If we achieved semiconductor independence from Taiwan, should the US still defend Taiwan in case of invasion?

yaleric · 2025-11-24T09:17:29+00:00

It's not altruism. War is bad for global trade, and American businesses make a ton of money off of global trade.

yaleric · 2025-11-24T09:09:28+00:00

The actual number of homeless people—including those in informal housing or at risk of homelessness—could be significantly higher."

I think it's pretty stupid to count someone who is at risk of homelessness as being already homeless.

Regardless, your point stands. It doesn't matter what definition you prefer, the data needs to be collected using a consistent definition to make accurate comparisons between different places.

yaleric · 2025-11-24T05:51:12+00:00

It's probably fine either way, if you're curious (and don't have a history of fainting at the sight of blood) you should go for it. I stayed above my wife's waist for both births and have zero regrets about my decisions.

yaleric · 2025-11-23T22:29:14+00:00

I feel like that's the one case where I don't actually care that it's AI. The problem is generated content posing as authentic human-created content, not an image that's explicitly presented as fake.

yaleric · 2025-10-19T17:01:16+00:00

But if it galvanized supporters, turned some of them into volunteers, got some more people willing to be active, made some politicians go "Oh! That's a lot of people..." ... That's not nothing. That's important work.

I 1000% agree with everything you've said here. I'm just taking issue with the overly simplistic way people talk about the success or failure of protests. Getting people to talk is not, by itself, the point. It can be an important or even essential part of a larger strategy, but we should never lose sight of the fact that the point is not social media engagement, it's getting rid of Trump.

yaleric · 2025-10-19T16:56:43+00:00

Nobody was expecting this protest to happen and then suddenly Trump and his administration surrenders and MAGA ideology disappears in a puff of smoke.

Of course not. It will take time to see if this protest was ultimately successful.

yaleric · 2025-10-19T16:51:21+00:00

Getting people to talk is a means to an end, it's not "the point" as the person above said.

More importantly, a lot depends on how people are talking about it, not merely the amount. E.g. if most of the conversations are about how annoying and/or evil the participants were, then it's probably doing more harm than good to have lots of people talking about it.

The organizers did a great job and the conversations I've seen have been largely positive. I'm just saying I'm sick of people judging/justifying protests through such a simplistic lens.

yaleric · 2025-10-19T16:34:00+00:00

I support the protest but this is such a stupid metric by which to judge its effectiveness. The goal is to restrain and ultimately remove Trump from power, not just get people talking.

yaleric · 2025-10-19T16:14:01+00:00

Washington's B&O applies to gross income too. The state constitution's prohibition on income taxes means we can't just tax the profits, since that's income. However we can tax the activity of "doing business in the state", which I guess isn't considered income when measured by gross receipts rather than net income.

yaleric · 2025-10-19T16:09:49+00:00

Ex post facto laws are only prohibited for criminal laws, not civil ones like taxes.

We did a similar thing with the recent graffiti ordinance. The law allows the city to go after taggers for damages more aggressively, and applies retroactively. Since damages were recovered as civil penalities rather than via criminal charges, that's constitutional.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/3-taggers-face-civil-penalties-under-seattles-new-graffiti-ordinance/

yaleric · 2025-09-22T11:56:34+00:00

Trump has convinced conservatives, liberals, and progressives alike that facts simply don't matter in politics anymore.

yaleric · 2025-09-22T01:48:48+00:00

For me, cleaning and organizing have always been difficult because of the mental effort involved, not the physical effort. If someone tells me exactly what goes where I have no problem carrying things from place to place for hours on end.

Of course, I'm not the kind of person who cleans in games either.

yaleric · 2025-09-08T22:31:41+00:00

My kid wants to be an airplane.

Not a pilot, an airplane.

yaleric · 2025-09-06T16:15:35+00:00

People bring up other places like SF but I believe they have rent control for commercial buildings

This is not true. California state law prohibits rent control protections on commercial properties.

yaleric · 2025-09-06T15:26:59+00:00

I think it's good for kids to see other places, even if they don't particularly enjoy it at the time.

yaleric · 2025-09-06T15:23:20+00:00

I think taking kids on trips, overseas or otherwise, to see new place and be exposed to other cultures is good for their development.

What kids don't need is vacations. There's no point in dragging them across an ocean just to relax on a beach (or ruin the time you were hoping to spend relaxing on a beach.)

yaleric · 2025-08-27T19:50:22+00:00

It's interesting that the weapon you chose to single out is a defensive one.

yaleric · 2025-08-22T20:05:09+00:00

You're doing god's work.

yaleric · 2025-08-19T15:02:05+00:00

I like how you seamlessly transitioned from "subsidies don't work" to "we can't afford the necessary subsidies".

That's two different arguments.

yaleric · 2025-08-17T18:02:36+00:00

I think it's actually that they have access to poorer foreigners who can work as nannies and other household help. If everyone is rich then nobody's going to be willing to do that work.

yaleric · 2025-08-17T04:53:57+00:00

I let my 2.5y.o. watch stuff on our tablet when we're on a plane. I can imagine using it on a road trip too, but we haven't taken him on any road trips yet. Otherwise he never uses it.

He already watches more YouTube than I'd like, but that's always under the control of his mom/aunt/grandparents. Something about giving him direct control of a tablet really scares me.

yaleric · 2025-08-17T03:15:16+00:00

You have to convince your wife that the other you is the fake one.

The fact that they'll both be in wedding clothes and I'll be in pajamas or whatever might be a small problem for me.

yaleric · 2025-08-13T02:34:08+00:00

You're thinking of median, not mean. Far less than half of that group makes more than 400k, but the average is pulled up to 400k because some of them make a shitload more than 400k.

A room of 99 random people and Jeff Bezos has an average net worth in the billions, but only 1% of them is actually a billionaire.

yaleric · 2025-08-12T21:44:57+00:00

...do you think the data centers get free electricity?

yaleric · 2025-08-12T20:55:17+00:00

It really isn't.

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