TIRM
25d ago
don't make their outgroup too unhappy
Show your support for the ingroup by rolling coal on the outgroup. Doing whatever enrages them the most. Then only travel with a team of armed security and only 'publicly' present yourself in closed secure venues.
They'd culture war as hard as possible, and call you a terrorist for criticizing them.
TIRM
27d ago
Article I, Section 6, Clause 1:
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
Yeah, legislative representatives should be immune to legal punishment for their speech. Imagine if a legislator gave a fiery speech and then was sued for slander or censured and stripped of voting power. That's not a well functioning government.
TIRM
28d ago
Even in the mid-1800s pre-Marxist thought there was extreme market skepticism. As the quote inventing the term "dismal science" explains:
Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall philanthropy is wonderful; and the social science -- not a "gay science," but a rueful --which finds the secret of this universe in "supply and demand," and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a "gay science," I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.
Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, Thomas Carlyle, 1849
His incredulous criticism of free markets is inadvertently a correct statement of their overwhelming strength. He just didn't get it.
Someone not grown up indoctrinated in this ideology thinks it is preposterous. Sure you can train a 17 year old to recite the truths of free markets. Or recite a Soviet ideological statement about socialism. The free market version happens to be correct. But learned thoughtful people have denounced it as false.
I read Orwell's assertions about how actually markets are bad and central planning is better. He's wrong, but not due to ignorance. You in a time machine couldn't convert him to laissez faire market ideology.
TIRM
28d ago
Sniffing little girls and "probably inappropriate" showering with them doesn't count. Literally grabbing grabbing Tara Reade by the pussy doesn't count. He didn't seem to have a mistress despite the hair sniffing and pussy grabbing.
They have lots of languages in China. Most Chinese people historically didn't speak Mandarin and had no use for Mandarin speech transcribed one phoneme at a time. Characters that mean entire words are quite useful as a common written language in a nation that is so pluralistic that most people lack a common spoken language with people outside of their local region.
This is true even in the modern era. Chairman Mao learned Mandarin as an adult and it shows in his strange accent and phrasing. Like almost everyone, he grew up speaking his local language, not a common national language. But any text written by any Chinese person would be understood by him.
Today Chinese schools demand students speak the common language in class. Outside of school many still speak in local languages which are entirely different than Mandarin. I've seen shanghaiese people switch to shanghaiese to prevent people from other regions and foreigners from understanding them. Rudely right in front of everyone obviously talking about us.
But yeah, bit odd they didn't think to also make a phoneme based script so they could write out their local languages. I was going to say they actually have that, but Google tells me that was invented in the 20th century. And even the Koreans had periods in which hangul was banned and all writing was mandatory Chinese only.
TIRM
29d ago
In terms of my time: self checkout is so clearly faster. I can wait in line a long time, or do it myself real quick.
Years ago self checkout machines were terrible about weight checking. Now they are very forgiving. I assume they made them very numb to decrease their false positive rate.
Found the solution to the Fermi paradox: negative utilitarians of such extremity that they sterilize all possible life to prevent the suffering of dust mites and other microscopic bugs and that means all animals. Yes, especially bugs.
TIRM
29d ago
a suicide bomber on American soil in advancement of a radical leftist position
I'm nominating this guy as a 6 years ago almost-example. Cops killed him before he could blow up that propane tank. And he isn't quite a suicide bomber. But he was a bomber, suicidally attacking ICE because of his leftist ideology. I say he counts. Bonus points for being a John Brown Gun Club member putting their ideology and training to use.
I have blown up a number of propane tanks on BLM land by taping road flares to them and shooting them with rifles. It's good fun but I don't think the explosion is large enough to do much in an ICE detention center parking lot.
TIRM
30d ago
The project started with a tax to fund it. That has lasted to this day. Depending on how high an electricity bill is, a progressive tax is applied to fund this program.
https://pwp.cityofpasadena.net/undergroundfaqs/
Q: How is the Underground Program funded? A: Initial construction costs are funded through an Underground Surtax on electric bills. As of now, the Surtax ranges from 1.21% to 4.34% of the total charges depending on your monthly electric usage. For a typical 500 kwh-per-month residential customer, the Underground Surtax is about $44 per year.
$44 per household per year does sound anemic. Some resident asked if they could double it to make the project move faster. City leaders say no, other constraints prevent moving faster.
TIRM
30d ago
I took "myths of our people" a bit too literally. Sure, copyright lasts too long. As best I know partially the fault of the Disney Corporation. Death of author plus 70 years is excessive.
TIRM
30d ago
is scandalous that I can't freely make, modify and distribute the myths of my people because they have been monopolized by a corporation
Corporations do not own the copyrights for old works such as myths, traditional stories or even modern 19th century works.
You can make your own Little Mermaid story. Just don't copy Disney's distinctive cartoon styling. Don't draw her with red hair and a seashell bra, or the Disney corporation's lawyers will go after you. Just make up any other possible look and styling.
TIRM
30d ago
They replace one checkout worker manning a single line with that worker overseeing half a dozen self checkout lines.
It is enormously more efficient.
TIRM
30d ago
signing a contract and going a tiny bit outside the box or making a spelling mistake or getting the date wrong because that means you didn't actually sign it HAHA, suckers, it's not valid!!
This is a "scrivener's error". "I spelled my middle name wrong on page 3, so I exempt myself from our agreement" isn't allowed.
TIRM
1mo ago
Something wrong with crime? Sorry, all the high agency people have simply moved to a higher income area.
I (we) cannot fix crime. We can flee it though. I do what I am capable of, not what is hypothetically possible if hard coordination problems were solved.
TIRM
1mo ago
Yes. That's okay for these particular links since the URLs are not particularly informative. Other links would have to be better obscured.
TIRM
1mo ago
But residents proposed increasing taxes to speed it up and the response was that won't work.
Some have suggested doubling the tax to halve the life of the project, but city officials say the disruption to traffic and available crews would make that impossible.
They're kind of pivoting from one excuse to another.
But sure, cost disease and schedule disease are close relatives. To some degree this would speed up if it was very cheap.
I understand the schedule is not literally true. This won't be relevant 400 years from now. Someday some political or social change will kill it or make it irrelevant.
They started this program in the 1960s with a special tax to pay for it. They stretched that tax and made it people's income ever since then. It's taxpayer sinecures for consultants. And recently local city board meetings in which local residents ask why this has a multi-century timeline. And of course proposals to increase taxes since the program is in a bad state.
The fact that it lasted 6 decades so far does mean the schedule is not completely made up. It's a long running program and we can compare decades of it's progress to the stated goal.
TIRM
1mo ago
They are working at a rate of 0.5 to 0.7 miles per year. Given how many miles of line they have it would take around a century for the high priority phase 1 lines and around another three centuries for lower priority lines. A city engineer did the math and drew a timeline given how fast they work.
They do this really really slowly and at a projected cost of billions of dollars.
TIRM
1mo ago
There is some discussion of cost disease around here. Scott wrote a bit about it. May I present its cousin: schedule disease.
There is a particularly silly recent example. The city of Pasadena in California has a project to bury some power lines. That's the sort of thing you expect a local government to do. There are various benefits to buried power lines. All good so far. Not obviously silly or indicative of a broad societal failure.
Guess what the estimated schedule will be? This is a town of 133k people. 23 square miles. The scope of this project is small. Take your best guess and check the spoiler below.
We used to be able to build things. Infrastructure. Nuclear power plants. Trains. The California high speed train project is a much more impactful example of cost and schedule disease. But this Pasadena buried power line project stands out for the combination of small scope and deranged schedule.
Ah yes, the personality assessment. In which the assessor looks at an applicant's race and marks them down as an unlikable unrespected coward if they are Asian.
The holistic interviews being originally invented to limit the number of Jews at Harvard, now easily repurposed for more modern racism.
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