Funny, I just watched Evan Edinger’s video on this tunnel. It’s shocking how poorly thought out it is.

Keep fighting the good fight, Londoners!

I’m out of the loop. What’d WotC/Hasbro do this time?

Frankly, if we’re going to be fucking with people’s property rights anyway, I think it would actually be better public policy to confiscate the whole car.

I agree and would happily vote yes for any measure adding such language to our state and federal laws.

Property seizure, especially with cars, is already a big part of many (all?) state’s law for unpaid taxes and debts. All we would need to do is tack on speeding ticket/points/whatever to allow the state to quickly and easily seize cars.

When does it end?

When we can get our act together to pass and enforce such laws. Until then I’ll take any legislative actions that restrict car drivers.

We can be angry about proposed laws not going far enough, but trying to stop good progress in the name of perfection will allow drivers to continue terrorizing the streets. This is especially true in purple and red states, but it’ll be a fight everywhere (California is desperately in love with cars).

That has never been a right, except on private land that the driver owns. Driving in public has always been a privilege.

That’s why I pointed out a doctor and other civil servants have the same power. We can argue about semantics, but the answer remains the same: a judge can revoke your driver’s license and is empowered for much more, like confiscating your property, sending you to jail, and removing your ability to vote.

I highly recommend reading the link I left in my earlier comment. It seems you haven’t read it. Although perhaps I should include a trigger warning: traffic violence by a driver in a brand new truck who had their license revoked multiple times by a doctor and a judge.

When does it end?

While I agree in principle, this change is a win and I hope more states legalize this method.

We give breathalyzer lockouts to DUI convicted citizens. Why? Because they’ll drive anyway. You can pull licenses all you want, but when driving is required to live, the people will drive. And they’ll do it even when they’re a raging alcoholic.

A speed monitor / limiter is a tool for a judge to use. Judges don’t have the power to pull city, state, and federal money and force building better street designs. I don’t believe they should have that power as political issues should not be addressed by a single branch of government. That’s how we got here after all: cities dictating minimum parking, civil engineers pushing terrible designs and refusing to change them, fire departments mandating minimum lane widths, etc.

However, judges do have the power to remove a person’s property and privacy rights. Ergo a good judge will restrict a convicted person’s rights in a way that could feasibly prevent societal harm.

Judges can remove a person’s right to drive too, as can doctors and other civil servants, but that usually ends in death. Literally.

These tariffs are not brand specific. Replace “SILCA” with your preferred brand and you’ll see similar results: products not available in the US, moving factories outside of the US, and increases to retail prices without new features or better quality.

You’re correct.

"It doesn’t make sense for chocolate bars to be divided into equal-sized chunks when there is so much inequality in the chocolate industry! The unequally-sized chunks of our 6.35 oz bars are a palatable way of reminding Choco Fans and Serious Friends that the profts in the chocolate industry are unequally divided.

And in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom of our bars depicts the West African coastline. The chunks just above it represent the Gulf of Guinea. From left to right, you have Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin (terribly politically incorrect, we know, but we had to combine them to create enough space for a hazelnut), Nigeria and part of Cameroon."

https://us.tonyschocolonely.com/pages/faqs

That department has been RIFed.

I wouldn’t mind liability insurance for guns if it’s similar to car insurance. Car insurance only covers about $30,000 per person injured/killed, maxing out around $60k per incident.

Unfortunately that low payout amount also means coverage is near useless. Especially when insurance coverage doesn’t go to the victims but to other insurance companies.

Car Insurance is Too Cheap

I wanted to upvote this twice. Instead I’ll leave this comment.

Great rant. Would read again.

Aquaman.

Broadcast TV is already going that way. ATSC 3 requires an internet connection to get decoding keys. For your protection, of course.

That’s a great question. My guess is the bandwidth comes from bonding those extra modes and from the lower signal-noise ratio. That lower SNR means they could modulate with more sensitive but faster modes.

Why wouldn’t a price that’s too high to pay prevent a product from selling? If demand of a product goes from 10,000 units to 10 units from the price shift, then it’s better to not develop and sell it. The rational move is to focus on the high end or custom-made products where you can have the margins necessary for low-volume to make sense. When it comes to low-end products, volume and throughput is the name of the game.

Want an example? How about this smart move by Framework stopping selling some of its cheapest laptops.

So long Ivanpah and thanks for all the fish clean energy.

I’m sad to see this technology not pan out, but being supplanted by another solar technology is a good outcome too.

Yes and sometimes worse. When a market cannot bear a price increase, the product simply ceases to exist. E.g. a low end $800 bike would never sell at $1,600.

If you like the idea of taxing rent, then you definitely need to read up on Land Value Tax. It ignores all the complexity of trying to figure out the economics of specific practices (it works for retail, commercial, sports areas, etc) into taxing the rent value of the land.

It also encourages building and maintaining housing when compared property taxes (those discourage improvements as improvements increase the landlords taxes).

RTO definitely has something to do with it, but I don’t think it’s a direct cause. Weekend ridership up to and surpassing pre-pandemic levels while weekday ridership has not recovered as well (though still up).

I believe ridership is up because of the new and more frequent trains. 1 hour intervals really suck and while 30 minutes isn’t great, it’s a whole lot easier to deal with. Weekday intervals were also reduced to sub-15 minutes during traditional peak commute. That’s a lot of time savings for a daily rider!

RTO does have an indirect impact: the freeways are always jammed. With partial RTO and split teams, there’s not been a return to the in-the-office-at-9am culture. Our local population has grown as well. Highway traffic is all-day now.

Is it really just RTO causing ridership increase if the dilemma faced is a guaranteed sit-in-traffic for an extra 15+ minutes versus a train that runs on time with 15-minute intervals?

Perhaps today you’ll also learn about Hellschreiber. Old tech is really clever!

I know I’ve been riding Caltrain more.

It’s shocking how much better the new train sets are. I remember the first time I took the new one. It was rolling in so fast that I thought it must have been an express train about to pass my local stop. Nope! It stopped on a dime compared to the old train!

Good job, Caltrain!

Yep. My consumer concerns are less of retail sticker-shock than people not realizing how dependent they are on consumer surplus. Even a few thousand a year in tariff related expenditure can be quite impactful on comfort.

Sticker-shock will happen with the tariff-adjacent removal of de minimis. Right now it’s China, but it was threatened against Canada and Mexico too (officially delayed, whatever that may mean). A $50 per-item charge is going to be quite a surprise to many.

E.g. if Canada is going to be levied like China, then my plan of getting a pair of oversized Cam-Lock kits for my Canadian-made Arkel bike panniers is gone out the window. There’s no way I’ll buy small parts when the total package cost is the same as getting a whole new set of panniers.