I don’t think anyone anywhere mentioned redirecting flock cameras funds would even approach switching the grid to green energy.

Couldn’t the billions have been used for solar infrastructure?

That's how I interpreted your statement actually. It came off to me as "the government is spending so much money on Flock when that huge sum could be used to setup a lot of solar energy generation". The points again though, is that it's not that much money (in comparison to other government contractors), a big chunk of it comes from private sources not public anyway, and it would be a small drop in a big bucket of money that is needed to have a meaningful effect on national solar power generation.

Just barely over a billion actually. We don't have good numbers from 2017 to 2023, but from 2023 onwards they're basically spot on 1 billion.

Regardless, not all of that money comes from groups that should be building solar power stations, and the amount of money spent on them is not nearly on the scale required to switch the grid to green energy in a reasonable timeframe. That was the whole point, you don't understand the financials, you don't understand the sources. You have a valid frustration about where and how public funds are being spent, but you're barking up the wrong tree, and you've picked a rather small tree at that.

Didn't address the strawman that you created, and instead went to ad-hominem attacks.

You at least put forth some effort to make another point, but I see no reason to waste my time defending against it until we are cleary having an honest discussion on even terms.

Please address why you made a strawman in the first place, and I will address the points you made in your last reply.

I just donated to them (the IL, not the republicans), so hopefully you can get back on the program!

"Annual recurring revenue (ARR) is a key metric used by subscription and software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses to measure the predictable and recurring revenue expected over a 12-month period"

They are expecting to bring 500 million this year in revenue. Thats what I said, and that's what you said. Not 500 million for the first half of the year and another 500 million the rest of the year. 500 million total.

Perhaps you should do a slightly less cursory search.

Ignore her like anyone else and let her decide on her own comfort zone walking by you? If some one sees you walking alone, and starts altering their behavior because of your presence, whatever their intention, it sends the message that you have been noticed, you are being watched, they are reacting to your presence, and this indicates some kind of interest or goal in an interaction.

So just keep waking, if she wants to cross the street, just ignore her. Definitely don't yell "It's okay I'm not a rapist!" or "I have a girlfriend already!", just let her do her thing, and you keep doing yours.

Some empathy is normal, but I don't think my level of empathy is, and I'm certain that there isn't enough for an anarchist society to exist at a scale larger than a few thousand people.

I think would rather enjoy living in an equitable society where everyone helps everyone else, and there is no property, but as soon as your society needs to have modern amenities (water, sanitation, electricity, roads, etc) setup or repaired, you're going to involve a chain of people so large to support that infrastructure that your society will extend beyond it's stable size.

I don't even think it was that altruistic. I have a saw, and a ladder. I could have risked myself to try to remove the tree and fix up the roof... Not to mention the potential lawsuits from screwing it up, since I'm not trained in tree removal or roof repairs, or getting arrested for trespass for messing around in a house I don't own.

I put in an amount of effort to satisfy my own concerns about how devasted I would be if my house was destroyed and no one even lifted a finger to let me know about it before I got home.

you have a story where you spent an hour of your time and effort to help your neighbour without getting anything out of it yourself.

everyone contributes as best they’re able with no concern for getting value out of an exchange proportional to the effort put in

If you read a little slower, and tried a little harder, you might understand what I actually wrote. I'm gonna go ahead and lay it out here, since you seem to be struggling...

I am not everyone, you are not everyone. Everyone is not me, and everyone is not you. People are individuals, and as individuals, they have different experiences in life. Those different experiences cause those individuals to behave differently. Some people do like helping others, (like I me), but not everyone does. You'll note in my story that not all my neighbors worked together to find this guy and let him know about his house, I doubt any of them did except me. I called the police about it, and they tried to help, because they are paid by my city (and by extension, me and my neighbors) to help if they can. I do not hold a social view that depends on everyone being as altruistic (if not more so) than I am. I have a personal philosophy that you should help people, and prioritize helping them based on how close they are to you. I put myself first, a little selfish, sure, but it's the old "put your mask on first, then help others" logic. You can't help others effectively if you need help yourself. After that, it's my family first, then friends, neighbors, residents of my state, countrymen, neighboring countries, continent, and then the rest of the world. However, it would be foolish of me to think that everyone has this same willingness to help, or the same logical progression of altruism for their fellow man. That is why I as an individual can help others with no expectations of direct compensation without characterizing myself as a naive fool who flunked out of homeschool, because I didn't actually state anything about the education of individuals that help others freely. Your comment is a strawman, where you build a different argument, and attack that, rather than debate what I have actually said.

Now, I'm asking you a question to make sure you are arguing in good faith. Please be sure to address it in your reply. Did you build a strawman intentionally, or did you do it accidentally?

He solved the railroad problem. Pull the lever, and then clear any arguments of bring partially responsible for murdering someone by shooting them.

That's if he actually did it though, which he didn't, because we were hanging out that night stomping spotted lantern flys.

Sometimes it's public entities, like city councils, or police departments. Othertimes, it's privately owned business, like Lowes, HomeDepot, apartment complexes, or even "communities" like HOAs. The point is that Flock is a private business, and only government affiliated when and where the government decides to do business with them.

This is in contrast to say, traffic cameras, owned by state DoTs, which are public property and exist on public infrastructure.

Maybe, maybe not.

They're only pulling ~300-500 million in revenue, which is enough money to build... 1 or 2 grid scale solar farms...

I'm not saying that wouldn't be a better use of the money, but you should probably do some cursory research on the company so you understand what they are doing, and the financial scale that they are doing it at.

No, I'm saying that your reading comprehension abilities and your lofty ideals of a utopian society where no one needs property and everyone contributes as best they're able with no concern for getting value out of an exchange proportional to the effort put in, is indicative of a failed home-school education and a lack of real world experience.

Your first comment is exhibiting the isolationist mindset of suburnites

I don't think you can narrow that general mindset down to suburbanites. People in all kinds of population densities form in-groups and outgroups, it doesn't matter if they are in suburbia, a big city, or out in the country. I lived in Baltimore for a year, and that was probably the most socially isolated I've ever been. The east coast of the US is just a bucket of crabs, everyone trying to climb over everyone else. The people there wouldn't even spit at you for free. My partner grew up in a very rural environment, like "outside city limits, and that city only had one traffic light of the blinking yellow variety" rural. The help they got growing up was from family. They would do odd jobs for neighbors and neighbors would do likewise, but there was always some expectation of barter or compensation for materials and services. They definitely had a concept of private property, and knew their tools, time, and expertise were valuable assets necessary to continue their desired lifestyle.

Please, contrast my experiences with yours. I'd love to hear a first-hand account from someone living in a current anarchist society.

Maybe an hour of time between checking around the house to make sure no one was home, checking with my other neighbors to see if they had his contact info, calling the non-emergency police line, checking the country records for property info, digging up my neighbor's linkedin profile, calling the corporate office (getting stuck on hold) then thinking to check the Zillow listing and call the agent that last sold the house.

What was it worth to me? I didn't have to spend the rest of my day wondering if he was going to come home from a day of work and find that his house needed major repairs that could have been mitigated if only he'd known a few hours earlier. He was able to get a crew out there the same day to get the tree out of his roof and get some temporary coverage up to weather then next few days of storms.

The bulging battery on its own isn't (much) more dangerous than a normal one. The problem is once the device splits open, the battery is no longer protected and much more likely to get accidentally punctured. A regular battery combusts when punctured, and the bulging battery would vent that gaseous content (which IIRC is Hydrogen) and then combusts, which makes for a larger initial fireball.

I used to deal with puffed batteries a lot and went through some basic training on safety and how to ship devices with them for repair. We only ever had one battery fire, it was a from a normal battery, and it happened when someone shoved a t-pin through the headphone jack of an iPod touch because they thought it was a reset pinhole.

Installing Linux and bucking the yoke of Microsoft from my private life has reminded me that using a computer used to be fun and rewarding. Not even kidding.

My brother wanted to play Project Zomboid on a private server, and I've had more fun setting up and managing the server than I've had playing a lot of games that came out in the last few years. I need to get the time to setup CRON to jobs backup and update the server and mods. I'm trying to figure out if I can do it all from my Proxmox OS, or if I need to build separate cron jobs both inside and outside the VM and schedule them with enough buffer that they won't run at the same time... Trying to get a nice and quiet hour to myself to really dig into it.

What makes you think people work together even with the threat/promise of those two things?

Then paint the whole thing flat white, really splurge on a granite counter top for the kitchen, and a deep single basin sink. (Single basin sinks were made by the devil to torment me)

My brother has/had a Google nest router, and that absolutely floored me.