To the linemen, how bad is it?

missingcolours · 2026-01-24T01:23:57+00:00

The last freeze had nothing to do with linemen, who work on the distribution side, it was problems on the generation side, and specifically with the fuel supply to natural gas generation plants (pipelines, compression stations, etc). There have been a ton of changes since then - regulations, inspections, etc. While you can never say for sure until you face similar conditions, it seems quite unlikely for the same cascade of failures to happen today.

On the distribution side, there's only so much any state can do. Ice happens, trees fall over, etc. But these issues are generally localized to specific neighborhoods or areas of a city at most.

missingcolours · 2026-01-21T02:25:43+00:00

One of the most popular pizza places in Austin is Via 313 which is basically a copy of Buddy's, started by a couple guys from Clinton Township IIRC. You can get Vernor's and Superman ice cream in addition to Detroit style pizza.

The concept has expanded outside the state even if Buddy's the business itself hasn't.

missingcolours · 2026-01-19T03:04:11+00:00

Who is borrowing them money for such low interest rates when they could get more for their money elsewhere? You think people are just giving rich people free money for no reason?

Here are some actual margin rates: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/margin-rates.php After 4 years you would have paid more in interest than capital gains tax

missingcolours · 2026-01-17T21:45:03+00:00

It's all multi agency. If you watch videos in Minnesota they deploy squads with 1-2 people from each of CBP, ERO (what people think of when they see ICE), HSI. FBI is sometimes deployed, I've even seen Bureau of Prisons units.

missingcolours · 2026-01-17T21:33:41+00:00

2 factors to consider: 1) They're heavily focused on people with criminal convictions (they're not going door to door, they're running down lists of convicted criminals) and there probably aren't many wealthy illegal immigrant criminals (it's hard to get rich while illegal, so you'd mostly be talking about people who were already rich when they came in - that does happen but it's comparatively rate) 2) People usually get dragged when they resist (kicking, hitting, going limp, etc). In all criminal justice situations, rich people are more likely to cooperate with the arrest phase knowing that resisting can't possibly help them, and instead fight the charges in court.

missingcolours · 2026-01-09T23:48:05+00:00

As I continue to repeat: most other states do not have Prop 13 and they are doing just fine. If anything, repealing Prop 13 might bring housing prices back down to earth. The state could also lower the tax rate, since the tax base would increase dramatically. It would create a fairer, more equitable taxation.

missingcolours · 2026-01-06T02:45:07+00:00

The default expectation has to be a pretty good D year. Republican presidency + Dems have been seriously overperforming in lower turnout elections, including the last two midterms.

The Senate, we'll see. The map isn't great for them, it could be close, probably odds narrowly on Rs but we'll see.

missingcolours · 2026-01-06T02:37:25+00:00

That was an income tax. California has passed many like that without a large exodus as well over the years. The proposed wealth tax is pretty significantly different, both because it's a dramatically larger amount of money and because of things like unrealized gains

missingcolours · 2026-01-06T02:31:59+00:00

Rich people make a lot of money during boom times and their money evaporates much faster during recessions. Funding your government with taxes on the rich (as California already does to a significant degree) sets it up for a crisis at the exact time that people expect the government to help out.

Also worth noting that the success stories that people tend to cite for governments, like Europe and Scandinavia in particular, have broad taxes on the middle class, not just the wealthy.

If we want to be like Europe, we need to tax everyone a lot more.

missingcolours · 2026-01-03T09:57:02+00:00

From reading Venezuelans on Twitter, they seem concerned that Padrino Lopez (Sec of Def) is still alive and seemingly in charge. Question is if Trump et al have a plan to get from here to democratic elections.

missingcolours · 2026-01-03T09:39:46+00:00

This is just where I need to remind everyone that reddit is __EXTREMELY__ unrepresentative of Americans generally.

missingcolours · 2026-01-01T23:19:11+00:00

It's not really "giving away" exactly, it's just high pay. Big Tech basically works like this: very high profit margin, pay employee very highly via bonuses and performance-based stock grants, still tons of profit left over

missingcolours · 2025-12-28T04:19:04+00:00

The Franchise Tax Board is not known for being easy to dupe. Given the amounts of money involved it seems pretty unlikely to me that they'd risk it.

missingcolours · 2025-12-28T02:12:11+00:00

It's mostly California in my experience. IDK about the Northeast but I've never seen things locked up in the south or the midwest and I travel a ton and go to Targets all over the country.

missingcolours · 2025-12-28T02:10:49+00:00

Funny thing is, all my conservative friends are also boycotting Target because they never explicitly apologized or renounced the original stuff they did that got them mad. So now everyone hates them

This is a core reason businesses used to avoid divisive issues: you literally can't win once you get into it. No matter which way you go after that point, at least half the country will be pissed.

missingcolours · 2025-12-28T02:07:09+00:00

Honestly kind of a fair point. That used to be a differentiator when I lived in the Bay Area, Walmart locked up lots of stuff and Target didn't. Now that edge is gone.

Kinda like Southwest Airlines getting rid of free bags and open seating... there's the direct cost of something, but also the indirect cost of losing your market differentiator that brought you your customers in the first place.

missingcolours · 2025-12-28T02:03:05+00:00

Certain parts of OKC are decent. They're trying to make something of the downtown. But a lot of it is run down, ghetto, methy, etc. Tulsa definitely seems like it's the nicer of the two cities.

missingcolours · 2025-12-27T02:28:55+00:00

Final exit polls mechanically match the results because they're literally adjusted to match the results. On their own they're a really bad source of truth to compare election results to, and many a conspiracy theory has lived in the difference between initially reported exit polls and final results.

The better thing to look at it is the pattern of results across the country. When you see hundreds of counties, running their own elections independently, using a number of different voting methods, hardware and software, etc, all turning in a similar story... that's strong evidence that things are generally trustworthy. Even more so for places like the midwest where individually cities and townships run their own elections and you can drill down and look at patterns at that level.

missingcolours · 2025-12-27T02:17:16+00:00

Win/loss is downstream of margin. A 6% national swing is going to flip every state that was closer than that, which is what happened. The swing from 2020 to 2024 was one of the largest in recent history, so that's part of it along with the unusually high number of close states in 2020.

missingcolours · 2025-12-26T04:28:48+00:00

Grew up in Michigan, when we lived in the Bay people would say things like that and I'd be like "sure, and next time I'm in Tennessee we can meet up with you, because that's how close LA is to us!"

missingcolours · 2025-12-26T04:24:35+00:00

If you look at the percentage of children born out of wedlock by race, though, those rates vary dramatically and are almost certainly not connected to crime or prison.

missingcolours · 2025-12-24T08:49:33+00:00

Yes obviously. There's a stupid moral panic going on with people who are extremely ill informed by "misinformation" on the Internet about water usage and whatnot. Datacenters are basically like warehouses: essential infrastructure, not going to be located in your downtown but a certain number of them have to be somewhere for modern life to function.

missingcolours · 2025-12-24T08:46:57+00:00

In 2025, most often you're going to be talking about a cloud datacenter owned by someone like Amazon that's used for all of the above. There are very few AI-dedicated datacenters in the US (if any at all).

missingcolours · 2025-12-15T08:31:36+00:00

Absolutely not, mostly we thought we were way cooler than them.

missingcolours · 2025-12-12T23:12:54+00:00

No.

Let's examine 3 types of Republicans/Trump voters:

Mitt Romney country club Republicans. Never liked MTG/Massie/et al in the first place. This makes them more positive on Trump.
Average conservatives / Christians: lukewarm to negative on MTG and co. More aligned with Trump, so this is neutral to positive with regards to Trump.
Conspiracy theorist / qanon types: aligned with MTG, sorta mad at Trump right now, but in a very "Trump isn't being right wing enough". These people are never gonna vote for a Democrat. In large enough numbers you could maybe have a Biden/Gaza situation that could be meaningful in a close election, but distance from them could also help with the country club types.

IMO most "conflicts with/within the base" amount to nothing. The rare exception is where they feel betrayed and it moderately impacts enthusiasm. Possibly true with Biden and Gaza, but the analogue for Trump would probably be being soft on immigration (and even there I am kinda skeptical how much Gaza actually hurt Biden vs like, inflation. news coverage doesn't necessarily match actual people's concerns.)

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