This comment is the equivalent of trying to have a real conversation with someone and they start singing a commercial jingle.

That’s an interesting read, but I think it misses a point of where that 25% GDP is really coming from. The US makes 25% of the GDP because they outsource. To use other country’s labor, other countries people, other other people’s brains, and they take a huge chunk of profit from it. They then claim that’s their GDP.

America is a very efficient country, with a lot of skilled workers creating a lot of cool products and stuff, but it’s not 5x other countries. The only way to get those numbers is by leveraging the work of other people and claiming it for yourself.

“On the other hand gas has a much higher energy density than batteries and a much faster refuel rate.”

But the reality is managers want to pick who gets laid off. It’s not that they want to just cut heads and reduce costs… upper management. may want that… but the actual managers want to keep their best and brightest. They know who the people are who get shit done, and they want to keep those people. Rto tends to have the opposite effect.

The reality is it is often the best employees, the most experienced employees, and some very high level employees who have the most confidence and are most willing to say " screw you, I know I can find a job somewhere else" And give the middle finger to the employer who’s trying to do an RTO plan.

Don’t be fooled by the headlines. Real businesses want to control who they let go. They want to have all the power in the relationship. They want to cut their lower performers and keep their superstars. RTO is about the worst head cutting program you could dream up.

This is the home of Tesla. There are a million EVs here.

I’m in the SF bay area.

The off-hours rate for my electricity is $0.04 cheaper than the prime hours rate. It’s laughable. $0.51 vs $0.47. Why bother even thinking about it at that pathetic difference? It’s certainly not going to change the math much.

It’s shockingly high. I live in the SF bay area and I’m a bit pissed off at how bad we’re getting screwed.

We have a Volvo XC90. Much bigger (and probably heavier) than your Bolt. It gets ~26MPG on the gas only mode. It has an 18.8kWh battery and can go ~30 miles on a charge. So again, bigger, heavier, and less efficient. At $0.50 per kWh, it takes ~$9 for 30 miles, and ~$5.5 in gas to go 26 miles.

That’s all great, but the real thing that will stop it is economics. We have a PHEV and I calculated it out and we pay $8 per gallon equivalent compared to $5.50 for regular gas. That’s a pretty big difference. Right now we ignore the EV part of the vehicle. (Live in California and I pay $0.50/kwh.)

We’re planning on getting solar shortly and that may make it feasible, but until then, it’s not.

I’d even go simpler than that. “If calling people by their preferred pronouns is one of the hundred biggest challenges…” Inserting “correct” into the statement just begs to get into an argument with a conservative and feels like you’re trying to force them to accept a different reality than they want to.

IMHO it’s simply a personal preference thing. Let people live how they want to live. You don’t have to convince everyone that Sally is really a woman trapped in the body of a man, you just have to say that it’s her preference you call her as a “she”. People should have the freedom to define themselves. That’s it. End of story.

My conservative neighbor brought up trans stuff thinking he’d use all the conservative media talking points and my answer was simply “it doesn’t really bother me. I’m a live and let live kind of guy. If they want me to use a different pronoun I’ll do my best to switch to that pronoun.” If you spin it as a freedom instead of a reality then it’s easier to accept.

Capital gains isn’t a “2nd tax on money people already earned”. If I put my money in a bank account and earn 10% interest (laughable I know) and I earn $10k on the $100k I have in the bank, I pay income taxes on the $10k. If I buy a piece of land for $100k and I sell it for $110k, I pay capital gains tax on the $10k. In both cases I didn’t work for the money and I only paid taxes on the profit.

Capital gains tax is NOT taxing money twice, and even if it was, sales tax is a much more direct “taxed twice” tax. There is no such rule as “money can’t be taxes twice” in our society. Capital gains tax should be done away with and all profit should just be called “income” and taxed accordingly, just like the rest of us who work for a living.

It’s a common phrase for to describe prioritizing bad news over normal news in media… basically saying bad shit gets top billing on news outlets. For example, murder, accidents, deaths, etc, they will lead the news feeds. This tends to give watchers/readers a skewed perspective as to how bad things are in the world. For example, murder rates may be down but media constantly hyping up the latest murders may get people to think it’s the worst it’s ever been… reality be damned.

Can someone explain to me what “collateral for loan is realized gain” means?

WHy not both?

That’s weird because the world is in better shape than it was when I grew up. You have drills for what to do in active shooter situations. I had drills for what to do in case of a nuclear war. I don’t think it’s as much to do with how bad the world is vs how bad the economy is for young people… and I"m not even sure if it’s statistically worse. Certainly housing is worse. Are there any other metrics that are really worse? (This is an honest question, I"m not looking for a generational fight. None of us have any control over when we were born.) Wealth inequality has gotten worse, but it was pretty bad before too.

I guess what I"m really arguing is that I think there is too much negativity and pessimism in our society especially amongst the young. Some things do suck. But finding someone who you love and then deciding to start a family with them and creating a small pocket of a better world seems 100% worth it to me.

His personality probably changed when he started taking all the drugs.

The issue is that romance tends to be prioritized over friendship in media even for straight relationships

This doesn’t seem strange to me. Personally I do this. I’m in a committed long term relationship married, but even before that I prioritized romantic relationships above friendships. I don’t get why this is weird (forgetting the exaggerated “I met this guy I have nothing in common with 2 days ago and we’re so totally in love” part).

The reality is that even if they’re pretty in shape, they wear enough gear and body armor that running in that stuff is going to be quite a workout. If you and the cop are equal runners with no gear, you’re going to beat him by a mile when he has his gear on.

So you only heard about climate change when celebs like Taylor Swift started promoting it? The writing has been on the wall for decades (from scientists) and we’ve been hearing about it for that amount of time. If you think that the only reason you know about it is from celebs then apparently they were needed in order to reach you.

More people than billionaires are telling you there’s a climate issue. Scientists are, normal people are, etc. It’s the biggest environmental issue of our lifetimes. And there are some celebrities that are also trying to use their popularity to promote the message to get the government to create a set of rules that will actually impact out much CO2 we’re putting into our atmosphere. The right-wing talking heads have found that it’s really effective to point at them and say “LOOK! They have big houses! They fly around in private jets! They use more resources that 100 of you normal folks, therefore we shouldn’t do anything.”

The reality is that they’re using more resources than 100 of us normal folks, but there are 100k of us normal folks to each of them so we make a much more significant impact on the climate than they do. And yes, lets make the laws affect them also. But the “they’re flying around in jets” talking point is lame. They’re going to be flying around in jets no matter what. They’re going to have big houses no matter what. So lets make them have lots of solar panels on their big houses or make flying around in private jets more expensive. That’s just a reason to make the laws affect them also, it’s NOT a reason to do nothing and let the world burn.