Honestly my Santa sack filled with some treats, including my OWN WHOLE MANGO was ultimate excitement for me as a small kid!
You don't need to think big, and you can go healthy.
Other than that you could always have a chat to him about how some people aren't so lucky in what they have in life, see if he would donate a few toys he doesn't use anymore, and replace them with some new books/toys, teach the joy of giving as well as recieving
Yep. Mangoes are common where I live, but I have never forgotten the time we got a little bag each of cherries from santa. Taste sensation! And old books have kids receiving oranges from santa....
Honestly give the kid books and interesting rare fruit and some more lego bricks and they will have a ball.
It's pretty but my opinion is biased by the knowledge that he had a housekeeper and also he was freeloading on his buddy Emerson's property.
But I should read it again because it is pretty.
Thoreau describes the cabin as a single 10 x 15' room with very few possessions, so there wouldn't be much to clean. And he spent a significant amount of the book describing cleaning routines. So yeah, I expected no housekeeper for sure.
What's your source for the housekeeper claim? I tried some internet searching but couldn't find anything mentioning a housekeeper.
Entirely possible I'm misremembering something I read for class as far as housekeepers, but chances are strong that he sent out his laundry, because laundry was heavy work.
Honestly, if I didn't need chat apps like Slack for my job I'd be pretty content with one of these. They'd still be good as secondary phones, but unless they can support chat apps (without other online apps like FB, IG, and even browsers - so good luck with that) they can't be my only/main device.
That is seen as a feature by many people. A big part of why a lot of people use a feature phone — whether for a short jaunt or for their main device — is to disconnect. You're still accessible by phone for important things, but you're no longer beholden to the constant buzz buzz buzz of chat notifications rolling in.
It depends where you live. Here, land is at a premium so the rent for a space that can fit a camper or prefab home would be higher than that for an apartment.
I have lived in a camper. I do not recommend it unless you live in an extremely mild climate. They are poorly-insulated, the windows fog up, they leak in the rain if you have slides. The hot water tank only holds enough for a 5 minute shower before the water starts to run cold. You have to deal with propane refills. The water hookup can freeze in the winter. Mice can get in easily. You have to stay mindful of the blackwater tank, because leaving it open creates a pyramid of waste that can't be removed, but leaving it closed means you have to remember to empty it. The power system isn't meant to handle a lot of things plugged in at once. When the DC fuses blow, you have to go find replacements at an auto parts store. The oven doesn't have a broiler. The fridge is quite inefficient and small. The list of issues goes on and on. Make sure you're really committed to the lifestyle.
Degrowth is such a fucking stupid idea. What we need is socialism. The demonic oligarchs that run the world are never going to prioritize reducing climate change. They've made that clear over the last century. There's too much profit to be made.
Worker owned means of production is the only solution. Only then can we direct the productive forces toward solving the most immediate problems that humanity faces. We've created so much productivity, but we need to guide it in the direction of sustainability instead of the profit motive.
You're conflating two very different things. You can have an equitable system of worker owned coops that still has a growth mindset and destroys the ecosystem. You don't magically become sustainable when socialism becomes a thing. Growth itself when we're bound by the resources of a single planet a problem, period.
Degrowth could definitely only be accomplished under a socialist model where we aren't price gouged for food and housing. A life with less work and less disposable crap sounds really fucking good though.
In order to slow the economy down and not wreak havoc, he said, we have to reconfigure our ideas about the entire economic system.
This is how degrowthers envision the process: After a reduction in material and energy consumption, which will constrict the economy, there should also be a redistribution of existing wealth, and a transition from a materialistic society to one in which the values are based on simpler lifestyles and unpaid work and activities.
Sounds good to me. It is a fair point that the basic operation of our society depends on continual growth, but redistribution seems like it would be an effective way of mitigating those problems degrowth might cause. We have more than enough resources to keep everyone alive, we just have to use them.
I'd rather just do the full communism now path, where once every man, woman and child has all their needs and many of their wants met, there isn't a desire to chase the next fashion craze, or buy the next iphone or "keep up with the jones'" as it were because the Jones' have the same stuff you do, but maybe they spend their ample leisure time exercising, you spend your time gardening.
The only way that will work is if you have a violent dictatorship. Welcome Stalin back basically.
I see more future in putting laws in place that severely limits what companies can do. Companies cannot grow beyond 1000 people. Tax any wealth thing heavily. Tax negatively for the poor, tax a little for those with a little and more for those that are better off. Taxes go up and up once you are richer and Once your income and or networth reaches a certain level, tax 100%.
Institute 3-4 work day weeks
Institute universal income
Out extreme limits on advertising and marketing. Those two are the real evils of mankind.
Require news outlets be paid for by the government and be required to be neutral and factual
With changes like that we can remain a (serverely limited) capitalist system that pays for the very nice social system below that doesn't focus in money anymore
Laws will be written with loopholes. Just nationalize industry run them for the public rather the for profit and fire the CEOs/Lobbyists and PMC's that keep Capitalism operating.
Also I'll take a Stalin for the initial break from Capitalism. After 10ish years, we can go to a more democratic government.
This will go the same way the "Green New Deal" did. It will scare the ruling class, the ruling class will send its media minions to demonize it, and nothing will change. doomer
If the phone were 5% lighter that would be an actual improvement. Instead phones get heavier and thinner and bigger. So overall the experience diminishes as they try to be tablets.
Like how about we work less and we immediately and totally nationalize energy and agriculture haha just a thought haha (fireflies are going extinct haha)
That's cool. Do they ignore climate change in their energy calculations? Because if they are nationalized and choose to burn Shale Oil for energy, then they are kind of missing the point.
This sounds nice for someone in a developed country who has all they need, and is only satisfying their wants. But for most of the world, economic development is a necessity and a lifesaver. Child mortality is reduced, life expectancy and education level increased, child labor decreased, as a country's economy grows.
This is not a fringe right-wing idea. This is the very real effect of economic growth in developing countries, i.e. most of the world.
Degrowthers often seem to forget that applying their ideas will literally kill millions in developing countries, by preventing the economic developments that would have saved them.
FWIW, I am not a fan of unbridled capitalism either but think that it is important to consider science in important matters like this and not just go with gut feeling. That applies to both fascism and degrowth.
I think a more fair take is that we need growth in underdeveloped places and degrowth in highly developed places. It's less about changing the total economic output and more about changing how that output is distributed.
Which is a direct function of development. All of Africa produces less CO2 than Alabama, and Alabama is the least developed state in the developed world.
Degrowth addresses that, contrary to your opinion. Degrowth in the global north provides the space for the global south to properly develop, something that has been systematically denied to them in many places by western powers through unequal exchange and neocolonialism.
I was shocked how much getting a password manager simplified my life. No more trying to remember obscure number conbinations, or going the 'forgot password' route for sites I rarely use. It's honestly even better than I expected. Bitwarden FTW!
I think the primary difference, at least in the hobby farmers I know who are young, idealistic, and just getting started, is that they aren’t expecting to scale the operation beyond some arbitrary point - beyond which, it stops being fulfilling and starts being a giant pain in the ass. Conversely, the dairy farmer I know who has the largest operation in the county is a stand up dude, who avoids cutting corners but is getting squeezed big time by small artisanal operations with street cred and big, industrial operations with margins. The middle, where there used to be a huge swath of family farms, is a bloodbath of debt and suffering.
I imagine most of these new hippies are trying to stay small.
FYI medium sized dairies are being squeezed out by the government back oligopolies in milk processesing that completely control the milk prices.
Many of them also do not have enough land base to feed their animals and manage the waste. The cost remedy this is prohibitive due to mega corporate investment firms buying up land at extremely high prices.
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