I’m from the rural South and there are plenty of ostentatious displays of wealth. Particularly surrounding how your home looks - decorating for every single holiday for no reason comes to mind.

Plenty of rural Americans are super poor. It generally takes more money to live in the city so that should make some sense. I grew up rural poor - my family were partially subsistence farmers, cutting our grocery bill.

To answer the question from OP - I’m not sure I count as properly middle class but I’m definitely more stable than I was growing up, so I’ll say my biggest changes are being more conscious of what I look and smell like. When you’re poor, everything smells like whatever’s on sale. I have kept my tendency to overbuy during sales for anything is shelf stable for long periods of time even if I already have plenty.

If the job requires you to be at your desk then presumably that means you have work to complete. Judge people for what they get done, not how often they mindlessly move a mouse and this wouldn’t be a problem!

In a similar vein, I was trying to find something on Facebook (yeah, I know, but it was a funny work thing) today and went to use the search function to look for the FB page in question (searched the exact name) and if you just hit enter the new AI assumes you’re asking it a question. It’s FB! It’s not a search engine! Why is it trying to give me a phone number for the police department I’m looking up to see their insane post?! I want to see the page! The page with the name I searched! On the app I searched in! Now you have to click a separate button that specifies you’re looking to search through FB… In the FB app!

This AI crap is already k.i.l.l.i.n.g. me.

No very believable. He can’t do full sentences like that.

I’m sure that will make people feel super safe while ubering.

While I don’t disagree that it’s going to be too late, I do think SMRs are likely to go the distance, at least abroad.

The reality is that we aren’t going to hit 90% carbon free by 2030 without a huge social and political shift. There’s just no way that is happening in 6 years. I really hate being a downer about it but I think we need to face the facts on it.

The storage capacity is the hard part. Batteries aren’t really a viable option (we don’t really have good enough batteries, limits on how many can be made with current resources, etc).

Dams would be good (pump water uphill when electricity is cheap and release when you need the energy back), but dams are not a viable option everywhere and also have a high environmental impact and are arguably not the safest thing for a community.

I read somewhere recently about the idea of putting smaller batteries in individual homes, basically distributing the power ahead of time to a certain number of places so they are not taking from the grid in peak times, but it would be hugely expensive still, and I also question if we have the ability to make so many batteries, much less get enough people to install them.

To be fair, Plant Vogtle just turned on Unit 3 earlier this year and Unit 4 should be coming soon.

OoO this would be fun to try to do the whole song…

Cruise ships are more about the amenities on board. Not sure how many amenities you could get on an airship because of the weight. So it would be a two days boring as hell trip and most people aren’t going to give up the vacay time to sit around and do nothing.

Whoa, don’t call her a cunt. She doesn’t have the depth or the warmth.