But the prices won’t go down. Reductions in production costs are only reflected in sale prices when there’s a market force driving the costs down. Right now, people have to own cars, and the barriers to entry into the matlrket are too high for new competitors. There’s no reason for the auto manufacturers to lower prices if their costs go down. They can just pocket the difference.

I legitimately think that’s a relative of mine.

I need to send this to him.

Also, despite being surly in general, he used to carry square-rimmed spectacles he’d put on when children “recognized” him.

The earth is also rotating and orbiting the sun, which is rotating around the galaxy, which is itself moving.

Top of that lorry is gonna be whipping around at relativistic speeds.

Heck, just hitting a potholes will make it move millions of lightyears.

When I was a mid-level retail manager, my philosophy was that my floor worker’s job was to take care of the customers, my store manager’s job was to take care of corporate, and my job was to facilitate both. The best way to do that most of the time was to take care of and protect my floor workers.

Most of the time the customer complaints were baseless. Sometimes they were legitimate. But in all cases my priority was taking care of my workers. I may have had to coach them on something after the complaint (usually on how to better handle asshole customers), but ALWAYS in private, and always calmly.

Sometimes I had to do something for the customer if there was a legitimate issue, like give them a $20 gift card or something.

But no matter what the situation was, if a customer was abusive to my staff they were banned from the store on the spot. I’d trespass them, put their picture on a board for our greeters, and if they attempted to return we’d have polkce escort them away.

If they had been trying to buy a firearm (we were a massive destination outdoors store), we’d blacklist them in the corporate system and I had a text message group with all the nearby firearm dealers where we’d share the names of customers we’d blacklisted.

Nobody’s business was worth allowing my people to be abused. I didn’t care that we were losing a $20,000 sale - my staff was worth more than that, both from a basic humanity standpoint, and also because having a good, experienced, loyal employee is more important than having an unreliable asshole customer. And you don’t retain good employees if you don’t protect them.

Scaling goes in both directions.

My old 1985 LTD had to have its idle set at 25mph to keep from dying.

When going through a school zone I had to ride the brake.

Getting 20 interviews is an accomplishment.

I have a 100% sucess record on getting the job offer once I get an interview l, but getting the interview is the hard part for me.

The thing is, I’m also terrible at coaching others for interviews because I don’t know exactly what I’m doing right or wrong since I effectively have no negative feedback.

At this point I think it’s mostly my confidence that carries me because I basically assume I’m getting the offer. I ask a bunch of questions about the company, working environment, etc and essentially make them pitch the job to me instead of me pitching myself as an employee. I’m also generally comfortable enough due to my past success to mostly be myself, and I think any time you can make the interviewer laugh it’s a good sign.

I got lucky in that my publication was through a journal that doesn’t charge money for access or submissions. It’s part of our professional organization and our annual membership fees cover the journal’s expenses.

The accounts are largely based in countries that are suspected by many to be manipulating US public opinion (e.g.Russia/Israel) or from countries with lots of click farms, scam centers, and other “engagement” services.

It showed how much of the American right-wing social media sphere wasn’t legitimately American in origin.

That’s probably accurate that there wasn’t a true bill, but it’s one of those things that I don’t think has actually been tested.

The specific circumstances where the foreman signed off on the second indictment with 2 charges instead of 3 without the rest of the grand jury suing the exact bill is really weird. But if it weren’t for the statue of limitations it would be an easy remedy - just take it back to the grand jury.

And if it were a different technical error, there’s a 6- month period after the SoL in which an indictment that’s thrown out of techical grounds can be corrected.

But the combination of the 2 is unprecedented as far as I know, and there’s a legitimate legal question as to whether it’s a bad indictment that should be thrown on on technical grounds (giving 6 months to re-file) or if it simply wasn’t an indictment at all.

And now with the whole thing being thrown out because Halligan isn’t actually a US Attorney, it’s even more confusing - especially when it comes to prosecutorial misconduct she may not have committed since she wasn’t actually a prosecutor.

It’s a fascinating train-wreck.

IIRC, an indictment that’s thrown out for procedural errors has 6 months from the SoL expiration to fix the indictment, so long as the original indictment was made before the SoL expired.

With the question of whether or not the grand jury actually agreed to indict or just the foreman, the more interesting question is whether or not there even is an original indictment to be fixed.

As with many issues surrounding this administration, I don’t know if we have precedent on something like this. The way they stack up their fuckups on top of each other and make everything legally hazy means they’re either the worst attorneys in America or are really clever. Or, more likely, someone really clever knows how to use one of the worst attorneys in America in an attempt to buy 6 more months to come up with something to justify charging Comey.

Also, they can also now pretend he did something wrong but got off on a technicality. Now that it’s thrown out on procedural grounds, they don’t have to show their lack of evidence.

That’s income tax, not wealth tax. Once you get rich enough, they’re not really related anymore.

I like the idea of having a maximum wealth. Once your assets are worth X amount, you can’t have any more.

The main thing the Endangered Species Act does is limit development in the habitat of endangered species. The President of the United States is a developer. Of course he’s targeting the Endangered Species Act. He hates it with a passion.

Also, his felony convictions are related to the overvaluation of land he owns that can’t actually be developed due to a conservation easement that’s the result of the Endangered Species Act.

Reminds me of this:

If you’re in a cold environment, the water that’s been sitting in the pipes in the house will be warmer than the water coming in from outside the house. If the sink/toilet/whatever increases water usage, that warmer water gets used up more quickly.

Water chills the body about 25 times faster than air of the same temperature, so even a 1-2 degree temperature change can feel like a LOT when it’s sudden.

I knew a guy in grad school who was a hard-core Trumper back in 2015/16 who thought I was too because we both owned guns and were white I guess.

Anyway - I was talking to him one day about an epidemiological analysis I was leading a team on for HHS. I’m a geographer, and our group was analyzing the demographic, spatial, socioeconomic, and temporal distribution of cases of gonorrhea in a major metropolitan area.

I explain that we’re doing multivariate analysis on the demographic stuff because of all the issues caused by covariance showing “fake” correlation between gonorrhea and other variables. I explained that while the strongest indicator of gonorrhea in univariate analysis was whether or not you were black, that was actually an artifact from the fact that being black had a strong covariance with other variables like low income status, low employment rate, low education level, high population density, poor access to preventative healthcare, etc, and that when you took all the covariance into account there was no actual statistically significant correlation between gonorrhea and being black.

He then said something that was etched into my memory:

“It’s just you and me here, [chilie]. You don’t have to be all PC about thisbshit with me. We both know that just like how there’s stupid breeds of dogs, there are stupid breeds of people, and it’s a fucking disgrace that you can’t study that honestly here.”

That racist motherfucker has a Master’s degree.

We need to ask for the long-form Epstein Files.

I think it’s a reference to Clinton’s famous quote to a grand jury when grilled on why he said “No” when asked if there was a sexuality relationship between him and Lewinklsky.

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. … Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

When my parents got married in the 70s, somebody didn’t know my dad’s name and wanted to send a letter to my mom, so they mailed a letter to “Susie and her new husband, [City],[State]”.

They got the letter.