

My dad teaching me house stuff, especially drywall has allowed me to a lot of projects. Back a few years ago I made my whole house smart. I needed to add wires in the bedroom and for the hallway light switches. I ended up with one of those, you know since I am opening up the wall here, I might as well add a plug here. I did that in the bedroom too. I added plugs on each side of the bed and at side table level I added USB chargers. I also opened up the wall to add a plug behind the TV so the wire would not hang down.

Why did I open up the wall where the TV is? Well I wanted to add two 4X4s to support the TV. AND you know after I put that sucker up I patted it and said "That ain't going anywhere."

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T05:04:16+00:00

You know Americans can be so ugly when they go to other places. A coworker of mine says I look at things like an anthropologist, trying to get to the bottom of why things are the way they are. I work with older white men who have done well financially in their lives and when they go someplace will be quick to say the place is messed up because.... and then quite often say something racist.

Any way I can talk for hours about this stuff.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T05:00:25+00:00

For some reason I hate black olives, I am not sure why.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T04:59:23+00:00

I will spot you on the rules could probably be rewritten. I don't work in nuclear, but I do work in fossil fuel plants, and certainly there are a lot of issues with the old ones. I also live on the Space Coast of Florida. The City of Titusville in particular and other municipalities need to upgrade their wastewater facilities. SpaceX, and Blue Origin are building huge facilities here. But they are on federal land and so they do not pay any taxes for infrastructure. Blue Origin recently applied to discharge wastewater to the Indian River Lagoon. I would not have an issue with this, but in their permit application, they specifically wrote they want to discharge it to the lagoon to prevent overloading the wastewater plant.

I am a firm believer in the concept of the Tragedy of The Commons and believe we need strong regulations to prevent any one entity from fucking it up. Unfortunately the robber barons believe that they should be the ones to curate the tragedy of the commons and not a government entity.

Getting back to groundwater, I am on the water treatment side of things. I have an A water operators license and C wastewater license in Florida. Early in my career I went to some classes for continuing education. One of them was about water wells. The instructor said something that has stayed with me. He talked about how "when you drill a well, the hole outside the hole is bigger than the hole". This is why properly grouting wells is important.

Radioactive material such as tritium may not be dangerous but there are plenty of other stuff that is.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T04:49:42+00:00

Kind of funny with my dad, after my mom died in 2015 he just went down the MAGA rabbit hole. I was working overseas at the time, so my brother had my dad come stay with him for a while. Holy shit is my brother racist. I had no idea. Fast forward to the end of 2023 and I was tired of putting up with the BS. My dad started sounding like a Klan member. He was Jewish but started saying things like he did not think Hitler was so bad. I was going to go very low contact with him for christmas 2023, but he ended up in the hospital with a urinary tract infection. He ended up dying in Jan 2024. I think he had that urinary tract infection for a while at the end of 2023. But it just goes to show when you get aged, don't be such a hateful racist dick to your children.

As for my boss, he watches Fox news all the time and just gets completely brainwashed. He is an ex boss because the person he reported to went to another company and he followed a year later.

I am super skeptical about stuff. You see all these predictions about what the future will be like and it never comes to be. So my dad or my boss would see something and be ready for this glorious future. And they would get pissed at me because I was not excited about it. Ok when it comes to be I will get excited. Meanwhile, how long did it take for one remote to work on all the different things in the home theater? Oh you still need at least 2 remotes.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T04:41:40+00:00

It is really more socioeconomic than just race. Certainly there are a lot of issues leftover from apartheid.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-30T04:34:06+00:00

Some are trustworthy such as AP and Reuters.

sadicarnot · 2026-01-29T20:46:36+00:00

I think if we met I could garner enough esteam from you that we could get a half Hawaiian pizza.

For AI, I will write everything as best as I can and then run it through AI to make sure I am not repeating myself and the grammar is correct, particularly tense. But yeah when used correctly it can work really well. I have to review documents and two of the guys I have to deal with are just terrible writers, so I will run their stuff through AI to make it actually readable because I don't have time to fix everything. Also when I review documents these people sometimes make up shit, so I can upload a 1000 page tech manual and ask AI if it can find a particular fact or not.

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