tlss

Justin Trudeau was a ski instructor before becoming Prime Minister.

Ronald Reagan and Zelenskyy were ridiculed as an actor in their election campaigns.

Poilievre is a career politician and unproven at the highest office, but that by itself should not disqualify him. Knowing who to delegate to is 90% the job of a good leader -- the other 10% is public speaking and being charismatic.

I mean, this is the French way. SNCF striking (a yearly occurrence) is arguably halting the economy each time it happens.

As a sympathizer to the HK protests, I've heard all these talking points before -- that the protesters are ruining the economy and making things miserable for everyone. Usually the protests can really only get so big when there is a shared grievance that keeps getting ignored by the administration.

In the case of HK, the grievance was the possibility for criminals to be extradited to Chinese mainland.

In the case of convoy protests, the grievance was the vaccine mandate in order to work a trucking job that's mostly solitary with minimal human contact.

Everyone thinks they're on the right side of history :)

English is an interpreted language. We wouldn't have this problem if we can check for undefined references during compilation.

Doesn’t that create an adverse incentive for companies to not grow (invest to make more money) even if they could? YouTube for example might still be stuck in the 480p era if Google hasn’t laid all those Ocean cables on its own dime...

I’m sorry, but what are you talking about? A Nobel Chemistry prize was just awarded for the creation of AlphaFold.

Whole Sichuan peppercorns are most prominently used in Sichuan cooking where they can be the star of a dish (e.g. mapo tofu). However, the powder form is a central ingredient in the so-called "Five Spices" mix:

- star anise - fennel - cinnamon - clove - sichuan peppercorns

This "five spices" powder is used very often in Northern Chinese cooking as a meat or tofu rub.

In addition, sichuan peppercorns are often used in lushui in the south:

https://soupeduprecipes.com/chinese-master-brine-recipe/

and also it can be found in a lot of braising recipes.

Discussion about US taxation often omit:

- the state & local taxes (can be as high as 12-15%)

- social security (6.2%, tapers off after 150k)

- medicare (2% generally)

- net investment income tax (3.8%)

- different tax treatments of short and long term capital gains

Sure, if you just look at the federal rate, the US tax rate does seem a lot lower...

VAT are generally higher in Europe though. Even in the "high sales tax" areas in the US, you'd typically get ~10% compared with 22% in Europe.

It's always BGP......

Recreational marijuana and JUUL is very much a millenial/gen Z hobby, and it is being pushed with a fervor that glosses over serious studies any potential health risks.

IMO weed will be in 50 years where "big tobacco" is right now.

If you paid for the ticket, then you get service from point A to point B.

This isn't hard.

If you're talking about terrible behaviour from United employees, this is not an isolated case.

See also "United Breaks Guitars" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Move to Cayman Islands or Monaco and convince the company to keep you on their payroll.

https://nomadcapitalist.com/global-citizen/countries-no-inco...

Businesses get preferential tax treatment because we want to encourage risk-taking. Yes, focusing on a handful of hyper-successful businesses make it seem like things are "not fair", but that's neglecting the much higher likelihood of businesses failing vs. a payroll employee getting fired. In most cases, even if an employee is fired, there are still labour law protections, social security, severance packages, and the employee has right to sue. When businesses fail, they fail.

If you want to get preferential tax treatment, go start a business! Go take risks, hire people, make money, pay other businesses, this is how capitalism works! If you can make it, by all means enjoy your tax deductions.

What can make this system dysfunctional is when you have corruption and cronyism that unfairly disadvantages some businesses vs. others. For example special access to loans, bailouts, or special tax deductions for meeting esoteric criteria. But this would a corruption problem IMO, rather than an inherent unfairness in the tax scheme.

It's possible to build more houses... up to a limit.

Cities need to be supported by enough resources -- that includes enough water, proximity to arable land, hospitable climate, and ease of access. The 2% figure you quoted can be a bit misleading because we can never develop 100% of the land into houses.

But as Japan/China/Korea has shown, it is probably still very possible for England to become much denser than it currently is. It would require all the residents to change their lifestyles to match though.

Quite right!