Scrap (twitter.com)
117 points by tosh 3 hours ago
ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago
One convenient fiction that wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"; and that's why they're poor.
I know lots of folks without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out, and not one single one, is "lazy." In fact, a few have more than one (difficult) job.
I am old enough to see a few of them getting into the back nine, with no cushion.
I'm extremely grateful for what I have.
gumby 7 minutes ago
Being poor is a lot of work, as is very well documented. When you have more money you can offload some (or in extreme cases pretty much all) of the labor.
andsoitis 23 minutes ago
> convenient fiction that wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"
just like all poor people aren't lazy, so too all wealthy people don't think this.
ChrisMarshallNY 11 minutes ago
Never said they did. Interesting read of what I wrote…
andsoitis 10 minutes ago
Jtarii 15 minutes ago
Some people just have a several hundred year head start on others.
teaearlgraycold a few seconds ago
The more money I’ve been paid the less hard I’ve had to work. Across my friends this seems to be a pretty strong trend.
p-o 20 minutes ago
The pervasive myth that hard work == wealth needs to die. Every people I have met in my life wanted to have a shot at a decent life and would have put the necessary work for a decent wage.
The word lazy should be identified as what it really is: a pejorative.
userbinator 8 minutes ago
It's not "lazy"; it's "made the wrong choices"... which I suppose you could call "intellectually lazy".
kajman a minute ago
It only makes sense that fetuses which choose to be born into blue collar families in the wrong zip code are more likely to continue to make poor decisions for the rest of their lives. You just can't trust people with such a poor history of judgement. Unless they're C-Suite.
ChrisMarshallNY 7 minutes ago
Or… were never given a choice/opportunity…
krupan 32 minutes ago
Wow, I didn't realize how much I missed blog posts like this. Is there any way we can get the version of the Internet where people posted like this on their personal blogs back? It's the reason sites like hacker news came to exist, you couldn't just scroll social media to find stuff, you had to sort of stumble upon (that used to be a website too, didn't it?) stuff like this and pass it around word of mouth. It was awesome.
nixosbestos 28 minutes ago
Sorry, but it's not a fucking blog post. It's a long form post on a site I can't read because I have literally half an ounce of actual self respect.
It's not a blog. Nor is Medium. I can't believe this shit the site tolerates (laps up, really) being named "hacker news". Buncha hackers should be ashamed and embarrassed.
p-o 24 minutes ago
> It's a long form post on a site I can't read because I have literally half an ounce of actual self respect.
Glad I'm not the only one.
gumby 13 minutes ago
Change x to xcancel and read it that way.
QuantumNomad_ 2 minutes ago
NoImmatureAdHom 11 minutes ago
xcancel.com
tonyhart7 25 minutes ago
I mean twitter used to be a micro blogging website that people could use without maintaining real blog website
what's the issue here ????
nixosbestos 17 minutes ago
delichon an hour ago
A friend was a property manager in Sacramento. His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper, that currently pays ~$5/lb. If people are really working this hard for steel at $0.04/lb, then transformers and air conditioners will have to be installed in vaults.
TacticalCoder an hour ago
> His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper
It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables. They've been found to steal, too, heavy road grate if they were of any value: which created actual serious accidents (where a car's tire falls into the hole).
Regarding the electrical cables for trains, one solution is, slowly , replace them with cables with basically the same properties but 1/10th the copper.
Other funky solutions have been implemented: chemical sprays with a composition that is watermark and that cannot easily be removed. So when caught the thieves cannot deny because for x weeks the watermark stays, invisible and harmless, on their skin.
One question of course is: what does society think we should do with thieves who create road accidents and who render trains inoperable?
gumby 12 minutes ago
> One question of course is: what does society think we should do with thieves who create road accidents and who render trains inoperable?
They should be liable for consequential damages.
NoImmatureAdHom 10 minutes ago
downrightmike 13 minutes ago
trains arent really useful in the US on purpose
gumby 9 minutes ago
mschuster91 32 minutes ago
> It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables.
Even worse. Sometimes, the dumb fucks think something has copper in it, but actually it's fiber... once two copper thieves simultaneously took out the primary and secondary fiber for the GSM-R network, leading to a complete standstill in Northern Germany [1]. (Personally: given the timing, I think it was Russian throwaway agents, and I do not believe that "copper thieves" cover story for a single second)
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R-Ausfall_bei_der_Deutsche...
kogasa240p an hour ago
> ~$5/lb
Copper sells over $6 per pound these days: https://www.kitco.com/price/base-metals/copper
Computer0 an hour ago
I’d say $6 is == ~$5
Aurornis an hour ago
The scrap price is what you get for bringing scrap copper to a recycler.
Not an expert, but I assume $5/lb is the peak value for dropping off nearly perfect condition copper. Not sure how much they’re actually getting for stripped copper wire.
tomjakubowski 34 minutes ago
mikeaskew4 an hour ago
We have them in Chicago, too. Call streets and san when you got something too big to fit in the can? Nah.
Also nearly got a job in Pittsburgh this summer…
phoronixrly an hour ago
slopinthebag 2 hours ago
I fear FIFTEEN CENTS A POUND is going to become a new vocal stim I will spam 50 times a day.