“Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall Rosenberg.

The lessons for communication and non-reactivity will pay dividends in every aspect of your interpersonal relations. Work, friendships, romantic relationships, even dealing with customer disservice.

Having seen firsthand what happens when someone unknowingly enters a hypoxic enclosed space, I think the difference is foreknowledge. Thrashing sounds like acidosis from holding one’s breath. I was helping an acquaintance work on his old steel boat. There was a watertight compartment. The risk of steel-enclosed spaces is that rusty steel in an enclosed space can consume all of the oxygen, leaving only nitrogen rich air.

He opened the hatch and, before I could stop him, he just strode on in like it was nothing. He was unconscious before I could get to him, maybe ten seconds. Fortunately, he was near enough to the hatch that I could just reach in and grab him, rather than trying to find an air tank and regulator, and then put it on.

He recovered just fine, but had a terrible headache. He didn’t remember anything about it. He didn’t thrash. There was no drama. He walked in and fell unconscious. Lucky for him it was a small space, so the bulkheads kept him from doing a full header into the steel deck.

I misspoke, and you raise a good point. I meant gift economies, and that error is on me. And those are pretty well-documented. I’ll stick to my firsthand experiences:

• Waianae, Oahu in Hawaii. The weekly take-what-you-need-bring-what-you-can food exchanges there are a huge stopgap for food insecurity and also spur community bonding
• Burning Man - TTITD, regionals, and much of the hippie festival circuit have a robust gifting culture

As a very young kid, I thought there was a very hungry monster that lived inside vacuum cleaners. The switch was just a lever to open a flap and expose the monster’s sucking hunger.

You are confidently incorrect on this. Currency == money. Money is, for we hoi polloi, a barely consentual conversion and exchange system for our labor, hypothetically allowing us to convert our labor into readily fungible exchange units. Money, at the Capital Class level, is debt, and therefore control, i.e. power. Money is just how they keep score.

There are plenty of barter gifting and Communist (“from those of ability to those of need”) economies, just on scales that fly below the radar of most economists. Your sweeping assertion leads me to believe that you may simply be ignorant of those non-monetary exchanges. Would you be willing to add more context to your assertion?

Edit: I misspoke; crashfrog raises a valid point, and I meant gift economies.

Is anyone else contemptuous of proprietary systems on bicycles? The spiraling complexity and lack of interoperability even on acoustic bike drivetrains really chaps my ass.

Just me? Fine, I’ll slink back to my retrogrouch hidey-hole now. 😆

While I don’t see the need for bicycle ABS in any of my riding, I do see why some may find it helpful. And this lawsuit seems like a step in the right direction for interoperability.

Wampum was used by Eastern Costal tribes as a storytelling aid.

In the Salish Tribes, dentalium shell necklaces were used as a status symbol/indication of social rank. Some tribes used the necklaces as a type of currency, but I’ve only heard the “some tribes did this” part; never anything about which specific tribes used dentalium as currency.

Obviously, anything that holds perceived value can be traded.

Source: went to junior high in a school that taught two full years of Haudenosaunee (also called Iroquois) history.

Salish source: I’ve been a volunteer naturalist in the Puget Sound for eight years with an annual training requirement, with entire days allocated to history of the original Salish tribe for the area where we’re working.

So… like running a blender in reverse? 😁

The Salish Tribes existed in the PacNW for over 13,000 years without money.

JFC, really, Squid? It’s too early in the morning for that. 😆

I see Robert Evans, I upvote. Really folks, Jobs was such a piece of shit that he got a 4-parter of coverage on Behind the Bastards. Highly suggested. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=aEv08Zzunfc&si=xGHOjTXfizCplLDp

All other things aside, Mao has some legendary lack of chin. Like… Was this just a bad angle? I’ve only seen missing chins in caricatures and comic book villains.

You do know that almost all modern on-road motorcycles are CARB-compliant, right? Oh, but what about those small motorcycles? https://www.transportpolicy.net/standard/us-motorcycles-emissions/ As of 2006, all Class I and II motorcycles must be compliant with few exceptions.

I don’t know where you are getting your numbers for your claims. These are some significant assertions that, even prima facie, don’t make sense.

1 person in 1 car emits less emissions than 1 person on 1 motorcycle

Even from just a thermodynamics standpoint, this assertion not only feels wrong, but is wrong. Maybe a two-stroke motorcycle could out-emit a modern SOV.

I see a lot of specific examples, but here is a good engineering guideline: do not skimp on physical interfaces. **Anywhere energy is changing form or if it touches your body, don’t skimp on those. **

For example

• tires
• bicycle saddle
• heaters/furnaces
• electrical inverters
• keyboard
• mouse
• engines
• shoes
• eyewear
• clothes (buy used if necessary, but always buy quality clothing)

Quality usually means more money, but sometimes one is able to find a high quality and low-cost version. In my experience though, trying to find the cheap version that works well means trying so many permutations; it would have been more economical to just get the more costly version in the first place.

Religion now throws a null pointer exception?

Eight what?

Holy hell! This was the most succinct, concise, and “yeah, your high school history textbooks whitewashed all this shit” summary of the modern Conservative political machine. It’s like Robert Evans, Matt Taibbi, Jake Hanrahan, and Kurt Andersen had a love child that came out as a summary text.

If anyone got to my comment here, but only skimmed parent comment, please do yourself a favor and bask in that bit.

I wonder how much of a role palate refinement is for this trend. For example: Starbucks, for as terrible as their coffee is, did a lot to elevate the overall regard of coffee; bean juice was no longer just a bitter stew we tolerated to get our caffeine fix. Starbucks broke trail for craft coffee roasting more general popularity.

Could it be the same with alcoholic beverages? I used to think Maker’s Mark was the best bourbon going. Now I know better, but so many of the craft bourbons are expensive or just plain hard to find. Ditto for my favorite hazy IPAs. Why binge drink the good stuff when your palate is going to be wrecked after three beers? And since I’m not going to drink swill, welp, guess I’m not going to get drunk tonight!

I have long pondered a comedy set in the Star Wars universe. Maybe some beer-swilling, rowdy Jedi. And fortunately Auralnauts fulfilled my dream: https://youtu.be/WSCm8yAxBr8?si=QC1SNiLAMAu1rE0T

Some of the later entries in the series are a bit weak, but there are always worthwhile punchlines.

:( indeed. This got me right in the feels.