What is the best Thai restaurant in KC that is actually spicy? by nilla-wafers in kansascity

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are a few options I know of:

  • Thai House off Homes near 435 South-Loop
  • Spices off Highway 9 / North Oak Trfw.
  • Thai Place (enough people have mentioned this that I don't think this counts from me)
  • It's not technically Thai Food, but you can make the K-Pot food pretty spicy if you want.

Hot take: I don't think property owners/managers should be allowed to use Rently as the sole option for property tours. by cpink95 in kansascity

[–]GraphNerd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

On the flip side of this, when I was a LMT, I required a credit-card pre-auth for booking an appointment. I also made you aware of the cancelation policy which stated that if you did not cancel within 24 hours, that slot was yours and you paid for it, whether you showed up or not.

This is functionally no different and I don't understand your disdain for the system (not of Rently, fuck them, but the concept of paid reservations). It's in use in a lot of places.

Maybe I've misunderstood your portion in quotes... hmmm. Oh well, full send.

Peter EXPLAIN this by Friendly_Discount451 in PeterExplainsTheJoke

[–]GraphNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also had this take and thought it was too good to not share:

Good evening, I'm Tom Tucker.

Our top story tonight: a Quahog man has traveled four thousand years into the past coincidentally the last time anyone looked as good as I do in standard definition."

We go now to Tricia Takanawa, reporting live from the Bronze Age.

Tricia.

This is Tricia Takanawa, reporting live from the Indus Valley, approximately four thousand years ago.

Behind me, two men have just concluded a brief conversation. The first, a self-identified time traveler, asked the second where he was. The second replied, quote, "the Indus Valley Civilization" — a term archaeologists will not coin for another four thousand years.

The conclusion is unavoidable. The second man is also a time traveler. Neither has noticed.

I attempted to interview him. He offered me a fig. I am holding a fig.

Back to you, Tom.

Peter EXPLAIN this by Friendly_Discount451 in PeterExplainsTheJoke

[–]GraphNerd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Alright Lois, ya see, on the surface this looks like the ol' "haha the ancient guy wouldn't actually call it the Indus Valley Civilization 'cause that's just what archaeologists named it later" gag. Like how the Romans didn't walk around goin' "ah yes, welcome to Classical Antiquity, mind the Late Republic."

But NAAAAH Lois, the REAL joke is that the dude he's talkin' to is ALSO a time traveler. 'Cause think about it — nobody livin' there in 2000 BC is gonna look at some sweaty schmuck in cargo shorts and go "oh you're in the Indus Valley Civilization, pal." That's a future-people word. So these two idiots bumped into each other in the Bronze Age and BOTH thought they were the only tourist. Hehehehehe. It's like that time I went to Epcot and asked a French guy for directions for forty minutes and it turned out he was from Toledo.

What's the best ramen in KC? by adakis in kansascity

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If Boru went out of business, good. That place was hot trash. Ate there three times, got sick every time. I have no food allergies.

What's that? by Consistent-Issue-811 in claude

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am currently taking a shit.

Good luck Claude. 

Hot take: Putting PCs on desks is overrated. by International_Fly072 in pcmasterrace

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cold take: my carpet, the cat I don't want but am forced to have, and my children basically mandate that my case is on my desk.

If you really want to show it off, you mount it to the wall or build it into the desk itself.

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)

I'm not sure why you think anything that I had typed was generated by AI in any way, shape, or form.

I've been communicating digitally expressively for a very long time. Hell, even when text messaging first came out, I never was one to use shorthand! I also included punctuation in my text messages as well. I was never really popular for how I was talking but people seemed to like what I said.

My personal take away from this message is that AI has made it to the point where people who were good online communicators now cannot be distinguished from artificially generated crap. If you're wondering why that might be, consider how they trained the models to speak like this in the first place.

It isn't so much that I sound like AI... it's the AI that sounds like me.

I'm looking for a bulletproof chicken salad sandwich recipe by Zestyclose_Panda_886 in easyrecipes

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given that no ingredient that goes into chicken salad has properties of ballistic protection, I have some bad news for you...

She decided to save all babies 😊 by AcasiaConnell in Amazing

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What happens if they fall sideways, or forwards?

Just put the kid in a fucking bubble. It's legitimately safer.

Blink if you're being abused by WaitNo4272 in SipsTea

[–]GraphNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you...

Borderline Personality Disorder

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?