admiralteal

admiralteal , 4 months ago to mildlyinfuriating in There is some Tesla brigade working hard to remove everything from the internet that makes them look bad.

But like, what's your point?

Setting aside all the practical ways this suit could be handled affordably (e.g., her actual damages were a much smaller monetary sum compared to that invoiced amount and probably eligible for small claims)...

Having a policy around cancellations in the invoices would not materially effect anything here. While it might be helpful to ensure a good-faith customer behaves in a professional and appropriate way, such policies have little effect on a bad-faith customer.

Even without an explicit policy, this is fairly straightforward promissory estoppel, or at least something very much like it. If she had a policy, she would have a very strong case. Without, I still reckon she has a very strong case -- pretty much just as strong. Either way, the recourse is the courts.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to mildlyinfuriating in There is some Tesla brigade working hard to remove everything from the internet that makes them look bad.

Eh, if she really wanted to take it to court I'm relatively sure her case is sound. A reasonable man knows you cannot cancel such a large order of perishable goods on short notice. She probably had her own reasons, whether lack of savvy, a belief the media campaign would serve her better, or maybe even just that she doesn't want to go to court.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to technology in We are closing in on zero-carbon cement

Highly recommend Volts to everyone interested.

David Roberts is EXTREMELY practical, politically. He's very no-nonsense, but gives clear and simple reasons for why he categorizes stuff as nonsense when he does. He's not some techno-wizard optimist, but he's also clear about how much tech we DO have and how much is achievable on realistic timelines if we just commit. He's also clear about what the obstacles are, and even sometimes gives useful calls to action.

His most recent episode on nuclear is an almost perfect example of this. A lot of people are VERY enthusiastic about nuclear. He had Jigar Shah from the DOE on to talk about the field extensively -- the upsides and downsides, what technologies work and make sense, what technologies are just mis-advertised, what technologies are total vaporware, why it's so hard to build nuclear in the US (hint: it's not the anti-nuke environmental lobby), and all that. Fabulous interview.

I definitely trend towards doomerism on all this stuff, but it's good to be reminder the tech really is there decarbonize a LOT and VERY FAST, and probably even achieve planetary net zero or even net negative within my lifetime. Just have to convince people the juice is worth the squeeze -- which it undeniably is when the entire ecosystem is at stake.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to technology in Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control

Sounds to me like there is a total glut of software engineers.

Which makes it really difficult to fathom why they are paid so goddamn much.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in A Florida high school required parents' permission for students to watch Disney's 'Tangled,' prompting some to say local education laws are 'out of control'

Specifically, the point is to create so much dysfunction in the public school system that it eventually collapses. Then, they can instead fund Christian Madrasas instead.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to technology in Report: 75K loyal Redditors can snag shares before Reddit goes public

The most charitable read is that it's an attempt to build hype among powerusers by letting them own a piece of it.

In a vacuum, that's actually kind of nice.

A less charitable reading is that they're targeting the users who have flukes and blowholes to try and get even more money from them as part of a media campaign to make it seem like they truly value those users.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in US unions target the housing affordability crisis as their ‘biggest issue’

As a rule, the only single statistic that is clearly correlated with homelessness is the delta between the prevailing wage and the prevailing rent in a geographic area. You can basically predict a city's homelessness rate by the affordability of housing. Sure, people try and cite all kinds of other things. They'll say it has to do with weather, with mental health, with drug use, with available social services. But there's also statistics that basically confound these kinds of measures so badly you can reasonably claim them to be falsified. Homelessness is, above all else, an effect of housing unaffordability. Anyone who talks about the issue who tries to pretend ANY other issue matters more than lack of affordable housing is suspect. You may or may not think this sounds insightful, but the truth is that the gulf between prevailing wages and prevailing rent is really just a measure of how painful it is to get a residence in an area -- so of COURSE homelessness increases with it.

Meanwhile, MOST US cities have laws, rules, and processes set up that reduce housing supply, either intentionally or as an obvious consequence. Policies that objectively make no sense.

Labyrinthine and unreasonable permitting processes. The slow death squeeze of the local builder by national firms that churn out giant, expensive, ticky-tacky homes. Redlining-era restrictive zoning rules that prevent sensible infill. Mandatory parking minimums based on voodoo 'science' that can make it flatly impossible to build dense housing (even in bikeped or transit-connected neighborhoods). The gradual death of the local bank, forcing ALL projects to fit standard national finance paper products that may not work or make sense in your city. Lack of regulation on the rental market or incentivization of owner-occupancy. Lack of said bikeped and transit connections, which de facto increases costs by forcing residents to own, maintain, and use cars for all their trips.

I absolutely think labor organization is a big way to fight back against homelessness because improving bottom-line prevailing wages is going to be a way to fight back against homelessness -- but no single solution will do the job on its own. And most of the best solutions for this can actually start super local -- they don't need national or even state elections to go a certain way, they just need local politicians to listen. You, as an individual, can email, call, or show up to MPO/council meetings and move the needle on a lot of these.

If you want to, you can start with something like the Strong Towns action lab to view guides, advice, and script-like documents for what to actually do and say at these meetings.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in Car insurance prices surge

But they do produce smaller cheaper cars that can follow those emissions standards - for markets like Germany or the Netherlands. They just refuse to go through the process of certifying and selling those same vehicles in the US market.

Not to be all tinfoil hat, but I think they have a gentleman's agreement to just not be competitive like that in the US market because they can get away with it. Because the US consumer is gullible and our Regulators are asleep at the wheel.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in Car insurance prices surge

Those first two, the "people" are largely the auto manufacturers.

Smaller and cheaper cars are SUPER popular in the rest of the world and are literally not available at all in the US. The auto mfgs will tell you it is because of US preference, but in a country of 330 million, there doesn't need to be that much demand compared to these vehicles popularity in, say, a cheese-loving nation of 65 million. Even if they are immensely less popular, there is still MORE than enough market for some of these ALREADY-BEING-PRODUCED vehicles.

But the US auto mfgs refuse. They go bigger and more expensive. The US consumer has no real choice.

For your fourth and fifth, the "people" are US civil/transportation engineers. They must be stopped. They are a scourge. There's no culture of safe road engineering in the US. AASHTO are an association of insane fuckwits.

I am incredibly skeptical that the behaviors of US drivers are significantly different than anywhere else in the world. I'm pretty skeptical of worries over inspections or licensing requirements and am CERTAIN that additional police enforcement will only cause more mayhem and death and not protect any life. I believe it's almost entirely a problem of road engineering, urban design, and vehicle design.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in West Virginia House passes bill allowing prosecution of librarians

or anything a reasonable person would find lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value

But where can they even find a reasonable person in West Virginia? Sydnee McElroy is pretty busy with being a full-time doctor and science communicator. I'm not sure there are any others.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in Oregon's Drug Decriminalization Law Faces Growing Pushback Amid Fentanyl Crisis

You can set up a justice system that is designed to reduce harm and to make the victims whole.

But doing so seems to be pretty incompatible with seeing up a penal system designed to harshly punish offenders. Because harsh punishments do not seem to be effective at preventing bad actions that create victims.

Especially in the US, we've made the choice to have a penal system instead of a justice system. And so our system does not exact justice, it just passes down punishments.

I'm for drug decriminalization and all the various kinds of harm mitigation strategies to make drugs safer to use. But I also will admit without hesitation that modern synthetic opioids and amphetamines are black holes that consume a person's entire being. If we want widespread drug decriminalization we need to do a lot of other side work to stop people from being spaghettified. We need housing and healthcare and an expectation of a baseline dignified life for everyone because if your life is going to be without dignity either way you may as well be injecting heroin while doing it.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to technology in Reddit has reportedly signed over its content to train AI models

Can't wait for the day a major court declares EULAs universally nonbinding outside of the most common-sense terms. Even though I doubt it will ever happen.

"We can store and display your content and use stuff you publicly post as examples in advertisements for our platform" is pretty common sense.

"We can use the things you post to do complex data analytics to package and sell your identity to advertisers" is fucking sus.

"We can use the things you post to train ANN generative systems to build next-generation technologies to impersonate you and your peers" is simply nuts.

The idea that displaying an EULA with an "agree" button is informed consent is just preposterous. Even lawyers don't read them.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to technology in Gen Z is bringing back landline phones because they think they look ‘cool’: ‘I love to twirl the cord’

There's just zero merit to these "people on the internet are saying X" stories.

Nothing of value to sourcing a few retweets, ticktock duets, instagram stories, or whatever the fuck TMTMTM version of it you get.

Actual street interviews with random schlubs are far, far more informative than this crap. The internet is huge and you can find literally any opinions on it. Sourcing these anecdotes is absolutely the trashiest tier of journalism and anyone writing one of these stories should think hard about an immediate career change.

Run a fucking poll if you want to write a story about public opinion.

The world will be a better place the day after every serious news media organization leaves twitter and tells all their journalists they cannot use it as anything other than an original source to what a specific public figure has to say.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to news in Tampa man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly four decades to receive $14m

Don't worry. It has no magnetosphere. Even in environmentally-enclosed shelters, you'd still see horrific rates of cancer and other such radiation-induced disease rapidly wiping out complex life like humans.

admiralteal , 4 months ago to worldnews in I’m not trying to destroy art, says man planning to do just that if Assange dies in jail

If they’re culturally or historically important, why are they in a private collection?

That's a really, really crap argument that is permissive of all kinds of cultural genocide. A LOT of artwork is in private collections that by no right should be. I make no claims about this guy's collection, but the mere fact that it is being bought and sold has no bearing. After all, I live in country that used to "legally" buy and sell people.