why… why does everything need to look the same, sell the same junk.

Because it is cheap. Build a warehouse, fill it with cheap shelves full of mass produced products. Costs come down due to economies of scale. It’s cheaper to make a kid’s toy if they are all made of plastic from the same mold, and it is cheaper to make buildings if they are all built from the same engineering documents. Stamp your logo on the building so that people know what quality of goods to expect at your store. You can now undercut local stores with lower costs. People shop there because they want to save a couple bucks.

Seriously. I wouldn’t be surprised if rock stars in the 80s bragged about how many teen girls they fucked on tv. And then everyone watching would nod along and think “yes, of course. That is what rock stars do.”

I’m confused… go outside?

Yeah. You could also search for staging companies in your city. Two big ones you could look for are Rhino and Upstage. Also, lots of people get the job because they like going to concerts - so if you are part of the music scene in your city, you can start by just striking up convos with event staff at concerts/festivals/raves/clubs etc that you attend. Even better, probably, is to just volunteer for a festival and talk to the organizers - then you can show you will actually do your job, and you get to go to a festival for free. Big bonus points if you have previous experience in theatre or AV, even if you were just in a high school club or something.

I will note that winter is the worst time of year to get hired in most markets, since there is a lot less work and the companies have lots of mouths to feed. Not that you shouldn’t try, but know that your odds are worse, and even if you get hired on, the gigs might be pretty sparse. But around springtime they’ll go on a hiring spree as the ramp up for summer, when they need to build whole stages in arenas for touring bands.

Show up on time, take the occasional abuse from an asshole boss, and get your shit done. If you do that and ask for advancement opportunities, you can pretty quickly get trained in various specialties - lighting, sound, fork lift, boom lift, safety, rigging (that’s what I do), etc. Then get good at a specialty and work on expanding your social network and you can get to the real money - going on tour. If you get hired to tour with a band, you will make bank while having basically no living expenses. Talked to a girl who did lighting for Coldplay - apparently they’d been touring continuously for 3 years. She’d been to Europe, Saudi Arabia, S America, Mexico with the band. Def a lifestyle choice - but can be a good one if it jives with your personality.

You’re going to run into an issue of two low probability events overlapping. You are on lemmy, so you likely have an outsized notion of how common/public these instances with ICE are, and of how common left-leaning gun owners are.

The vast majority of ICE arrests will happen in isolated locations, like someone’s home or place of work. So already, there are few people around. Of those who are around, most will not be gun owners, will not be carrying a gun, will not see ICE’s actions as tyrannical, or will have overestimated their confidence in whipping out their glock to defend liberty.

Ugaynian

I mean, hopefully positively

This doesn’t make utilities cheaper. Utility prices are almost universally set, in one way or another, by the government. If the government wants to lower utility prices, they can do so easily by just voting.

This ignores the issue of how we actually pay for the actual cost of utilities. That’s a whole other thing. But long story short - NO, you should not expect utility prices to come down if your government builds solar capacity.

I believe this is an idea most legitimately championed by Nick Bostrom. Here is a video explaining his perspective.

I feel like, at least from the stance of abstract philosophy, he makes some good points. And I’m not enough of a philosopher to refute them (though I’m sure some have). Personally, my stance is “I’ll cross that bridge when I arrive at it” - I expect to die before that happens.

Dunno how you define “good”. But it is really easy to become a stagehand. Like, unbelievably easy. You can be a meth addicted felon with bad face tattoos and get that job - and even keep it as long as you just show up on time! The job can be physical, but the work isn’t super repetitive so it tends to make you stronger rather than weaker over time. Because of the non-standard schedule, you are paid well for what is essentially menial labor. Spend most of your workday kinda bullshitting with coworkers while you move something from A to B or turn a wrench or whatever.

Hence why I said “in all likelihood”. There are always exceptions to the rule. Apparently you are one of them.

This is really a huge oversimplification of a complex and nuanced topic. But the main thing worth mentioning is that your utility bills, in all likelihood, are already insanely cheap if you compare what you get to any other time in history. Like, keeping your home temperature at a perfectly pleasant temperature 24 hours per day probably costs you only a couple hours of labor each month. Compare this to gathering sticks in the forest and lighting a fire inside a mud hut - which, btw, also gives you lung cancer faster than cigarettes.

Should the government invest more in renewables? Yes, obviously. They should also fund the infrastructure necessary to make renewables work at scale, and research to improve renewable generation, transmission, and storage tech in order to close the gap between what is practical now and what we need to achieve. And while they are at it, they should introduce improved pricing schemes to head off increased wasteful usage. But will any of this actually have a direct impact on consumer pricing…? Probably not, since almost all utilities are already state owned or else heavily regulated. The cost of electricity is determined more by committee and political maneuvering than the actual price of, say, coal or solar on a day to day basis. The actual mechanism of paying for power to be generated and delivered to your house on demand is a combination of the price you pay per kwh, property taxes, government revenue in general, debt taken on by the government or utility, investments made in the past, etc. If you actually want a cheaper price per kwh, the solution is simply petitioning whatever regulatory body is in charge to lower it.

Of course, the problem with lower prices is that they encourage wasteful usage. If electricity becomes free, then aunt Ethel will start blasting the AC while leaving the windows open, because she likes to be comfortable while listening to the birds chirp. Without appropriate pricing schemes, people and companies will use up as much additional renewable capacity as is built as soon as you finish building it.

One more thing that hasn’t been mentioned - the pope is the figurehead of the church, and needs to look the part. Why does the pope have grey hair? Because people expect the pope to have grey hair. Stable symbolism is important in an institution like the church, as much for followers as leaders. Electing a pope who doesn’t “look the part” could cause defections and schisms.

His silence is deafening

I mean, the problem isn’t that OP’s question was stupid. The problem is that it is rude to question people’s religious practices.

Roll the bill into the fabric. Forms a crescent moon shape. Shove it under your belt

Lots of people like to use things like antlers or skulls as decorations

Masturbate.

Then once that is out of the way, go ahead and start working on whatever it is that is stopping you from boning.

Bwahahahahahahah! Holy shit, this article is the epitome of doomerism and conspiracy theories. If anyone actually read this article and didn’t immediately peg it as brain rot… idk what to tell you. Go read a book. Not to say that homelessness isn’t a very real problem - but if your interpretation of a complex and multifaceted problem is to boil it down into a handful of evil people doing evil things who could be stopped by a few good people with courage and determination, then you aren’t understanding a real problem. You’re describing a Marvel movie.