CGMthrowaway

SNAP is not provided on an individual basis? Quite sure you have to apply for it, on an individual basis.

>Yeah, I don't think so. The backlash is 100% real people. I don't know a single pro-Flock person but I know 100s that want to go take them down.

That's not a sound refutation. For example, 100% of published opinion can be 100% anti-Floc, while still being composed of 50% real people and 50% astroturf.

Perhaps you misunderstood my comment.

One thing that can be derived from this effect is that the mind influences reality through observation. The mind creates, by directing focused intention/attention on a particular outcome. The body is the final link between mind focus and reality/human experience

As with most antistate issues today, there is a mix of bots/institutional interference (both foreign and domestic), and real people. Both can be true.

This article makes a good point. Surveillance pricing is not different from means-testing for government benefits. If the government gives SNAP benefits for groceries to the needy, why not the grocery store itself offer reduced prices? Might even reduce the burden placed on SNAP

Anybody that visits near the Wieliczka Salt Mine (outside Krakow) must take a tour. It's incredible. Lick the walls (they are sanitary). My favorite part was the craftsmanship - chandeliers, relief of the Last Supper, etc entirely formed by unskilled workers hands in their spare time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine

Why is a murmuration of starlings so pleasing to watch?

It would not take 5 years for a competing interest to complete a takeover bid of the water utility and implement faster/better fixes. Nor would it take 5 years for water customers (if they could) to divert the money that funds the municipal water district away from them and towards an alternative like water filtration or truck deliveries

Accounting earnings are not simply the markup on electricity, or revenue collected from electric customers minus the cost of supplying them. NEE's financials include many other things such as investment earnings, gains from the sale of assets, energy futures and tax credits

It's not clear what public company status has to do with anything, but it's easy to point out that there is plenty of extraction and hollowing out on both the private and public company sides of the economy.

>The interests of the shareholders diverge quite strongly from the interests of electrical utility customers

That is true for most businesses. People in different circumstances have different economic wants and needs, that is a neutral fact.

The parasistism you describe is only enabled by barriers to competition.

Only if it's in updateable software. Hardware takes longer to correct.

Hence Sam Altman's latest public comment: "I don't even know a dramatic enough word to use… models can find bugs that are outside of the normal threat model of what we think a hacker can do… hardware-level, insane stuff… I no longer think we're gonna be able to just patch all the bugs."

>only at unrealistic levels of bad

Bad water or water service is not unrealistic.

It took FIVE YEARS for Flint Michigan's water to be re-declared "safe to drink without a filter." The solution involved FEMA and the National Guard.

That can't have been the best way.

"Shareholder value" is just another way of saying return on capital. Do you want to reduce return on capital? (the answer could be yes or no, just advancing the discussion)

Or do you want to redistribute the ownership of capital?

This guy thinks waste in government is only 15%.

At the low end, the GAO estimates of federal spending, 3-7% is fraud, 3% is improper payments, 7-10%+ is legal but wasteful (e.g. zombie programs) - totaling 13-20%.

In the middle, DOGE (don't smite me, just citing multiple sources) estimated 30-33% was waste.

And at the high end, the American public according to Gallup polling perceives 59% to be waste. https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-say-federal-govt-wastes-...

Even if there is only one set of pipes under the street, the owner of those pipes is constrained from acting in a predatory way if the market is free. They are disciplined by potential competition (if prices too high or lets the water quality drop, it suddenly becomes financially viable for a competitor to dig a rival pipe, or set up localized system, or offering water trucking to your site).

Under a government-granted monopoly, that threat is legally banned (except for maybe water trucking)

What was the hypothesis here, did we think they would be charging less?

>Good example is ETOPS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS - some time ago, we required flights over ocean to have three or four engines. Now, reliability improved a lot, and the engines got good enough that single-engine operation is not so catastrophic as before.

And yet, single-engine jets are prohibited from operating under Part 121 and must use Part 135 (the analogy here might be to an apartment building where the developer takes on the responsibility of structural code-compliance and safety, vs. a single-family home where the homeowner does).

There's a big difference in going from 4 to 2 engines, vs going from 2 to 1. And to be certified single engine jets must have battery backups, rapid depressurization tech, and a host of other things twin engines don't have to. In one case (Vision Jet) they use a whole-plane parachute to compensate for the lack of a backup powerplant

Sounds like a decoherence trap

>We don't really need multiple exits in case of fire because fires are occurring less often and people are getting plenty of warning.

I'm not a fire expert but I don't think that logic holds. The point is redundancy. If one exit gets blocked, you have another one you can use. Hospitals don't stop carrying backup power supply for life-saving equipment just because "the power grid downtime has improved."

Yes, a small one, only as large as is necessary to accomplish a limited and enumerated set of objectives...

So the debunkers using AI to make the upsidedown flag look like it was rightside up, were the actual deepfakers?

I'm confused. So was the flag really upsidedown or rightside up?

> impossible it is to get 40 different families who all live on the same street to unanimously agree on something

There's your problem. You are requiring unanimous agreement? Republics (et al.) were invented for a reason.

> It’s extremely common for local governments to make an HOA a legal requirement for new developments.

Then people ought to be complaining about their local governments, not HOAs.

What's the problem? He gets the house at (what you think is) a lower price than could otherwise be had, and he gets to enjoy living even more

That is a risk you freely accept when choosing to buy in an HOA. Co-ops, which are related but distinct, solve for this risk by requiring the co-op board to vote to approve any new residents. You have a co-op as an option for your living arrangements, as well. Optionality is a good thing.

Which is why Jefferson, who would agree with you, thought that a well-informed people (education) was critical and without it self-governance would fail. It's not an oxymoron - it just comes with caveats.

> "I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people...whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government"

> "The most effectual means of preventing tyranny would be to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large"

The implication is that you ought to move into a neighborhood with people who share your values.