The fact fascism can come from within makes it extra hard to fight, yes.

Still, vs. Putin, Europe has a long way it would have to slide.

It legitimately was for them, if you’re being serious.

Unfortunately, you make a publicly traded company, and it will always act like a publicly traded company, in the end. No pithy saying in the code of conduct will change that. It’s like how every dictatorship tends to become a monarchy.

2018, according to Wikipedia.

In line with nostalgia, some kind of tourism. People dress up as vikings and practice with axes, even though they don’t remember the good ol’ days of raiding monasteries.

There are families with way more money than musk, all over the world. These are groups of people who made their money a century or several more ago. They are long lived dynasties that have passed-on how to keep power and how to be quiet about it.

7 secret families is pretty close to that. Elon Musk passed a trillion, if you didn’t know, which is where that number came from.

Although options there seem to be declining, as well, at least where I live.

Oh man, banning indexing has the same vibe as Piefed banning all the most active users. Apparently, you can run part of the internet, and still not know how internet communities work.

IIRC, only once. It felt like seeing someone you know on TV.

Well, everyone starts somewhere, I guess.

Oh, I see. They were literally selling, like, ordinary foil as insulation but cheaper, and then managed to kill themselves, because they’re not actual tradies and didn’t follow basic safety rules.

Sorry if that was a stupid question. I know Australian and North American buildings are pretty similar, but if you live in the tropics building a thin-walled container with no room for insulation is an actual option. So, it was hard to be sure.

Hmm. What kind of wood is the common one for construction? It’s probably not pine or fir like here.

Apologies if the conspiracy stuff is totally off-base. I don’t want to strawman anyone.

The UAE has some contenders too, IIRC. I’m not sure about Kuwait. There’s plenty more tin-pot dictators around the world that would have billions, and some lieutenants as well, like in Russia. Trillions is another matter, though; that’s a lot of money.

Really old money families tend to grow to the point that each branch has a much more modest amount. The Medicis never died out, for example, but good luck finding anyone still rich because of them. Families that hold political power as well are a bit different, because they tend to (ahem) “consolidate” it, but the world has changed a lot over the past couple centuries. Most (all?) of the ancient aristocratic families are either politically sidelined or completely expelled.

In Canada, there’s no exemption from minimum wage, and there’s typically a payscale that goes up from there with experience. I don’t know any servers well, at the moment, but I would guess 23 CAD/hour is typical if it’s your career (so about 17 USD).

And then tips are added on top of that, which are traditionally 10% or so, but are higher now thanks to digital terminals that make it hard to refuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re up to 20% fairly regularely.

I haven’t ever noticed different service standards vs. the US. Except maybe that staff seem surprised if you clean up your own messes in America. In Europe, etiquette is already so different that it’s hard to tell.

He basically was a random guy from a wealthy-ish family until his 30s, then got involved with Zip2, which ended up getting acquired, and he made 20 million or so. Then he took that, and got in PayPal on the ground floor, which took him to ~200 million. Finally he bought a major stake in Tesla and founded SpaceX, which both went gangbusters, and now here we are.

Most billionaires make it big in one shot, while he had like three. If you wanted, you could spin that as him being a genius, but honestly he proves that he’s not fairly often and publicly. It’s still luck.

The only ones that are in the running are Gulf royal families, which go back maybe a century. Well okay, maybe Putin. (The UK’s monarchs are worth well under a billion at this point)

Maybe aliens or the Illuminati are where you’re going with this, though, and then it doesn’t matter what anyone says.

For one thing, nobody owns, like, General Motors, or Apple. Or rather, they’re publicly traded, and I probably own some of it indirectly, and you could buy some of it for a few dollars, yourself. Lot’s of people don’t seem to get this - a company owned by one guy, or even mostly by one guy, happens, but it’s not really the main part of the Western economy, anymore.

Bill Gates was in the lead for a long time, and it’s true Microsoft is how he made is money, but he’s down to holding 0.5% of it at this point. The biggest individual owner is Steve Ballmer, at ~5%.

Someone else more qualified would have to answer in detail why Elon Musk’s stake in several companies are worth more than another guy’s stake in several companies, but that’s the gist. It got that way, because he got lucky a few times in a row. That’s how inequality is made, in general.

Anything sticky and viscous would count, probably, so yes.

To be slime, you need a certain elasticity or gelatinousness as well. Honey isn’t really slime.

Source: I made it the fuck up, but also, it seems right.

That happened? Wow. Link?

Yeah, “should [AI anything] be banned” is a shoe-in on Lemmy.

I actually wonder if this is OP venting about it, more than anything, since there was never any doubt what the result would be.

Interesting, although not quite as devastating as the mass casualty events I’m talking about.

Here, fibreglass is the standard choice, and absolutely required for a space to be livable to a modern standard. Is anyone trying that in Australia?

Massive flammability of the foam. If it starts in one place, and it’s ordinary, non-flame-retardant foam, the whole ceiling will be burning aggressively within seconds. (Flammable claddings have caused other issues, like the Grenfell tower fire, but bar ceiling + small flame specifically happens over and over again)

It happened in Thailand at the Rong Beer Na Lat Phrao bar this summer, set off by a failing AC unit, ~30 dead ~70 injured. And in Switzerland at the Crans-Montana bar this winter, set off by a sparkler lifted too high up, 41 dead 115 injured.

If it was just this year, maybe it’s a coincidence, but it was huge news back in 2003, when it was one of the first disasters widely filmed. That was in America at The Station nightclub, set off by band pyrotechnics, 100 people dead 230 injured.

As long as it’s not across the whole ceiling of a bar.

It’s a bit off topic, but damn. If you got a nickle for every time a double digit number of people were killed by that exact scenario, you’d have more than one nickle, which is ridiculous.