1st

@1st@kbin.social
1st,

I know you meant to have the word "no" in there, but I'm loving the idea a business tiger getting used to his new environment

1st,

I'll be much more irritated if you're on the sidewalk. It's more dangerous for pedestrians and for you. When you're biking you expect to have to pass people whether it's because they're a slower cyclist or using a escooter. My old apartment had an exit at a blind corner and dealing with escooter riders on the sidewalk was hellish. I would pull out slowly so that pedestrians had plenty of time to stop, but when scooters became popular I had to start creating forward at a painfully slow pace because people going bike speeds somehow thought it was okay to be on the sidewalk.

1st,

The second I have to use regular expressions I'm turning straight.

1st,

Chromecast doesn't work on most hotels WiFi anyway. At least it won't work if they have a page to sign into the WiFi after connecting. Pretty much have to use a HDMI cable in most cases

1st,

Sleep with the queen of Spain. But yeah let's be honest, he wasn't exactly the first.

1st,

Or that they use child slave labor.*

*Note: they don't own slaves just contract work out to slave owners

1st,

I legit can't tell if you're continuing the joke or being serious. It's just crazy enough that I'm certain some people believe it

1st,

Okay, gotchu. The things you said were true just so wild to use as an explanation for ending quarantine that I had to take a second.

1st,

SCCM > MECM, Azure AD > Entra ID etc

Wait... I'm only 3 years into it. Is SCCM the direct predecessor of AAD/EID? I follow the SCCM group on Reddit because they usually have good opinions on updates, but have never understood what the fuck they actually did.

1st,

It's worded in such a way as to be meaningless - half of what? The original number of Russian soldiers, the original number plus Wagner and other extra troops, the current number deployed with/without mercenaries? Plus Russia's numbers don't look like US numbers, don't quite look like Ukraines numbers.

That said heres the first source I found:

Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

...

Russia has almost triple that number, with 1,330,000 active-duty, reserve and paramilitary troops — most of the latter from the Wagner Group.

Those numbers refer to the current number of deployed and undeployed Russian soldiers plus mercenaries, which is clearly not the numbers the ad is using.

To be clear, I fully support Ukraine and fully support the US guaranteeing missile manufacturers that we will buy new missiles even if the war ends tomorrow to incentivise greater production. I just think the ad played with the numbers until they said what we want them to say.

Source for both quotes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html

1st,

Did Sherman ever face Lee? I think of Lee being in Virginia and DC while I only know of Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas. I assumed the main factor effecting the numbers is general McClellan

1st,

For anybody that has never heard the impossible to sing along with original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2OcbeGqbpU

1st,

Guinness world records and Guinness beer. Bush Gardens and Bush Budweiser

1st,

It's not the entire plot, but it gives you a pretty good idea of the rest.

1st,

If this really is your primary reason, talk to your partner about adoption or foster care. There's no guilt but you can still have all the wonderful things

OC Car Headlights - Why not red?

So, just finished reading an article on WaPo about fireflies/lightening bugs and got me thinking further... Car headlights suck. They mess up our night vision when we pass another dickhead running white/blue lights. We mess up the habit(at) of many animals/bugs. So why not red lights? My hiking/camping headlamp has a...

1st,

Yeah. I was so stoked when I got this name before I learned how it all worked

1st,

There is a very real possibility that it will be designed in such a way that it's initially federated, but will slowly get to a point where they can see mastodon posts but mastodon can't see their posts. (Adding non-activitypub features and standards) All the benefit of having an already active userbase with none of the work for organic growth, and none of the downsides of competition in the long term.

Are there actually blind people without pupils, or is that a Hollywood thing?

A lot of movies, especially horror movies (I’m watching one now) depict blind people as not having pupils. But my understanding, based on blind people I’ve met, is that the problem is usually in the lens or the retina, and that they have pupils the same as everyone else. Are there actually blind people out there whose eyes...

1st,

Yep. The standard Hollywood eyes are pretty close to how my dad's look. Only Hollywood tends to do grey while his are a very pale blue. I didn't actually learn he technically had brown eyes until I was in my late teens.

1st,

I love examples of the Fibonacci sequence showing up in nature!

1st,

I mean... I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. I am gonna have to find something else to fall asleep to though

1st, (edited )

You have every right to your opinion, and you're welcome to ignore me, but I really don't understand where you're coming from on that. I can think of so many issues with having a privatized road system. Just off the top of my head,

How do these companies get the land? Every libertarian I've asked this of has gone on about how the railroads didn't need government help to get their land, which is provably false (sources 1,2,3). So given that the land is taken by the government then given or sold to the railroads, (or in our case roads) the government is still in the position of forcing the trade and choosing which companies get it.

Then we get to the topic of necessary monopoly. If we don't have a monopoly in charge of a large chunk of land, turning right will cost you an extra $10 as opposed to going straight. For that matter going straight more than 5 miles may cost you an extra $10. (I'm hoping this is uncontroversial enough to not require a source). This is the reason that we have utilities (of which private roads are - at least in my state- already one (source 4)), but this means that the government gets to say how much they're allowed to charge (source 5). If they don't place this regulation, people that live at one end of a private road and work at the other will be required to pay extortionist prices, because there can only be so many roads to get from point a to b. If we do keep those requirements then this is no longer a benefit of using private roads.

Then there's the price difference for the consumer. This one requires some pre-amble.
New Jersey has a population of 9.288 million
Michigan has a population of 10.077 million
(both source 6)
Michigan roads are funded primarily through a (shockingly high) gas tax of 19c/gal (7). (It's largely so high because the wild temperature varrations damage the roads.) The average American uses 489 gal/year (8) for a total average tax of $92.91/year.
The average new Jersey resident pays very little in gas tax, but they do pay for tolls. I can't find an average, but last year the state got ~2 billion (9) in tolls divided by the total number of residents from earlier we can roughly estimate they paid 215.33/year. (This fails to take into account visitors, but in the reverse direction it also fails to account for children and those not driving)

This is in a toll system that, unlike a private one, does not need to turn a profit. To your point on road maintenance being better for toll roads - according to Consumer Affairs NJ is raked 27th in the country for it, while Michigan is 20th (10). US news has NJ at 40, and Michigan at 30 (11).

In the end of the day, it seems to me that people will pay more to drive, and the government will still have such a high level of control of the road system that any benefit that could be found in privatization is lost.

Sources:

  1. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/22093/chapter/22
  2. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0167.htm
  3. https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5697&context=nclr
  4. https://www.ncuc.gov/ncrules/rulstoc.html
  5. https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/ByArticle/Chapter_62/Article_7.pdf
  6. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
  7. https://semcog.org/blog/part-two-michigans-road-funding-how-do-we-stack-up
  8. https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/blog/2022/05/26/top-numbers-driving-americas-gasoline-demand#:~:text=489%20gallons%2Fyear%20per%20registered,day%20of%20gasoline%20was%20sold.
  9. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2022/11/nj-toll-hikes-jan-1-2023-garden-state-parkway-nj-turnpike-atlantic-city-expressway/#:~:text=Through%20the%20end%20of%20September,according%20to%20the%20agency%20records.
  10. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-conditions.html
  11. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/infrastructure/transportation/road-quality
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