I'm getting a Google Drive permission error on several (but not all) charts... not sure if that's a problem on your end or theirs, but you might want to look into it.
Thanks for this! Very interesting stuff.
1,570 karma · joined June 20, 2016
Thanks for this! Very interesting stuff.
We can talk about whether it's a good or moral idea to transfer wealth, but let's not pretend like that's the only way to deal with poverty.
For example, get rid of the gas tax. Toll all state and federally funded roads. Scale the toll according to the amount of wear and tear the vehicle causes for the road. Price something in to account for emissions. Make sure the tolls are high enough to pay for the road and its ongoing maintenance. Cameras capturing license plates at intersections can keep track of everything (tolled highways near me already work this way). Bonus points if you get municipalities on board and reduce property taxes being spent on transportation.
If you started doing stuff like this, I think people's choices will start to change. When it costs $5 to drive 30 minutes in to work every day, people are going to choose to live in big houses with big lots in suburbia and drive everywhere. When they have to pay the full cost of making that drive, their preferences may start to change.
Yes, a lot of stuff would have to change to get people to agree to this sort of thing and make it work. But the author is already talking about re-making cities, so we might as well do it in a way that maximizes freedom and consumer choice... right?
Most of the UN stats are about poverty and inequality. But the NYT piece wasn't talking about poverty, and I don't deny that there's a small portion of the population stuck in a trap of cyclical poverty - I can see that every day. I also don't deny that inequality has been rising - every time I see a news update on Jeff Bezos' wealth, I'm reminded that his net worth is going up _way_ faster than mine is.
But what the NYT piece (slash the book it was summarizing) was _actually_ focused on was a changing experience for the American middle class - the Americans that aren't stuck in poverty, but also aren't the rich. The author was arguing that there's been a shift in the middle class experience... that you can now grow up in the middle class, do all the "right" things career-wise, and still find yourself struggling to make ends meet and keep up the standard of living associated with a middle class lifestyle.
All I'm saying is that, in the experience of me and my friends, that doesn't seem to be representative of middle class America over the last 10-20 years. Sure, I don't live in a McMansion and drive a nice new car, so maybe I don't define the middle class lifestyle as aspirationally as some people do. But the vast majority of middle class people I know seem to be finding it relatively straightforward to get an education, find a job that pays reasonably well, and start a family, without struggling to pay the bills.
I admittedly come from a very privileged background (in terms of both an upper-middle-class family and genetics), but how have so many people found themselves in places where it's so hard to make ends meet? My parents paid for college (like I said, admittedly privileged) and the State of North Carolina actually gave me free tuition and paid me a stipend to get my Master's degree (free/cheap government education is a benefit which you don't have to be privileged to get, at least not as privileged). I chose the "wrong" programs from a job prospects / earnings perspective - Sociology and Public Administration. I still managed to fall into a career as a data scientist. I'm not paid a bay-area salary, but then the suburbs of Raleigh/Durham don't have a bay-area cost of living either. My wife and I have a bigger house than we need, drive two old (2005 & 2009) but functional cars, have two kids, take a reasonably nice week-long vacation each year, and give quite a bit away, all on one salary. We've both made sacrifices to be debt free other than the mortgage, which helps. Most of my close friends went to very reasonably-priced state schools (e.g., NC State University), got the "right" degrees, and are now gainfully employed and able to support a family. Do I just live in that much of a bubble? Are my and my friends' experiences really that out of the ordinary in America in 2018?
Second, is it just because I'm young? This article suggests a lot of programmers/engineers end up being un-hireable by middle age, and struggle to find another career to make ends meet. Does that match the experience of a lot of folks here? From my perspective, most of the middle aged programmers/engineers I know have just moved on to become software architects, managers of development teams, CTOs, consultants, etc. - in other words, they're doing even more lucrative work facilitated by their years of experience.
Please, please, don't break the user experience this way.
Not dealing with the hassle of shoe-shopping every 6 months? Totally worth the money.
And time is money too.
Also, get factory seconds and you'll pay WAY less than $500 for a good pair of shoes. I think it was $~200 for me.
Did a similar thing with Allen Edmonds dress shoes. Yes, they were expensive initially, but given how little I wear dress shoes, I wouldn't be surprised if they last me the rest of my life.
Now if only I could find a solution for clothing...
You can't count the upsides for the shareholders without counting the downsides as well.
For example, suppose somebody says "I'm so hungry, I could literally eat an elephant." It's obvious that they're being hyperbolic because of course nobody eats elephants. Adding literally just adds to the hyperbole because it makes the sentence that much more ridiculous.
It's a figure of speech and perfectly legitimate, IMHO.
My wife and I recently moved and, while we ended up somewhere we like, there was one particular street right next to our old house that we always wished we would be able to get a home on. When we talked to other neighbors that were thinking about moving, we found out that we were far from the only ones eyeing that street. Unfortunately, people there rarely sold and, when they did, the homes got snapped up quick.
We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did. Facebook ads would have made it way easier. And a service where we forked over $50 to run some ads plus $250 as a reward and pushed a button would have been better still.
I think you're absolutely right that our product may do more to help parents feel secure letting their kids roam, rather than actually making them safer. Still, if it gets kids out more and helps parents feel more comfortable, I think that's a win.
The site: https://relaygo.com/
I wonder if theaters have figured this is a waiting game and they can just let MoviePass die and go back to business as usual...
1) You don't take your number when you find it. I guess my brain assumed "find" meant "find and take with you to prove you found it." Perhaps a better term might be "encounter."
2) Here's a much better explanation (thanks micaeked): http://datagenetics.com/blog/december42014/index.html. Essentially, the algorithm works because following numbers to drawers will eventually create a loop (e.g., drawer 2 points to 4 points to 6 points to 2). By starting with the drawer with your number, you're guaranteed to be in a loop with your number. The only question is whether your loop is less than 50 drawers long...
Furthermore, this confirms that there IS no transfer of information from previous prisoners in any way.
"Before the first prisoner enters the room, the prisoners may discuss strategy—but may not communicate once the first prisoner enters to look in the drawers."
And, in the example given, "That prisoners 5 to 8 will also find their numbers can also be derived from the information gained by the first three prisoners."
There's never any explanation of what happens when a prisoner opens a drawer and finds it empty. In the first example given, what happens when prisoner 5 goes in and there's nothing in drawer 5? The algorithm doesn't seem to account for this.
It seems like there's some sort of assumption that the later prisoners are gathering information from the earlier prisoners, but the problem set-up seems to preclude this? They're going into a room so they can't watch each other, the drawers are closed afterwards so they can't derive information from which drawers are open/closed, and they're not allowed to communicate.
Am I not following something?
~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances.
I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocolate or whatever. We know for a fact that smoking, overeating, and not exercising kill literally tens of millions of people each year, but it seems like most people can't be bothered to take those health risks seriously...
I have to second the other person recommending a Lenovo X1 Carbon. I had one for awhile and it was just about the perfect laptop. Surface Pro looks nice too.
If we don't go the single payer route, it seems one of the #1 things we could do is to help move "insurance" back to being actual insurance (i.e., we'll keep you from being bankrupted by your medical bills) rather than a system that highly subsidizes your regular medical care but then may not actually be there for you when the bills really pile up... If consumers had to actually shop for procedures (as opposed to knowing the out-of-pocket is $250 and who knows what happens beyond that), I think you'd start to see people screaming for transparency, and medical providers would have to get their acts together.
Only one of many problems, I know.
For example, he notes that they'll have to write off their investment in Toys R Us, but makes it sound like they're making out like bandits because they got $200 million in management/consulting fees out of the deal. So, they lost a $6.6 billion investment, and made $200 million in management fees? Doesn't sound like a very successful evil plot to me.
More importantly, what if this had been a success? What if they had bought Toys R Us and orchestrated a phenomenal turn-around? Would this still be a story? Would they be evil, but this time they'd be evil because they stole a public company for pennies on the dollar (a la the Dell lawsuit) and made bank when it returned to growth and profitability?
A significantly more dispassionate discussion about the debt burden that goes along with a leveraged buyout would have been far more interesting to read.
And, before you go thinking I'm just the radical conservative, recognize that this cuts both ways. I'm also of the opinion that we shouldn't be subsidizing people's high-carbon lifestyles by making roads free, for example.