penitentkulak [none/use name]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • A huge source of pm2.5 is wildfire smoke, weird it’s not listed. I’ve averaged between 50-100ug/m3 the last few weeks with peaks as high as 450 and no one masks, people are still jogging, kids still playing sports, my uncle with COPD nearly got rushed to the ER just sitting outside at a parade. It’s barely even mentioned as an issue, let alone any thought of masking, or even using an air purifier/corsi-rosenthal box inside. Truly baffling, but it really shows the brainworms around masking/public health, if people aren’t going to mask or change behavior to protect themselves from thick wildfire smoke they can taste/see/smell they aren’t ever gonna mask up for a less “visible” threat like covid-cool , especially not to protect others.











  • I don’t think the customs is gonna bat too much of an eye at an industrial grade 10" roller bearing Type H3B and other such bullshit if you only bring in handfuls of each.

    You are severely underestimating how shitty CBP is lol. I’ve had a few especially shitty border cops over the years question shit like basic tools I had in the trunk of my car. I had friend who ran conferences, on a trip down for personal stuff he brought a pretty standard DSLR and a tripod to shoot an interview with someone who was gonna be at one of these conferences while he was there anyway. He didn’t admit that and just said it was for taking pics of the trip, but they didn’t believe him and said that he was smuggling in equipment to do work in the country, and detained him for like 4-5 hours, during which they scoured social media and found a youtube page for the conference stuff. They didn’t have any proof but that didn’t matter because they have a right to refuse entry, turned him around and banned him from the country for something like 3-5 years?



  • See this article:

    https://unherd.com/2025/02/why-trumps-tariffs-are-a-masterplan/

    Trump has been lamenting the decline of US manufacturing for decades: “if you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country.” But why blame this on the dollar’s global role? Because, Trump answers, foreign central banks do not let the dollar adjust downwards to the “right” level — at which US exports recover and imports are restrained. It is not that foreign central bankers are conspiring against America. It is just that the dollar is the only safe international reserve they can get their hands on. It is only natural for European and Asian central banks to hoard the dollars that flow to Europe and Asia when Americans import things. By not swapping their stash of dollars for their own currencies, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of England suppress the demand for (and thus the value of) their currencies. This helps their own exporters boost their sales to America and earn even more dollars. In a never-ending circle, these fresh dollars accumulate in the coffers of the foreign central bankers who, to gain interest safely, use them to buy US government debt.