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> You can mandate trees, but then you'll get less parking.

This implies we want to maximise car parking spaces in a city, when, I think, you'd want to maximise enjoyment of the city.


Your views are getting more unhinged by the day fyi.

You used to have interesting, if tediously contrarian things to say. But now it's just strawmans and weird takes like the above.


I wonder if his clients are aware of his posting history.

Serious question: what exactly is unhinged about my point? Naturalized citizens supported Hilary Clinton 2-1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/632012/voter-turnout-of-.... They supported Biden by 27.

Do you think Democrats can’t Google these statistics? Or do you think it’s an insignificant share of the electorate? (Foreign-born is 10% and children raised and socialized by foreign born parents is even higher.) Or do you think Democrats’ immigration viewpoints have nothing to do with what’s good for their electoral prospects?

Or do you think Democrats do know all this. But it’s “unhinged” to notice because you think people from Bangladesh will participate in civic governance the same way as a sixth generation Vermonter? Or do you realize they won’t and you’re actually okay with that?

These are genuine questions. I’m struggling to understand your ideological priors here.


I know it's par for the course, but I'm constantly surprised to see how editorialised official communications from the US government are.

Everything is written in the voice of a terminally online Twitter troll. Every single communication from the U.S. federal government should be assumed to be a lie until proven otherwise.

I wonder how long it takes (it took?) before Americans think this is how it all should be, and that this is how it is in every country.

This "article" just rehashes the top submissions from the reddit thread and then adds some surface level musings about UX.

It also blasts you with a full screen subscribe popup, ostensibly in case you want to see more rehashed content.


Seriously, why not just link to the Reddit thread instead of this? It seems like every damn site has become a Torment Nexus.

In defense of this blogspam, the original posts were each individual submissions to /r/programmerhumor, so there's no easy way to link to a collection of them on reddit itself.

That wasn't part of the show? The popup (no idea what was on it, no one reads those of course) shows up and you think 'Ah. Yes, that would be very annoying if that happened while interacting with a volume slider.'

The popup also scrolled down for me and I had to scroll back up to hit the X.

Also, the post is on Medium.

It works fine with javascript blocked, thankfully.

That popup is typical of blogs hosted on Medium. I don't know if the author even has control over if it pops up or now.

Why not use SHAP?

Fyi, large states in the US routinely have rolling blackouts and brownouts.

Texas, California (the richest state lmao), Puerto Rico, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi etc


Fyi, this is not true. California has them but they are not routine, and are a function of internal political dysfunction that is quite unique to California. The grid here is still extremely fragile, and vulnerable to e.g. cyberattack and other disasters, but let's not get carried away.

California at least only has blackouts when pge causes another fire.

You can tell them they are doing a shameful job or that you disagree with their actions or whatever.

You just can't _insult_ them like a 6 year old on a playground. Why is the ability to do so valuable to you?


It is viscerally against my cultural upbringing for the government to make illegal a verbal insult, it seems like an incredible overreach. I'm genuinely culture shocked hearing this. I'd be no more shocked hearing that it's illegal to dye one's hair.

Fyi, insults are illegal in the US, under certain conditions, under the fighting words doctrine.

The first thing you described is an insult.

No, an insult implies insolence, rudeness, condescension, insensitivity. You can communicate a dim view of someone without being rude.

> You can communicate a dim view of someone without being rude.

I would agree in theory, but whom is the judge of whether communicating that dim view is an insult or not?


Maybe that right is not worth the trade off

Unless you change the culture it will be just like the drug war. Firearms familiarity and possession are a cultural rite of passage for ~most males in the USA and there is no way to regulate that in a way that meaningfully stops it short of perhaps large-scale death penalty.

Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.


To get a gun in Norway i need 6 months in a shooting sports club. And then can only take the gun with me for shooting exercise. Strictly prohibited to have a round chambered when not standing on the shooting lane. And then only after an order from the guy running the training.

Sure, but I could print a reliable firearm with ECM'd barrel and make ammunition within a couple weeks if I went to Norway and so could most of your citizens, just following FGC-9 and "but what about ammo" instruction guides. The law says 6 months but in practice that's not the limiting factor. And then with no problem chamber a round and walk around with it in a backpack. The same applies in most of EU; of course in someplace like France or Poland you can straight up buy a black powder revolver over the counter which although heavy works quite well for most self defense cases with a firearm.

The fact is if any particular Norwegian decides today they want a gun, criminal record or not, and they have very modest means by Norwegian standards they will have it within a few weeks, no problem at all. Of course in USA criminal have been found many times with these self-made guns, now quite reliable and accurate, but a great deal of culture here is people will bear arms no matter the prison sentence hanging over their head or what the law says, and that is the cultural issue you will run into trying to curb gun possession in America. The fact Norwegians don't I think has more to do is that they don't view gun's as integrally to their natural rights and cultural imperative as much as Americans do, the physical potentiality is there for them to bear arms roughly widely as Americans do even without a change to law.


Most people, including myself, have no interest in jumping through such hoops to exercise a constitutionally protected right. We also value the ability to carry (mostly) anywhere we see fit for the purpose of defending ourselves in a worst case scenario.

Yes, the American cultural preference for guns is well established. The GP's point was that in most of the world guns are more restricted and people are doing just fine.

Again, a bit naive, but that actually sounds okay to me. You'll learn to use the gun responsibly and in a controlled manner. What else would you want to do with it and why?

Sorry for not making it clear in the first post. I just meant to say it's a little harder to get in some countries. The "Europe" is quite diverse.

Still, 6 months or not, from what I've heard, people have their gun permit applications rejected very rarely. Compared to Poland - it's much easier. Also just hearsay, but I've heard that it can be hard to get a permit and it's often rejected without any apparent reason.

But that was about pistols. Hunting rifles seem to be much easier to get in both Poland and Norway, though you still need to be a part of a hunting "club". Not sure what it's called, but it also takes some time and effort, just the rejection rate is lower.


The drug war that the US government created?

The numbers you are using are not common at all.

I get what you mean, but I doubt corruption is good for building good housing

Corruption isn't prevented by regulations; its enabled by regulations. That's the flaw in your thinking. If a market's only players are really rich, there are 2 possible reasons for that: 1) the market is really good and more players should be entering or 2) the market is highly regulated which prevents more players. Guess which happens a lot more than the other in RE development?

PS Most of the people who build houses aren't very rich, just the CEO/big boss who owns the entire company is. The other 99.9% of people are middle class/blue collar.


> just the CEO/big boss who owns the entire company is. The other 99.9% of people are middle class/blue collar

Yup. I did some IT integration work for a man who owned a local construction company and was very effectively vertically integrating it. In addition to their other work he'd buy land, personally, his company would build at cost prices, and his office staff first informally and then more formally became property managers.


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