Plus, delivery drones have one fatal flaw that always gets glossed over - they’re loud as hell. Even if the tech can be made to work right, people simply don’t want to put up with that much constant high-pitched noise. If a company ever did figure out large-scale drone delivery, delivery drones would be immediately banned due to the sheer annoyance of the damn things.

You got downvoted because you didn’t try to answer your own obvious question first before asking others to answer it for you.

The main barrier to people living cheaper lifestyles abroad is their obligation to continue to pay American taxes for what amounts to no benefit.

This is a myth perpetrated by rich people. It’s similar to the handwringing about the estate tax. It’s just rich people bitching. The first $133k of foreign earned income is completely tax free. And additionally, any foreign taxes paid can be deducted as tax credits. So if you would normally owe $10k in taxes to the US government, but you paid $8k in taxes while living abroad to a foreign government, you’ll only owe the IRS $2k.

The idea that this is a substantial barrier to middle class people moving abroad for a cheaper lifestyle is just fucking comical. It’s only a problem if you are very, very wealthy. And even the very wealthy don’t end up getting double-taxed. No one who moves overseas for cost of living reasons is going to have to worry about taxes being a problem.

The water is one thing. But I always heard the concrete box apartments are just how they’re sold. They mass produce concrete apartment blocks. But the idea isn’t that you’re supposed to just live in the box. When you buy an apartment, you’re buying an empty shell, a blank canvas. The intention is that after buying it, you will then put in the money to outfit it with drywall or other interior finishings of your choice. Though I imagine there are scummy landlords that just rent out the bare concrete boxes.

[Go outside at dawn, breathe deep]

Ah, nothing like the taste of fresh satellite in the morning!

That’s a good question!

Why can’t we just go back to reporting volumes in bushels, like God intended?

There is a metric. The metric is one truck!

Fuck it. Let’s just outlaw time. Let’s just make it illegal to own a clock!

Calendars too. We’ll just live in the eternal now.

And are we talking a reasonable work truck, or one of those American abominations referred to as ‘pickup trucks.’

The vaporized materials themselves are a problem. When we’re building these mega-constellations, we’re putting some real mass up there. We’re introducing all sorts of exotic materials into the stratosphere that would not naturally occur there at those concentrations. And remember, this is a very sensitive environment. The actual volume of CFCs we introduced into the stratosphere wasn’t that large. The volume of all our AC refrigerant and hair spray cans was nothing compared to the atmosphere. We may actually not be that far from the sheer volume of satellites affecting the ozone layer as they decay.

The stratosphere is an environment like any other. It has a finite ability to absorb and process any form of pollution without noticeable and significant effects. I’m not qualified enough to estimate the number of satellite reentries to damage the ozone layer or to have other deleterious effects, but at least from that study featured in that video, we may not be far off. The story of civilization has been repeatedly realizing that what we once considered infinite dumping grounds were anything but. And the stratosphere is no different.

Edit: may have misinterpreted parent comment and went off on a wild tangent.

I mean, if we’re going to go with retribution-by-improbable events, I have to stick with the classics. There’s nothing quite like an evil leader being smote by lightning bolt. It just has that “wrath of an angry God” effect like nothing else.

A lot of this is just due to the Reformation I imagine. If you want to become a corrupt greedy preacher, why do so in a church that requires their priests to take a vow of poverty? Pre-Reformation, those who wanted to grift joined the Church and found various excuses to get around vows of poverty. But in many Protestant churches, there is no vow of poverty to have to work around.

I mean, they’re not 40 cakes or anything!

Diesel still catches fire. It’s not as bad as gasoline, but it’s still flammable.

I remember reading this when it came out. It’s truly a gem. My favorite is probably the studio apartment with a pool in it.

No sea lioning.

Yeah, and I think that anyone knowledgeable enough to model nuclear winter accurately would refuse to participate in that kind of military planning. If you go to a climate researcher, put a gun to their head and said, “help us calculate just the amount of nuked cities needed to cancel out the temperature increases of climate change or we’ll shoot you,” I think most would just say, “fine. Do it.”

ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant

Intrusive thought of the day:

Simulations suggest that evenly a relatively modest India/Pakistan exchange (modest by the standards of a full nuclear exchange between Russia and the US, you’re still talking millions dead) would produce enough dust and soot into the air to seriously affect the climate of the planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Recent_modeling

But that also implies nuclear winter exists on a scale. Even one H-bomb will have some affect. In principle, it would be possible to determine the precise level of nuclear winter required to combat global warming. Then, if the target country doesn’t have nukes of their own to retaliate with, a nuclear power could drop just enough nukes to cause just enough nuclear winter to cancel out global warming. As long as they’re the only one releasing any nukes, they could precisely control the scale of the resulting nuclear winter effect. Literally designing an act of mass genocide as a means of combating climate change.

:/