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eclectic_electron

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eclectic_electron ,

Reminder that a “living wage”, and what most servers make, is at least 3x minimum wage, so tipping is still going to be required.

eclectic_electron ,

Tipping is “not required” the way that not cheating on an SO is “not required”. No, you’re not going to get arrested for it, but that doesn’t make it okay.

eclectic_electron ,

I hope so. I hope something like this makes it to a ballot in my state.

eclectic_electron ,

Unfortunately that’s not the reality in full service restaurants in the US, where I live. Servers are reliant on tips to live. The practice is pervasive. I don’t know of a single non-tipped full service restaurant in my city.

eclectic_electron ,

I don’t think chickens raised for meat live anywhere near 2 years. Yeah, a quick google shows around a 2 month harvest time for chickens raised for meat. That’s a big part of why chickens are such amazing creatures and make such an affordable protein source, they can be sustainably* harvested year round. (Sustainably as in without decreasing the size of your flock.)

Laying hens are productive for two to three years. They rarely make it into the human food supply though, after that long the texture and flavor of the meat changes and American consumers don’t prefer it. You can probably get them through a local butcher shop, though they might have to order it for you.

In a small and well managed flock, chickens can live 6 to 8 years. In the wild, I don’t think modern chickens would exist at all. Ask anyone who’s kept chickens, keeping the hawks and foxes and raccoons etc. out of them is a constant and eternal struggle.

eclectic_electron ,

Surprisingly relevant lol

eclectic_electron ,

The article is pretty short so it’s hard to tell, but I know in other cases there can be a significant difference between whether or not you say you’re an engineer when you make these claims.

The term engineer is effectively a trademark controlled by a state licensing board. They want to protect the word engineer so it’s clear to the public when someone is speaking as a professional licensed engineer vs not. Overall, this is a good thing and a direct response to specific and numerous very bad things that have happened in the past.

However, this has also resulted in some very awkward situations because the word engineer has almost become a genericized trademark in that there are many people who have the word engineer in their job title but do not have or need a professional engineer’s license.

Based on the fact the guy won the case, I’m going to assume he wasn’t substantially misrepresenting his qualifications. The headline is very sensationalized though and the article is lacking any detail, so I don’t know how relevant this little anecdote is but I find it interesting.

eclectic_electron ,

I have engineer in my title, I work in software, and there kind of is a PE available for software but it’s actually just an EE license with maybe half a dozen software questions tacked on. I’ve never heard of anyone in software actually getting it. It’s slightly more common in EE and ME, and I think a lot more common in civil and structural engineering.

I don’t know how aggressively state engineering boards actually enforce their hold on the word “engineer”, but I still try to be careful. The last thing I want is to get sued for misrepresenting qualifications.

eclectic_electron ,

Landlords take on risk. For example, when I rented an apartment, I came home one day to a plumbing disaster. I called emergency maintenance and left. The landlord fixed it and paid for my hotel in the meantime. As a home owner now, that would be entirely on me to figure out. I’m pretty handy, but I have no disrespect for someone who doesn’t want to be responsible for that.

More importantly, selling a house costs about 10% of the value of the house, and the first few years of a mortgage you’re mostly paying interest. If you move every 3 years, it’s actually cheaper to rent than to buy. It’s just that your money is going to a landlord instead of to banks and realtors.

So while I see your argument that landlords don’t “deserve” the money they make, practically they’re an important part of the housing market, and I respect people who make an informed decision to rent.

eclectic_electron ,

I’d be willing to bet you bought at least a few years ago, and probably couldn’t afford the house you’re in now if you had to buy it today. I’m in a similar spot. It definitely feels wrong. The rapid increase in prices in the housing market in the past few years is ridiculous. I think it’s a lot more complicated than “landlords” though. I think a lot of the issue stems from restrictive zoning that prevents the construction of small homes in dense neighborhoods. A lack of respect for trade jobs also contributes, with massive shortages of skilled construction workers driving prices up.

Granted, I live in a relatively affordable smaller city. If I were in a city with a lot of real estate speculation like LA or Toronto I might feel differently. But speculators aren’t landlords. I have a much bigger beef with a speculator who let’s a house sit empty than a landlord renting out apartments.

eclectic_electron ,

What do you mean no choice? There’s always a choice.

Realistically many people don’t have a choice to buy, because they don’t have the credit score, reliable income, or down payment, but I don’t see why that blame falls on landlords and not on the banks or the government?

eclectic_electron ,

I think a big component of the problem is location. I may have a different perspective living in a low cost of living city. Just a few years ago I lived in a two bedroom apartment that was $650/mo. It was old and not very nice, but totally functional and reasonably safe. It was a bigger complex so the landlord was a management company. They weren’t amazing or anything, but they held up their end of the lease. I understand the situation somewhere like NYC or California is going to be radically different.

I think that’s where a really interesting question comes in though, do people have a right to housing? Or a right to housing in the place they’re currently living? It’s a big difference. Forcibly relocating people is… Problematic at best. But there are places like LA where it’s almost physically (geologically) impossible to build enough housing for everyone who wants to live there.

If you haven’t already I’d recommend listening to the podcast mini series “according to need” by 99 percent invisible. I really appreciated the perspective it offers into some of the practical challenges of trying to get homeless people housed.

Ultimately I don’t know that I’d call housing a “right”, purely for semantic reasons, but I do think the very existence of homelessness and housing insecurity is a devastating critique of our social and economic systems. I didn’t think we’ll ever have a system that completely eliminates renting/short term housing, but we do clearly need to change a lot of things about how housing works now.

eclectic_electron ,

I think there’s some ability to distinguish as anything intentionally discarded due to spillage or damage should be accounted for directly, as opposed to only showing up at inventory

Obviously it is impossible to separate out honest mistakes, intentional theft, and disgruntled employee semi-intentional shrink. If you ask the company, 500% of shrink is theft by organized crime rings and the general public should definitely be spending taxpayer dollars on police enforcement and jail time for pretty thieves. So I would assume most of it is actually accidental check out mistakes and employees “accidentally” checking things out wrong.

eclectic_electron ,

You know that’s not actually going to happen though. Maybe one in a hundred will get intercepted and saved at best.

eclectic_electron ,

They could be, and probably should be repurposed

But also, brand new chrome books are ~$80

By the time you collect, clean, repair, and reimage the older computers, it may well be cheaper to just buy Chromebooks.

I hate seeing anything useful going to the trash but the economics aren’t great in this case

eclectic_electron ,

Indeed. It would be interesting to run the same analysis for censorship of pro Israel content and compare the differences between the two, though the data would likely still be noisy and inconclusive.

eclectic_electron ,

They are not the same, but it is still disappointing to see lots of lazy, reactionary arguments, circle jerking, etc even if you agree with what someone is ultimately supporting.

eclectic_electron ,

People aren’t comparing it to alternatives, they’re comparing it to Google 5-10 years ago.

Google used to be astoundingly good at figuring out what it was you wanted, and finding out for you. Now there’s a lot more SEO garbage and meaningless fluff clogging every results page, and if your search could even remotely be related to buying something, it’s only products and ads.

eclectic_electron ,

It’s a “potato bar” not just a potatoes to presumably that price is intended to include all the bacon, cheese, etc.

Really though it’s probably just whatever the hotel cafeteria charges for potato because that’s a lot easier than coming up with a new price and then justifying it in case of an audit.

The Clarence Thomas Scandal Is Somehow Looking Even Worse (www.vanityfair.com)

ProPublica reports that Thomas was in debt, frustrated with his salary, and implying he’d resign from the Supreme Court if his financial situation didn’t change—just before Harlan Crow and other conservatives started lavishing him with expensive gifts and luxury vacations....

eclectic_electron ,

Yeah, but that would 100% get abused politically to remove justices that don’t align with whoever is issuing clearances. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but recent history has shown that trusting politicians to not abuse the system isn’t a good long term solution

eclectic_electron ,

Apparently the hot water leaches lead out of fittings and solder joints much faster than cold water does

eclectic_electron ,

Since no one seems to have read the article, and the summary doesn’t answer the headline, I gave it a skim. Basically, regulations on lead in food are a work in progress, but progress tends to be slow when there isn’t much political pressure behind it, and that pressure tends to only come after something goes wrong.

The big problem is threading the gap between what is technically possible with existing technology and infrastructure, and what the limits would ideally be from a public health perspective. Everyone agrees there should be a limit, but finding the best number for each food product is a complicated process.

it can be difficult to agree on recommended lead levels because fruits, vegetables and whole grains all contain varying amounts of the heavy metal.

eclectic_electron ,

There should be eventually but young children are particularly susceptible so it’s a logical place to start

eclectic_electron ,

The only thing I miss it for is plugging into the car. I’ve got Bluetooth adapters now though that work pretty well. In theory I might run into a situation where it would be nice to be able to plug into a speaker or someone else’s car or something, but BT is so common it doesn’t really come up.

eclectic_electron ,

Getting rid of a toilet might be easy. My trash company accepted one as my once a month “large item”. I just had to dry out all the water and bag it up with the tank and bowl in separate bags.

Upgrading to a modern toilet with a good MAP score was a huge upgrade and not terribly expensive compared to other projects. I think we’ve plugged it maybe once since we got it? The old toilet needed to be plunged regularly.

If you decide to take it on just give your trash company a call first and see what their policies are.

eclectic_electron ,

Doesn’t that chart show wages going up during the pandemic then coming back down to basically the same level they were at before?

eclectic_electron ,

Polls are important especially in economics because people’s opinions matter. Everyone thinking the economy is bad will cause a recession even if there isn’t an economic reason for one otherwise.

eclectic_electron ,

The baking soda will just neutralize the vinegar though? And you’ll get salt water? Vinegar is good at getting smells out though.

eclectic_electron ,

What’s your workflow that merging into other people’s WIP is normal? I’m so confused

eclectic_electron ,

I like this. Like a digital equivalent to how a car’s VIN is stamped on a bunch of different parts all over the car so a different buyer can tell if it’s been wrecked and repaired.

eclectic_electron ,

School budgets are paid out of city property taxes, which are mostly paid and voted on by old people who own homes with no mortgage and little chance of increasing their income. They also don’t have young kids and are probably Republican.

They’d gouge their own eyes out before they’d vote to raise their own property taxes to pay for something that doesn’t benefit them.

Ergo, schools are always underfunded.

eclectic_electron ,

White meat is “fast twitch” muscle and is used for short powerful bursts of activity, like the breast muscles, which are used for flapping the wings

Dark meat is “slow twitch” muscle and is used for longer duration activities like walking, hence the legs and thighs are dark meat.

Dark meat contains more fat and can be cooked longer without becoming dry. White meat becomes dry and tough very quickly if overcooked.

This only really applies to birds, mammals are made of red meat, which is like a combination of both fast and slow twitch and can do both sort and long duration activities

eclectic_electron ,

Some games still do AoE 4 has the HD assets as an optional DLC so you can decide whether it’s worth the drive space/download time.

eclectic_electron ,

TBF that’s how many master artists worked in the past. The big art producers had one master painter guiding a bunch of apprentices who did the actual legwork.

eclectic_electron ,

Blame the great vowel shift.

But also, English spelling can’t standardize because English pronunciation isn’t standard. West Coast vs Midwest vs South vs East Coast have vastly different accents. Any spelling reform that makes English phonetic for one would be wrong for the others.

And it keeps changing! People keep moving and interacting with other languages, adding and dropping words and accents over time.

eclectic_electron ,

That list records 8 fatalities related to nuclear power in the US. All time.

Coal is responsible for more than 40. Per year. Just in my city.

eclectic_electron ,

And a dam failure isn’t that much better than a nuclear accident, and far more common and less regulated

eclectic_electron ,

Those wind turbines and solar panels also get constructed, and affect a much larger area. It’s not an obvious comparison

eclectic_electron ,

Obviously building one wind turbine is less disruptive, but you need hundreds to get the same output, and they only work when it’s windy.

eclectic_electron ,

Almost anything has the potential to negatively affect tens of thousands of people when it’s managed as recklessly and negligently as Chernobyl.

Chernobyl was less a reactor and more a bomb with a very long fuse. Saying we shouldn’t build nuclear reactors today is like saying you shouldn’t take a modern cruise because 14th century sailing ships sank all the time.

eclectic_electron ,

There are a lot of good arguments for wind, and I’m not arguing against it, but density and consistency are well known issues. You absolutely cannot replace a nuclear plant with a wind farm of the same size and get the same output. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, wind farms can often coexist with other land uses, but that’s still a disruptive environment.

It’s good to put pressure on nuclear, the reason it’s so incredibly safe is because it’s highly regulated, but to completely ignore it is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The question isn’t “are nuclear plants perfectly safe”, the question is “will adding nuclear plants to our energy portfolio reduce the risks from climate change enough to offset the risks they introduce.”

I think, in that framework, replacing existing coal power plants with modern nuclear reactors is a huge overall benefit.

Wind and solar are great but there’s still a lot of work needed on storage and transmission before they can be viable grid scale. Realistically, saying no to nuclear doesn’t mean more wind, it means more natural gas. And those LNG tankers really are floating bombs.

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