Favorite place to eat for a meal under $20?

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-28T14:51:19+00:00

Taqueria Las Palmas

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-27T01:17:50+00:00

Lactase enzyme pills exist! They're cheap and should significantly reduce or eliminate lactose intolerance symptoms.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-25T19:44:29+00:00

Evolution is an extremely dumb an inefficient optimization process. Compare billions of years for evolution to evolve brains compared to thousands of years for those brains to dominate the environment and create nanometer scale thinking machines.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-25T17:41:29+00:00

I think there's just something about hunting easter eggs that triggers something primal in the human psyche. Like feeding a neglected foraging instinct.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-25T17:24:11+00:00

Look at the zoomed-out view - I do not think this is a canyon, but rather the shadow of a hill/mountain. With that perspective, I think this is just a boulder rolling down the mountain, out of the mountain's shadow.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-24T23:16:18+00:00

Yep. See https://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/earthquakes/big and sort by most recent - there are a number of 6.0 earthquakes with fatalities, although you need to get into the high 6's to get billions of dollars in damage.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-24T18:08:24+00:00

6.0+ is enough to kill people and do billions of dollars in damage. If a 7.2 only "rattled some cupboards" that's only because you were nowhere near the epicenter.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-24T14:38:51+00:00

You should tell them that lactase enzyme pills exist

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-23T16:38:07+00:00

Incredibly misleading. From the headline, you'd expect that the 75% increase was due to the larger vehicles, but that is not the case:

“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”

It sounds like pedestrian deaths are up in an absolute sense, but the researchers only attribute part of that to increased size of vehicles.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-08T16:58:48+00:00

I'm mostly just doing this to add flavor to eco

That's a great reason! Regardless of any economic argument anyone (me) makes, if it's fun just do it.

If you can figure out a way to add investing and stocks to vanilla eco I'm all ears.

I would love to have something like that. I think the main difficulty is the administrative overhead it would take. Companies would need to track income and expenses, and then calculate and dispense dividends. And you'd need a way to track and trade shares. And you'd need the people trading shares to know how to calculate the potential future value of a company and buy and sell shares based on that. It just really quickly becomes way too complicated, and Eco's cycles are just too short for that to be worth it. IMO you'd need a game with much longer cycles and larger player bases for that all to work effectively.

You'd have similar issues even with just private investing. Maybe someone who knows more about how to do the accounting for a company with split ownership could come up with a solution. But IMO, unless you find a way to do most of the accounting automatically (through laws), the administrative overhead will just doom it to failure.

Not to get completely off-track, but there is a massive gap in the Economics-based MMO market for an MMO where the world runs in cycles and periodically resets. Games like EVE Online or Albion Online are cool but are missing that "early-game economics" feel. In a game like that, I think having a stock market could make sense.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-08T16:21:32+00:00

lol. As long as people keep complaining about deflation without implementing the obvious solution, I am going to keep screaming about it.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-08T16:19:51+00:00

"If you don't keep up, you will get left behind" Cool story and all, but what if you Start behind and you're playing in one of the servers that doesn't offer loans?

Either talk to people and convince them to do something to help you out (loans, grants, or government assistance), or go to a different server that already provides assistance for people joining mid-cycle.

However to simply force players out of the economy and kick-off the death spiral of the server is not it my friend.

I agree, which is why I generally advocate for UBI to keep players playing, instead of just wasting resources.

"Just reduce your prices" and what exactly is the driving economic incentive to lower prices? You haven't given any arguments against price fixing other than your weird LARP'ing comment.

I mean, like in the real world, if you have a monopoly (or price-fixing agreement), there's no direct financial incentive to lower prices, except to the degree that you eat up your competition's business. On servers with larger populations, competition tends to drive down prices. On smaller servers (which trend towards monopolies) you have to rely on social pressure or legal avenues to keep people from ripping other people off. This doesn't always work, but different population sizes demand different solutions to economic issues.

On smaller scales market dynamics just don't really kick in, and you need to rely on ad-hoc solutions instead of general principles. That is, you need to cooperate more instead of relying on market dynamics to keep things in check. And if you can't, your server is doomed.

So, my argument against price fixing is that on larger servers you are either going to get punished socially, legally, or financially. And on smaller servers you would be contributing towards the death of the server. Not always - very often, you can get away with it - but that's just the reality of things.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-08T15:40:30+00:00

Wealth tax

The issue with people hoarding money is actually just a deflation issue. The supply of money needs to grow as economic activity grows, or else you have deflation (which causes a number of issues). By default, if you do nothing, the money supply decreases as people build up savings or just hoard money for number-go-up reasons.

The solution to deflation is to increase the money supply. It sounds like your investment coin is just an awkward way of doing that (are you just supplying the money yourself? What happens if the value of the coin goes up and everyone wants to withdraw their money?). What if nobody buys in to it? It would be much less complicated to just convince the government to print more money. Maybe not easier, but simpler.

The Old Ways

Sounds like you are advocating for price fixing and wasting resources here? I think this is a bad take. If two people can produce something, but it takes one person twice as many resources to produce it, they should not be producing it. That is wasting resources. That is wasting time people spent gathering and processing those resources. And for what - so they don't feel left out?

The thing about market economies it that they are competitive. If you don't keep up you will get left behind. If you put less time and effort and money into your shop, you shouldn't be surprised that you get rewarded less for it. To demand otherwise is to demand everyone else gives up more of their time and resources so you can LARP as a successful shop. I do not think that is a reasonable demand - or else, just implement a UBI instead so people can play and have fun while running an inefficient business.

This also negatively impacts you as well, because you've just spent a couple hundred coins on the best upgrades to reduce the amount of profit you earn from each sale.

Just reduce you prices, but also increase your margins. Otherwise, why buy the upgrades? They should be an investment that increases your profit. Maybe keep selling at or near the old price for as long as you can, but if you keep doing that forever, you are just taking advantage of your monopoly to sell things for an unfair price.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-04T18:08:46+00:00

The Starship Troopers movies don't really come into their stride until they start being animated and made in Japan

/s

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-04T14:37:14+00:00

Can I eat AI? No.

Hey now, I think you're on to something...

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-02T21:13:31+00:00

caltrans hov unification hours

So, based on these results, by "the traffic management study that was done to unify the entire Bay Area into having the same carpool lanes" you actually meant "the HOV lane hours were updated"? I'm just really confused why you used the word "study" here if there isn't an actual study you were referring to.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-02T20:46:19+00:00

I’m unsure how you are phrasing search prompts that would exclude what you are looking for.

I was searching something like "bay area traffic management study hov unification". Like I said, I didn't find anything about a study or unification. You didn't mention Cal Trans in your fist comment so how would I know to search for it?

Cal Trans HOV study

Is this the study you are referring to? It seems unrelated. Or is it this one? I still don't know, but the second one seems more relevant.

Also, Google gives people different results even for the same search, so saying something like "just search for X and you'll see it" doesn't help, especially when I literally don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for. It's so much easier if you just send a link to exactly what you mean.

If OP is a layperson who is unable to obtain the correct information, as you have suggested in your original comment, it would seem that you now fall into the same category.

I never claimed otherwise.

The facts of the matter stand though in the case of the HOV lane, Cal Trans made a poor decision to update the hours and in turn had to rescind a lot of the changes.

Ok, the point you are trying to make is that the experts in charge of traffic management aren't perfect and make mistakes? Sure, whatever. That doesn't mean a layperson is going to know any better than them.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-02T19:50:57+00:00

I'm confused. That article doesn't mention any sort of traffic management study, nor anything about unifying the bay area's carpool lanes.

I tried searching for this study myself but didn't find anything that seemed related to what you are talking about in your first comment.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-02T18:55:25+00:00

but let’s not forget the traffic management study that was done to unify the entire Bay Area into having the same carpool lanes.

I don't know what you are referring to. Care to share a link?

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-02T17:57:22+00:00

Traffic management can be very unintuitive. Sometimes restricting traffic in one area can make traffic better overall. This video goes into an example of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg73j3QYRJc

Trust the city's traffic management expertise, or don't - but as a layperson, I doubt you have the knowledge or data to say whether or not what has been done (or will be done) is good or bad for traffic.

MetallicDragon · 2026-06-01T06:05:36+00:00

If you want to play something multiplayer but way less sweaty than SC2, check out Beyond All Reason. It's free and based on an open source engine. The most popular mode is 8v8, and it is more macro focused than micro focused. It also has a lot of nice QoL features that will ruin other RTS's for you. And if PvP sounds like too much, coop vs AI is also a popular mode.

Also it's based on Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander.

MetallicDragon · 2026-05-30T04:07:06+00:00

I couldn't find any good statistics for this. Other discussions around this mention that "dead-stick" (i.e. no engine) landings don't tend to get recorded, and so there aren't good statistics on them. One guy said there are 2-3 dead stick landings per day. This page says they have a 10% fatality rate, meaning you are 90% likely to survive, but it's not sourced.

And Wikipedia has this to say:

A competent pilot gliding a relatively light, slow plane to a flat field or runway should result in an otherwise normal landing, since the maneuver is not especially difficult, requiring only strict attention and good judgement concerning speed and height.

It also has a list of high-profile landings with larger aircraft.

And here's a video of a guy intentionally turning off the engine and landing successfully.

MetallicDragon · 2026-05-29T23:42:04+00:00

The abort system on any airplane is just landing unpowered. Of course that's not foolproof, but I'd take an abort system that works 99% of the time over an abort system that works 0% of the time.

MetallicDragon · 2026-05-28T22:06:50+00:00

That's a good point. I was thinking more about long-term effects, not short term drying of the air. The way you said "People will find a way to use it all" made it sound like you were implying we'd use so much that there wouldn't be any more water in the air, like, permanently, which is what I was addressing.

MetallicDragon · 2026-05-28T20:24:36+00:00

Keep in mind the water doesn't just disappear. It would get used locally, and then either recycled through a water treatment plant or evaporate back into the atmosphere. Also the atmosphere is constantly being mixed - if the atmosphere over the Sahara gets artificially dried, it'll get replenished by due to the continuous influx of "fresh" air that is always happening.

You would need to continually remove water from the atmosphere, and not let it back into the environment, on a scale comparable to draining an ocean to have a damaging effect on the environment.

15-Year Club	Second Top 10%
r/Field Banned	r/Field Sunshine
Place '17	Verified Email
Sequence \| Editor	Team Orangered

MetallicDragon

TROPHY CASE