It’s a general rule of wine pairing that the wine should be sweeter than the food

The “SSH” picture would work for SSH tunneling

In this context “well regulated” means like a smoothly-running clock, with the implication being that militia members will need weapons for training and practice.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization

-Jo Walton, Among Others

who the fuck invented strong overhead lighting

Well, in the beginning…

I guess the argument is that they will raise rent by the maximum, even at excessive risk of losing tenants? Because if the tenants will pay that much, why wouldn’t the landlord charge that anyway?

Definite agree with the core of what you’re saying, though for US and EU (and to a lesser degree “High income countries”), the numbers are quite close, as clean grid energy is significantly outpacing electric vehicle adoption (and EVs rely on a clean grid to be clean).

If you return the tax to everyone as a dividend, then it becomes progressive, while still encouraging less polluting options

To be fair, it would be more effective to build a handful of mid-rises rather than clear-cutting space for a new exurb

The antecedent of “its” is America, not the drug

Effective systemic change requires changing the systems, not individual people or companies. If we want less virgin plastic or gasoline burning, it needs to be less profitable to extract oil, process it, and sell it to people who want it, otherwise somebody is going to do that.

That is why in California, bees are fish

The report describes living comfortably as spending no more than 30% of one’s income on rent.

This is abusing a crude, outdated rule of thumb that never worked in HCOL areas [1]. Put simply, if your rent goes up by $10K annually and all other costs remain the same, you only need $10K more per year to be just as “comfortable”, not $33.33K.

Granted, $35.1K is a lot (that would be 100% of minimum wage in Los Angeles). The median rent for a **1BR ** is $2.2K [2], so 26K per year (i.e. still too much).

In short, minimum wage isn’t enough to afford rent in L.A., but you certainly don’t need to be making $100K.

1. https://www.earnest.com/blog/rent-and-the-30-percent-rule/
2. https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/los-angeles-ca/?bedrooms=1

This requirement is also the plot of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, As the Last I May Know

Every presidential election is important, and it never makes sense to make a “protest vote”. That’s just not how voting works.

I’m sure somebody has cried wolf at every election, but McCain and Romney never aimed to become dictators. Republicans currently have a published plan to institute fascism. It’s pretty obvious that these elections actually are exceptional.

Yes, you can always count on the right-wing to oppose all progress, with help from everyone’s favorite propogandist petrostate. What’s wild though is over half of Canadians don’t even realize they are getting a rebate! [0] Clearly whatever people’s opinions on the policy are, they aren’t driven by reality.

[0] https://abacusdata.ca/carbon-tax-pollution-pricing-carbon-action-incentive-payment-abacus-data-polling/

Public services (e.g. libraries) are so far the most effective at getting people’s buy-in. Many countries even provide healthcare this way. Food is a bit trickier, but is done in schools, and something like a public cafeteria seems tenable. Housing would be extremely difficult due to security concerns; the current housing shortage would also prevent this.

In general Universal Basic Income (UBI) still has the advantage that everyone gets it, so it doesn’t feel “unfair” (and people generally support getting money for themselves). It far more flexible than public services, but suffers from people stressing about the rich getting it.

Carbon Tax & Dividend has that advantage and even further justification. Tax polluters, and then give that money back to everyone equally (after all, everyone is hurt equally by pollution).

A similar argument could be made for nonrenewable resources and Land Value Tax (LVT) - the land belongs to everyone, and everyone deserves to benefit from its use.

This article is an abuse of the source data. “Working class” here is closer to manual laborer and excludes teachers, farm workers, military, emergency services, nurses, law enforcement, and others. The data is also fairly noisy, with typos and 2% of values being empty affecting the calculation.

To conclude that anyone not “working class” by this definition is “upper-class” is absurd. I guess for some it is hard to imagine the lofty former assistant manager at Burger King (D-AR) understanding the struggles of the common man.

There are certainly interesting discussions to be had about the disruptive influence of wealth on elections and about balancing representation with competence – and folks are having that discussion – but this article contributes less than nothing to those conversations.

Industrial strength anthropic principle

Oh man, don’t stop

You got it! Here’s some other consumer protections the administration has introduced recently:

• Direct filing with the IRS
• Price limits on asthma inhalers and insulin for seniors
• Requiring ISPs to provide consistent up-front information and pricing
• Restrictions on college junk fees and disallowing witholding of transcripts

Hungry for more? Check this out:

White House Statement on Junk Fees

That’s from October, so some of it overlaps, but among other stuff there’s still a “Click to Cancel” rule working its way through the FTC.

Sadly Biden has been spending a bunch of time on lame crap like climate change, human rights, health care, infrastructure, election integrity, etc., so it might take a bit longer for him to single-handedly usher in consumer utopia.