mjamesaustin

The donor class are the ones who want culture wars, because their continued donations are contingent on the party ignoring the economic woes of the working class. What can the Democratic party stand for if it doesn't protect workers and unions? Identity politics.

Guess we'll never know, since instead of arresting and prosecuting them under the law, we blew them up.

I was shocked to find it's a faux pas to rub disposable chopsticks to remove potential splinters. I was taught this is what you're supposed to do with disposable chopsticks.

Growing up in LA, I was fascinated as a kid watching the water flow down this aqueduct. Anytime we drove by it on the way to Magic Mountain, I'd hope that it would be a water-on day.

Universal healthcare is very sound economically. Costs are lower and outcomes better than under private insurance, and overhead is dramatically reduced.

To be considered successful, most companies need to sell more of their existing products and/or introduce new products. Tesla is doing neither – they have reduced the number of models they sell and are also selling their existing models in lower numbers.

I think the current administration has laid bare the truth behind how wealth and power work in our society. The rug pulls have become extremely obvious, but no consequences arrive for those making billions off of intentional sabotage of the economy.

At what power envelope? Intel chips can compete with M series chips, but usually at way higher power, which means fans running like a jet engine.

The amount we pay just to settle the liability claims for police misconduct is almost as much as our entire street services budget.

LA government is an enormous corrupt police department with a few measly services slowly decaying as their funding gets cut.

EVs are cheaper to own – the fuel savings are enormous.

EVs aren't cheaper to produce yet, but battery costs are still falling and they will reach parity with ICE vehicles soon.

The argument is that the best writing is the unexpected, while an LLM's function is to deliver the expected next token.

Winning in Balatro has very little to do with understanding how to play traditional poker. Yes, you do need a basic knowledge of different types of poker hands, but the strategy for succeeding in the game is almost entirely unrelated to poker strategy.

I see, so you're suggesting 5% is not enough? I'm listening...

Until users are sufficiently locked in and they decide to start tightening the screws.

It's easy to access statistics about wealth and income inequality. It is worse than it has ever been, and continuing to get worse.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

Ad skipping should be handled at the platform level and not left to individual advertisers to control. Regulations like this make such an outcome more likely.

Mobile ads in the US are heinous. Each one has a different mechanism for skipping, the skip buttons are micro sized and impossible to tap, some of them don't even work.

Standardization should have been up to the platforms selling ads, but they haven't done it. It's past time for local authorities to step in and protect consumers from predatory behavior.

Would you prefer if your phone required a trip to a dedicated refilling station once a week, even if it only took 5 minutes?

Because that's the kind of logic you're implying about your car – that it's more convenient driving somewhere once a week rather than just plugging it in at night before bed.

Scams are our entire economy now. Do whatever you can to own a market, then squeeze your customers miserably once you have their loyalty. Cash out, kick the smoking remains of the company to the curb, use your payout to buy into another company, and repeat.

Rent seeking is the end result of capitalism as an economic system. The goal of a capitalist is to accumulate capital (wealth), and rent seeking allows you to do this without expending any effort. Any capitalist acting rationally within the system of capitalism will desire to seek rent.

Fascinating point, and one I think can definitely apply here.

Though there is a key difference – Galileo could see through his telescope the same way, every time. He also understood what the telescope did to deliver his increased knowledge.

Compare this with LLMs, which provide different answers every time, and whose internal mechanisms are poorly understood. It presents another level of uncertainty which further reduces our agency.

Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair, would be unhappy if we transitioned to a system where all voters have an equal amount of political power.

This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones. Our current system is a crazy double standard, and inherently unfair.

Yes, what's more fair is for the smaller states to overpower the larger ones. Hooray for the Senate!

Please explain how a demand limited company is seeing dramatic reductions in its annual sales? They used to be demand-limited. Not today.

This is some suburban delusion. Do you think the people who own multimillion dollar condos in NYC would rather live in a single family home? What's stopping them?

I want to be in the heart of a bustling city where I can walk to everything and do something different every night. That's not possible in suburbia.

It succeeded in the 60s because we didn't just focus attention, we focused a LOT OF MONEY on it. In comparison, today's NASA has a meager budget which has only been further slashed by the current administration.

I would love to see the kind of investment in NASA we had during the 60s. The scientific advancements were staggering. Today, the only thing we have money for is weapons and warfare.

It should be illegal because these services market a subscription to you claiming the benefit of zero fees and free delivery, which is a lie. You are being secretly charged through a higher menu price, none of which is shown to you as a customer.

I can't count how many friends I have had to explain this to who don't understand they are paying 20-30% more even after getting "free delivery" than if they just ordered directly through the restaurant.

They've only updated the base M5. Expect the Pro and Max updates to come early next year.

Rumors suggest they might be early next year, or likely by spring.

I play absolutely everything on my M1 Macbook Pro. Through Crossover, basically every Windows game runs fine. I used to check ahead of time before buying a game, but it's so good I now kind of just assume games work.

I'm curious what problems make it such a bad experience for you.

I have some reservations about my EV, but on the whole it is better than an ICE vehicle in almost every way and I'll certainly never buy another car that isn't an EV.