Glassnoser
4mo ago
I thought it was shown that they don't do much, especially outside. And they mostly protect others from you. They don't prevent you from getting infected.
Glassnoser
4mo ago
Growing up, the only thing we ever did for Christmas Eve was to go to church in the evening. It was only time of year we would normally go. It's been years since we've done that. Lately, my siblings, sister-in-law, and I go to my parents' place for supper and put our gifts under the tree to be opened in the morning.
Glassnoser
7mo ago
Why is it a bad thing that asset prices are high? That seems like a good thing to me.
First of all, those are very different situations. It's not true that if Israel is justified in attacking Palestine that those other causes are justifiable, nor is it necessarily wise for the US to get involved. Secondly, it's not true that if the US helps one country it has to help them all.
I hate it with a burning passion. (This is, unironically, what a website should look like: https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) I guess they want things to look nice and clean, but for practical reasons, I want as much information to fit on the screen at one time as possible. I can understand limiting clutter, but they have gone way too far. I don't like clicking through menus, especially if I don't know where to find what I'm looking for, and I really really don't like scrolling.
For the same reason, I abhor the trend of making things too big. I really don't like that if I open YouTube on my 27" monitor, I can only see 8 videos at a time (or just 1 or 2 on my Pixel 6 XL). My bank used to have a nice website that they ruined by replacing with the design from their app. I have five accounts and only two fit on the screen because they're using 24 point font with huge chunks of white space between them. They can't fit 5 numbers on a 312 square inch screen! I'm seriously considering switching banks over it and I only hesitate because the others will probably do the same.
I have to resist going on a rant about this, so I'll just conclude by saying I also dislike the trend of replacing text with symbols that I have to decode, and by saying that if God is just, there is a special place in hell for whoever is responsible for pushing this.
Glassnoser
4mo ago
How do you explain Canada then, where the issue wasn't politicized at all and yet lots of people are still wearing masks?
Glassnoser
4mo ago
Developing property is also productive activity.
Why did the US end up with this system? In Canada, there is no equivalent to the SAT. To apply to university, you usually just submit a high school transcript.
If you want a full scholarship, that's another story, but you will usually get something just for having good grades and the tuition is less than half what it would be at a state school in the US.
We also don't have anything like the Ivy league. Our top universities have huge student bodies, and the gap between them and the lower ranked universities is not as big. The university of Toronto has 76,000 undergraduate students. Nor do we have the same problem with grade inflation. U of T notoriously grades its undergrads in a curve, which is not popular for students who all excelled academically in high school. Other schools, such as my alma mater don't do this, but it's common for courses to have C averages (which are stated on the transcript). Does it have something to do with the US having private universities?
The result is that, unlike the US, the UK, China, and probably many other countries, it's not so difficult to get into a good university, but it's hard to do well once you're in, and depending on the program, hard to even pass. But in these other countries where it's really hard to get into the top universities, once you're in, you don't have to work very hard from what I've heard.
Glassnoser
6mo ago
Why is it inherently bad?
How would that work? Mid six-figures is $500,000. Assuming a real growth rate of 4% (it could be higher, but I think this is reasonable given how low real interest rates have been lately), and assuming 45 years of growth, that gives you $2.9 million.
Each generation, you'll pay capital gains tax, which in Canada (I don't know how it works in the US) would be about 25%. In the US and many other countries, you also have inheritance tax. That's equivalent to about 1% a year. Is there a way to avoid this with a trust?
Then you have to pay half in income tax, which leaves you with 1.5% to live off of each year. That's just $44,000 year to be split between you and your siblings, spouse, and children.
but even conservatives have got to recognize there is a problem.
I don't see why it's a problem.
Glassnoser
9mo ago
Why do East Asian restaurants have such massive menus?
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Your simple faith in this religion of the free market is touching, I have to say. There's an argument that the instances in the original post are indeed over-regulation for the sake of it, but to put it all on the free market is optimistic in the extreme.
If it were faith, I wouldn't be asking for reasons why it might not work. I don't think you're quite going this far, but there's this really common and very annoying thing that a lot of people do where, if you express any kind of belief that markets ever work, you're accused of being a free market fundamentalist. It's a subject on which people struggle to see nuance and seem to default to gesturing vaguely at market failures which they've heard exist but can never explain why any given case is one.
Every insurance company has its own licensing body? Multiple licensing bodies? Or in effect a monopoly? Any common standard, or LicenzRUz gives you one if you can turn the ignition on, nothing more required (and the insurance companies that take this licence then charge you out the nose for coverage) while Rules Rule Inc. ask for your family medical history three generations back?
Competition and choice would be great, but we can't do worse than the current monopoly.
Law cases even more lucrative for lawyers as the survivors of person killed in crash by "minimum requirements only" licence holder fight it out with the insurers, and judges have to rule on whether the driver was adequately licenced or not?
Why would it matter whether the driver was licensed? The compensation would be based on the harm caused and who was at fault. Why would this be any more difficult than it is already?
This is where we get things like "Jet's Law" in the first place, and the subsequent over-reach.
How so?
Adjusting the free market grave by grave may be one way of doing it, but I think most people would prefer a less final method than "Okay, fifty thousand extra deaths due to lax licence rules, pressure on insurers to put pressure on third party bodies to tighten up their requirements".
I'm not following this at all. What do you mean by "final"? Why would there be an increase in deaths? Why would there be any kind of grave-by-grave adjustment of the free market?
Whatever way you do it, the government is going to get dragged in by cases such as led to Jet's Law. After all, the 'free market' allowed the epileptic driver to operate a vehicle, and it was the consequences of that which involved the government:
Why would the government get dragged in?
I don't think there's anything at all wrong with what she did. If they really needed the bike, they could have paid for it, including paying her to give up the bike she rightfully rented. They were deliberately circumventing the intention of the free period limit - why is there any free period at all by the way? - so I don't see why they should feel entitled to the bikes. They're trying to do something the system is clearly designed to not allow them to do.
I don't think we need to play sympathy games to figure out who deserves the bike more based on pregnancy status, sex, age, race, tiredness, or who got there first. We have a system for allocating the bikes and she followed that system to get the bike over someone who was trying to exploit the system to get something for free. We also have an even older and better established system for getting something that legally belongs to someone else. It's called trade. You can pay for something with money.
I agree that the narrative that they ganged up on her to take a bike that was already in her possession is false, but she is still completely in the right.
Glassnoser
6d ago
Don't all countries with legal systems based on the English common law have freedom of speech?
Glassnoser
27d ago
That is still really vague. I am talking about people who want to restrict immigration based on race. What would that actually mean? Once they can answer that, we can talk about whether that actually makes sense, whether it could work, how it would be done, and whether there are better ways of achieving those goals. White nationalists don't seem to want to do any of those things. But they are decisions they would eventually have to make.
I'm going on a 3.5 hour drive tomorrow to get to the centre of the path of totality for the solar eclipse. I have the solar glasses. I have solar binoculars and regular binoculars. I know about shadow bands and am thinking of bringing something to make them easier to see. Is there anything else I should do to take full advantage of it that I'm probably not thinking of? How hard are shadow bands to see? I saw videos of people using white sheets to see them. I'll probably be on a beach if that matters.
UPDATE: I saw the shadow bands in the snow. They were very faint at first but very clear right before the eclipse. Overall, an amazing experience and totally worth the trip. It's hard to describe the impression it made. A few minutes before the eclipse, it got noticeably darker, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Then, very quickly, it's as dark as night with a full moon, and you can suddenly see this back orb where sun was a moment ago, ringed with bright light and extraordinary white whisps of still smoke coming out of it. I am not a religious person, but angelic is best descriptor that comes to mind.
A couple I know is doing IVF. They have the embryos already but they aren't implanted. I suggested they select the one to implant using genetic testing which a few companies offer at wildly varying costs. Does it really work? Are there downsides? If it can do what's advertised, it would seem to be worth the cost, which is several thousand dollars at most.
Glassnoser
6mo ago
Why does that mean it's bad for it to be indulged?
Most Canadians sound similar to most Americans, but there are Newfoundlanders who sound like they're from Ireland.
Can you really not recognize a strong New York accent or southern US accent? These are very distinct.
My impression is that there is a larger average difference between the French spoken in Canada and the French spoken France than there is between the English spoken in North America and the English spoken in England.
Mapping accents to class in North America is easy. The higher class you are, the closer your accent is to a general North American accent that you hear in movies and on TV. The lower class you are, the closer it is to the strongest version of your regional accent.
Glassnoser
20d ago
This is not correct. Where are you getting your information?
Glassnoser
1mo ago
It seems that most of the work that real estate agents do is finding clients. How does that work? If I want to sell my house, it's not hard to find a real estate agent. I can contact one in two minutes. For real estate agents to be spending so much effort finding clients, there has to be a large pool of people who want to sell their houses but for some reason don't have real estate agents yet. How can that be? What are real estate agents actually doing?
Glassnoser
3mo ago
How can Texas physically prevent the border patrol from entering Texas? Texas doesn't have border control between it and other states, and wouldn't part of the border patrol already be in Texas anyway?
This is politically impossible. Canadians have a very strong national identity which is based at its core - and on little else - on not being American. Remember, it's the only country in the world that was actually founded in direct opposition to the principles on which the US was founded. The entire point of Canada, for its entire history, has been to not be part of the United States. Furthermore, the Canadian population has been heavily selected over 250 years for people who don't want to be Americans. So despite the cultural similarities, most Canadians very much don't want to be part of the United States.
Most Canadians don't appreciate how much richer the US is, and those who do, mostly think it's only the very richest who are better off. They falsely believe that the average person is richer in Canada.
There are also constitutional issues. Quebec's language laws would violate the first amendment, and nothing is more important to French speaking Quebeckers than protecting their language. They would far sooner become independent than give up control over what language speak in order to join the US.
Our gun control laws would violate the second amendment, and most Canadians have no interest in giving up their safety in order to have that right. There are lots of Canadians who like to hunt and are upset and some of the recent changes to the gun laws, but there is nothing like the broad support that the second amendment has among American conservatives. The gun situation in the US is seen by most Canadians as crazy. and it would be top of mind in any discussion about joining the US.
Canada's talented engineers (who also conveniently speak English) can easily move to the US and find jobs, instead of trying to kickstart some mini Canadian engineering industry that competes with Silicon Valley
Most Canadians wouldn't see this as a good thing and would prefer to keep them here where they can support our local industry.
American Oil companies can help develop Canada's massive oil deposits and other natural resources, which cost a lot to develop and would benefit from economics of scale
Is there something preventing them from doing this now? The environmentalist movement is very strong in Canada, and outside Alberta, most people don't actually want the oil industry to be further developed.
Quebec would fit in nicely as yet another ethnic/language minority in the US, instead of being this one persecuted minority in Canada with a chip on its shoulder
Quebec isn't persecuted in any way and has much more autonomy than it would as part of the United States, in particular, regarding laws on language usage and immigration. It would also face more pressure to assimilate into anglophone culture. Canada has a lot of federal laws enforcing bilingualism in the rest of the country. These wouldn't exist if it were part of the US, and Quebec's exposure to anglophone culture would increase. Quebec also receives large subsidies from the richer parts of the country as part of Canada's equalization payment system, which the US doesn't have.
It would also lose its ability to separate. US states don't have the right to secede, whereas in Canada, it is not clear, but they likely can if there is enough support among the province's residents. Quebec separatism may be dormant, but francophone Quebeckers do not really see themselves as Canadian and it's quite possible Quebec will try to separate again in the future if it's relationship with the rest of Canada worsens. It would not want to give up that option.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
So being a recent graduate is a bad time to date?
The Cancel-Culture Troll with a Neo-Nazi Past. This is an exposé on the RationalWiki editor behind several cancellations of intelligence researchers including Bo Winegard and Noah Carl.
He used to be a white nationalist on Stormfront before flipping to the other extreme and attacking the reputations and destroying the careers of academics by writing defamatory articles under multiple pseudonyms.
He was later banned from RationalWiki for, among other things, writing articles about and doxxing other editors. Although he was easily able to ban evade and continued to use RationalWiki to attack academics.
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