@trochee it’s weird how instantly we’ve transitioned from Google organizing the whole world’s information to a kind of premodern only word-of-mouth can be trusted.
God bites Their fingernails and discards them in the sky.
a faint sliver of an evening moon, resembling a discarded fingernail.
@artcollisions i did that once! it was fine, but very generic, like a lot of the moving biz it seems you contract with a broker and then there's a vast internal market that schedules the actual trucks, so it's not clear how much difference who you choose makes.
i ultimately went with https://www.kingoftheroadtransport.com/ it was fine, about the same price as everyone else (not cheap!) i don't know if it'd've been any less fine or different with anyone else. i've only done it once.
For learning about products, Mastodon "word of mouth" seems very definitely superior to search and reviews in the usual (far from credible) places.
Asking about travel laptop backpacks, I learned about, got feedback on the following brands that did not appear prominently when Googling (or Kagi-ing or Amazon-ing) laptop backpacks generically:
Jandd
Nomatic
Osprey
Quechua
Rickshaw
Tom Bihn
Tatonka
Also Targus, which does show up more easily. Plus, I got a kind offer of an extra!
Thank you @mtraven23 @marick @ringmaster @barrkel @dpp @LesterB99 @admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org @nach @ouguoc @kouhai @Lemniscate @lordbowlich and anyone else i hope i didn't forget.
i really appreciate the help!
can our political narratives be urgent without being simple?
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org i guess all enshitification is relative!
US prison labor definitely isn't in the US Tesla supply chain, where I'm not sure we can say forced labor in China isn't in EV supply chains. (Maybe we can! I don't know.) But I think even if, labor costs are not the big differentiator between US + Chinese capabilities. 1/
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org The US now is planning to protect the domestic EV industry with huge tariffs on Chinese imports. That may be wise or not, but if it's true that China is just better at building and designing EVs, such strong protection will just leave the US with a modern equivalent of old Soviet Ladas, a substandard product that competes only in isolated markets. I'd hope we'd be more clever, but of course US incumbents do a lot of lobbying and don't mind this outcome. /fin
[new draft post] Industrial policy and ecosystems https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/05/11/industrial-policy-and-ecosystems/index.html
i'm looking for a replacement travel backpack, something big, water resistant if i get caught in the rain, can pad a 16" laptop. i'm on a budget these days.
i find i no longer trust reviews on the internet, pretty much anywhere. maybe i trust "word of mouth"? any recommendations?
“American Myths of European Poverty” by @Alon https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/05/09/american-myths-of-european-poverty/
the only fixity in time is that the moment you were born was exactly one lifetime ago.
gives a new meaning to threads.net ht @CosmicTraveler https://vmst.io/@jalefkowit/112412509319748604
@Jonathanglick ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's short!
with apologies to #vgr, there's the cozy-web and the nosy-web.
"collapstrophe" is an underrated portmanteau.
evidence-based policy means the best fabricators of evidence control policy.
one can hope it's easier to fabricate evidence for what is true than what is not, at least to some degree.
but is that degree large enough to overwhelm, say, resource differences among backers of researchers looking for different things?
seek and ye shall find — if you have the finances to seek thoroughly enough.
"Silenced Unknown Call."
Usually phone notifications stress me, but this one was somehow calming.
starbucks wrote to say my stars are expiring soon very kind of them to write but they didn't have to tell me man do i feel it.
@kentwillard i think it fair to say Biden has both national-interest and political incentives in the mix. it’s been rough on his domestic coalition, but as you say he can still hope for Saudi Arabia’s vote at the pump this November. i think the US is already pretty clear that it sees Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and some less well known groups in Syria and Iraq as ultimately answering to Iran (and indeed Iran describes them as its “axis of resistance “).
@kentwillard i think the US wants Israel and the Gulf monarchies together to maintain a stable Middle East without nearly as much direct US attention. though their publics are not on side, in the future first Trump then Biden have decided on, Israel and several of its former enemies are hoped to become one team, together deterring Iran and its proxies and helping support one another’s “stability”.