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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • But they choose to not. One of those cake and eat it too scenarios.

    A territory like them is eligible for Federal money from various programs, while not having to pay Federal income tax. If they became a state, they’d then have to pay income tax, lose benefit of the free program money, but be allowed to vote.

    If you don’t want to fully commit to the whole package and are milking the advantages of being a territory, should you really get a right to choose how the package that is being taxed and giving you free money is steered?

    (Oversimplification, of course.)

    If I were a member of a territory, I don’t really know where my thoughts would land.

    However, as one that is taxed, it seems that allowing the untaxed to choose our taxed destiny would be disingenuous.






  • They will likely revamp the process. The problem is, once the ballot is counted, the vote is separated from the voter, so there’s no link to who the person was and who they voted for.

    It’s a process meant for privacy. That someone was able to accurately forge signatures enough to pass verification (which is handled by trained humans) is a bit on the “this was creepy/planned” side, which is likely how the outlier event happened.

    America isn’t there yet, but cryptographic hashes anonymizing but connecting a vote to a voter, so the vote could be anonymously recalled for an attack like this would likely be the best privacy-preserving process.








  • Sure…but let’s expand. Those trees then become paper towels and such. Processing would need to be done with electric stuff and not petrol based machines. There would be a cost to create said industrial equipment in pollution I’m sure.

    Let’s invent new ways to use the wood. It would likely be weak fibers if fast growing so they’d need to be processed and pressed. What is disposable products like paper towels get composted and used for (other vague processes) - any methane generation can be collected for the methane to then be burned (I know, but at least it’s not fossil fuel extraction) for processes that still need burnable fuel.

    Any compost that can be used for fertilizing new tree growth goes back into the cycle.

    The Plants may still be beneficial to exist, but augment with the plants. Let’s start reforestation? Especially on land with abundant fresh water.

    As a side-note, an episode of an old TV show SeaQuest in the 1990s always stuck with me, I think it was the (mediocre) 2035 reboot where there were giant carbon scrubbing towers on the shoreline. It stuck with me way back then and I had hoped we’d never see it. But. Yay, here we are. /s

    Lots of holes I’m sure, but, seems worth trying? Not an expert obv.



  • We need another flavor of the 1980s telecom antitrust. All phones should be sold 100% unlocked. All carriers should not be allowed to sell phones with custom software configurations (Verizon is the worst for this) or neutered basic band support that makes the phone difficult if not impossible to use on competing carriers. All phones should be as interchangeable as they are currently capable of. Predatory carrier financing deals should be heavily regulated. No more trapping people in multi-year financing pyramid schemes. Basic communications methods for voice, image, video, text, video call, data should be forcibly standardized on all brands.

    These companies were given a long leash, and they just abused it.