tfowler11
1yr ago
Is there a way to view your overall "karma" here the way there is on Reddit. Yes "internet points" don't really matter, but still it can be mildly interesting to see.
tfowler11
1yr ago
If they try to make you fuck off, and esp. if they had the actual power to kick you out of the activity, then that might better be called cultural appropriation than what often gets attacked under that label.
If some white American wears traditional Chinese clothes or makes tacos or learns traditional African dances, or teaches yoga, or whatever they aren't *appropriating *from anyone else. The do what they want to do, and anyone who did it before is still free to do so.
But to the extent they could take over a campaign or a gaming venue, and then effectively kick the people that where there before them out of it, that could be considered appropriation.
tfowler11
1yr ago
The quotes are pretty meaningless. "Bring an end to it" meant to get it decertified. And it wasn't said about Nord Stream 1. The Thank you, only implies that he believed that the US did it and is happy that (he thinks) they did. Just one person's opinion. As for heavily controlled, while its not an ocean, there is still a lot of water out there. A sub, or a nondescript looking boat with divers could go the area without attracting notice. Confirmed that there was an explosion != confirmed that someone planted explosives or used a weapon against it. And explosion is a rapid expansion of material, which can happen without C4, TNT, ect. The size of the explosion could be an argument against methane hydrates but not just that there was an explosion.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Yes you can send bombs down pipelines. Pipeline "pigs" are sent down all the time. You could attach a bomb to one of those or you could create a new device specifically for the purpose of moving the bomb.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Also, what are the arguments against LVT, besides low-effort "taxes are always bad and raising them is evil?"
That would arguably be low effort only because its a simple statement of principle, rather than a development of the argument to support the principle. If it is low effort so is the simple statement "land value taxes are a good idea because they aren't making more land".
tfowler11
1yr ago
Biden was talking about getting Germany to decertify Nord Stream 2, which happened shortly after the Russian attack.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Erik Hoel on Effective Altruism, Utilitarianism, and the Repugnant Conclusion - https://youtube.com/watch?v=PCnkJ1y9kys
Russ Roberts talks with Erik Hoel. They both think overall that effective altruism does good, but they think it, and strong/exclusive forms of act utilitarianism have some strong problems. Most of what they mention will not be new to many people here, they talk about the repugnant conclusion, and the difficulty of predicting results, and comparing the utility of different outcomes. They mention Yudkowsky discussion of a huge number of trivial harms being compared to one severe harm (specifically a googleplex people getting hiccups compared to one person being torn apart and killed by a shark). Despite the fact that most of it wasn't new to me I still found it to be an interesting discussion.
I think I agree with them on what I called strong/exclusive act utilitarianism (they didn't use that term they just called it utilitarianism). What I mean by strong/exclusive is that you don't consider other moral principles, and that you give an extremely heavy weight to utilitarian calculations. OTOH I don't think totally ignoring consequences, or even specifically utility is a good idea either. I think your actions should aim for outcomes with higher utility. I have a mixed moral view both deontological and consequential. Sometimes the two conflict. When that happens I don't have some well developed overarching theory to choose between them its more of an intuitive thing. If an act I consider to be immoral on deontological grounds is necessary to prevent some horrible catastrophe, I'd probably say it still is immoral but you should do it anyway.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I mean this happens, constantly, all the time. If you live in a desirable area you will get a veritable stream of calls, texts, e-mails trying to make you an offer on your land.
It's dreadfully annoying to filter.
Less annoying than if you can't say no to them.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Why are we letting financial illiterates sit on land that could be producing much greater value?
Because its their land, and properly their decision to sit on it or not. Not yours, not even "ours".
tfowler11
1yr ago
I guess you could hijack this, or if you have some more to say about it you could make your own post. Personally I have very little idea what caused it at this point. Could be a truck suicide bomber but everything happens so fast and its not a high speed camera. The truck was obviously blown up but its unclear whether its actually the source of the explosion.
One thing I'm interested in is how much capacity they can get out of the bridges (road and rail) and how long it takes them to do it. Right now they seem to have one lane, light vehicles only, for the road bridge. Rail bridge is down. Russia is claiming they can have it up pretty quickly. We'll see. It may be possible if you ignore normal safety margins, and perhaps send fewer and less heavily loaded trains over it. But even that would have an impact on Russian logistics in the southern front. Worst case and the damage is less then it seems and they get it fully running, it would still have caused some temporary problems for them. Best case the rail side is down for a long time (the rail side is more important to war logistics), and the road side can't handle heavy trucks for a long time. That would have a serious impact.
tfowler11
1yr ago
The US pushing European powers to handle more of the defense of Europe long precedes Trump as president. Trump just increased (but didn't create) the public statement of the idea.
tfowler11
1yr ago
NATO is here to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down
That might have made some sense in the 50s with memories of WWII fresh. Its thoroughly obsolete now when many of Germany's partners, including the US, would want Germany to do more in terms of building up its defense capabilities not less.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Does Amazon Studios make a profit?
If Amazon Studios makes a series or a movie or a mini-series and it shows on Amazon Prime is there even a way to tell if it makes a profit? A lot of people get Prime for free shipping. Even if it was all about video and other benefits where not an issue, it can be hard to determine what content is driving subscriptions. Sure Amazon knows how many people are watching each of its shows and movies on Prime. But something you decide to watch after you have Prime isn't necessarily what caused you to get Prime.
There is also the pricing issue for the show, how much Studios gets from Prime. In some companies internal production wouldn't even be a separate profit center. They would know Studios cost, but there wouldn't actually be a price they get for it unless they sell it externally. My understanding is that this is not the case with Amazon, that the different elements of the company sell their services to each other in a similar manner to selling services to an external customer. But if the execs made a strategic decision that Rings of Power was going to be a "flagship" for Prime Video they might not have shopped it around to other companies and made Prime Video outbid those companies in order to get the content so even if there is some internal price its not necessarily a real market price and could be arbitrarily set to whatever. Set it high and Prime Video doesn't do as well but Studios rakes in big bucks (even if the show doesn't do well, at least as long as Prime Video keeps paying for it).
tfowler11
1yr ago
It was more of a revolution than a coup, and it doesn't seem at all like she engineered it, instead of coming in later and trying to take control and get some credit for what happened.
As for decertifying it, the US had been pressuring Germany to do so. Biden could have said "Germany will decertify it" but he wanted to make a statement where it was the US or him doing something rather than Germany, and also probably wouldn't want to announce Germany's policy before they did. Wanting an active and tough sounding statement he could have said "we'll make Germany decertify it" but that could have pissed off Germany, and possibly have even sabotaged the effort to get it decertified.
As for mind reading, its no closer to that than thinking he meant that it would be blown up.
"Germany is the enemy here" was very unlikely to be what he was thinking.
Germany will have enough gas to not freeze in the winter if they (as I suspect they will) prioritize residential over industry. That will have a heavy short term impact on their industrial production (and risk losing some markets for a smaller long term impact). But its not deindustrializing, which would imply that they would have no industry, or at least much less industry, afterwards.
tfowler11
1yr ago
The "he meant I'd blow it up" explanation sounds like trying to fit in a more spectacular or otherwise preferred explanation in. Biden had been trying to get it decertified, and it was in fact decertified. Is it possible he meant something else? Sure. But there isn't any good reason to think so. And trying to get it decertified fits more with talking about it, than a covert operation that you would want to keep covert.
As for multiple bombs being difficult to keep completely secret, to the extent that's true it applies to everyone.
tfowler11
1yr ago
The Liberty incident either was, or if it wasn't can plausibly be presented as, a mistake rather than a plot.
tfowler11
1yr ago
why do you think that building more will actually solve the problem with unaffordable housing? We have been adding lanes to highways since time immemorial (aka the 50s) and the congestion is still here.
But congestion isn't as bad as it would have been if we didn't add any lanes or build any new roads since the 1950s. Having to build more to stay in place doesn't imply that building more is a bad idea.
Similarly with housing, liberalizing housing rules, and so increasing building is extremely unlikely to result in cheap housing for everyone. But if it reduces prices a bit, or even just slows the increase in prices, its still useful.
tfowler11
1yr ago
I don't have a write-up on, or really even any knowledge about them. But often when a company isn't paying income tax its either because its not profitable or because it used to not be profitable and its using credit for it previous losses. Sometimes those losses are because of a huge amount of investment. So the company can have a lot of revenue and be expanding and look profitable on the surface if you don't have any of the financial data (maybe its a closely held private company that doesn't have to release the info, or maybe you just haven't look at the publicly available information).
I don't know if this applies to the motels your talking about. I had not heard of them until reading your post. I found a few articles about them one over 20 years old and some newer ones, but none that went in to details about their taxes. I'm not sure they are properly even considered a cartel, it seems to be different business owned by people from the same ethnic group from India, so there could be different answers for different companies. Presumably some of them do pay income tax.
tfowler11
1yr ago
It built (or at least paid contractors to build) some of the early infrastructure, but mostly the infrastructure of the internet, the routers and other networking equipment, the fiber and wire connections, the wireless connections satellites, wifi devices, cell towers, microwave relays, etc., the servers, and the end user computers phones and other devices were built by private industry, and more for non-government use than by the government (and with much of even the government use being the government acting as a customer in the market).
tfowler11
1yr ago
It could be presented as the work of a rogue faction, but not as easily as the Liberty Incident could be presented a mistake (even if it was not, even more so it it was a mistake). Also a rouge faction would not completely remove the diplomatic fallout even if that explanation was believed (although it could possibly reduce it, perhaps significantly).
Mostly though it just doesn't seem to be rational on a risk/reward basis. No gas was being sold through either of those pipelines. Longer term Germany was planning to move away from all Russian gas (even if the Russians are willing to continue to sell) in a couple of years. The gain to Ukraine is zero very short term, looks to be zero long term, and is uncertain and not huge in-between.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Yes by decertifying it and never bringing it online, as stated by someone who wanted to sound tough rather than measured and technical.
tfowler11
1yr ago
Attacking a target in Russia (assuming it actually was a Ukrainian government operation which I don't think is really a settled issue) is less risky than attacking your benefactors. Germany isn't the top supporter of Ukraine but I think its fourth after the US, Poland, and UK. Also attacking an EU and NATO country isn't exactly going to be positive for the support of the rest of them or probably even the US.
The other problem for Ukraine attacking is that it would be rather hard for them to pull off. Its not like they have assets in the Baltics. Its not impossible, they could have smuggling in some bombs and given them to some expert deep water divers who then go out on some civilian boat in to the area and blow up the pipelines, esp. if they started planning the op months ago. Still it would be more difficult for them than for Russia or Germany (easiest as they have direct access to the pipeline from land), the US, Poland, or the Baltic states.
tfowler11
1yr ago
those who value hunches more are more likely to “hold religious or paranormal beliefs,” AKA be right-coded
Traditional religion yes, but "paranormal beliefs"? Its possible my understanding about what "right-coded" means is incorrect but I don't think any belief in the paranormal or supernatural outside of traditional religions is right coded.
Social Security and Medicare amount to a 15.3% tax if you're self-employed, though most people have about half that amount paid by their employer
Which may not really matter much in terms of the effective impact of the tax. If it costs more to employ you that puts downward pressure on you wage or salary. If a change was made now to put it all on the employee, its not like all employee compensation would automatically or even quickly change but in the longer run the amount going to employees might not change much.
A large chunk of most state transportation budgets, however, is fuel taxes
Fuel taxes are also used to cover non-road transportation, so it may be the case that that large chunk is actually in a sense over 100 percent. (Yes the actual road expenses only cost 100 percent of what they costs but the fuel tax could be more than 100 percent of that cost.)
Alex Jones just lost a lawsuit for defamation for claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the reward was $965bil (after a previous $50mil verdict so its over a billion) for defamation and emotional damages. Jones is a kook, and his claim was both false, and outrageous; but I'm not 100 percent sure he even should have lost. Esp for the emotional damage part. I don't think people should be entitled to damages because they feel hurt by what you say. As far as the defamation part if he claimed particular people created the hoax then I can understand a loss of a defamation lawsuit, but if its just a general comment along the lines of "I think it's a hoax" I don't think he should face any legal penalty for it. And a billion dollars for spouting off some nonsense seems ridiculous to me.
I suspect that he will appeal (I understand he tried to appeal the previous case all the way up to the Supreme Court, who refused to accept the case), and that the case won't be overturned on appeal, but perhaps the damages will be reduced.
There was also some talk about harassment and death threats against people suing Jones. If it can be proven that Jones was behind it I suppose that could be ground for a lawsuit (and perhaps even criminal charges depending on the details), but that would be a separate issue than defamation or emotional distress over the original comment.
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