I'm pre-registering a very optimistic prediction. If it was meant to really be act of war/do damage, why was the attack telegraphed in advance? Also, per Fars, only targets identified by government sources so far are bases in the Golan Heights and one in the Negev desert. This matches the pattern of the symbolic post-Soleimani response - remember when people start talking about ballistic missiles that those were used then too. Am I wish-casting? Yes, probably, but I do genuinely think this is probably not going to be disastrous.
Edit: just seen this tweet from the Iranian mission to the UN saying that 'the matter can be deemed concluded'. Thank god, though the danger not passed if some of the missiles/drones do get through and do some real damage.
HaroldWilson
21d ago
10-15k is a fair bit higher than you really need to spend to get something decent imo, if 'every penny saved helps'. Hatchbacks tend to provide much better value than other body types, and imo for a relatively young person look better anyway. Saloons are very middle aged. Automatics command a premium too as you doubtless know, and after a while driving a manual it really becomes second nature.
Still, even if you do want an automatic it's hard to beat a Vauxhall Corsa for value - yes it's a hatchback, but all the 2010s ones look good. There are automatic versions with <40k miles for less than 6 grand on autotrader.
If you really do want a saloon, a Volvo S40/60/80 might be decent value and pretty reliable? There are S40s with <30,000 miles in the £5-6k range, a handful of them automatic.
HaroldWilson
29d ago
education of African-Americans is any better today?
Relatively, yes. Unfortunately comparable data seems only really to go back to the 70s - though desegregation of schools took a while to get going in earnest - but since then the black-white achievement gap has been closing at a fair clip - convergence stalled in the 90s but got back on course in the 2000s. State-based data which would allow us to look just at the South only goes back to 1990 disappointingly, so we don't know what component of convergence is accounted for by non-Southern states - still though, the overall picture is of a gap closing post-integration, and in 1970 still over half of African-Americans lived in the South.
HaroldWilson
20d ago
I can't imagine you'll see many comfortable BMWs unless the UK has a very different used car market than the US right now.
There actually are even under 10k BMWs with under 15,000 miles on the market online right now. Autotrader is very good for this sort of searching.
Huh. I definitely didn't know there was an association between age and driving a sedan. That's very much not a stereotype in India. Sedans are aspirational, and so are SUVs, though not as much as the States.
Yeah it's really hard to understate the dominance of hatchbacks among young car drivers, which is partly driven by their relatively better fuel consumption, insurance grouping, price etc. than bigger cars of course, but still, perhaps downstream of those factors there is a general cultural association of hatchbacks as young peoples' cars. Not exclusively, older people do drive hatchbacks often too, but virtually every young person drives a hatchback. Saloons/sedans are - at least in my impression, maybe other Brits would disagree - pretty deeply uncool for a young person and associated with balding professionals. Not necessarily a reason not to get one, if you don't care what other people think (and I have no idea how young you are), and it's not like it matters that much, but if you do something to be aware of. Also bear in mind that among some elements of the middle classes 'looking' aspirational is not necessarily a good thing, though again this doesn't really matter and no-one will care about your car much anyway.
Sedans just aren't that popular full stop, as they get outcompeted as family cars by crossovers, estates and SUVs which are more practical, and without either young people or families it doesn't leave a huge market.
A premium I'm willing to accept. I'd call it a deal breaker really. While I did/am learning to drive stick, I consider it a nuisance, even if I'm sure I'd get used to it like everyone else. I likely will be at best ok at driving by the time I'm in the UK, I'm resuming my driving lessons and do actually need to pass them, but even with our questionable roads, I doubt I'd be entirely comfortable. Still have to make do, if I leave with a driving license that earns me 2 years of leeway before I have to apply for a British one, which is much harder to get.
Fair (though I've got to imagine that even if the test is harder driving in Britain is much easier than in India), but bear in mind that if you do the test in Britain in an automatic you will not be allowed to drive a manual under any circumstances, which might be annoying if you ever need to drive a rental car/van/friend's car/whatever.
Overall, if you are looking for an automatic in the £10k range, you will be able to get a considerably lower mileage, more economical, newer car if you do go for a hatchback. For that price you can get a virtually new 2023 Corsa at the moment and you would struggle to get any low-mileage sedan that wasn't old or uneconomical.
Would you have a reference of a discussion of these results? I really wouldn't know where to look for something like that.
Some stuff here; https://cepa.stanford.edu/educational-opportunity-monitoring-project/achievement-gaps/race/
For example the development in race relations which caused the end of segregation has been having an effect on the genetic structure of the 'black' population
I don't think this can account for the 1970s and 1980s improvement in black performance. By 1980 black inter-racial marriage rates were a whopping 5%, a figure which increased only quite slowly and gradually over the following years, not really compatible with the quickest convergence being during those years. There is the question you raise about changes in identification, but again I don't think that was occurring - not in most of the country anyway - to any significant extent during the fastest years of decline (during the years to which that data goes back).
It's possible that the way some of these institutions work is influencing the measurements of the outcomes
That doesn't seem too likely given the nature of the data. It's from the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, who administer their own nationwide tests to students, which are (obviously) the same for every race. Could there be some increased level of teaching to the tests etc. from teachers/schools in order to boost their numbers. Maybe? But again if this were so you'd surely expect the strongest effect of that to be now, when the schools are under pressure to improve equitable outcomes etc., not in the 1970s. And wouldn't we see that reflected across the board, not just in black students? If this was a case of schools/districts marking their own homework, no pun intended, then one might be more suspicious but I don't think it is.
Better access to more competent teachers ('white' ones)? Passive diffusion of so-called 'white' values from the 'white' pupils to the 'black' ones?
Well to be clear, if it were either of these that would validate the Brown decision, because it would prove that segregation was lowering the relative quality of the education received by black students.
General lowering of expectations as a consequence of the ruin of society brought about by the same forces that ended segregation?
What forces do you suppose these to have been? I would put the Cold War and WW2 pretty high on the list of things that ended segregation, not sure they brought about the ruin of society though.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
The people who criticised Trump for disrespecting the troops are very much not the same people as those waving Hezbollah flags.
HaroldWilson
26d ago
It really is superb. The range and importance of the interviewees is astonishing. There are good quality versions of every episode on Dailymotion iirc.
HaroldWilson
28d ago
as close to a landslide for Trump as possible for tribal America.
Which is not a landslide at all. Trump's cap is at best 322, realistically 312 (MN the difference), hardly above Biden's 2020 result. To go any higher he'd have to start pulling some pretty preposterous states out of the bag. In any case, Trump's polling margin even in true swing states is low single digits, the economy has 6 months to get even better and Trump still has his trials to contend with. It's way, way too early to predict a 'landslide'. A week is a long time in politics, six months is an eternity.
Well maybe but that's sort of the point. If this is simply a right-wing reddit that doesn't say a great deal for it really.
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