mulderc

The person was asking me if I had seen a specific car and I gave them my reaction to that car. BYD has cars I want that they sell for ~$15k in China which look like a much better value to me.

The BYD car I am interested in is ~$15k in China.

That is WAY more than I would ever spend for a car.

I would never spend $40k on a car.

BYD is basically the only car company that has showed off cars I would like to buy.

Given the track record…. Maybe a year?

Maybe these prediction markets are less useful than has been claimed.

I really like Orion, wish more people would give it a try as it is a very solid browser.

Google Maps isn't good for this one as it is off of a forest road. My understanding is that it is less than a mile from where you would park if you were to drive there.

I honestly don’t understand how that specific thought was motivating for you but I guess whatever works…

I had a friend who got hooked on these and it really messed up his life. He had issues before but one he was hooked to those he became unbearable to even be around.

It wasn’t the existence of an HOA. It was the HOA feeling they needed a guard gate to protect the community.

Should probably add that her grandfather was a member of the SS

Plenty of people live in failed states around the world. Just moving isn't as simple as it sounds.

American cities are not largely failed states and no I can’t think of anything like what you are suggesting. The laws we have in my very average city cover the issues I would have with my neighbors. Personally I appreciate people being creative and have housing designs I might not choose. People storing things on their property is fine as long as it isn’t a health and safety issue.

Also since my city is a democracy with vibrant civic engagement, if I thought a law needed changing I am pretty sure it would be fully debated and considered. What I have heard from friends who have lived in HOAs would suggest that I could not be confident the HOA board would give a crap.

I feel like if you need a guard gate then whatever city you live in is basically a failed state.

If there is blasting music at 3am the police in my area would deal with that and every city I have lived in deals with those type of nuance issues quickly.

HOAs are not common where I live and they just sound like people privatizing what your local government should be doing.

I have literally never heard anyone speak positively about an HOA. The city pools where I live is well liked and maintained. With the exception of the local YMCA, the public pools are considered better than the other options in the area.

Isn’t that was your local municipality in for?

My experience in higher education so far suggests the affluent are not immune to these same trends.

Kaiser is by far my best experience with healthcare in the US that wasn’t just a government run plan.

It isn’t as hopeless as it looks. Places like Oregon have been long experimenting with things like coordinated care organizations to better manage healthcare. Also health system like Kaiser Permanente compare more favorably to national healthcare systems than you might think.

Yes the US could save a ton with a more efficient healthcare system. Additionally we have shockingly high costs for basic infrastructure as compared to other developed nations which could also provide savings if we could streamline that.

For the economic impact of austerity there has been a lot of good scholarship about this recently. Check out Austerity in Crisis?: A Narrative Review of Its Economic, Social, and Political Effects in Times of Crisis https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10449

Targeting "entitlements" as a universal fix ignores both the fiscal math and the human costs. Healthcare makes up the lion's share of that spending; cutting it just shifts uncompensated care burdens onto hospitals and inflates private premiums. Cutting programs like SNAP and WIC means pulling food support from children, which causes long-term economic damage.

If the goal is deficit reduction through spending cuts, policy needs to evaluate actual economic ROI. Programs like nutritional and income supports have positive fiscal multipliers, which is why blunt austerity measures trigger negative feedback loops and contract growth.

Spending cuts have a place, but treating entitlements as a slush fund without accounting for the economic return or impact on people isn’t a productive policy proposal.

You should give something like the Amazon Kindle Scribe a go. If you are just reading then it should be fine. My issue is more when it is an android tablet using an e-ink screen. When software isn't specifically made for e-ink, it is sort of awful to use.

“This isn’t flying, this is falling with style.” - Buzz

This is just going to depend on the person. Personally I find the lower resolution and contrast to be unacceptable.

True, although I do think people have generally thought the colorsoft was a bit better viewing experience than the Kobo color options. The QA seems to always be a bit off with amazon and I would always recommend waiting a bit before buying from them.

I feel like amazon tends to wait a couple of years before using whatever the latest e-ink screen is and claim to do a lot of customization and calibration as compared to their competitors.

In theory they should be amazing. Full color, looks like paper, basically an interactive magazine!

In practice the color isn't great, the screens are slow to refresh in an annoying way, and the resolution is a noticeably worse than an iPad. I also find that apps not explicitly made for e-ink are generally garbage when used on an e-ink device.

So far I have personally been incredibly disappointed with e-ink devices outside of e-readers. I want them to be good but the experience is just so much worse than an iPad.

More that the services they were using might have been related to some part of the infrastructure that went offline. Like slack going down.