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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • The posted article and me.

    I’m a union representative and it bothers me that people always jump to the $$$-question. That’s only rarely what strikes are about. Look at the ongoing Tesla strike in Sweden. They were paid over market wages and they still strike, because it’s not about pay.

    My own contract doesn’t even mention pay, except that we have the right to annual negotiation. This right has lead to higher wages than any minimum wage agreement will ever do. We’re not here to fight for back pocket scrap metal, we just want a balanced relationship between employees and employers.

    This is just difficult to see for anyone who is still working on the employers terms only, or someone who is used to consider jobs “take it or leave it”, instead of taking pride in what they do because they want to do the job.


  • Ok, let me explain.

    Money is probably the least important thing in a union contract. It’s always about rights.

    Unionizing is the only way to escape the prostitution-like relationship of paid work. Accepting to being paid more is just accepting being a more expensive prostitute. “Here’s $100, now you do what the man says… Ok … $200?”

    No, it’s never okay. No amount of money can ever make it okay. You should have the rights to choose how and when you do the thing that you’re offering as a paid service. That’s why you need a clear contract that outlines all of your rights.

    In this case it’s about termination without cause. As an employee, you’ll want a binding contract, so you can plan ahead. Termination without cause is the employers trick to keep you on a one sided contract in which you’ll have to dance like a bear in a Russian circus, while the employer has no obligation to keep you fed once the show is over.

    The reason they strike is that the employer has already abused this power.




  • putting it within the context of a particular life choice adds a layer of focus to the conversation.

    It won’t create a very interesting debate though, because OP already excluded most people who followed through on the opposing view in the question itself.

    This extra layer of focus really functions as a filter, which can only result in a hall of mirrors.

    It’s perfectly fine if OP just wanted to confirm an existing bias and need arguments for that, but it’s absolutely not a very interesting conversation.



  • It can happen in many ways. If you’ve ever used your mail for anything, then the address is out there.

    Just the other day I got an email addressed to 50+ people with every email in the “to” field. Ironically the mail was about online security…

    Obviously it’s a breach on GDPR, but the damage is already done. If just one of the other recipients has been hacked or has forwarded to someone who is or has allowed some dodgy app to syncronize contracts, the scamners now has all the emails.

    There’s absolutely nothing I could have done to prevent it.


  • Yes it’s country specific, but more about old houses.

    In my case the building code says the ground should have an impedance of maximum 1666 ohm. My installation was already grounded and had about 400 ohm.

    The charger guidelines says 200 ohm, however the car refuses to charge on anything over 100 ohm. I had an electrician add a new ground spear, bringing the impedance down below 1 ohm.

    The building code in USA already recommends 25 ohm, so it shouldn’t be an issue if the installation is up to date.


  • No regrets, but I do acknowledge that it’s very different and has different challenges. The usual worries before buying about range, mileage, battery drainage, top speed, maintenance fees, towing capability etc, do not actually exist. I understand why people worry, but no, they are not actual issues.

    In reality: Software. That’s an issue. Car mechanics do not know how to service software. Doesn’t matter if it’s a subscription to a service or a mandatory but malfunctioning pressure valve, it’s software and they don’t know about it. It usually not a serious issue, but it might be, especially for cars with a lot of gimmicks and shit. This issue also exist with new fossil fueled cars as well. For most part, it can be ignored.

    The charger at home may be an issue. (Maybe i. Europe mostly?) Some cars only accept voltages with a very low resistance. Both Renault and Tesla require a better grounding than the building code in most countries. It’s not costly to fix, and it’s a one time fix, but it may be a surprise…(that you need to expand on your electric circuit just for this), but you should have done anyway).

    I will acknowledge that range is a downside. Not in everyday use, but for longer trips, you will have to plan your trip according to charging. It has never been an issue for me, because I generally never drive that long without pause anyway. Time it to to your breaks is all there is to it.

    For a comuter car with home charging, you will have absolutely no issues in switching. It does have many more surprising positives than negatives. Like, never having to set foot on a gas station. Never mind the cost, but the time spent on going there or stopping on your commute to do it, or holding the nozzle in the cold, or being tempted to buy stuff in the convenience store etc. In comparison, I go home and plug in to charge my car, exactly the same way that I charge my phone, so it’s ready for the next day. It’s not difficult at all. It might take 30 secons and more often than than fueling but it’s still much faster than stopping on the road, gas or not.

    Only actual real downside for me is that I’m also a cheapskate. I prefer to time my charging to the variable electricity prices, but not everyone has that option and it’s completely voluntary… I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Sure, i save a few bucks, but the hassle of it is real. I am considering changing to a subscription model instead, just to avoid worrying about it.

    The best advice that I got before buying was: “Just drive it”.

    Don’t think about it: It’s a tool, use it. In a lot of ways an EV is much better suited for that, because you only need to worry about it being ready to use. You probably never thought of that for your ICE car, because you’d do refueling and other fluids on the road. If you fuel at home, you’ll also have to refill your sprinklers and remember to wash it every now and then… Maintenance is home based, not on a station.

    There’s a whole lot of benefits to it as well, but you didn’t ask for those, and I think you should just go test drive one to see for yourself.


  • I thought these idiots got sent back after Brexit, but I guess they weasled out of it.

    As someone working in a different EU country having business with Spain, I have to wonder why the Spanish tax authorities do everything that they can to make it impossible to pay taxes. It’s insanely bureaucratic.

    If your want to pay them, you need to request (in Spanish) to make a payment, classify exactly what you’re paying (using internal Spanish Tax Authority codes, which are not present in the letter) just to get a reference code that will identify your payment, and only after that are you given the information to actually make a euro zone payment, which is then set for payment at a specific date or otherwise it will fail.

    We owed them 0.57€ for interest on a periodical indiscrepancy and they still sent a stamped letter to let us know. Just the cost for them and us to do so easily runs into hundreds of euros for each part…

    Tax authorities in other countries either send out the necessary information to actually pay the claim or have a fixed payment account based on company number, so you can always pay and have it allocated correctly. Just give me the IBAN and a reference?!

    I can’t even be bothered to start thinking about the various ways that this system can be fucked over, but here they are only accepting that method.



  • “Ding ding ding!” When someone agrees with something you wrote, but wants to make sure that you know that they already knew and claim ownership of the statement that you wrote. Condesending asshole. I did not arrive at your opinion late.

    “Meanwhile” in cooking recipes. Just no. I am following a recipe in stepwise order. You do not get to tell me what I should have already done in the previous step.


  • If my phone didn’t have a cap, I’d hotspot it all, which is basically the idea of cellular home internet routers. I found a home router without a cap, which time will tell to be true, but it’s still more expensive than my phone with a very large but not unlimited cap.

    They want to get paid, that’s the reasoning. The amount of data is really irrelevant except for pricing.

    Roaming fees used to be the same until EU stepped in. Hopefully EU will eventually step in and order a full stop to ALL CAPS too. We live in the “future” now, right? Bring me my free unlimited connection so I can download that car they talked about.




  • I hope that lesson was taught last time. Those that didn’t learn it then are unlikely to learn it if he should win again.

    I believe that there were many people who voted for Trump in 2016 because of the reasons you mention. I get it. Sometimes it’s necessary to destroy something to build something new. Give the world a kick in the balls instead of keeping patching the broken status quo.

    Trump is just not the guy to do it. While he did destroy a lot of shit last time, he didn’t actually clear the ground for a new building.

    You know what would be more disruptive than watching an old geezer shit on the carpet a second time? You know what would piss off a lot of people?

    Electing a woman as president.


  • I bet those 40 hours are more stressful than before.

    Efficiency has increased,so you’re probably doing a whole lot of more tasks with the same time, but the bureaucracy still exists. It’s just a different kind of bureaucracy.

    While we no longer need to stand in line to get a rubber stamp on a paper from some rude clerk just to pay a bill, we now need to download apps, keep the systems up to date, manage user accounts and input the data exactly how the app wants it. While the individual task might be somewhat easier than before, it is now expected that you do a whole lot more of these bureaucratic tasks yourself. All the tech bloat creeps up and makes every little task a little more difficult than before.