Apparently 80 years ago coffee was grown in DC. TIL

It’s interesting to me that the only people who advocate for Fahrenheit over Celsius in any circumstances are those who grew up using it, whereas those who prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit are from both places where Celsius and Fahrenheit are used. I’m yet to see an example of someone saying “I grew up with Celsius but Fahrenheit is so much better because…”

Sorry in advance for the rant, but it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when someone asks a question and gets an answer for a completely different question. They specifically asked for salads made by decent companies and you’ve told them to go and buy the ingredients at a market. They basically asked what wattage of lightbulb would be best for their lamp and you’ve recommended a great candlemaker.

I get that in a perfect world we’d all only eat locally-grown produce from small farms and suppliers or grow our own food, but we don’t all have that luxury. Because of economic and social pressures, we often have to make choices we wouldn’t like to make.

Maybe this person doesn’t have the time and energy to travel to a market just to buy lettuce or to make their own salad; maybe that’s cost-prohibitive for them; maybe they live in a food desert; maybe the local grocer is 5 minutes away while their nearest market is an hour’s drive; or maybe they’re looking for a type of lettuce that isn’t grown locally so that they can make dishes that are culturally appropriate for them.

BRILLAINT

The truth is that winning elections in a country without mandatory voting isn’t about shifting those rusted-on voters - it’s about getting those who don’t usually vote to step up and do so. A certain percentage will just ALWAYS vote their respective party, because they lack any sense of reflection that would be required to make a genuinely considered choice.

Obligatory response that this is highly dependent upon the field and your experience. Of the four authors I contacted for copies to their paper in my tenure as a child protection caseworker, none of them even replied to me let alone gave me a copy of their paper. I don’t know if it was because of the fields (psychology and social science) or because I emailed them from my .gov.au email but this advice doesn’t always hold true.

Kinda reminds me of the story of how David X Cohen (Futurama, Disenchantment, The Simpsons) got the middle initial X when his middle name is Samuel: when he went to be registered with The Writers Guild there was already a David S Cohen, and they don’t allow two people with identical names to be registered, so he chose X because it sounds more ‘sci-fi-ish’.

See, that’s the thing though - he doesn’t. He never pays his own debts and never spends a dollar he doesn’t have to when it comes to his own money. When it comes to taxpayer money though? He’ll firehose that shit in whatever direction he feels like.

Those who hold treasury bonds don’t tend to spend the interest on their day-to-day living costs. Those who hold treasury bonds use them as an investment vehicle, whose proceeds are usually either reinvested or invested elsewhere where the effects of investment aren’t inflationary. Many treasury bonds are also held by the international community, who by definition don’t spend those proceeds within the country whose bonds they hold. Domestic Australian retail investors make up such a small fraction of total ownership and, those that do own them in this context, tend not to use the proceeds as regular income that would be inflationary.

That’s why I specified in my first sentence that it depends upon how the monies are spent. I outlined a few different ways in which government spending impacts inflation.

Just paying down interest on national debt (as we have been doing) is just as deflationary as paying down principal, given that it’s removing money from the economy.

It entirely depends upon how the government uses that money. Paying down national debt is entirely deflationary; they are literally removing money from the economy. Spending on services can be very mildly inflationary, but usually also increases quality of life for the most marginalised and therefore reduces the impacts of inflation on those who feel it most. It can also be deflationary when spent on services, especially if those monies are spent on the government shouldering costs that have been pushed onto the average citizen (single-payer healthcare, energy costs and the like).

By far the biggest upward effects on inflation are caused by corporate greed and geopolitical instability.

I generally prefer to tight internet in my woman but you do you, I guess.