Yeah but it’s pretty nice to be able to take advantage of a promo deal as long as it’s not a sticky long term relationship. Some people in this thread are talking about a reward system of 20% cash back on what you put on BNPL, and 0% interest, as some kind of Paypal promo going on during Black Friday.

If you take the deal as a one time thing, it’s a great deal. They hope that you might get used to using the service next time it’s not such a great deal, but if they don’t have a way to lock you in, then just take the money and run.

See, for example, the glorious year of MoviePass setting its own money on fire. People got great deals on movie tickets, and then the company went bankrupt and didn’t keep their customers.

The base price of TVs have gotten so cheap that in terms of absolute savings, even a true 50% discount wouldn’t seem like a big deal.

30 years ago, when a big screen TV might cost the same as 3 months rent in a 3 bedroom apartment, getting 50% off was like getting 1.5 months rent. Now, when a big TV costs less than a quarter of a month’s rent for a studio apartment, getting 50% off a TV is like getting 3 days rent.

Modern life is expensive because of housing, not because of stuff. Giving us better prices on stuff doesn’t even help make this life more affordable.

By this logic fat shaming is acceptable?

I mean, yeah, in many contexts. For example, when a professional athlete shows up to training camp after putting on a bunch of fat in the off-season, that’s fair game. It’s literally their job to maintain their bodies and if we’re allowed to criticize their job performance then we’re certainly allowed to criticize their maintenance of their physical fitness. There’s obviously a clear parallel here between that and other public figures where their intelligence may be fair game for criticism.

More broadly, when people are engaged in unhealthy habits of any kind (from smoking to sleep deprivation to overwork/stress to terrible relationship decisions to unhealthy eating/exercise habits), I think it’s fair game for loved ones to point that out and encourage steering their lives back towards healthier choices. I’m not advocating that we go and make fun of strangers, the range of acceptable conversation in our day to day relationships is going to be different.

No, that’s not OK to mock people’s medical conditions, and it’s always a good idea to exercise some empathy and humility to know that things might not always be as easy for others as for yourself. But I’ve never been on board with the idea that fatness is somehow off limits, in large part that I don’t believe that most people’s fatness is inherently innate. Correlations between moving to or away from high obesity areas (most notably between countries or between significant changes of altitude, but also apparent in moves between city centers and suburban car-based communities) make that obvious that fatness is often environmental.

TLDR: I make fun of Trump’s fat ass all the time.

But because intelligence is an inherited trait

I don’t think this is true, practically speaking. Intelligence is like endurance running speed in that there are heritable components to it, but at the end of the day environmental factors dominate on who is or isn’t faster than another.

I can make fun of someone for being dumb in the same way that I can make fun of someone for being a slow runner. It’s only problematic when their slowness is actually caused by something out of their control, like some kind of health issue.

Why are you forgiving student loans?

That’s the federal government’s administration of a federal government program, so no, that’s not the same at all.

Why do you tip servers in America?

That’s the basic deal. If a restaurant implements a no tipping policy, they’re allowed to do that. I don’t see how that’s the same or different from a restaurant implementing a “discount for veterans” or “no discounts for veterans” policy. It sounds like we’re in favor of a system where the restaurant chooses what they want to be about, whether it’s a tip-based system or not, or a discounts for vets place or not.

So in a sense, it sounds like you agree with me that we should let the restaurants choose. Neither choice is a “punishment” of anyone.

But really you’re just punishing veterans with PTSD

Failing to give special treatment to someone is not punishing them. Especially when we’re talking about special treatment for an entire category of people, most of whom don’t have PTSD (estimates range from 6-27% of those deployed to a war zone, and not all veterans served in a war zone), many of whom are financially well off.

Maybe the VA and the federal government should do more for vets. Maybe the military itself should take care of the troops a bit better. But asking private businesses to prop up veterans at their own expense seems like a misguided approach.

defend yourself criminally

Robust criminal defense

These court proceedings aren’t criminal cases. They’re more like hearings on restraining orders and things of that nature. Like I said, this is generally less than a single day’s work for a lawyer, 2-5 hours.

I’m comparing middle of the road prices for handguns ($500-$1200) to middle of the road prices for a lawyer who can handle one of these hearings ($500-$1500). I still think it’s financially irresponsible to own more than 3 guns and not have a $1000 emergency fund.

If you can’t see the difference between buying one gun every x months and paying a lawyer 4 to 5 figures all in one go that’s on you.

You’re off by an order of magnitude. I’m saying the lawyer would cost between 3 to low 4 figures, generally less than a single gun.

Time is linear and you can’t sell what was taken from you.

The ownership of the gun hasn’t changed. That owner can sell the gun even if they can’t physically possess it. Federal law requiring relinquishment of firearms (like upon conviction of a disqualifying felony or domestic violence misdemeanor) explicitly provides for selling the guns as a way to comply with the order. Each state is different in their rules on selling weapons already in the police’s possession, and states require that transfer to go through an FFL, but most do not.

Look, I’m a gun owner. And I think part of being a responsible gun owner means having the financial means to actually deal with the consequences of owning, and potentially using, that firearm. I think it’s a defect of American gun culture that there are so many people with concealed carry licenses who wouldn’t even know how to contact a lawyer if they were to actually fire a gun in a real situation, whether it’s a legitimate self defense situation or a negligent discharge. Gun ownership carries important responsibilities, and there is such a thing as someone who is too poor to responsibly own a gun (much less enough to where the phrase “all my guns” carries its own implicit meaning).

The issue with red flag laws is that they completely bypass this.

It’s my understanding that every state with a red flag law imposes a procedure similar to involuntary commitment: a court weighing evidence presented to it under penalty of perjury, with a heavy presumption that these orders are only for extremely rare situations.

Florida’s procedure, for example, requires a petition from the police to the court, and requires the police to show the court that the person is suffering from a serious mental illness, has committed acts of violence, or has credibly threatened acts of violence (to self or others). In ordinary cases the person whose guns are being taken away has an opportunity to be heard in court before the judge decides, but in emergency cases the court can order the guns be taken away for up to 14 days, and requires an opportunity for the person to be heard in court.

So in practice, in Florida, someone would have to convince the police they’re a danger, and then provide enough evidence that the police can persuade a judge. Private citizens aren’t allowed to petition the court directly, and the process requires proof of a serious enough set of facts to justify taking guns away.

Gun suicides are a huge problem, so there is a legitimate need for interventions in the appropriate circumstances. Suicidal ideation is also usually an impulsive or fleeting idea, so removing the means of suicide only temporarily can be a solution to that temporary problem.

The Swiss saw suicide rates drop with reduced access to firearms in shrinking their military, and the Israeli military has seen weekend suicide rates drop by simply having troops check in their weapons into armories over weekends, without a corresponding change in weekday suicides.

Anti-suicide nets on bridges work very well, too, because simply making a suicide more inconvenient, or require a bit more planning, is often enough to just make it so that the suicide attempt never happens.

So yeah. I’m generally against restrictions on firearm ownership or access for people who can be responsible with them, but I’m 100% on board with interventions for taking guns away for mental health crises, and restrictions on those found by a court to have engaged in domestic violence. And, like, convicted criminals, too.

Do you really believe that “all my guns, bullets and reloading material” is cheaper than a lawyer for a hearing like this? In my mind that phrase represents thousands of dollars worth of gun stuff, and a lawyer who can represent you in a TRO hearing might be about $500-1500 ($200/hour, maybe 2-8 hours of work for that first hearing).

Florida seems to be the state most likely to use the law.

I wonder if the stat is skewed by the fact that Florida has the largest population of Florida Men.

Increasing productivity of workers is met with demand for more production-intensive products. It’s like how every time hardware improves, software becomes more complex to take advantage of that increased capability. It’s like Jevon’s Paradox, but applied to productivity of workers.

One prominent example: our farmers are more productive than ever. So we move up the value chain, and have farmers growing more luxury crops that aren’t actually necessary for sustenance. We overproduce grains and legumes, and then feed them to animals to raise meat. We were so productive with different types of produce that we decided to go on hard mode and create just-in-time supply chains for multiple cultivars so that supermarkets sell dozens of types of fresh apples, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, etc., and end up eating much more fresh produce of diverse varieties compared to our parents and grandparents, who may have relied more heavily on frozen or canned produce, with limited variety.

The average cost of a hospital stay in a U.S. hospital is about $3,000 per day, but it varies significantly by location. So long stays like yours might cost between $250,000 and $500,000.

If your insurance covers it (and about 92% of Americans have health insurance), you’d be looking at your annual out of pocket max, which the law caps at $18,000 for family plans or $9,000 for individual plans, but which most people on employer sponsored plans (around 60% of Americans) have out of pocket maxes around $4,000 to $5,000. Source

So for most Americans, your hospital stay would’ve probably cost the individual patient about $5,000. Insurance would’ve paid another $350,000.

But for some Americans, they’d be looking at a $360,000 bill and then would just file bankruptcy, start over with close to a net worth of zero, at least for non-exempt assets (people generally get to keep their homes, cars, and retirement accounts in bankruptcy so it won’t actually be starting from zero if you’re well into a middle age in the middle class).

Or worse, the hospital would realize they’re not getting paid, and then would find a reason to kick you out as soon as you’re stabilized. They have to keep you alive even when you can’t pay, but don’t have to treat you beyond that for free.

Let’s take home appliances. Imagine you are a person who knows how to diagnose and repair microwaves. You keep all the most common parts for the most common brands in your warehouse. You bring them with you based on the customer’s description of what is wrong, and you’re prepared to efficiently apply to correct repair as soon as you’re confident in your diagnosis.

Your typical job looks like this:

• Get a call, get all the billing information (15 minutes).
• Drive out to the person’s home (30 minutes).
• Talk to the customer (15 minutes).
• Unscrew and disassemble the access panels to the appliance itself (15 minutes).
• Diagnose and test things to make sure your initial hunch is correct (15 minutes).
• Remove and replace the faulty part (15 minutes).
• Put everything back where it belongs (15 minutes).
• Drive back to your office (30 minutes).

There, that’s 2.5 hours of your time to do a 15-minute task of installing a part. At the factory, a much less skilled person (who doesn’t need to know how to diagnose different models, or manage a business) could have installed 10 of those in the same amount of time. Maybe more, because they wouldn’t have had to remove an old one.

Most manufacturing is like this. Assembly is easy. Repair is hard. So repair of heavy/bulky/stationary things is always going to be very expensive. It may be more economical to tow the thing to a central place to be repaired, so that the worker doesn’t have to waste too much time driving from place to place.

Throw in the need to keep an inventory of dozens of parts for hundreds of models, and you’re also paying for the warehouse space and parts supply chain, and the interest on the money spent up front to stock up, maybe to be recovered later when a job actually needs that part.

The economics strongly favor assembling new stuff rather than repairing old stuff for anything even remotely simple. It isn’t until you’re up to the $5,000 range that it becomes pretty normal to prefer an all-day repair job over paying for a replacement.

For $500 devices, it’s gonna be pretty hard to economically repair things.

Mandatory until the European Commission updates the standard. The law mandating the use of USB-C explicitly has a procedure for how to propose a new standard to supersede the current one.

I’m only generally familiar with the big crime podcast/documentaries that spilled into the mainstream about 10 years ago: first season of Serial, Making a Murderer. And both of those were highly critical of the police work and called convictions into question (and actually got the public attention on the wrongful convictions).

More recently, I’ve seen the HBO series on Karen Read, and it painted a picture of severe police misconduct that at worst tried to frame an innocent person, and at best botched the investigation to make a conviction of a guilty person difficult to impossible.

So yeah, crime documentaries often do show police misconduct and incompetence. At least the ones that hit my radar.

The boring answer: criminal investigative files generally aren’t released, so they’re compiled in a way that mingles information about victims with information about suspects and witnesses and others potentially involved in criminal activity, intentionally or unwittingly, directly or tangentially.

If you want to export a list of all names in the files, you’ll want to filter out victims for sure, and probably mere witnesses. You definitely don’t want to out informants and make them vulnerable to retaliation.

So most law enforcement agencies simply will keep everything secret. The idea of releasing names from the file was unusual, and it’s not surprising that Trump’s own people refused to follow through, especially when it’s highly likely that Trump was in that list of names.

No, LCOE is an aggregated sum of all the cash flows, with the proper discount rates applied based on when that cash flow happens, complete with the cost of borrowing (that is, interest) and the changes in prices (that is, inflation). The rates charged to the ratepayers (approved by state PUCs) are going to go up over time, with inflation, but the effect of that on the overall economics will also be blunted by the time value of money and the interest paid on the up-front costs in the meantime.

When you have to pay up front for the construction of a power plant, you have to pay interest on those borrowed funds for the entire life cycle, so that steadily increasing prices over time is part of the overall cost modeling.

apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well

No, the unemployment rate was around 20-25% under the traditional definition. It’s currently 4.2% under that definition.

If you want to use this LISEP definition, fine, but recognize that it’s been above 30% for most of its existence, and has only been under 25% since COVID. Basically, if you go by the LISEP definition then you’re saying that the job market after COVID has been better than it has ever been before.