kersploosh

Hillary lost because she didn't do enough to incentivize people to vote for her.

Hilary got more than enough votes. She received 2.9M more votes than Trump. Her problem was that her support was much too concentrated in a small number of states. The Electoral College math punishes candidates in that situation.

In theory a pension is stable, guaranteed income. The employer promises a monthly or annual payment for life, and they manage a pool of money to make sure you get that payment regardless of whether the market goes up or down. People like stability.

With a 401k you take on the market risk yourself. If the market tanks (2000 and 2008 come to mind) then your retirement funds are suddenly worth less and your payments to yourself (distributions) go down. Of course, if the market is hot you can also direct your investments to try and ride the wave. Greater risk means greater (potential) reward.

401k's also have required minimum distributions that kick in as you get older. If you live long enough you will reach a point where you have been forced to drain the whole thing into your regular bank account. Then it's time for another plan.

After digging into it, we banned the two sh.itjust.works accounts mentioned in this post. A quick search of the database did not reveal any similar accounts, though that doesn't mean they aren't there.

This sounds a bit like a normal non-profit organization, but the board of directors is composed of all donors (the "consumers").

What's the incentive for someone to want to be a "worker" in this scenario? I assume they are still paying dues? Are they getting some compensation for doing additional work, or is it an unpaid positions?

Mastodon will still be the biggest fediverse service. It will remain a niche player in the microblog world, as Bluesky gradually becomes the big player by stealing users from the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The rest of the federverse will (hopefully) coalesce around fewer projects. Development is massively fragmented right now. I'm very curious to see which projects flourish, and which projects die.

I do not expect the federverse to unseat large corporate social media and become home to the masses. And I'm okay with that.

Your last paragraph is a good one. I fell in love with Sweden when I was there. Then I talked to some teenagers and they said they really wanted to live in America. It caught me off guard. I didn't understand why they would want to leave a place that seemed so safe, secure, and comfortable. They said they wanted more flexibility and opportunity. Sure, they could get a stable living-wage job and keep it for their whole career, but in America they thought they would have more chances to try new things and reinvent themselves.

Whether our perceptions of each other's countries are correct or not, for all of us the grass certainly looked greener on the other side of the fence.

I wondered if the Turbo button on the computer really did anything.

Fantastic resource!

I fixed the creaky sound in the bottom bracket of my commuter. Pulled off the cranks and bearings, wiped everything clean, then reinstalled with fresh grease. Also cleaned the accumulated dirt off of that area of the frame, and wiped off the chainrings, while I was at it.

Don't forget the four most important goals of any activity.

1. Looking good
2. Feeling good
3. Looking good
4. Safety

I don't know where in the world you live, but here in the US there is a decades-long trend of people abandoning group social activities in favor of individual activities. Robert Putnam wrote a whole book about it called Bowling Alone back in 2000. Organizations of all kinds have seen declining membership, from adult sports leagues to scouting organizations to PTA groups. If you can find a group of people dedicated enough to form and maintain a club, then you are bucking the trend.

I was working for an HVAC contractor and we did a job at a prison. We would work at night while all the residents were locked up and sleeping. We had a corrections officer escorting us the whole time. The hallways were all on the exterior of the building and lined with large windows. That allowed the guards in the towers outside to watch people moving within the building.

One night, in the wee hours of the morning, we're walking down the hallway when a red laser dot appears on the wall next to us. All of us contractors freeze instantly. We don't know what is happening and we DO NOT want to get shot. Our escort gets on his radio and tells the guys in the tower to stop fucking with us. The little red dot disappears and we go on with our night.

We were briefly afraid for our lives because some bored asshole prison guard couldn't resist flagging us with the muzzle of his rifle and teasing us with the laser sight.