exasperation
@exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Anon is 23 3 days ago:
Where are you that plumbers don’t get paid well?
I’m in the U.S. Here’s an interactive, searchable table of U.S. stats for all job codes Note that you can dig around the site by state, as well.
It shows the mean, median, 10th percentile, 25th percentile, 75th percentile, and 90th percentile wage, plus the number in each job, by both hour and by year.
For 47-2152, “Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters,” we have 465k people making an average of $72k. The 10th/25th/50th/75th/90th percentiles are $44k/$50k/$63k/$85k/$108k. Those numbers are exactly what I’m talking about: a high floor and a very flat trajectory, where the 75th percentile doesn’t even double the 25th percentile.
Compare to something like Human Resources Specialist, one of the more unremarkable college-educated office jobs. They’re averaging $82k, with $47k/$59k/$76k/$99k/$129k on those percentiles. And they have a clear pathway towards Human Resources manager, where the average is $164k and the spread is $88k/$111k/$149k/$199k/$268k.
Note also that the U.S. employs almost twice as many HR specialists (912,000) as plumbers (465,000) in our job market. And HR Managers are over 200,000 people.
Start digging into different jobs and you can see a lot of the same trends. Non-college educated white collar jobs (secretaries, assistants) don’t pay well, and jobs requiring a bit of a certification but not full blown bachelor’s degrees (paralegal) are comparable to plumber incomes.
But my general point is clear: the trades have a high floor, very flat trajectories, and a low ceiling. They deal with higher unemployment rates and the jobs are harder on the bodies. The college educated pathways have a huge up front cost (tuition and late entry into the workforce), and take up to a decade to actually catch up. But most of us work 30-50 year careers, so a 10-year break even point is actually pretty good.
And if you want to work with your hands, the educated blue collar job fields can be super lucrative: field engineers, outdoor researchers, even things like surgeons.
- Comment on Anon is 23 3 days ago:
An electrician certification proves that you can do something. A bachelor’s degree is just a checkbox to prove you went through the motions.
Why is it that you think that an electrician certification is less about checkboxes than a 4-year university degree? Or that the checkboxes are somehow more difficult to game? Most trade schools themselves are a joke, so you have to play the meta game of getting the cert and networking your way to a job. You know, same as your university degree.
The fact is, most trades pay shit, and their big advantage is that you get to start earlier in life, and that you have more opportunities to get overtime pay. That can be a good option for your 20’s, especially during a jobs boom (most trades are infamously boom and bust cycles), but by your 30’s you will get passed up by most of your degree holding peers (and you’ll totally get left in the dust in your 40’s and 50’s).
It’s not good advice to young people. Electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. don’t get paid very much on average, and the ones who break out from that low pay are either highly specialized or climb the small business/management ladder (at which point they benefit from concepts taught in school as well).
- Comment on Hell yeah. 3 days ago:
I don’t think we’re talking about love here. We are talking about S-E-X in front of the C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N!
Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down!
- Comment on Old but gud 2 weeks ago:
I wear colorful men’s clothes. Fun designs on things like short sleeve button shirts in the summer (Hawaiian shirts and similar things), fun sweaters in the winter.
Even my office wear usually has a splash of personality, with the amount of subtlety appropriate for the setting: suits or jackets with interesting textures and weave patterns, neckties with interesting designs, a bright color on my socks. Some settings allow for a bit more expression, and other choices can be more adventurous if you prefer, including intentionally contrasting choices in glasses, watches, shoes, other accessories. Even a pair of headphones can be a fashion accessory, although it is true that women seem to be able to pull that off better.
- Comment on Sounds beautiful 2 weeks ago:
The wonderful story? The lyrics to the Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)”:
Hey how you doin’ lil’ mama let me whisper in ya ear
- Comment on Is it even possible to drop 20 lbs in a month? Are there any diets for people who want to go to the extreme? Kind of like celebs do for roles? 2 weeks ago:
Yup. Dropping 5+ lbs of water weight in a day or two is possible, especially when targeting glycogen stores.
Even burning fat or metabolizing protein releases retained water, although not at the same high ratio as with glycogen.
- Comment on I know exactly where 2 weeks ago:
Well, not-so-prime breeding age is still has reproduction potential greater than zero. And the social effects still matter, with the interplay between sexual attraction/ desirability and all the other social factors. So extended sexual attractiveness might be a side effect of something else that is evolutionarily advantageous (including correlation with prime age sexual attractiveness): being athletic and smart and funny and charismatic are all attractive traits that have functionality outside of just reproducing.
- Comment on Heh heh 2 weeks ago:
Throw it in the trash.
People talk about recycling and that makes a difference for restaurants, but at home quantities? Just put it in the trash.
- Comment on I know exactly where 2 weeks ago:
Genetically coded social behavior helps the genes even when they don’t help the individual. The most obvious example is how each worker bee in a hive or worker ant in a colony is a genetic dead end, with no offspring, but will do plenty of work to help the overall hive/colony survive.
We’re hard wired to raise our children, as can be shown by just how helpless our children are at birth, and how long it takes for them to form full maturity. That extends to the whole village, including grandparents.
Meanwhile, plenty of anthropological evidence shows that we form coalitions and tribes and work together to advance group interests, and that it’s been going on for our entire species’ history, including in the genealogical line that we descend from, outcompeting other hominids and even other branches of homo sapien that didn’t form such complex alliances.
Our brains are hard wired to develop complex language for communication with other humans. This is what helped us thrive as a species, to where our evolutionary success threatens to harm our greater environment.
But that just shows that humans are really good at socializing. And as social creatures, we have evolutionary value even beyond our direct ability to produce offspring.
- Comment on The end of civilization costs $5 4 weeks ago:
Certified gluten free!
- Comment on The end of civilization costs $5 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, there’s no better way than directional freezing. Either you freeze big old slabs in a way that pushes the dissolved gases (and many dissolved solids) away from the crystal structure of slowly freezing ice and then cut it after the fact, or you directionally freeze something that has an outlet to push the gases down so that you pull the frozen ice from the top compartment before the bottom compartment freezes.
- Comment on The end of civilization costs $5 4 weeks ago:
I need to get a bunch of “fresh, never frozen” stickers to put on bagged ice.
- Comment on The end of civilization costs $5 4 weeks ago:
Believe it or not some of us like pretty things to enjoy for ourselves, not to put on social media.
And big clear ice melts more consistently in a way that better maintains coldness longer while maintaining a slower pace of dilution. It does make a difference to flavor.
- Comment on That's fair 4 weeks ago:
the usual 8-12 range
Define “usual,” because in most strength programs I see, they rarely call for more than 5 reps in a work set (unless doing AMRAP where you need to do at least 3 or 5).
And I personally do my 1RM testing to competition form, but I get what you’re saying.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
My only hope really is that my apartment building would install some kind of central cooling solution, which is an incredibly expensive endeavour.
This comment got me wondering how apartments can retrofit their central heat into some kind of climate control that goes both ways.
For apartments with ducts and forced air, it seems like the central furnace/boiler can probably be replaced with some kind of heat pump setup for more efficient heating in the winters, and reversed to provide cooling in the summers, through the same air ducts. The total cost/complexity would probably depend heavily on the space for the furnace and its service/maintenance, I imagine.
With steam/hot water radiators, though, I imagine it’s even harder. Can these systems safely be modified to pump cold water?
Or, if they need to add ducts where none currently exist, that seems like it would be unbelievably complex and expensive, if people are going to be living there the whole time. Seems like a real challenge.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
will kick out a fuck tonne more carbon
Not if that installed A/C also functions as a heat pump that reduces gas furnace use in the winter. Especially if decent cooling also incentivizes better insulation (which would further reduce energy use at both extremes).
Carbon emissions from heating account for about 4 times as much as carbon emissions from cooling, worldwide. Replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps will greatly improve overall annual carbon emissions, even if they blast the A/C all summer.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Everyone should be installing heat pumps for winter, too. The ability to cool in the summer is basically a bonus, that they can run the system in reverse.
- Comment on Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up 5 weeks ago:
I’m not sure that it would, but I’d bet it depends on time, place, and other context. The ideal body looks different in different social circles, even among the very fit (swimmer versus powerlifter versus Olympic lifter versus MMA fighter versus crossfitter versus basketball player).
In my circles, the straight women seem to to mostly prefer thin endurance cardio bodies, which, whatever, let people like things. Either way, that’s not always a great body type to show off shirtless.
- Comment on I want it to slap me across the face 5 weeks ago:
Caffeine is very slightly negatively correlated with darkness of the roast. Dark roasts tend to have less caffeine than light roasts.
Also, drip/pourover/percolator/press coffee tends to have more caffeine per serving than espresso-based drinks. The longer steep time extracts more of the caffeine, and serving sizes tend to just be so much larger to overcome the higher caffeine per unit volume of espresso.
So in reality, the lighter pourover coffee where you have the roaster or barista talking about tasting notes tends to be higher caffeine than the dark, densely brewed bitter stuff.
- Comment on I want it to slap me across the face 5 weeks ago:
I like my coffee like I like my women: completely devoid of STDs.
- Comment on Anon's lil bro goes through his first break up 5 weeks ago:
When I used dating sites, seeing a guy’s shirtless, muscled profile pic was always a turn off, if not a red flag in itself.
So bizarre that people would do that. When I was single and on social media and on dating websites (before smartphones), I did want to show off a bit that I worked out, but I had the discretion to, like, wear a T-shirt or a polo in the right lighting to show that I had strong looking forearms and a hint that there’s something pretty solid under that shirt. Actually taking my shirt off would have felt way too desperate, and besides, just isn’t something that I’d naturally have a picture of myself in.
Just seems to be a mix of validation-seeking insecurity and confidence in one’s own muscles. Seems like a lot to unpack, and that combination probably doesn’t really send a message that “becoming intimate with me is going to be a rewarding and fulfilling time.”
- Comment on Finally an explanation 5 weeks ago:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
A system of fair rules does not always lead to fair outcomes, if the rules don’t accommodate the asymmetry in capacity, motivation, resources, etc.
- Comment on My favourite moment of the world cup is when there's more rules about advertising than the sport 1 month ago:
Yes. Levi’s paid a ton of money to have their name and branding associated with the stadium in Santa Clara, where the 49ers play.
And basically the only tenant in the history of American sporting events to have the power to persuade the stadium owners to cut a deal not to use the official names of the stadiums, which the brand sponsors paid lots of money for, was FIFA making it a condition of hosting the World Cup.
The only branding that survived is on Mercedes Benz stadium in Atlanta, because the logo on the roof is, like, load bearing or something and can’t safely be covered without damaging the stadium.
- Comment on sorry, I have to see for myself😩 1 month ago:
These two actors played the main on and off again couple at the center of the television show Sex and the City. The relationship was toxic, all the in-universe characters knew it, but the couple kept getting back together, and that provided a lot of drama for the television show.
- Comment on My favourite moment of the world cup is when there's more rules about advertising than the sport 1 month ago:
The actual brand owners are not providing the stadium. Some stadium operator who accepted the brand money for the normal use of that stadium is providing the stadium, and FIFA said they’d require that any branded stadiums remove their corporate sponsorships in order to be considered as a site.
- Comment on Just wash your hands or something after, Junior. 1 month ago:
Yeah, every time this (frequent) repost comes up there’s always this exchange, between people who see chores as a way to offload a parent’s household work and those who see chores as a way to teach children how to build their own life skills as future adults.
- Comment on Goddammit 1 month ago:
Yeah, it’s a written representation of a verbal phrase. I would’ve written gon’ with an apostrophe for marking that it’s a shortened version of the word “gonna” but it’s like spelling out the more phonetically accurate form of an abbreviated or contracted word, like “fridge” instead of “frig” or “Mike”/“Tom”/“Joe” as shortened versions of “Michael”/“Thomas”/“Joseph.”
- Comment on Wut 1 month ago:
I saw a pretty fun series of videos explaining why this is.
Viewing Fibonacci spiral structures in plants shows that as the structure grows from the meristem of the plant, each new growth is offset by the golden angle from the previous growth, rotating in a manner that many revolutions will show spiral formations in Fibonacci numbers.
French physicists Douady and Couder performed some experiments by periodically dropping magnetic fluid onto some oil and observing how they moved from that center point. Drop them slowly enough and they’d alternate sides, by repelling each other. But drop them close enough to where the repulsion happened against multiple droplets and they’d tend to stabilize at rotating around, with the golden angle.
So the simple algorithm of growing away from the previous growth is easy to encode genetically, and creates spiral structures with minimal overlap with prior growths. So Fibonacci spirals arise with the simplest of growth instructions coded into the genetics.
- Comment on The local supermarket takes protein bar protection. Anyway does anyone know how to open these cases ? 1 month ago:
Funny how you completely left out (sweet)potatoes, paprika, carrots and other vegetables with as low as 2g of protein per 100kcal
Other than potatoes, those are all low calorie foods that are easy to just ignore when meal planning. You can eat a 2 kg (4.4 lb) bag of bell peppers/paprika, roughly 15-20 peppers, and it’s only 600 calories.
Wheat products being pretty close to begin with sounds nice but it still means they are too low on protein and those definitely make up a large portion of most peoples calorie intake.
They are definitely more than enough for most people. The example I used, of 5g protein per 100 calories, is a fairly tight example of a bodybuilder on a calorie restricted cut, and probably twice that of a person with more typical needs.
For someone who is physically active and has a higher caloric requirement, like a typical 180 lb (82 kg) athletic man, their maintenance calories are 2800 and their protein needs are around 100g (with health issues possibly showing up below 70g). If they’re actively bodybuilding they might need 150g of protein, but they’re also going to be physically active enough to have a higher calorie budget. And for most people, there’s no muscle building/retention benefit of getting more than 0.8g per pound (or 1.8g per kg) of body weight. Basically, the 5g per 100 calorie budget applies to a pretty narrow category of people who are trying to optimize for something specific rather than just people who want to live their lives.
And even for those vegan bodybuilders, it’s not that hard to just supplement with pea protein, eat some processed proteins (like tofu), not that different from omnivore bodybuilders who use lots of whey/casein protein isolated from dairy products. Or they can go get those protein supplemented pastas and breads and just eat normally.
For a normal 200 lb (91 kg) man who isn’t trying to be a competitive athlete, 80g of protein on 3000 calories is enough to stay healthy. So when budgeting 2.6g of protein per 100 calories, at that point things like potatoes and carrots and bell peppers are already staying ahead of the curve.
Obviously less choice makes things harder. But for people who are actively trying to optimize their diets for body composition, the supplements are useful regardless of whether you eat meat or not.
- Comment on Comic sans gang 1 month ago:
Stars are colorful but the rods in the human eye that help process very low light intensities aren’t color sensitive. The colors of the stars, though, are real, in that if you had enough brightness you’d see the colors with the cones in your eye.
If you put a very colorful picture on the ground but illuminated it with only faint moonlight, your eyes would struggle to see the colors on the picture, despite the fact that the colors on the picture are objectively real, with real pigments that actually represent colors that would be seen you had more light.
So merely pointing out the deficiencies in the human eye don’t actually prove that the colors aren’t real.