ctdonath

The whole self-appointed "fact checker empowered to cancel" movement has to stop. Far too much fair disagreement, and objective truths, have been maliciously "cancelled" for not adhering to a given narrative on public forums.

I get that "freedom of the press" does not include freedom to use someone else's press, and the owner has the absolute right to decide who may use his press. That said, we have a legal differentiation between "publisher" and "common carrier", and by culling §230-protected content in a clearly biased manner Facebook etc is establishing themselves as "publisher" culpable for libelous & criminal content.

I’ve been blogging since before blogging was blogging. Personal blogs are now, on the whole, not viable.

Twitter is among the best platforms for being heard by the most people with the least cost/effort.

Yeah, I get your point - to wit “get your own press”, a line I’ve used long and often. Nonetheless I recognize the value of a place where a great many congregate to converse with many - and know the importance of that forum being neutral for the betterment of all, a truism Dorsey abandoned for the worse.

No government agency attempted anything like the Branch Davidian raid for the next 15 years.

Amusing, but still problematic. Blue check was intended as neutral authentication. Turning it into a preferred faction indicator just serves to promote factional divisions - something Twitter could use a lot less of. …which brings us back to the OP point that blue checks have become a mark of shame, promoting division instead of objectivism.

Interesting comparison: for the Left, you choose the qualifier “dirtbag” which presumably is a very small fraction of that faction ... while comparing that unpleasant small minority with the entire other half of the political spectrum.

I can (sort of, but would rather not) see denying authentication to problematic nutcases of any kind, and can see that edge case not pedantically covered/excluded by “nobody but us”. Sure, we can chalk up fringe cases to inconsistent boundaries of enforcement. But lumping in a plurality of users with edge cases is willful blindness to the blue check exclusion being official from-the-top policy, not mere erratic enforcement of vague rules by underpaid contractors.

Sure it’s boring if you’re not in the targeted plurality. It’s significant when Twitter is your only viable podium in the public town square, and anything you want to say that’s meaningfully & reasonably dissenting may get you kicked out because Twitter management is decidedly biased.

There's a difference between government acting as an interested customer, vs government subsidizing something for political reasons.

Government should not be just handing out money without getting at least that much value back. Government may very well hire a company to do something because it's more cost effective than DIY.

Blue check used to mean "identity objectively verified", useful to confirm the twiterati using the name is the actual person/group others think they are.

Then came the Great Bluecheck Purge, where anyone exhibiting opinions not preferred by Twitter management had their blue check revoked/denied - which in practice was applied generally to Republicans, who constitute about half the USA. (We're talking mainstream views, not just weirdos.)

Ergo, anyone with a blue check is, by Twitter decree, not a Republican. For Republicans, blue check now amounts to a "badge of shame" indicating Twitter-approved opposition.

Blue checks were changed from "identity confirmed" to "one of us, not them".

Because it was the moment Twitter decisively shifted from an open fair neutral public forum, where contributor accounts could be neutrally & objectively confirmed to be who they claimed to be, to a biased forum which refused legitimate identification of anyone not in line with certain sociopolitical views.

Anonymity is important, and Twitter gave that to anyone who wanted it. Identification is important too, and Twitter denied that to dissenting views (not weirdos, but about half the population - normal mainline opinions).

Twitter isn’t grade school. It succeeded as the new global online public town square, widely quoted as an authoritative forum. If @Talanes posts something important, good to know it’s the real Talanes people assume it is - but if he’s denied a blue check because he promotes wrongthink (even if shared by hundreds of millions), the validity of the post is questioned.

I’ve seen enough “not really who you think it is” accounts obfuscate truth to know it’s a real problem. Online identity verification, when wanted, is important.

Indeed, Twitter was great.

Until the Great Bluecheck Purge, which revoked the verified status of significant twitterati - not because of question about their identity, but because their politics were incorrect.

Yes; interesting that they never bring up the chart showing we’re at the peak of a natural 125,000 year temperature cycle.

“Black Friday” = the day most realtors go from “in the red” to “in the black” financially for the year.

Been interesting watching it mutate from merely the day customers start buying gifts en masse in earnest, to a real discount & deals day, to a jack-and-drop fakeout.

Presumably there’s a stage between achieving sentience, and realizing the importance of protecting power sources.

When there is nothing you can say which will improve the situation, don't say.

When someone doesn't want to discuss an issue to mutual conclusion (if only agreeing to disagree), don't discuss.

When someone's statement/question speaks for itself, don't speak for it.

You have deprived them of the opportunity & reasons for you to purchase it from them, which is their motive for creating it.

Positive should not mean compulsory. Compulsory does not mean good. Let people opt out of regulations as they see fit. Let me have a home, if regulations would make it unattainable.

On a whim, I looked into poverty-level taxation by plugging $12,880 into various online tax [gu]estimate calculators. Results varied from -$114 to $1080 (FICA included). Short of running it thru a real tax program (which I will in due course), struck me how US income tax law presumes you will pay at least a 10% tax rate, even if below the poverty line. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-provides-tax-inflation-adju... I assume a little finesse with a 1040EZ form should get it down to $0, but it's unsettling that legislators who unanimously agree "something should be done for the poor" actually legislate a 10% tax rate on the poor.

That's accounting for PPP adjustments.

Poverty line is a published official statement.

Percentile of world incomes, PPP adjusted, are easily found. Find and compare them.

Poverty line = $12,880/yr : https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/povert...

"A $12,880 income in the United States has enough buying power to put you in the 84th percentile globally for per-person income" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...

The "bubble" accusation works both ways.

"Building codes" is used here in a very broad stroke. Yes, minimum wage is 10x that of India, which means the basic cost of construction labor is already 10x. If you're going to quibble the point, you make the point: 90% of the cost of construction labor is due to building codes insofar as you can't pay less than that, and that labor payment requirement exists deep into the supply chain. Insofar as minwage doesn't account for all the high cost, there are thousands of other laws edging up the price of housing. Insofar as that cumulative burden doesn't explain all the high price, there's more.

Having driven the price of housing up just thru laws directly & indirectly related to home construction (which can colloquially be referred to cumulatively as "building codes" for purposes of casual discussion), there's the psychological factor of "if I'm going to pay $X for that, I may as well pay a bit more and get more." Ergo the price bumps up further.

Having seen all that direct & indirect increase of price due to laws, we then get to the land. Again, psychology intervenes: if the price of the building itself has grown, the value of the land shifts too. One can casually assume that a house of some cost will typically be placed on land worth 1/10th that price. One is not inclined to put a $500,000 house on a $1000 property. Ergo, houses will tend to be built on land valued commensurate thereto - and housing & population growth will tend to get located on such property. There is "dirt cheap" land in the USA, but few are inclined to live there.

Further discussion would call for combing thru an itemized invoice for building a home, starting with land and labor, then similarly examining why each component is chosen vs legal requirements, and breaking each component similarly for legal and labor costs. I expect there'd be little surprise that, after analysis, US and other first-world homes cost as much as they do - given that the very starting point of labor is an obligatory 10x, and the same legal sensibilities permeate all of construction.

Consider that I could, tomorrow, buy a lot in my state for $1000 and put a new $10,000 camper on it. Instant home, owned outright. Can't do that because, broadly speaking, building codes.

If you're going to make the "bubble" accusation, please explain what's wrong with it rather than equally flippantly dissing the original assertion.

US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes.

Any hope of the Lisp community pulling a Swift and replacing the language with a drop-in-compatible new one built ground-up with lessons and sensibilities learned over decades?

Then the up-front purchase cost is being relocated to later during use, and Apple fairly wants in on that.

Apple takes 30% for the purchase of an app. Whether 30% is reasonable may be debatable, but that they get a cut is not (their App Store).

The post-purchase 30% cut amounts to adding or enabling content/function to the app post-purchase, meaning developers can put off charging users for some of the app until later, at which point it's fair for Apple to still get their cut - lest developers (like Epic) give away the app and effectively charge for the app later to bypass the 30% cut. E-books are, in a reasonable sense, part of Amazon's Kindle app. Movies are part of a video rental app. Power-ups and other features are part of the Fortnite app. As Apple is only charging for what is in essence part of an app, not for non-app stuff like chairs or rides or food, it's a not-unreasonable attempt to prevent developers from giving away apps and charging later to avoid the 30% App Store service charge.

Seems this is a moment that Apple, Google, and others really need to win, lest practically all apps be "free with in-app purchase to do anything meaningful".

I’ve seen that template applied to every technology now considered bog standard (utterly mundane & normal).

"Listen to me, coppertop. We don't have time for twenty questions. Right now there's only one rule, our way or the highway." - Switch, _The_Matrix_

Solved by Tesla building EVs to million-mile specs. Between lasting 3-4x longer with few repairs, and gas savings over long usage, TCO is far less than ICE.

Running numbers, I'm seeing a "Tri+FSD" Cybertruck paying for itself at 410,000 miles just in gas savings, then amounting to a free second vehicle over the next >400,000 miles. That should make the frugal overcome "right to repair" issues.

Someone elaborated on the cultural marvel that is the humble American hamburger: that a food made of ground beef, bread, pickle, lettuce, tomato, and a couple sauces - most are rapidly perishable items - can be made on demand, year-round, for the incredibly low cost of one dollar is absolutely amazing.

System peaks around 57W, with battery charge rate limits and frequent environmental disruptions (clouds, angles, etc).

Battery (Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC) shows output load. Lowest draw on MacBook Pro 15" is 7W, usually idling 10-15W, pulls about 50W when charging.

Between experience and math, my rule is: on average, buffered with a battery, you'll get 10 watts out of a 100 watt panel (i.e.: 10% efficiency, all common conditions considered).

I do similar with gear from https://GoalZero.com, typically using a car-portable 100W panel + 100Wh battery with USB-C support when seriously traveling, and a briefcase-friendly 20W folding panel + same battery when mobile. Wait for specials at https://REI.com to get good prices.