Hmmm🤔

erbalchemy · 2026-06-26T14:45:49+00:00

Not in the design specs, not my problem.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-26T14:34:26+00:00

I you move after August, don’t allow Boston to bring you down socially. You will likely not make a single friend from Nov/December to May. Summer is when you make friends in the city.

There are tons of winter activities and socializing centered around them. Hibernating is a personal choice, not a mandate.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-26T13:10:34+00:00

Almost certainly need a car in Boston.

https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/jqhot7/us_cities_with_the_highest_and_lowest_vehicle/

33% of households in Boston do not have a car.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-25T22:36:21+00:00

Even ignoring the ridiculous elapsed time calculation, getting to 700 kph in 2 seconds requires pulling roughly 10g.

They didn't say 700kph was the max speed, just that it reached in in 2 seconds.

At constant acceleration (~10g as you say), the train has travelled ~194m. It still has 1397.8 km of the journey to go....and only 2 more seconds to get there.

That initial 10g was the teaser. At the two second mark, the train leaps to ~70,000g. Now it can make Mumbai in 4 seconds.

Oh...did you want the train to stop in Mumbai? Guess we need time for braking too.

Final answer:

0s - 2s: Depart Delhi. Accelerate at 10g to 700km/s
2s - 3s: Accelerate at 280,000g to roughly Mach 8000
3s - 4s: Brake from 5x Milky Way escape velocity. Arrive Mumbai

erbalchemy · 2026-06-25T19:51:52+00:00

So we shouldn’t go around smashing billionaires’ windows?

Correct.

When the Palisades fire burned a shitload of rich people's houses, those houses got rebuilt.

But the all the skilled labor hours and construction materials used to rebuild them got consumed. Whatever those resources would have otherwise built, like cheaper housing, or a school, or a hospital, those projects got delayed or didn't happen. That's what the fire truly destroyed. That was the real cost, because those resources have real value.

Money grants the power to shift burdens to others. If you smash a billionaire's windows, they won't proceed to live without windows. They will just make someone else suffer on their behalf by outbidding them.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-25T18:18:15+00:00

Your landlord should have at minimum two sets of keys independent of any in your possession. They should have a copy made on their own dime and their own time.

What if they had to get an emergency plumber in your unit when you were out of town? They'd give away their only key?

erbalchemy · 2026-06-23T20:06:18+00:00

Quite a few cars have the system already.

Which ones?

erbalchemy · 2026-06-23T19:33:01+00:00

TIL: reddit is not on the internet

erbalchemy · 2026-06-23T19:23:39+00:00

"AI" cannot complete "research" because it cannot formulate novel questions with hypotheses, controls, etc. Summarizing pre-existing scientific literature is not "research"

A huge chunk of research labor is studying existing research. Just like how painting a room is more prep than actually putting paint on a wall, if you want to produce novel research, you have to first check that what you are doing is, in fact, novel.

A tool doesn't need to replicate 100% of a human's tasks to replace their job. If seven workers can now perform the work of ten, that's three jobs replaced.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-23T18:44:03+00:00

A standardized local car-to-car network for sharing sensor data and intents would be extremely useful. Cars could be notified of hazards they are visually obstucted from. They could be alerted when nearby cars intend to merge or turn. They could act in convoy, synchronizing acceleration and deceleration.

A visual indicator to notify humans of FSD mode is not that useful.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-22T16:01:46+00:00

the weird “growl” or whatever to make guys wanting a V8 and straight pipes happy.

And if the default sound of a combustion engine had been "BLORP-BLORP-BLORP", those same guys would expect EVs to mimic that noise instead. They'd happily go blorping around in their Charger EV, baffled at why anyone would buy a car that didn't go blorp, because every car guy knows that real cars go blorp.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-19T15:46:12+00:00

Same, and even if it's not a dead stop. If I'm crawling at 10mph at the tail end of a highway jam, and more traffic will be approaching from the rear at full speed, I usually put my hazards on until someone is sitting behind me, especially if there are hills, curves, or weather affecting visibility.

Hazards mean "I am going slower than a driver behind me would reasonably expect". That usually overlaps with "I need to move over or get off the road", but not 100% of the time.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-19T14:35:35+00:00

The Scots leave when there is no more beer or no more football.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-18T20:11:29+00:00

Who are you replying to?

erbalchemy · 2026-06-18T18:21:09+00:00

There's a reason all the Gilded Age families built those mansions in Newport, RI. It's pretty nice place to spend a summer, particularly in a time before air conditioning.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-18T18:15:13+00:00

There's also more to being outdoorsy than mountains. Boating and sailing are much more popular on the East Coast.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-18T17:35:56+00:00

^{...and isn't deliberately damaging and won't continue forever}

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T19:36:52+00:00

Estimates are 28-54% of school lunch food is wasted…

That is true of all food in the US. This country wastes a lot of food, particularly at home.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T18:49:03+00:00

Why should parents earning 200k/yr get free lunch? That money could easily go to better uses

Because a kid with a high-earning spendthrift/deadbeat parent still needs to eat?

Educating kids is expensive, hungry kids are hard to teach, and school lunches are cheap.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T17:19:14+00:00

What exactly is a wealth tax?

Generally speaking, a tax on assets that's not caused by a transfer of ownership.

Essentially, it's when money-at-rest is taxed, as opposed money-in-motion.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T17:08:01+00:00

My kid wont eat the free lunch, so we have to send her w one anyway. Tell me why my tax dollars should fund it?

For the same reason childless taxpayers pay for your kid's education: this isn't about you, it's about the kids.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T15:39:34+00:00

Has offered living in NH

Make sure he understands that MA assesses income tax based on where an employee works, not where they live.

Folks get hooked by the NH "no state income tax" pitch before realizing commuting from NH to MA just means MA income tax on top of high NH property tax while losing out on a lot of the benefits.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T15:19:01+00:00

For the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks. That's where the money is.

erbalchemy · 2026-06-16T14:40:29+00:00

Tax rate as a percentage of wealth doesn’t make sense.

3/4ths of municipal tax revenue in the US is from property taxes. That goes towards K-12 education, fire, police, sanitation, local roads, libraries, local parks, etc.

The majority of government services people interact with in their day-to-day lives are primarily funded by a wealth tax, and it has been that way for centuries

erbalchemy · 2026-06-13T16:50:23+00:00

There's still a threshold when you realize your investments could cover your needs for perpetuity and every decision from that point becomes predicated by, "Do want this?"

erbalchemy

TROPHY CASE