Mine are "First Contact" TNG S4xE15, "Where silence has lease" TNG S2xE02 and "Night" VOY S5xE01

Under communism, how do we clean our clothes?

• It's not really efficient for every housing unit to have its own washing machine let alone dryer
  • some people can dry clothes on lines but some can't
• Washing clothes by hand sucks
• Laundromats suck
• Industrialized clothes washing? I have no direct experience with this

And it needs so much water.

To my mind laundry is one of the most intractable issues.

I'm talking hair products, body washes, deodorant, body sprays, laundry detergent, candles, literally ANYTHING that can smell nice I want to know to about it

Has anyone ever dealt with it?

I'm not old enough to remember. I known the basics of the armed struggle of the ANC, bantustans, Cuba in Angola, etc. But not enough to compare it to Israel today. My general suspicion is Israel is worse but the US is way more committed to backing Israel than it was apartheid South Africa. I'm mostly want to gauge how the anti-apartheid movement was going then compared to now. Any resources or personal experiences.

If you missed my other thread - I haven't been a gamer since the late 1970s so I don't know anything about this stuff.

I'm going to buy an Alienware Aurora R16 next week. The only PSU options seem to be 500W or 1000W. The PSU is proprietary. I'm going to buy my PC from one of the following...

1. New from dell.com. Both PSU options are available.

2. Refurbished from Amazon Renewed. There are no power supply details. That's even true if I use plain old amazon.com and look at new models.

3. Refurbished from outlet.us.dell.com. Both PSU options are available.

Amazon Renewed might be cheaper but it annoys me they won't give the info. Even if 500W is fine for me - I'll like to have that "in writing" before I buy anything.

I'm going a PC at least this powerful...

• Processor: Intel Core i7 14700F (61 MB cache, 20 cores, up to 5.4 GHz Turbo)

• Videocard: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER 12GB GDDR6X

• Memory: 32 GB: 2 x 16 GB, DDR5, 5600 MT/s

• Harddrive: 2 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD

I don't know if I'll ever upgrade. Is 500W good enough?

I'm going to buy a new prebuilt PC next week. I'm almost certain I'll buy a Windows PC and making a PC is not my thing. I haven't been a gamer since the late 1970s so I'm a bit behind the curve.

What peripherals should I buy?

I know that's vague but I sincerely don't know what kind of games I'll end up liking.

How much should I budget for it?

~$300? I have no idea. For the short term - I want the basic core stuff I need and maybe a bell and whistle or two.

I want to avoid going crazy and buying specialized stuff like a wheel and pedals set. If I decide that driving games are my thing - I can always buy that later.

Should I buy a headset right off the bat?

Do you use a headset? My mental image is that I don't want to talk to anybody or listen to anybody because there are a lot of trolls out there. But am I wrong? Are there games where a headset is worth it? I'll let you define "worth it".

Also - how much does a good headset cost?

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Edit

I thought I needed to budget more for peripherals. It seems I don't. And - I don't need to buy everything next week anyway. There's no rush and my gaming needs might turn out to be (very) modest anyway. Current plan

• Keyboard. My current keyboard is beyond crap anyway.
• Gaming mouse?
• Microphone headset?
• Speakers? Maybe not. For reasons I don't want to explain - no speakers might be better.

If so, how so? I hope it doesn't because love how the song sounds.

Tbh idk what Zionism even is. I just judge from news that a lot of them, maybe up to all of them, support Israel. Feel free to educate me.

Earnest question here. I got offered a job with public works inventory management for a city. I thought it would be limited to just public works, but it also includes inventory for the police fleet. Part of applying was to salt for the municipal workers union. Would doing inventory management partially for cop cars make me a pig?

I ain't got room for this shit! Hoping someone can buy it off me.

I need a cellphone.

1. I can spend up to $300 including any fees. But cheaper is always better.

2. A better camera would be nicer but I don't need anything fancy for the phone.

3. What's the difference between locked and unlocked?

4. I'm in the US now. I might move to Canada next year. I'd like my phone to keep working if I move. But it's not a deal breaker and I need a phone very soon.

5. From my ~3 minutes of googling - it seems AT&T has the best coverage where I live.

6. Samsung A14. I found it when I was googling. Amazon has it from $99 to $180. I don't understand the range of prices. How it is for that I need? In any case - I think it's a useful benchmark for this thread.

7. What am I forgetting to ask about?

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I need to buy a cellphone and I know next to nothing about them. Long story short - I've lived without a cellphone for a very long time. I'm not a cellphone guy. For the phone I'll buy I don't think I'll use it for much except talking on it when I have to and I hardly get around much anymore.

I've never used Instacart but I plan to and I assume I need a cellphone for it. I'd prefer to use Instacart entirely on my desktop but I assume that's impossible.

I'm just middle aged and lost all energy for unproductive discussions. The second another poster posts something genuinely hostile, like "touch grass" kinda shit, I'm just done talking. Also if we're six comments in and the other guy won't even admit to being wrong to the thing he said on comment one, despite me doing twenty minutes of research to prove conclusively that he's wrong, I don't want to waste another second of my life on him.

I gotta have 10% of the "disengage" comments on this site.

I've known plenty of but when it comes to being scratched about it, it has to be my old neighbor that lived just down the road at the intersection, one of the first to buy (and performatively loop around the neighborhood with) a Te$la.

I had the misfortune of running into him at the bookstore, and he had this sort of eager "oh boy I'm going to blow your mind" look on his face as he saw me at the tables by the obligatory coffee shop inside.

"Isn't it insane what's happening out there?"

"What?"

"The looney left! They're out of control! I mean... you know it's bad when the most philanthropic human on the planet says they're out of control."

"Oh..."

"Yeah that's right! E~L~O~N has to take a stand or no one will! I don't want to be stuck living in a mud hut just so I don't hurt someone's feelings!"

"Oh it's your turn. She's trying to take your order."

Capitalism has a deep-seated taboo against taking recreational drugs. So strong is the taboo they will ruin your life and exile you from mainstream society for doing something recreational.

This is changing a bit as the scientists tell them there is basically no reason for this. But the scientists meet with resistance from entrenched cops, judges, lawyers, who are very about it.

What's the materialist explanation for this moralistic taboo?

I've read several news stories talking about the CIA's attempts at negotiations with the Israeli government, parallel with the US State Department's incredibly brazen charades, lies, coverups, and stonewalling. I've heard a couple times that the CIA has been actually attempting to move things back toward the status quo.

Now I see they've trotted out Obama's CIA director to go on CBS Sunday Morning to talk about Israel's terror attacks on Lebanon and directly call it terrorism. That's got to be coordinated with the current agency, and comes across as very intentional signaling. Matthew Miller is basically acting like nothing happened, while the CIA is publicly calling Israel a terrorist state.

My question is why? What are their incentives here? Are these stories just PR bullshit by the CIA? What does the CIA stand to lose in an all-out regional war, that makes them willing to go around the President and apparently make the only real efforts to negotiate?

Post your favorite bass line in this thread

Because well, I am Asexual, and well.... it is incredibly rare to find another Asexual person anywhere. Not to shame people for their interests, but I am not comfortable with a lot of posts, even if they are meant to be for a joke, implying that everyone gets horny, and/or that apparent "Peak Hedonism" or whatever it's called, is about having lots of sex. Again, something I am not interested in.

I have seen no signs of any Asexual friendly spaces on this site, not even in the LGBTQIA+ Subcommunity for this site. Although I have been socially isolated by otherwise queer friendly spaces before, for "only" being Asexual.

Maybe it's common in China and I just didn't spot it.

I don't understand why there are so many people who consider themselves "Marxist feminists", but at the same time are distracted by astrology.

The origin of feminism is working class, and as a working class movement, it is materialist. I don't know if they at least know what dialectical materialism is, since they don't see such an abysmal contradiction between astrology (pseudoscience) and feminism (materialism).

They remind me of the liberal “feminist” Gloria Steinem.

And the same with some anarchists.

What do you think about it?