I identify as an Electronic-American, and my pronouns are buzz/click.

A narcissist taking something away and then giving it back is a common manipulative tactic used to control their victim[s] by creating a cycle of dependence & uncertainty.

IMO, if our government was legitimate and uncorrupt,

History has demonstrated that such a government can never be guaranteed. Germany had it right when they banned Nazi speech? They banned other types of “hate” speech not all that much earlier. Nobody knows what kind of “hate” speech they will be trying to ban tomorrow, or a decade from now. All we do know is that the people will broadly support it, just as they do now, just as they did a hundred years ago.

I’m going to repeat this again: Even though they are spoken, threats are not a form of speech. Threats are “violence” and “censorship” is not the appropriate remedy for violence. People who issue threats should be prosecuted, not silenced.

The government should not be allowed to shortcut the criminal process and merely prevent such violent people from being able to discuss their violent intentions in public. They should either be prosecuted, or ignored.

Government censorship isn’t just a ban on speech currently deemed to be hateful. It is also an endorsement of speech they currently believe to be political.

The problem should be wildly apparent when we realize that governments around the world have a long and colorful history of making “political speech” that is only later determined to be hateful.

Even “Good” presidents in our recent past have held positions that, in hindsight, are dehumanizing, abhorrent and vile. Our entire “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for example.

Our incoming president has indicated his intention to treat immigrants as enemy combatants. He plans to deport adults who were born and have lived their entire lives in the US if he determines their parents did not adequately prove their legal presence. He has determined that this racist position is “political speech”.

Government has no fucking business deciding what is and is not protected speech.

One important caveat: there is a difference between “speech” and “violence”. Threats may be spoken, but threats are not speech. Threats should be criminally prosecuted, not arbitrarily censored by the government.

I found this: https://bluewallet.io/watch-only/

Since it doesn’t use the wallet’s private address, you should be able to use any public address, and not just an address for your own wallet.

Point of order: “Americans” aren’t talking about taking over Greenland. “Semi-sentient Cheetos” are talking about taking over Greenland.

Ah, a Greenlander. Greenlandian? Verdant-American?

American, or European?

Never been impressed by the “water to wine” miracle.

My S/O can turn anything into whine.

Absolutely.

It used to be that if you had $10,000 excess income, you could use it to buy $900 worth of stock, bonds, and other financial instruments or you could spend the entirety of that $10,000 on something you tell the IRS you plan to use for business purposes, and pay some salaries for making it.

Now, if you are $10,000 over the line, you can turn $6,300 into stocks, and double your money in 4-5 years. There’s no point in actually spending your money anymore; just keep rolling the excess into the means of making more.

People born in the 1950s grew up with a 91% top-tier income tax rate, which ultra-rich people went out of their way to avoid by spending their excess income on “business expenses”, rather than investments.

Yes. I only want FOSS and federated spyware social media.

We’re on the same page, but I wasn’t saying anything about feminists, actually.

The post was about an artist receiving death threats after having drawn a female character’s hand in a “pinching” gesture, under the theory that such a gesture is referring to a tiny penis.

I was saying that the people wishing death on feminists don’t qualify as “men”. Actual “men” don’t give a shit about such things. The people who are offended by feminist insinuations of tiny penises aren’t men at all.

What was hilarious was that in OP’s response to the comment he linked, he called for the commenter(s) to “unalive” themselves.

The American healthcare system kills people all day long. But, it’s not a public function; it’s not a component of the state. It is a private industry. Yes, it practices voluntary manslaughter for profit, but no, it’s not eugenics.

The state is not involved in your decision to not have ginger kids. Your decision not to have ginger kids is not eugenics.

The state providing incentives for behavior is a mandate. The state providing incentives for not having ginger kids is eugenics. Not “subtle eugenics”. Not “planned breeding”. Eugenics.

If your decision to abort is because the fetus will be a redhead, that’s “planned breeding”, not “eugenics”.

The sine qua non of eugenics is a state mandate.

Alternatively, it’s an incredibly simple question, with an incredibly simple answer:

It’s your business, not mine. Do what you want for the reasons you want.

I’ve said this many, many times: If abortion is a viable option, it is the only option worthy of consideration.

The transformer is dimensioned based on the max capacity of the houses in the neighbourhood

No, it isn’t. They use considerably smaller, cheaper transformers, based on the maximum expected load. A 500A transformer might serve ten 200A users. They do not have the capacity to provide full, rated service to all users simultaneously.

Those ten users might never use more than 400A total, even though each of them might use 150A+ from time to time. It doesn’t make sense to install a 2000A transformer when it will never see more than 400A.

Understood.

And that “$10 connection fee” makes perfect sense for covering per-user administrative costs. The cost is the same to send a $1 bill or a $1000 bill to the customer; a per-user fee to cover that administrative fee is not unreasonable.

But they aren’t talking about administration. They are talking about infrastructure maintenance. Infrastructure is a shared resource, and the maintenance costs scale (primarily) with total consumption, not per-user.

From the original comment:

Hence, the split that many utility companies are shifting to. There’s a fixed charge to have a connection to the grid, which covers the cost of grid maintenance. And there’s a separate cost per kWh of energy used.

That “fixed cost to have a connection to the grid” does not cover grid maintenance. Grid maintenance costs are proportional to consumption, not number-of-users. It does not make sense that this fee should be divided among users rather than based on consumption.