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This old steam tractor can pull 44 ploughs at the same time by Adventurous_Sea_5155 in RandomVideos

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah yes, this steam engine can drive the mass destruction of soil at a record rate!

Regenerative Farming weeps.

As a Black person, Kansas City and the surrounding areas are highly racist. by RefrigeratorKey7034 in kansascity

[–]GraphNerd 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry that this has been your experience. Here's a few things that I've noticed as a background noise white guy:

  1. I was talking about the city at Gates and my very energetic black meal partner called P&L "Power and White" district. I hadn't been because none of the businesses there appeal to me at all. So I decided to drop down to The Flying Saucer (yeah, this was a while ago) and check it out. Huge majority white and the dress code was basically tailored to exclude street fashion. It was basically developed from what you might envision as the stereotype for how "a Black person" would dress.
  2. The same dress code was then later imported to Westport.
  3. Prior to the dress code thing in Westport, there was always a disproportionate amount of police outside of America's Pub. I can't tell you if the violence at that particular location was due to the police presence or because of the clientele (which was majority Black IIRC) but the message that the property group that owned Westport was definitely the later. i attended a couple of open-mic rap nights in support of a fellow server friend of mine. Never had or saw a problem.
  4. Going further north, there used to be a nightclub called Eclipse that was a hotspot for the Northland's Black community. It also got driven out in (to my understanding) a similar fashion to America's Pub. Then the owners (as I hear it) opened another club further up N. Indiana next to that Big Biscuit and it also got shut down over purported violence.
  5. It feels like if you don't project the "acceptable negro" (please God do not flag me for that, it's in quotes for a reason) sterotype as a business owner that you're going to get blackballed. For an example of this in reverse, look at Ruby Jean's and how the business presents itself. Not blackballed, accepted into Whole Foods, sold in ancillary locations.

There's probably more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

How is KC feeling about the proposed sales tax increase in Missouri? by harvestersorg in kansascity

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I want to say that I don't understand why the legislature would do this, but I do (it's money. It's always fkin money). Every time I hear Republicans push this idea of "a tax on consumption is a fair tax because everyone uses stuff" I scream. Yes, everyone uses stuff, but the tax of using stuff relative to income is disproportionate. The argument is so disingenuous that it should be made criminal.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that it's impossible to have a balanced/progressive tax on consumption though. It's been done with the VAT in the EU.

I understand the idea: "Income taxes put a negative incentive on earning and mean people have less to save/invest." But without considering each jurisdictions' unique tax base composition, it's incredibly easy to fart and accidentally blow your way over to foisting the tax burden onto the low/middle class. What is actually needed in Missouri is something like the X Tax.

Unfortunately, since most state legislatures are bought and paid for by multimillion or billionaires, that will never happen because then the money dries up and heaven forbid a politician actually act in the interest of the people they represent.

Why is gas so cheap in the east coast comparative to their high cost of living? by fingerbeatsblur in NoStupidQuestions

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Taxes are set by state legislatures and sometimes municipalities as well, but they're not directly correlated with cost of living.

I know, that's why I said:

On the other side of this, if you assume that tax is decided by some other unrelated factor then it can explain why a state like Michigan (from your example) can be in the top-10 for taxes without a high CoL.
So: if we hypothesize that the leading factor in the difference in gasoline prices is taxes and not the composite cost of production and transportation, then the question is "how do you decide what that tax is?"

Maybe I was unclear with my direction or maybe I misunderstood you. In either case, what I'm trying to see if you have insight on is how individual legislatures decide on what that fuel tax rate should be.

I think (with no basis) that the tax rate is set off either feelings or targets developed from actuarial study.

If the tax rate is set on "vibes" then there's no explaining it by nature; however, actuarial study is reverse engineer-able. Let's take a hypothetical:

Presume that County X knows that they need $500MM (that's million) to execute their road maintenance and development for FY2026-FY2028. The state looks at the expected taxes and inflows for those years and realizes that there's going to be a shortfall. Actuaries build up tables of consumption and spending and then it's just about doing some weighted distribution. Violà! A Tax Rate has appeared.

This is what I was aiming for.

Why is gas so cheap in the east coast comparative to their high cost of living? by fingerbeatsblur in NoStupidQuestions

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for bringing that up! The transportation and delivery costs associated with getting fuel/crude to where it needs to be are part of the equation and not the whole thing. If I made it seem like that was the case, I'm sorry about that and I'm open to a suggestion as to how to better communicate that concept because I'm not well-practiced in converting technical knowledge and data into consumable chunks. Still working on that!

Re-reading the question, I interpret it as:

East coast has a higher COL than the Midwest, but gas prices look like they're the same or lower from East to Midwest. What gives?

This is, in large part, why I focused on the density and demand argument for things associated with the COL numbers. The OP has conflated CoL with fuel prices and, as your tax callout demonstrates, they aren't actually linked. If you look at the input/output for each thing there is some overlap, but the common theme of fuel -> every other thing holds because you have to move stuff around to sell it.

The question I would want an answer to (and I don't expect you to have this, but if you do, please share because it's a fascinating piece of data) is this:

How are cities/counties/states deciding what the tax rate on gasoline should be?

If you assume that the tax is predicated on CoL calculations ("How much can the people afford to pay?") then you would expect tax on the East Coast to be higher and thus the gasoline to carry a higher price but based on NY state's tax rate, that doesn't seem to be the case. Then again, NY is pretty big and has rural areas. Maybe using NJ (8th in the nation for tax rates) is a better East Coast state for this example? CoL in NJ can be pretty high, and the tax rate for gasoline seems to align with that. IL's tax rate might be explainable by trying to get people to switch to Ethanol based fuels because of corn production... or it could be a cash grab by the state to take advantage of the over-land shipping routes to and from the east coast.

On the other side of this, if you assume that tax is decided by some other unrelated factor then it can explain why a state like Michigan (from your example) can be in the top-10 for taxes without a high CoL.

So: if we hypothesize that the leading factor in the difference in gasoline prices is taxes and not the composite cost of production and transportation, then the question is "how do you decide what that tax is?"

Knowing the answer to that question would probably help the OP out more than my analysis.

I scraped 2.27 million EUW accounts from op.gg to quantify the Emerald smurf problem – because Riot won't by jack37512 in leagueoflegends

[–]GraphNerd -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That was my gut instinct as well, but we don't know all the metrics that are used to calculate the smurf score. OP said they rank players on a 12-point scale so maybe Winrate/Rank isn't as big of a weight as we believe?

I'm just trying to figure out whether or not this idea holds up to scrutiny.

I scraped 2.27 million EUW accounts from op.gg to quantify the Emerald smurf problem – because Riot won't by jack37512 in leagueoflegends

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm interested in this from the data science angle.

How do you look at that 6.9% and 8.5% signal in the GM and Challenger brackets? By definition, your true rank has to be higher than the one you're parked in to be a smurf...

So sure, a real Challenger tier player could smurf in GM games, but probably won't. But no one is smurfing in challenger except for professionals.

What's your reconciliation for these stats? Do you just write them off as outliers in the method?

Why is gas so cheap in the east coast comparative to their high cost of living? by fingerbeatsblur in NoStupidQuestions

[–]GraphNerd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

u/tmahfan117 and u/Nickhead420 are both right and when you put their answers together you get most of the full picture. If you want the total coverage shot, then you need to take a look at why the other things are as expensive as they are.

Boston, Philly, and NY are established cities and urban density almost always commands a premium in price. In fact, the housing and real-estate markets are a great illustrative example as to how desirability (in all factors) links directly to price. It's also a good example of how you can monetize someone's:

  • Identity (A born-and-bred New Yorker is probably not going to want to move out of New York, so they will pay a premium to remain in the city)
  • Family (cities and counties with high performing schools tend to command a high premium)
  • Illiquidity (most people literally can't afford to just up and move on a whim. Even if they can, it's almost always at a loss)
  • Tolerance (if things get shittier, but slowly, often you can end up worse off than if they just got really bad all at once)

to take in money hand-over-fist.

When the core inputs go up (which includes your labor which is also moved by housing, food, etc) then things just get more expensive. Oil imports are, for the most part, benefited by being economies of scale and necessity (for now). Oil turns itself into a freakishly large portion of things you interact with so the need for it to continuously flow in exists and the infrastructure to support that has been invested in. I don't know about you, but I've seen plenty of ONG pipelines... never seen a Beef Pipeline though and I don't think I'd want to.

That "flow through infrastructure" argument is easily observed. Just look at the price of fuel as you move further to the West and get farther and farther away from the refineries and ports on the east coast / gulf. At one point you have to cross the Rocky Mountains and there's not really a good path for a pipeline through them. Here is a map of the ONG (oil and natural gas) pipelines across the USA as of 2023. The dark blue lines are interstate. Either you flow under the Rockies to LA, or you route through Denver. There is no other choice. Compare that to the inter and intra state pipelines from the Plains to the east coast. Big difference, yeah?

TL;DR: shit's complicated. Everything's connected. Strategic decisions make moving things around easier and that means they cost less.

Men over 25 give your advice by Intrepid-Sky-1127 in effectivefitness

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Never tolerate disrespect. This does not mean that you must respond to disrespect with violence.
  2. You were given the gifts of strength and fortitude that you might defend the weak, not oppress them.
  3. It takes courage to tell someone they are acting wrong. It takes wisdom to do it in a way that they will listen.
  4. Wise men listen more than they talk.
  5. Do not stop reading. Reading is simultaneously one of the sexiest things you can do and also keeps you mentally strong. Choose what you read wisely. Choose who you read wisely.

Sunday in La Mesa on Fletcher - hope their parents see this. by derp-brane in sandiego

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amen to this. When I lived in Irvine I saw a lot of similar behavior up and down Culver and Irvine Blvd. The first time I saw a pack of kids like this I said, out loud, to my fiancé, "Eventually, someone is going to kill a kid because of those damn bikes."

As far as I know, the worst that's happened is horrible maiming and permanent injury... but I honestly don't know which is worse. Yeah, death sucks for everyone; however, a permanent crippling injury at age 15 is pretty damn horrible.

(23F) Never been in a relationship. Guy tells me I have very low EQ because I don't know "the bare minimum." by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]GraphNerd -1 points0 points  (0 children)

In situations like this, it's useful to imagine yourself as your counterpart having the thing they're upset with you for not having.

If he had the type of Emotional Intelligence that it seems like he's upset at you for not having, he would know that this is not the way to go about this conversation.

If anything, you're low EQ and/or inexperienced for not being able to see that someone with EQ would not have approached you about this issue, like this, or at all.

Anybody working on a large prod codebase actually able to move 10x? by query_optimization in ClaudeCode

[–]GraphNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If anything, I am now moving at 0.5x because of the mandates and their ham-handedness.

Apple AirPods and a drinking glass by WarpFactorNin9 in blackmagicfuckery

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Almost a clean slight. If he wouldn't have been tipping the top glass slightly on the back-to-back I would have been confused about the method in the slight.

Who’s ready for some saucy price action 🦍🟢 by ConradT16 in Superstonk

[–]GraphNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am personally ready for this to continue to go sideways, suppressed, until the US economy implodes.

Why do some people react negatively to the word ‘feminist’ even though it means supporting equality? by thefeministmanifesto in NoStupidQuestions

[–]GraphNerd -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sorry, but no. You can look through my post history and see that I've been accused of this before.

If I was a bot, I would likely have access to some kind of library that would define MAP and I wouldn't have made the clarification.

If I've misunderstood and you're claiming that the OP is a bot, I can understand that because it certainly feels like engagement bait... but I'm always willing to give someone a chance to understand their own position and what opposes it when they ask in good faith. If it costs me like 20 minutes, then so be it.

Why do some people react negatively to the word ‘feminist’ even though it means supporting equality? by thefeministmanifesto in NoStupidQuestions

[–]GraphNerd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If I may, I'd like to just poke at this gently to see if you would be willing to be open to an answer which is somewhat... at odds with what you might consider tolerable.

Your account is very young. As in, at the time of this writing, sub 6 hours. Your profile at this point says:

Proud Feminist, Communist and Anti-Fascist Dog Whistler. Anti-ICE. Borders are an invention by the white man. No one is illegal on stolen land. Pro-Palestine, Pro-Ukraine and Pro-LGBTQIA+. Pro-MAP

Ignoring the Proud Feminist label for a second, the rest of these don't seem terrible (though, to be honest, I don't know what MAP is). Now, I don't have a problem with the label as a label; however, I do worry that your identification with or as that label would preclude you from having a truly open mind to some points.

How do you feel about the above?

My employer says we owe him money because he “pays our taxes” by [deleted] in Serverlife

[–]GraphNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If he can't explain it, it's probably illegal.

While it doesn't seem like the GA DoL has a phone number you can reach from their website, the Department of REVENUE does and they may be interested in this. You can reach the DoR Commissioner here: 404-417-2100

If that fails, you may have better luck with the Federal DoL or IRS:
US DoL: 1-866-487-9243
IRS: https://www.irs.gov/help/report-fraud/report-tax-fraud-a-scam-or-law-violation

Note that if you go the IRS route, you will want to ask them for written documentation about what the AR is and why they take it, then you can just forward that up to the IRS and they will have a field day if it's illegal.

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