delg

Extensive big city stroller experience here. The only circumstance when I have been asked to fold up the stroller was busses, and that's pretty universal. Light rail, subway, regional rail trains, etc. were all fine with it, and if you take any Amtrak, pay for a Red Cap to get you on early and seat you in one of the wheelchair seats so that you can leave the stroller open in front of you.

What's the end goal for a diamond simulant? To be sparkly, or to resemble naturally-mined diamond?

That isn't a helpful comparison if what we want to know is, will spending more in the US lead to better outcomes given our diverse, high ESL immigrant, large income gap, population. So a better thing to look at is, say, do test scores go up when we throw money at a low-performing US school? And the answer there is generally yes. Which, of course. Being able to afford quality ESL instructors would mean the world in rural Eastern Washington.

Okay, so instead let's look at people who have lost weight (well-trained pilots) trying to maintain their loss. They fail miserably. Very low success rate. Among a large population. So not a rogue pilot with a machine gun, instead the majority of successful weight losers.

The advice "eat less move more" is a proven loser. Not really even a question. Time to move on. Maybe low carb/IF/less time-consuming HIIT will do better. But we know move more, eat less has failed. Being more smug about the fact it would work if only all these dummy pilots would use it right isn't going to improve the public health success rate.

You saw the part where part of the obesity problem is actually in the developing world right

That's a terrible analogy. A huge proportion of well-intentioned pilots are crashing their planes.

That's a pretty narrow definition of "benefit."

I don't think it's better yet, but it's getting there. The cost is still super high, what's available on the market hasn't been great cuts so far, etc. Soon though.

It certainly is sparklier, but it looks "off." Which is fine. It's not a good diamond substitute. It has its own charm.

This is rich. The whitest moissanite is still going to be obviously doubly refractive, pretty limited in cut options (make terrible step cuts for example) and is generally an inferior substitute to the vastly cheaper common CZ. If you are upset that the value of diamond is all in branding, then run to moissanite, which actually IS sold exclusively by a monopoly until this August...

Honestly I am not sure how you can't tell the difference between moissanite and diamond. It's pretty obvious. It's much harder to distinguish diamond and CZ.

These are some interesting insights, but I wonder: can "bootstrapped" businesses really tackle big problems? Part of the frustration with SV isn't just the kinds of "problems" they're "solving," but also that they're taking up all the oxygen (read: funding capital) that, if applied differently, could fix more meaningful problems.

Yeah, why should it matter that your business model is illegal/regulatory arbitrage? Progress!

Rare? That's not an accurate depiction of the status quo in the least. AARP is one of the more influential groups in DC not because it gives away a lot of money but because of the voting block it represents. If you did an analysis of who you are as a voter then reviewed groups in DC representing your interests, I bet you could get 2 meetings on the Hill before the end of the year.

Everyone hates lobbying until it's used as a tool to tell legislators what they want legislators to hear.

Jesus, I guess, but compare the space efficiency of a rush hour train in an urban area to 4 people in an electric car. Not that I would want to sit in a car with 3 strangers, or my spouse and baby with 2...

That, and because public school populations aren't nearly homogenous enough. See Canadian schools and UT for examples of grades not doing a good job keeping incoming student quality uniform (and necessitating remedial programs, which have their own issues).

As a lawyer surrounded by highly-compensated lawyers living month to month (with great handbags) this doesn't strike me as suspect. What's that plea of the overtaxed upper-middle class? "You don't understand how little money I have, after I spend it all."

Not necessarily true. I personally know 2 Ivy League grads from low income families who, through a combination of luck and high standardized test scores, lucked into a position of getting this kind of counseling. Lots of consultants do some amount of pro bono. Most poor kids wouldn't know to ask, though.

You can't exclude the testimony of your housekeeper that your sock drawer was full of cocaine on the basis that you had an expectation of privacy, so yes, it changes a lot.