I’m OK with a live filibuster. Being able to “filibuster” a bill by passing a note to the teacher threatening to talk all night does not promote compromise or good lawmaking.

For me, the effort of going somewhere to exercise is a big impediment, and I’m self-conscious exercising in front of people. The low barrier to start a daily workout wins, hands down.

Others find camaraderie just having other people involved in the same process, or really enjoy the variety of machines and options of a well-equipped facility.

You have to figure out which type of person you are. The most important thing is just to do something. (Unless you have specific, Jason Momoa-type goals in mind)

Traveled to Rome recently (as US citizen). Walked no more than 10 minutes from the gate, was 5th in line to one of a half dozen or so automated camera/scanner customs gates, and cleared customs within 15 minutes of landing.

Returned to the US, walked for 20 minutes through a maze of twisty passages to get to the customs hall, where I stood in line for another 30 minutes to get to one of a half dozen or so checkpoints where an agent scanned my passport, told me to stare at the camera, and eventually, maybe even grudgingly, welcomed me home.

Have you seen egg producer profits lately? It’s great for them to have an opportunity to find out exactly how much consumers are willing to pay for their precious eggs. Super cost efficient, for them.

The message was supposedly fine, but you can’t have it delivered by someone with brown skin.

Seriously: “the district told the Statesman that it was not the message that was at issue, but rather the hands of different skin tones on the poster.”

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/education/article301972094.html

Most of us, raised by Hollywood, imagine critical infrastructure has guards and ID checks. Keys. Guys with machine guns. The last 10 years, it’s pretty clear the major controls are just that no one tries. “I’m from DOGE” is going to be the penetration tester’s go-to social engineering hack for the next four years. Just walk in, press the Big Red Button, and leave.

Remember the Arab Spring? Massive protests in multiple North African countries, mostly peaceful regime changes. Those protests were hundreds of thousands of people - less than 1% of most country populations. Most of those nations were still going about their daily business like normal. Complaining about the awful government. Complaining about the disruption of the protests.

It’s really had to get people out of their daily routines.

In the US, there’s the extra issue that a significant part of the population are actually happy with recent events because they think it’s going to work out well for them, personally. Some of them think that the chaos is exactly the overthrow of 4 decades of terrible government they’ve been hoping for, and they don’t care what comes after.

Who wants democracy, when we can have an anarcho-capitalist libertarian utopia?

Physical violence? Did I miss where the dude got dragged from his vehicle and beaten?

Go out in public proudly displaying political symbols, and you should expect people to answer back with a yell or a finger. A sticker about how your car sucks. Maybe even a blast of coal-rolling exhaust. Words invite words; symbols invite symbols - no one’s throwing hands, so I’d say this is just about how I’d like culture war to work.

Trump 45 was happy to let his appointees work as interim this-or-that or acting whatchamacallit, and those people seemed to have exactly as much authority as confirmed appointees. Maybe they didn’t get the full paycheck? but senate confirmation seems to be completely unnecessary to the exercise of power when everyone just goes along anyway.

I’d be pretty happy to see Dems grind congress to an halt with investigations of absolutely everything, filibusters of everything else, and red card holds, or whatever other magical Senate traditions allow single Senators to completely stifle government activity.

I’ve gotten the impression that the major gains in the 5xxx line are from DLSS and frame generation going from 1:1 extrapolated frames to 3:1, and it looks like this review was just comparing straight rendering.

I feel like ‘normal’ politicians are more beholden to old-guard oligarchs, because those are the ones that brought their parents and grandparents to power. The people who’ve been funding them through their whole, 50-year careers. Those oligarchs have generally learned to avoid the public eye, including politicians that attract public scrutiny.

Donald Trump doesn’t care about relationships, heritage, or established trust. He just wants money and flattery, right now, in great volume, and that makes him uniquely susceptible to new money tech bros.

First time you do something is always harder. OpenAI just didn’t think it was 1000x harder and thought they’d have more time to cash in.

Myself, I think that being able to throw billions of dollars at hardware, and their focus on next-quarter results discouraged them from putting in the human effort to analyze and optimize their process. It turns out there were some fantastic optimizations to do.

He’s paid Trump something like $3M/day. I’ll put up with a lot of shit for $3M.

Although, now I think about it, after I’ve collected a few hundred mil, that next $3M probably wouldn’t seem so compelling.

Before the War, you want your bunker to be open and easily accessible, so you don’t have to go hunting for keys or struggle to remember a passphrase when the missiles come over the horizon. After the War, you want your valuables to be inside the bunker, so you can use your Tiffany broach to buy grain from the raiders. So, all your valuables need to be in the open bunker, but secure from pre-War thieves. Definitely need a vault in your vault.

Remember that Trump lies about everything, often in both directions. Everyone knows this, including his supporters. That gives his supporters the mental freedom to make up whateverthefuck policy positions they like and find proof that they are Trump’s real plan.

Donald Trump is the human version of a Bible. If you’re a Believer, god says he will implement your Desire. If you’re a Heretic, god says he will destroy the world. All with the same words.

It’s a little misleading to describe ‘feeling good,’ including selfless acts of altruism with the phrase “enrich themselves.”

They probably do not get the same tax cuts: a “normal” person, making a paltry $250,000/year only reduces taxes by 24% of their giving, where the ultra-rich get 37%.

But the real difference is scale. A million people each giving $100 to their favorite charity is going to distribute that money more-or-less according to the community’s overall priorities. One person giving $100M to their favorite charity has no connection to the broader community and social goals. They supercharge that one thing, which takes attention and resources from everything else.

4 - High-end philanthropy is subsidized by regular taxpayers.

I feel like this is really under-appreciated. Like, Rich Dude decides he wants to donate $100M to…whatever - early childhood education. In the US, he avoids up to $37M taxes, which you can either look at as other taxpayers making $37M matching donation or $37M taken from other society objectives.

To the extent that government is a (marginally) publicly accountable system for funding a society’s competing goals - education, health, defense, research - charity allows the very wealthy not just to bypass the social structure for prioritizing goals, but to force other taxpayers to adopt their personal priorities. Maybe the goal is good, maybe it’s not - the point is that they’re completely unaccountable.

How do you see this situation as different from splitting rent with a housemate?

To me, the ethical questions lie not in the situation, but in how you handle it. Charge your tenant high enough rent to cover the full mortgage, maintenance, and renovations of the whole building? Sounds sketchy. Charge “market rate” just because that’s what the hedge-fund landlords demand? Sketchy. Find a rent level that accounts for your costs & maintenance of the rented space, an allowance for vacant time, and risk of bad tenants? That’s a great way to help people find housing, without being an actual charity, and make more sustainable use of a big space than living in it all by yourself.