supportlocal4h

I'm not sure about the "mission system" part. Most of the MLM people I encountered in Utah did not come through the "mission system." I kinda discount the church hierarchy theory, too. The point about stay at home moms carries water, I think. There aren't a lot of ways to make money while raising a 1, 4, and 7 year old. You can let somebody else raise them while you work. Or... you could have a playdoh party at your house. You can have your one-year-old on your lap while you explain to the other mothers (who are playing with their children as you talk) why they need the rainbow castle addon to the playdoh kingdom set.

A couple fingernail kit / vitamin / kitchenware / scented candle / whatever parties might promise to make you $500. That could pay for a month of piano lessons. Your old dental hygienist job didn't let you bring your kids to work and only work 4 hours on two Saturdays a month. I guess you could give it a try once. And who couldn't use a new cheese grater?

Oh, you should see the 128-line compiler OP unveils in the second hour of the class, now that students have the gist. And by the end of third hour...

You've reminded me how many very different circumstances exist besides my own. I paid less than $15k for a 3yo PHEV pre-Russian invasion. It has a ~9kWh battery with <30 mile range. It saves me about $5/day on gas. I charge it every night on a 110v outlet for ~$0.70 and again at work for free (lucky me; $140.00/year perk saves me $500 gas).

I could probably sell it for $18-20k today. (Four-door,five seatbelts with tons of leg room.) But you're right that it wouldn't make sense for apartment dwellers. And that counts a lot of people out.

You send the battery truck out. It looks kinda like a tow truck towing a huge battery. It can charge 8 cars at a time. It takes 30 minutes to get 8 cars up to 3kWh. So a 30 vehicle stack up would take 2 hours to clear with just one battery truck. After being stranded for 24 hours, a 2 hour charge delay doesn't seem like a big deal.

What's the use of standing on that anti-static mat and wearing that grounding strap? Can't you see there are fork lifts zipping around just right in the next room? That mat is giving you a false sense of security!

You haggle over most things that cost more than $50,000 because those things are unique and their value is subjective.

I don't haggle over the price of gasoline or milk. It's not because the price is low. It's because the identical product is available from a dozen local merchants and I know which is cheapest or which has the best lit parking lot or which has self-checkout. Price becomes so standard that merchants try to compete in other ways. And for those that do choose to compete on price, $0.05 difference on a $5 item is a big gap.

Maybe it's just me, but I took the original concern to be for people and objects outside the car. It's a bit jarring for your only concern to be the passengers.

My onboard map doesn't have red rectangles when speeding. And the little speed limit overlay is wrong at least 25% of the time.

Indeed, these machines are crazy dangerous. They should require operators to be trained and licensed.

I'm curious what your favorite alternative to alfalfa might be.

"Western" meaning west of where the sun rises?

It doesn't take much imagination. "Free" doesn't mean there isn't a lot of money swirling around.

Your anecdote sparked an old thought for me.

In your story, the customer would perceive the service as inferior if their food was late. A cook, knowing that the service isn't really inferior (there was just one little snag), justifies a little action to put appearances back closer to reality.

That last sentence is a study for me. I see it in everybody including myself. Somehow we convince ourselves that our ideal is the normal and the actual reality is an aberation. Then we rationalize little efforts to hide the aberation.

It can be hard to acknowledge the truth about ourselves and accept the consequences. But it is very hard to improve otherwise.

(At the same time we need to be careful of imposing overly severe consequences for mistakes.)

Pebble didn't get crushed by a big money monopoly.

Some people are willing to be "niche" and some people aren't. A company that produces 100 laptops per month for $100 profit each is not Apple. But that still means there is $10,000 per month left over after all salaries and other expenses. It's not a path to fame and glory, so few are interested. But it could sustain a very small company for a long time outside the world of monpolies and big money.

But if you've figured out how to produce 5 laptops per day, 20 days every month, you're in a strange space. That's not a garage operation. So why not 50 per day? Then the eternal quest for growth leads you back into the world of monopolies and big money.

This is obviously false. If nobody at all had gone into farming in the last 40 years, there would be no farmers left. Let me introduce you to my neighbors, the farmers. Hint: they don't live in San Francisco. Drive through Central Valley and guess how many 20-40 year old farmers are involved in all that food production.

There are much fewer farmers than there used to be. But simple math tells you that more food consumption divided by fewer farmers provides a huge opportunity for more profit per farmer. If you are politically- and business-savvy enough you can become enormously wealthy.

Please expound on your claim that you have to maintain machines you aren't using. Is there some requirement for how many working machines you have to possess to qualify for a subsidy?

If so, is that requirement equally as absurd?

I'm not sure those things have ever been controlled.

I have been around many many many smart people. So many of them seem naturally gifted. It's effortless how easily they solve things. But if you hang around long enough, it's also impressive when they reveal their magic: they just used so-and-so's technique from some discipline I've never heard of. Oh. Of course! How easy, when you put it that way.

How long did it take them to read, digest, and master all those techniques? Hard to say. Nobody followed them around with a stopwatch 24x7x365 for years.

So, lacking data, I fall back to antecdotes. I personally know very intimately a handful of valedictorian smartest person in the room type people. The kind that everyone knows is just naturally smart. I know their family life intimately. I know that none of it came without enormous time and effort.

We have the testimony of the man himself about the price he paid. I'd be interested in anyone at his level in any endevour who claimed they were just born with it.

I do believe that different people are born with different abilities. But I have seen those "smartest person in the room" people fail elementary math, then spend 100s of hours drilling flash cards to master simple arithmetic tables. I have seen them with reading (I hate the word disabilities) challenges spend 10 years reading 100s of books, then get perfect scores on college entrance exams. I have seen in person some poor child spend 3 hours every single night for a year to master 5 spelling words a week. Just to be average. Then have people think they were born knowing the dictionary.

I believe that if you randomly choose any 20 students from any elementary school in the United States and let me select 10 people from that group, then subject them to what I have seen... those students will graduate high school with perfect grades and nearly perfect standardized test scores. I am certain of it. But I do not condone doing such a thing.

Of course, that doesn't make them Feynman. But I believe Feynman when he says that he was once ordinary and that time and effort transformed him.

Something like this is accomplished in America all the time. Replace the bamboo with rebar. Then place the forms and pour the concrete.

You might be in awe if you could see the bones of what you think of as ordinary buildings. You might marvel to see a team hanging from lanyards to tie rebar. Or you probably just hurry by wondering when all this construction mess will be over.

Isn't that like saying that motorcycles will happen eventually but not anytime soon because: weather?

Traditional cars with drivers haven't solved the weather problem 100%. But they are here now. Sometimes we ban them in some conditions, but they are a game changer the rest if the time.

How fast has warehouse automation occurred? What has happened to all the former warehouse workers? Fully autonomous warehouses has been a reasonable thing way before autonomous driving in the wild. It carries all the cost-saving and safety arguments. It might affect more people's jobs. What can we learn from that?

Seriously! Kinda like those food services people who harp on and on about gloves. Clean gloves prevent this, clean gloves solve that. And they're not content to just use gloves themselves. They keep evangelizing to recruit everyone to their practice.

It gets annoying to those of us who know how to do safe food prep without wearing gloves.

It is common for car sales to add a tracker to a car they finance. It is very helpful during the repo process.

Many of them pay the owner to allow them to recover the device when the loan is paid off.

"Most jobs"?

Hmmm... let me look around my neighborhood...

School teacher - easy; Lawyer - doable; Doctor - already done; Auto mechanic - no problem; Bank teller - easy; Construction worker...

Ok. I can't come up with any. I'm sure there must be some, but they don't come to mind. Most people work the number of hours it takes to earn the standard of living they accept. Work is never done. There's always more to do. That is never the question.

Somebody please put some kind of warning on that link.

Why can't Delta just maintain their own list? Why does the government have to do everything?

"Growth" and scale are interesting concerns. Companies, cities, languages, etc that aren't "growing" are considered to be in crisis. You could have a little gig that produces and sells 100 gadgets a month. At $100 per, it's enough to quit your day job. In fact, you're considering hiring some help. Two years later, you're still selling 100 per month and can't figure out what's the problem. Maybe you need to shut it all down.

A podcast with 10,000 listeners? Wow! Who'd have ever thought our little Joey would attract so much interest? Two years later, Joseph Productions is struggling to keep the doors open with only 500,000 listeners.

Back in the day, people found a website by word of mouth and bookmarked it. 100 page views a week was awesome. 1000 a month was maybe even better than all that money spent stuffing mailboxes with flyers. This internet thing has a lot of potential.

Today? If you can't break into the front page of a Google search, what's the point?

An automaker that sells $1 billion of product is in deep trouble because growth is flat. A city that hosts 2 million convention visitors a year is "struggling" and needs a new Chief of Tourism. A town with a population of 10,000 with clean streets and no crime is at a dead end because they don't have a Walmart and can't attract new businesses.

Human discontent is fascinating.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

That's why type systems are important in languages.

I have been accused of being dim for not understanding a common word. Or alternatively of intentionally playing dumb.

Then I layout out six reasonable definitions for the word that could fit this context. Then I am accused of making other people feel dumb. Unless it's my wife, who simply claims, "You know what I meant." :)

I heard a story at a recent robotics tournament about a team that had competed together all the way from 7th grade through 12th grade. As the story went, the teammates were hired en masse by a certain high profile company who agreed to pay for all their college, etc, etc.

I thought it was an interesting story as I heard it repeated among the students at the tournament. Many of the teams have sponsors who donate $1000s so the schools/clubs can buy parts, etc. They are trying to encourage interest in STEM. But if the story is true, one company could spend $1000000 and inspire 1000s of students, generating lottery psychology. Of course, one person could just make up such a story for $0 and achieve the same thing. But it amuses me to think of some altruistic billionaire having a little fun and doing such a thing.