Only a long list of very particular choices would leave you in a situation where it’s “unavoidable.” I don’t accept this excuse. Get your shit together.

I don’t care what kind of call it is, frankly. I don’t want to hear you talk in your phone, or hear your phone make any sound whatsoever. Sitting there watching videos with the speaker on, at a restaurant? Damn.

I think something like a Bismuth crystal would have had the “arbitrary square” aspect they were going for, but would also have allowed that the cube might need to grow in any direction and might not always come out perfectly cubic at all times. I think this would have been somewhat ideal.

https://colemanquartz.com/cdn/shop/files/bismuth-midnight-blue-and-purple-crystal-mineral-specimen-488187.jpg?v=1727711991&width=1445

California was 67% powered by alternative sources in 2024:

22.8% Solar

13.8% Wind

12.5% Hydroelectric

11.1% Nuclear

5.0% Geothermal

1.9% Biomass

Source: California Department of Energy

We have also been adding an enormous amount of battery storage to the grid. Cheap (but large and heavy) sodium batteries don’t work well for cars but they’re great for stacking up next to solar farms.

Meanwhile Republicants whine about how it can’t be done. Fucking losers. The sad fact is that the US is diverse and a place like California is essentially a modern country but we also have petrostates like Alaska and Louisiana that fall apart without oil.

Even the Saudis know oil isn’t forever and are trying to diversify their economy. But the hellhole that is Louisiana is so corrupt it’s worse than a kingdom.

They make that kind of wild shit up about us already. It’s not helping.

Learning is good for the brain at any age. Picking up a new skill, traveling to a foreign land, starting a new job with new people…

Fiddling with an app on your phone…. Not so much.

I understand the suspicion but you might want to keep some daylight between “qualitative data” and “bullshit.”

I completely understand that quant data is always more certain to work with, but to totally discount qual data leaves you utterly blind in a lot of fields where quant measurements are impossible to standardize.

I’m a LOTR nut and we actually look at it as a good outcome if no more LOTR shit can be made, period.

I guess Trek is not like that, though a lot of people seem to think some shows/movies should never have been made.

Just trying to offer a positive spin on franchise death.

that attracts garbage articles and clickbaits.

So it is clickbait. I understand that it’s our fault for being filthy numbskulls who want quick solutions. But we agree it is clickbait.

While you’re right that these things happen over time, there are often sudden watershed moments where the change becomes much more obvious than before, and those can precipitate more sudden actions to follow. Not everything is a slow forever burn with slovenly people like me yawning on the sidelines crying “borrring!”

I’ve been hearing about how Russia is about to collapse economically, lose the war, and watch Putin die from cancer for… years now. It’s just clickbait at this point.

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We could do more than we are, but when the nuclear sabre rattling inevitably comes, we realize we have more to lose than Russia does.

Wait who’s your daughter? I don’t see a daughter mentioned in your comment above. Sorry, I’m just confused.

If that is the explanation, it sure isn’t made clear by this shit article.

Yes, so you’d think that reopening the strait should help. Maybe they just mean not right away? It’s unclear.

This is a really shoddily written article. Bad. Basically he’s saying that fuel costs will remain high and from a business standpoint the risk doesn’t go to zero just because Trump says everything is rainbows. Therefore shipping faces increased costs, which raises prices for consumers, which hurts demand, which lowers shipping volume. And that systemic slowdown doesn’t disappear overnight because Trump says yippee.

I think. If the article weren’t total shit, maybe it would be clearer.

Just because you can think of ways out of enforcement doesn’t mean all enforcement is impossible. If there’s a plumbing truck parked at the movie theater, management is going to damn well know if plumbing work is occurring. I know it makes us feel smart to think of loopholes but we don’t need airtight enforcement in order for a law to make sense. There are tons of laws on the books that aren’t actively and exhaustively enforced, and they exist to give authority to those who would take action in situations where they can.

It’s a myth that you can write anything off as a business expense and the IRS can’t do anything about it.

That’s not a loophole. If the truck wasn’t driven to this movie theater for work purposes, then it wasn’t driven for work purposes.