domain:forecasting.substack.com
failure to reason through 9th grade math
Famously, the Third-Pound burger failed horribly, for the same price as McDonald's Quarter-Pounder. In focus groups investigating what went wrong, A&W discovered most people thought 1/3 is smaller than 1/4 and were thus getting less meat for the same price...
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
It never occurs to anyone to learn to do something more valuable. Just that they need to win the fight against the classists. How much unrest is actually caused by failure to reason through 9th grade math regarding your personal conditions?
Perhaps there's a cause and effect here. If you can't reason through the 9th grade math, you can't find anything more valuable you're capable of doing.
But probably not; it's just the politics of envy. You can always point at some fatcat you claim is getting all the value. Or if that fails, blame the customers for not paying enough. After all, if you by law increase the cost of coffee so every employee can afford a house, you've eliminated the problem of direct competitors eating your lunch. The idea that people might say 'fuck it, I'll make my own coffee' can just be dismissed out of hand.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I never heard of her before today. But I had elementary school in one of the older states, not Texas. Maybe they were too busy.
I have a really hard time with CEO vs worker pay discussions. It kind of drives me crazy. Lets take Starbucks, since I'm currently hearing unions complain about the disparity right now. The argument mostly feels like math blindness, but maybe my problem is that I'm bringing an abacus to a knife fight.
The Starbucks CEO makes $95 million a year. They argue this is outrageous because their employees only make $20/hour or whatever.
Why not complete the math? What if we took the Starbucks CEO, fired him, and redistributed his $95 million a year a salary to the workers? Well, the 361,000 workers would see their pay bumped by about $1 per day. It's really hard to get across that the workers at each Starbucks already capture a huge portion of the value of the cup of coffee they serve (aside from real estate costs, cost of goods, etc). The Starbucks CEO takes perhaps a 1 cent from that cup.
This is a simple economic fact that seems almost impossible to communicate. Unionization won't improve worker pay on this front because there isn't much on a per unit basis that can be squeezed to give to workers.
I mean, the union could say lets increase the cost of coffee at Starbucks by 2.5x so that every employee can now afford a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house in their neighborhood but then their competitors would eat their lunch. And customers might actually be pretty outraged by the idea of paying $18 for a blended coffee plus tip. So, the unions don't try this angle.
In my town a particular annoying version of this argument is happening regarding a company that distributes Pepsi products in the region. They somehow ended up with a union 50 years ago which includes a pension. The company recently announced they can't fucking afford to give employees a pension anymore for the very not valuable job of delivering cases of Diet Pepsi to 7-11s all day and they want to switch them over to an 401k. This was an enormous outrage and the delivery people have been on strike over this for a year now. Going by the town's reaction, they seem to believe thousands of dollars per case of soda being delivered are waiting to be wrestled away from the evil classists who run the company.
It never occurs to anyone to learn to do something more valuable. Just that they need to win the fight against the classists, a fight that could not change anything if they won.
How much unrest is actually caused by failure to reason through 9th grade math regarding your personal conditions?
Is any of this even about actually improving worker conditions? I know it's cliche to be skeptical of unions but I honestly don't understand their modern presence at all.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
The only place I've ever been that used $2 bills was a local strip club that gave them to you as change rather than singles.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
The opinion says:
A phlebotomist and a lab technician made four attempts to draw blood from both of Norris’s arms but were unable to do so.
A second phlebotomist failed the fifth attempt to obtain a blood sample from Norris.
KMC
lurk moar
1d ago
For the uninitiated, this is a Unabomber joke:
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
It's like calling the Austrian mustache man a "noted vegetarian."
Noted vegetarian and landscape painter (better known for other work).
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
At the hospital, the woman consents to the blood test. However, after four failed attempts to draw blood, she withdraws consent due to the pain.
I wonder who was trying to do the draw. In my state, many officers are supposedly trained to be phlebotomists and will do the draw themselves, but once at a hospital, it's usually staff.
Not that staff are necessarily better. I have ridiculously prominent veins and I've had them screw up so badly (during a blood donation) that they gave up and tried the other arm, only to also screw that one up. I went home with a bandage on each arm and no blood donation.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
you just need to make then orgasm to the “correct” images, thoughts, and experiences enough times,
So Clockwork Orange-style reprogramming done in an orgone accumulator?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
We're in an interesting situation where inflation has made these chicken shit denominations worthless but large denominations are not useful since big transactions are handled by check, card, wire, etc.
An "interesting situation" that almost seems like a squeeze to impose digital currency.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
Geri was at a Scottsdale doughnut shop in May 2021 when a woman and her daughter, 4, noticed he was standing in line behind them with his genitals exposed, according to court documents.
Geri, who represented himself at trial
Those two sentences tell me everything I need to know about his executive functioning.
Where did you end up for final square footage?
If you're referring to the design that I'm actually having built, I went with the third drawing in this image.
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744 ft2: Most efficient, but has the kitchen in an L-shaped position that IMO is awkward in juxtaposition with the highly linear dining/living room
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793 ft2: Less efficient, but looks better; unfortunately can't fit into my lot's 35-foot-wide buildable area without rotation
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873 ft2: Final choice; originally drawn by the contractor's drafter, redrawn by me here
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857 ft2: A less ugly design, centered on a corridor rather than on a dining/living room, presented for comparison purposes
I always thought custom would be a 20–30-% premium over a spec-built house, which would be a 10–20-% premium over a tract house, which would be a 20–30-% premium over a prefab.
RSMeans says similar things. For a 1000-ft2 one-story house, the 2019 numbers are:
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Economy: 124.3 $/ft2
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Average: 144.55 $/ft2 (+16 % vs. economy)
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Custom: 198.65 $/ft2 (+37 % vs. average, +60 % vs. economy)
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Luxury: 233.9 $/ft2 (+17 % vs. custom, +88 % vs. economy)
I signed a contract to build my 873-ft2 design for 221 k$ (253 $/ft2) including driveway and fence. Due to a miscommunication, the contractor also offered a price of 193 k$ (221 $/ft2) not including driveway and fence. This probably is a waste of money in comparison to just buying a manufactured house (or perhaps obtaining a modular implementation of the 857-ft2 design), but I wanted to splurge on implementing my own design, since I'll be living in it for 50 years.
I did see the utility rooms in your plans. It's pretty generous for a washer/dryer, but I imagine pretty tight if you also need to fit an air handler, return, ERV, and 80-gallon hot-water heater.
Possibly, but I assumed the use of forced air in these designs just for simplicity, to align with the book's default assumptions. If I were actually having these houses built, I would use ductless heat-pump HVAC rather than forced air, freeing up a lot of space.
I don't particularly mind a small space, but small and stuffy sounds very unpleasant.
Not mentioned in the book's per-square-foot numbers is default window area. I generally would put 4-foot-wide windows everywhere (2 feet tall in bathrooms, 3 feet tall in kitchen, 4 feet tall elsewhere), which would more than suffice for the IPMC's light/ventilation requirements.
walruz
1d ago
Trump doesn't want any airbase in Afghanistan back, though. He threatened Afghanistan with "bad things" if they don't "give (Bagram) back to those who built it".
Now exactly why Trump feels so strongly that Afghanistan should give an air base to the Soviet Union we'll probably never know.
BahRamYou
1d ago
anecdote but when i worked as a cashier 20 years ago, we were told to always keep one $2 billa the bottom and never give it out. That way, if someone robbed the cash register, it was relatively easy to trace the $2 bill. Maybe there's a lot of small businesses keeping them around for that purpose?
Celestial-body-NOS
We are all human beans. Together, we will rice.
1d ago
He sees that LADWP has trampled the endangered Braunton’s milkvetch.
As opposed to wildfires, which apparently pose no danger at all to the apparently fireproof plant....
What exactly would happen to a blue whale in this scenario...?
And what would happen to the pot of petunias?
2rafa
1d ago
People should actually read scientific literature and look for things that usually work.
You Will Know Them By Their Fruits.
Mormons have produced a High Quality Civilization, even by Anglo standards (compare to the native English working class, beset by various issues).
Their tribe, their identity, their mode of being and living works, by an objective, scientific measure, indeed according to the only measures by which a civilization should be judged.
You, dear friend, are the one making the emotional argument. I am not emotional about it. I agree that this is a faith founded on a ridiculous story by a charlatan. But, by Jove, it works.
Celestial-body-NOS
We are all human beans. Together, we will rice.
1d ago
...if Joe exotic can turn men gay, it stands to reason someone, somewhere, can turn them straight.
And if my aunt has wings, it stands to reason that she doesn't hit her tail on the ground.
no, the indians were not part of the American nation because they were part of the various indian nations
the indians could stay, but they would be treated as individuals and would have to renounce their indian nations and any claim of sovereignty or right to the land
his speeches and writings make pretty clear he wanted to remove the indian nations because the alternative was escalating conflict, that Americans would win it, that it would result in "utter annihilation" for the indian nations, and the only way to stop that was to raise an army to shoot Americans and even go to war against at least Georgia, which he would not do
it is the opposite of "racist even for his own time"
you don't really have a clue what you're talking about, huh?
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
Like because "deport illegals" isn't an answer to every problem which results in dirty, disorganized, and violent cities, therefore it's never an answer to any problem?
No, because "deport illegals" being the answer to some problems doesn't mean it's the answer to all problems. "Many of our cities are dirty, disorganized, and violent" doesn't seem like one of those problems, at least not for the dirtiest, most disorganized, and most violent of them.
In a very similar way to how "racism exists sometimes" does not mean "racial justice is the solution to all problems, including things like climate change", but people who care a lot about racial justice have a tendency of thinking that fixing that will fix everything. With results that... well, you saw the results too.
And I'm worried that we're going to see the same pattern we saw there except this time it's going to be "we deported a bunch of people and observed that the problems we care about haven't improved, but that's because there are still illegals, we just need to spend even more money and suspend even more civil liberties in the effort to deport them all and then things will be good".
MollieTheMare
1d ago
I do think sketching floor plans is quite fun.
Where did you end up for final square footage? Closer to 1050 ft2 based on removing 120+ a bit ft2 from your smallest seven person design, closer to 1200 ft2 like your seven person design / scaled larger design, 1500 ft2 like the PGH 2 persion target, or 1875 like the PGH 4+ person target, even smaller since it's actually for only two?
I'm very much in favor of building the design of house you want with the best quality materials you can afford, even at the tradeoff of square footage. Provided, that is, resale does not have to be a consideration. Unfortunately, square footage is the most dominant factor in sale price. For most of the housing market , price and price/ft2 seem to be the dominant considerations.
If you've actually signed for a custom built, you probably know better than me, but I always though custom would be a 20-30% premium over a spec-built house, which would be a 10-20% premium over a tract house, which would be a 20-30% premium over a prefab. I'd be interested to know what the final premium is over just dropping a same bed/bath cheap trailer on your lot ends up being. I would rather live in a small custom than a trailer, but I assume most people living in small homes in cheap areas are doing it because it's cheap, rather than aesthetic preference.
I did see the utility rooms in your plans. It's pretty generous for a washer drier, but I imagine pretty tight if you also need to fit an air handler, return, ERV, and 80 gallon hot water heater. You could make everyone take cold showers or pay the premium for an instantaneous hot water heather though I guess.
The square footage based HVAC calculation probably assumes average bedrooms/people per square foot. If you are following IRC you would at least need it to be based off of bedrooms. I'm pretty sure that table is based off of ASHRAE 62.2 though, and they just assumed 2 people in the master and 1 in each other bedrooms. I think ASHRAE probably prefers HVAC techs to use their (person + ft2) calculation if you actually intend to occupy at very high densities. I don't particularly mind a small space, but small and stuffy sounds very unpleasant.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
Modern air combat is looking more and more attrition heavy. Ukraine and Russia basically can’t use close air support because it’s too dangerous. Even operating far from the front lines, both still regularly lose aircraft. And with drones and hypersonic missiles, both sides are still suffering aircraft losses even when the planes aren’t in combat.
Meanwhile India and Pakistan just recently had the only major air-to-air engagement of the 21st century and even though it was barely a skirmish it caused the loss of six to eight planes on both sides. Imagine what would have happened if they had been seriously trying to get air superiority.
And then you have Israel, who is fighting an enemy with no Air Force and no air defenses, and they are still running into problems with wear and tear because they are having to run too many missions with too few aircraft.
All in all this would seem to imply more planes are better, because you need to be able to afford losing quite a few.
This happens because labor theory of value is rather instinctive, as it appeals to our innate sense of fairness, even if it's wrong and inefficient. In which, of course, there is no realistic way a CEO could be doing thousands of times the amount of labor that his subordinates do, so there is no fair way in which they should be taking home thousands of times the pay as these subordinates.
Once people realize that there is no fair objective way of pricing goods and services, including labor, then they can understand why they should accept the inequalities created by a market.
*EDIT : Of course, that matters for mistake theorists. Conflict theorists that do know better than to believe in labor theory of value will still gladly invoke it to agitate against their opponents.
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