Completely agree, but that wasn’t the question. Progress is progress, even if it’s decades late and only a tenth of what it should be.

Medi-Cal is already available to all Californians that meet income requirements?

First, how dare you accuse me of looking up someone else’s claim before engaging in debate on the internet. I would never…

But seriously, they originally said people are moving to places where companies are building. Someone else responded with something along the lines of “companies are building in red-leaning areas due to poor labor protections”. Without addressing that point, the original guy said Texas is building more green energy than California. With that comment he: side stepped the claim that companies are building where there are fewer labor protections, and talked about a hyper specific example of one section of one industry where one state is creating more output (not more jobs, mind you) than another state. I responded with a claim that state-led conservative governments have not been a shining example of “how to govern in the best interests of your population”.

So now, like an idiot, I’m gonna start googling things so that I can address his point and yours. First him:

Texas generates more green energy than California. He is correct. According to Wikipedia, but according to that same data California produces a higher percentage of green energy than Texas. Neither are in the top position for green energy production, or percentage. Even if they were, green energy production is not a direct correlation to economic prosperity, corporate development, or well employed populations. Better examples might have been standard of living, median income, or new jobs created. Texas beats California in only one category (new jobs created), but neither are in the top spot in any of the three. Are there better metrics? Undoubtedly- like median income divided by cost of living, or job growth of only jobs earning 1.25x annual cost of living by state, but I’m not gonna sit down and do that math, and I wouldn’t want to make an unsubstantiated claim that doesn’t fully paint the picture.

Now, to you:

Their statement is true, but as I’ve just demonstrated, trivially so. I responded with a dismissive remark because they, as well as many others, knew their claim didn’t support their original thesis. We can sit and argue about why they were down voted and I was up voted, but you’re probably correct. Left leaning sites like Lemmy probably didn’t get more critical than “Texas bad, California good” with their voting. Or, maybe, they got down voted for attempting to lie with statistics by proving a point no one was arguing, and did an obviously bad job, which the users on this site critically analyzed and down voted accordingly. We’ll never know.

You, however, came in and disregarded my point, and attempted to discredit my argument without disproving it, based on an appeal to the audience that I’m a partisan hack without the spine to engage in the debate at hand. Ironically, in doing so, you created a comment no better than mine, based on your own position, and a lot less pithy and amusing.

So now the ball is in your court. Are you gonna do hours and hours and jobs research, determine if it’s blue or red states that create more economic prosperity for their occupants, and post your findings, or are you gonna look it up, realize I’m right, and decide to respond in a way that doesn’t actually address what I said?

Do keep in mind the conversation is blue vs red states, not California vs Texas, and it’s overall prosperity, not one or two cherry picked metrics. That was the mistake the original guy made, and if you do the same, I’m probably gonna respond with a single sentence joke dismissing the work you put in as an attempt to mislead.

Yes, because when I think of a state with robust energy infrastructure, I think of Texas…

An ex and I used to jokingly sing “avocados from Mexico” because that was an advertising jingle, and she definitely ate avocado toast all the time. We broke up in 2013, so it had to be kinda popular before then.

STARK: “wow, your intellect is stunning. I look forward to seeing what you’ll be able to accomplish in the next few years”

CAMERA PANS

GRETA THUNBERG SMILES

The number of times I shout “your car is supposed to be smarter than that!” As a Tesla does something like, without signaling, whips around me and into oncoming traffic to pass a stopped city bus is staggering.

A coworker of mine was recently bragging about their new electric mustang and its zero to sixty time. “Have you ever gone zero to sixty?” was my only response. Of all the facts and figures, 0-60 has you to be one of the least important when buying a car.

Am I insane? I’ve been seeing avocado toast on menus for years. Granted, I was living in California at the time, but still. I feel like Dunkin donuts introduced avocado toast to their menu like three years ago.

I’m not really a “brunch” guy, but I feel like every breakfast spot I’ve been to since 2015 has done avocado toast.

Though many wear red, the Ace I managed for a few years had black vests. With the exception of a few large groups (like Westlake), each Ace is independently owned and part of the Ace co-op, but get to make their own choices about things like uniform, sales, and stock.

I intentionally said blue vest because while an Ace employee (in whatever color vest/apron their store chooses) would take the time to explain why you can’t have the thing you think you need, a guy in a blue vest (if you can even find one) is likely to say “oh, I guess we’re out. Maybe we can order it for you online…” before wandering off.

I don’t think he can afford rusty nails and broken glass at this point…

People hanging Christmas lights do the whole house and when they go to plug it in, they realize they have the female end by the outlet, not the male end. “Fuck, I’m not gonna redo the entire process” the idiot thinks to himself, I’ll just get a male/male adapter.

It’s not sold because as soon as you plug in the side to the house, the other ends become live, and touching them means “big ouch”.

“That’s okay, I’ll just plug the end into the lights, and then into the house, problem solved” the idiot thinks.

Except the far end of the lights has a male adapter and that end is still live. Plus, anyone who doesn’t know about your deadly modification is in danger of hurting themselves because they don’t realize the hazard.

There are exceedingly niche applications where these cords are used, but those applications only come up for trained electricians who know how to make one of these cords, and use them responsibly. If you’re asking the minimum wage guy in the blue vest, this sign is for you.

I used to know a hardware store that sold guns in the 80s. Guy bought one, walked down the block, robbed a bank with it, and died in ensuing police shootout. Store stopped selling guns after that.

Competition is the answer, though. The problem is companies ended up competing the wrong way. If I could watch “The Office” on any streaming platform, suddenly they’re all in competition to create a better platform (quicker loads, different pricing models, integration with different devices, etc). By limiting shows to only certain platforms, sure, you’re creating an easy way to differentiate between platforms, but you’re letting the competition stagnate as you just create cable TV with extra steps: minimal choice, minimal ease of use, minimal cost upside.

I was having this same conversation the other day. Have you ever seen that picture where different people involved in the creation of the video game Kirby draw the title character? Two look really good, and the rest are awkward blobs that only look like Kirby because of the power of suggestion.

Anyway, I genuinely think a team of Tesla employees (independent of Musk) were talking about building a truck, and all took turns drawing something while pulling together numbers before the pitch to Musk. As a joke, the design team mocked up the worst sketch in 3D, and Musk accidentally saw the design in the Slack chat history and demanded it.

Either that, or some sort of “have your kid draw the next Tesla” employee contest, and the design teams modeled the funniest ones as actual cars for the company newsletter. Like those companies that’ll turn your kid’s drawings into real life stuffed toys.

tried not being a grumpy godless commie?

You know you’re in Lemmy, right?

If we’re adding somewhat related concepts OP might find interesting, I’ve always thought these were neat: grammatically correct sentences your brain doesn’t process the first time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

For a service like Twitter, where user numbers define value, using it is 100% supporting it. Again, the metaphor falls apart because suggesting they can’t use other options suggests they might die, which is painfully untrue for the vast majority of Twitter users (literally no user in a developed country relies on Twitter for life/death information in a way other sources can’t provide).

Oh, shit, well as long as they got to the restaurant before the Nazi bought it, I guess there’s no harm in continuing to support it. Especially if they don’t have the technical knowledge to… Stop using a website?

This metaphor falls down when you realize the table is in a restaurant owned by a Nazi, and the table by the window makes the restaurant look really popular.

Refusing to concede the table is literally adding value to the Nazi owned table, and giving others cover to say “no we also hate Nazis; we’re just here because that table looks cool” which furthers the problem.