I saw this when I had to get new machines 7-8 years ago. However they were an extra like $300 for each machine. wtf.

I would kill for some sort of audio out or usb, but even better would be Zigbee/z-wave/thread, and you can do it for less than $20 in parts.

Now that Matter/Thread has standard profiles for laundry machines and has a chance of building interoperability, I hope my next machines will, for a reasonable cost and no cloud requirement

If you read Kissinger’s Wikipedia, it give him credit for some really significant changes that pulled us back from WWWIII

You could say the same about pretty much any infrastructure. It’s hideously expensive and will never get paid back by utilization.

• highways
• local roads
• bridges
• air traffic control
• utilities of most kinds
• canals
• flood control
• erosion mitigation

All are hideously expensive and will never get paid back by utilization.

Are they all bad investments?

I claim they all are critical for their indirect benefits to an economy, a society, and rail is exactly the same.

It’s a conspiracy I tell you, the operators of all 250,000 worldwide weather stations are in a coordinated effort to misreport temperatures

It wasn’t even necessarily a bad idea given property growth, but it will be interesting to see what happens if they can’t stop population decline

Trains everywhere connecting the entire country is a very worthwhile goal for a country, regardless of profit motive. If we can see the benefit of doing that with roads, why can’t we see the benefit of doing that with rail?

Id argue the northeast corridor is effectively the only place we have intercity rail.

While there are other routes, it’s mainly just keeping the lights on. How can rail be useful at 1-2 trips/day, travelling at glacial speeds? We shouldn’t even count it. If we ever start funding rail seriously, we’ll save a crap load of money where Amtrak kept the right of way sort of in use but that’s the only benefit.

The 2022 infrastructure bill would have made a huge difference increasing several routes to “plan to be useful” or even “sort of useful”, but even then a decent rail system would be a century out until we actually start spending. It doesn’t even have to be much, compared to road spending, but it has to be a lot more than we do now, in percentages more similar to road spending, and it needs to be consistent, long term. It can’t just disappear every time a Regressive is in office.

Given that we here in the US are still trying g to work out from under 150 year old rail infrastructure, I don’t think they need to worry about it for a while.

Rail generally lasts longer than roads even if you don’t maintain it. We’ve proven that

You might ask if capitalism is the sole definer of policy, what’s the purpose of our elected parasites? If they can’t define a reason for their existence, they too need to be replaced with ai.

Just like vaccines, preventive services save money and lives.

But they’re not claiming the car driver is always at fault, only the presumption of fault. Clearly demonstrating the other person ran a red light has a good chance of changing the judgement

Yet the reason you’re getting none of that is your own conservative flock. I have no idea what you need but I’ll damn well try. Be ungrateful if you want. Turn it down if you want. Reject all hope for the future if you want but then don’t come crying to the rest of us. . But don’t be trying to tear down my world too. Don’t be getting self-righteous about it. Don’t claim its not fiscally conservative when you’re getting more money than you paid in.

https://www.thecompanystore.com/washed-denim-duvet-cover/51218D-T-DENINDIGO.html

As always it’s women’s beauty standards preventing them from having pockets. Jealous?

Did you vote for the racists and fascists? Vote for suspending human rights, kidnapping people off the streets with no due process? Current politics have really made me understand how much white privilege I have and this is the fullest time in my life that I’ve been “woke” enough to be grateful for my skin color. What is going on now is way beyond the pale.

This is the first time that politics aren’t two slightly different positions where I can understand both, but one side is clearly anathema to everything we’ve ever professed as a country for the last 200 years.

For example, I’m currently looking at the worker retraining programs, and the closest one is 70 miles away

And yet this was one of the major points where Hillary Clinton lost. Part of her platform was greatly expanding job training opportunities. People shit all over that …. While they had a point that those haven’t always worked well in the past, at least it’s something. At least it’s better than the guy lying to everyone’s face with no intention of doing anything.

Why vote Democrat where some people would benefit from job training when you can vote for some blowhard spouting gibberish who will just make your life harder?

Why does everybody assume that the 2k people living in my town don’t want any of that stuff?

I did grow up sort of rural. I do know what it’s like to have fewer people, fewer amenities. But my town always managed to vote for at least good school funding.

But it is all politics. I started from conservative attitude and have gone much more progressive over time. Part of that is moving to a more progressive city and seeing how well it works. But most of my life it’s been “you deserve the same benefits that I have”. The same quality education, connectivity, infrastructure, all the modern amenities that make up a good quality of life. But I keep voting for that when it seems like rural conservative areas are the ones voting against it, those who would most benefit, are most against. Most of my life I could understand where they’re coming from, most of my life I could see the logic. I just can’t anymore. The modern conservative/progressive divide just doesn’t make any sense. Maybe part of it is money. In my conservative phase I cared a lot about being fiscally responsible and there was never enough money to go around. But now I have a better idea where the money comes from. It’s my money. I live in a major city that is the economic life blood of the region in a blue “donor” state that gives more to the nation than it takes. I’m voting to spend my money on your buses, your internet, your renewable energy, your education and job training so we can all benefit and I don’t understand why conservative people shit all Over that.

I also used to be conservative for strong family values, but that really seems performative and inconsistent with what I consider family values. Don’t be all self-righteous with your family values that really don’t seem to value families.

Why should I not complain about that?

You should complain. You deserve better.

I’m sure these services are a big part of it - you can’t see all the poverty assistance spread out across a wide rural region but you can see there’s no bus service.

Certainly some services only work with higher population densities, but that’s why some of us prefer cities. Rural areas have advantages too, but either way is a compromise. We each made a choice where to live.

But turn this back to what would you do? As a liberal elite urban snob, i freely agree that my ideas are not likely to work well: maybe you don’t want internet service, education, connectivity to the modern world, infrastructure, fine. But im trying and i dont know what else to try. Step up and propose something. I don’t have any say for your county but if you say you need rural bus service, I’m all for that. And I’ll go further and say we should fund intercity rail, and rural bus service to all the towns it passes, to open more of the world to both of us. Stand up, tell us what you need, and you just might get it and more …. It’s not charity it’s a pooled resource making life better for us all.

This article pisses me off a bit, because it does seem likely, but there is no one that people on the left like, who is so corrupt, spiteful, narcissistic, destructive as Trump. We’d never vote to tear everything down, including the democratic traditions that are the foundation of our society. Plus if your strength and independence is so core to your self-image, where is it? Voting for a tantrum to knock everything off the table is no one’s idea of strength. Instead of denigrating what other people try to do for you, stand up and tell us what you need. Make a proposal we can all get behind. A big difference this article misses is that we want the best for you and will act to improve your life if you meet us half away, we have the entire resources of the country pooled to help all of us, where rural MAGA voted for lashing out, for hurting people

My state has similar. But I don’t know why Trump and groupies would object, local cops are allowed to help with criminals who are also wanted by ICE: they said they’re deporting the worst of the worst, criminals and violent …… seems like a perfect overlap

As long as it could be thousands of years we can dream about fantastic new elements that could make arc reactors or interstellar travel possible.

The more likely reality is a boring line of research of interest only to scientists