TriplePlaid

The U.S. doesn't really make anything

Actually the U.S. makes a lot of stuff. Amongst other things the U.S. accounts for somewhere around 40% of the global food & beverage market.

https://www.nist.gov/el/applied-economics-office/manufacturing/manufacturing-economy/total-us-manufacturing

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/food-beverages-market-size-reach-133000592.html?

For which Volkswagen was fined approximately $30 million... Compared to having grossed €59.5 billion in 2024... Nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Cost of doing business, you could say.

I would personally recommend picking up some amanos if you haven't already.

I spent loads of effort balancing my aquarium and it did eventually help some, but then adding amanos really reduced new growth of hair algae. I think they eat it when it is just starting so that it can't grow mature enough to become resistant/unpalatable to algae eaters.

I have been going through a very similar experience to you. The more coworkers I have over the years, the more people I realize are extremely jaded and having a tough time caring at all about the world at large.

This is a pretty complicated issue. I think that means you need a sort of patchwork of paradigms to apply to the issue at the right moment.

Sometimes you need to give yourself a break and let yourself live your life - you only get one, and joy is an essential part of a functioning human, and you must continue to function if you are to continue impacting your world.

Other times you must keep in mind that it is literally completely illogical to say that your actions have no impact, obviously each individual action on it's own is small but the actions humanity makes are made up of individuals. Change happens one person at a time, and individuals are difference-makers.

Consider professional sports teams where the stars elevate the team to the next level - they cannot do their work by themselves, every member of the team is needed and makes an impact, but the impacts are not all the same. You will see the same dynamic play out in the typical workplace - a relatively small portion of people really make things happen at most workplaces in my experience, but they still need the team to help them get it done. So you should continue to think of your actions as being important/having meaning in my opinion, and you should keep striving to make the world a better place.

Sometimes when there is a situation that frustrates me but that I know I cannot change (or cannot change immediately or in full), it helps to quiet that thing in my head that worries by practicing mindfulness techniques. Personally I find "box breathing" (a style of controlling breathing to regulate heart rate and perhaps lower cortisol) to be most effective. Maybe this or some other method could help to quel your feelings when you know that it is a situation to let go of.

Even with a car payment being $750/month, that's a pretty fancy car from my perspective - and represents the average car payment for a new car.

I think that these folks could keep up with expenses much more easily if a few minor compromises were made (namely, a cheaper car).

Given that the legs move a little bit, I would suggest adding at least a small amount of bracing in addition to whatever you choose to do to fix the center of gravity problem.

Also, bracing helps to stiffen the structure by resisting forces that would make the wooden rectangle into a parallelogram. Here is an illustration:

This does not convince me that we should redirect all effort away from environmental legislation. In my view human rights are very much intertwined with environmental stewardship.

Even if you feel that the white house should stop being used as an active part of the USA government, it doesn't make sense to tear it down.

Take Auschwitz for example - a horrible place, but worth preserving so that future generations can see history in person and learn from the past. At the very least, the whitehouse is worth preserving for its historical value, if nothing else.

Also it is important to know that wireless charging is much less efficient and therefore is environmentally worse than using a corded charger.

If that is common practice it would seem to indicate that "cart abandonment rate" is actually a very important metric, since users often abandon carts and so a restaurant needs something about the menu/presentation that makes people abandon them less and "wins" a larger share of the market of users on the platform.

I would say that food scarcity in preindustrial countries is not "manufactured" per se, because there isn't an excess of food lying around in those places. You are right that people there starve in part because it isn't profitable to get food to them, but there are other reasons too such as lack of adequate infrastructure to store and transport food and perhaps even lack of trained personnel to distribute it etc.

So really I think for preindustrial countries it's a complex picture that basically boils down to the oppositional philosophy generally held when considering international relations. So in a situation like that I think it isn't accurate to say that scarcity was manufactured in order to justify the existence of capitalism.

Also your statement that it isn't profitable to industrialize other nations and so we don't seems contrary to what I understand, which is that it is often profitable and that is why developed nations are often trying to invest in industrialization efforts (of course taking their unfair piece of the action in doing so). I feel that this principal of investing in industrialization has largely guided the international efforts of China, the USA, and others.