I think they left out the most obvious questions-
Are you super rich?
Can you afford elective heath operations that will potentially prevent life ending illnesses or affliction?
Can you afford expensive lifestyles tailored for your health?
Can you afford to reduce all forms of stress in your life and live with no worries?
Yeah, colon/anal cancer will do this as well.
He needs a doctor, and fast. Best case scenario it is ulcerative collitis. Worst case he is getting an MRI of his brain and brainstem to find out it is a central tumor and will only be getting worse.
Fun fact, in the book Jurassic Park and in the initial script, there was a river boat sequence. It was extensively planned in preproduction and teased as part of the plot. This was spread to the other ‘tie-in’ merchandise and park ride. This is why the universal studio ride is a water ride and why games that timed their release with the movie had river sequences. But as we all from the future know, it never happened. Budget overruns and shooting delays lead to script rewrites to cut out that sequence.
Seriously. We are talking about tire tread compared to weight. Both use multiple sizes of tire depending on the year/model. There are a few that overlap in diameter to get the closest to comparison but they still have a very different width. We are talking about a 235/35R18 vs a 235/75R18. That is a huge difference in wall height/aspect ratio and changes how the tire gives under power. Those numbers massively change depending on model as well. Something like an f150 raptor could have a 315/70R17, almost a foot wide. So comparing just the weight and saying they are close enough is far from a fair comparison.
While any aircraft sent to ukrane is nice, I sure hope they aren’t paying much for them. That airframe is about 60 years old with the last major design overhaul in 1990 and its last electronics upgrade in 2000. They would be better off buying F15e’s or even the new f15ex. He’ll, even getting some last Gen f16’s or f18’s over there would be as good or better, but cost probably more. The f15 though is probably the best multiroll jet for the cost.
Now, if we are talking about sending some OG Mirage 2000 fighters over there, then that sounds like the ultimate white elephant gift France could give. The US could sent some F4 phantoms over while we are at it.
The big news I the training of 4500 pilots. That is huge. If they could do that, then the mirage 2000 could basically turn into their base fighter trainer and use it as the training wheels to get the new pilots experience and into bigger and better things.
You are on a nuke loving platform and people are going to downvote anything that isn’t hard pro nuke. But you are correct. I have had this exact same discussion before. The numbers you are looking for are called the LCOE, or the ‘levelized cost of electricity’ where the lifetime of the technology cost if factored in. Offshore wind is currently the lowest followed by solar. Nuke is clost to 10x the cost. There is even an international nuke consortium that has several reports agreeing with exactly what you are saying and basically sum it up as: if you invested in nuke early, then it is cost efficient to just keep upgrading. If you didn’t invest in it early, then the cost to implement it so high that you are better off going wind/solar. Even if you add in the cost of battery systems, it is still cheaper than building a new nuke plant. And more than that, with these new nuke plants you have to upgrade all your infrastructure because your old wires can’t handle the output loads. If you look at the 30+ billion Georgia spent on this plant, they could have simply given out a micro generation grant to everyone to add solar to their roofs, not needed to upgrade the lines, and been far better off. But hey, just like reddit, if you are commenting on lemmy you better be pro nuke only and ignore the other numbers.
I never felt so more attacked, but also related to at the same time.
I had a CPT like that during my second deployment. He was out in 60 seconds and in the funniest positions. The team made an entire photo album of him sleeping. MK19 range included.
I have an honors minor in medical humanities and took several medical policy courses. We looked at this exact graph from previous years as well as several other huge sets of data/graphs/studies and anything else related to insurance you can imagine. Insurance is not a standard market commodity and does not follow the same trend or logic. The only way you can lower premiums in insurance is by reducing the risk in the pool, or increasing the pool size to dilute the risk. This is either increasing the total pool size by increasing premiums, getting more people, or being selective about who joins the risk pool. The third one was what was called “preexisting conditions” and kept high cost people from entering the risk pool and draining the funds. This got banned and increased premiums. By increasing competition you end up splitting up the pools, making everyone’s premiums go up. This happened multiple times post ACA after the GOP started stripping out the funding and safeguards to prevent this. More and more competition opened up with artificially low premiums being subsidized by federal dollars, but then when the subsidies ended the premiums started jumping. Then when the premiums were jumping, new companies opened up to make more competition advertising lower rates, but then further fractured to pool sizes, leading to premiums skyrocketing. If you look back just 10 years ago there was a 3-5 year stretch of premiums increasing almost 30% year after year. It was due to all the competition opening up every year. This is why single payer systems have the lowest rates. If you have even one private company monopoly with a regulated cap on profits you would still end up with lower premiums. Then, if this single paying company was nationalized to take out the profit making middle man, the premiums are that much lower because your risk is spread across a massive pool. More competition in insurance makes the problem worse. I would agree with your stronger regulation though. There is a lot that can be done there.
One man’s terrorist group is another man’s freedom fighter. This is why many new organizations that are big on neutrality normally shy away from calling anyone terrorist groups. You could just as easily frame Israel as a terrorist group with the same justifications listed above.
So true. I am from Houston and loved it. I know what you mean about people bitching about taxes no matter what. The oil and gas guys are the worst. They have million dollar town homes, jobs that bring in 250k or more, and then bitch about the sales tax being on their bar tabs that are over a thousand dollars. They will bitch about their city taxes going to nothing, but then when I bring up the port of Houston, all the amazing museums, Herman/memorial park, miller outdoor theater, any of the amazing parks really, or any of the other things Houston pays for- that doesn’t count because they don’t use it and they just want a city paid for frat house with free booze and prostitutes. Ahhhh, classic Houston O&G…
I am homesteaders and you are correct in your numbers. And to be transparent here, I am actually a disabled veteran and receive an even larger exemption than most people. The value can grow more than the capped 10% in a few ways. The first was from the first assessment after I bought it. I bought for 170k and yet it was immediately assessed for 210k. Now I am up to about 250k. No improvements. I will be happy to sell for 200k.
The second thing they can do that I discovered was this last time they tried to say it was worth more than that (before I got it down to the 250k it is now), and did even note that the capped “taxable” increase- essentially saying that they have pre-locked in +10% increases for the next so many rounds of assessments until the taxable value is even with the assessed value. I argued it down. The value is still inflated.
Now, my personal opinion? I’m actually not mad about paying for taxes. I enjoy the idea of everyone pitching in what they can afford and together we can build a better community, nation, and world. I just hate that my city is playing in the real-estate speculation game as a way to pump their budget and the taxes I pay are going to a bunch of bullshit. Fuck dallas.
I think there is a miscommunication between both comments here on ‘fair’. Here is what I interpreted-
Taxes are never fair in the sense that one poor person will put in a penny, one middle person will put in a dollar, and one rich person will put in 1.99 and they will each receive 1 dollar back in services. This was only fair to one person of the 3, beneficially unfair to one, and penalizing unfair to another. But by paying what each was ably to pay society as a whole has been invested in 3 more dollars and no person was asked to pay outside their means.
I am not taking sides in this, just conveying the thought that ‘fair’ taxes can have multiple meanings and not just automatically jump to flat taxes.
I am also a texas home owner. The issue I have is when my county assessor has found their own incentive to ride the housing bubble and claim my property (a 2/2 condo in dallas) has somehow gained +60% in value over 3 years so they can get far more tax out of me knowing fully well that it isn’t worth that much. And when I argue it down all I get it down to is “just” +50% in value, knowing fully well that I might actually get +30% at best, but realistically +20%.
The state is incentivized to pump land values for more tax revenues and it will only cause a stagnation down the road when the bubble pops. It is a short sighted money grab from the state and it fuels the bubble that much more. It is one of the multiple catch 22 factors to make a housing crash into a self fulfilling prophesy.
Let me just point this out- this was the exact same argument by many intellectuals back in the 1950’s about segregation/integration and blacks in science. Why should we care about their color? If they are good scientists with great original ideas and experiments, then surely they will get published and get their positions commensurate to their merit. This is also ignoring their segregated schooling being underfunded, not being welcomed into higher ed unless at specific ‘negro’ universities, and the crippled career paths because of it. But sure, even with their second rate primary education due to their skin color, and their second rate secondary education due to their skin color, and then their crippled career prospects due to their skin color- why don’t we then measure them on merit? The black man never amounted to what out nice ivy league educated white man has done, so why take a risk on them? And again, should we not just judge them on merit? Ignore that if a black man has a novel idea then they must then have the idea reviewed into perpetuity while one of the white reviewers just so happens to come up with the same idea then publishes before the black man.
So to sit here and still argue that merit alone while disregarding the person is only progress is actually quite regressive.
Now, beyond that- modern publishing is blind in most every respectable journal because of this issue. It is only after being accepted is the author identity revealed to the reviewers.
The pyramids are made of granite. It has a density/weight of approximately 165 lb/cubic ft. As in, a 1x1x1 block weighs about 165 lbs. This block, assuming the standard person in this picture is about 5 ft (people have been getting taller over time) this block is maybe 20 ft cubed. Just an eyeball guess. That would put it at about 1,320,000 lbs.
The picture has 6 people deep carrying the first stone with what looks like maybe 4 people across? Hard to tell. But going off 6x4 people, that would mean that each person would have to carry 55,000 lbs each.
Would it be possible? I will let you guess from that. Next question, how many eggs to support it? After some google searches the textbook theoretical best an egg can support is some 300 lbs, but in practice is closer to 120-130 with support/positioning in place (think egg cartons holding them vs just on the ground). This would mean our 1,320,000 lb stone would take between 10,000 to 11,000 eggs to support it.
How long would it take to get that many eggs??? Good question. Chicken normally lay about an egg a day. So 10,000 chicken take 1 day, or 1 chicken would take about 10,000 days. But what is a realistic amount? Well, let me tell you. In the rabbit hole I found myself in of jokingly replying to this, I found an entire dissertation on “THE EXPLOITATION OF LIVE AVIAN RESOURCES IN PHARAONIC EGYPT: A SOCIO-ECONOMIC STUDY” BY ROZENN F. BAILLEUL-LESUER (JUNE 2016)
Captivating. Would recommend rabbiting down that hole. And on page 299 we can see that a Pharoah size flock would be about 2,000 Eurasia cranes or geese. So it would take us about a week to put that block in the picture on a bunch of eggs.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Shitty paywall. Even through 12ft.io
But about the content- he isn’t wrong, but people also need to know there is a bit of self interest in there too. France has a huge military industrial complex (outside of the massive one the US has) and is one of Europe’s biggest domestic military suppliers.
I always know someone doesn’t know anything about Afghanistan and its people when they refer to them as Afghani’s.
An Afghan is a person. Afghani is a currency. Anyone who calls them Afghani doesn’t even know the right term to call the people. It is a giveaway to how little you know about them when you don’t even know what to call them.
Meanwhile all the Chineses and Viet Congs are turning in their graves right next to the Afgani.
The grenade thing depends on the generation of grenade. Also depends on the country of origin. Assuming we are talking about the American M67 one you see in most movies, there are 3 different generations of safeties.
Quick basics of an American grenade- the spoon is the handle looking thing that is sticking out the top and runs along the side. Under it in the head of the grenade is a spring that is always trying to push the spoon off its hinge and make it fly off, while then starting the fuse and the whole bang process. The safety pin (a codder pin with a ring on one side to pull on) runs through the head of the spoon and is held in place simply through binding into its hole/channel by tension provided by the spring. For a little bit of extra safety the end of the pin sticks out about a quarter inch and is bent for a little, but easily straightened and pulled out with the ring (look up a picture and you will see what mean).
The old ones were just the safety pin held in place by the spring/spoon mechanism. But if you had excessive vibration or just enough pressure and you had pre-straightened the safety for pulling ease, it would negate the spring pressure and the safety pin could slip in and out with ease (thus easy to pull with teeth for Rambo effect). People didn’t trust it, so it was typical to then use electrical tape to hold the spoon down wrapped around the full body and then a bit extra folded back to make a quick pull tab. To throw: pull e-tape, pull pin, throw. The army then added a secondary safety to the safety. It was this secondary safety clip that held the spoon down to the head, providing constant tension and stopping the vibration loosening issues. They were also intentionally designed to have to get pulled off in opposite directions. To throw: (I am left handed) sweep safety clip left, pull pin right, throw. This was in my opinion the best setup and my favorite of grenade generations. Apparently this was about 50/50 with other others. So the army then came out with their third generation, the “confidence” thumb guard thing. It is a metal flap switch that locks/latches the safety clip onto the pin ring. I thought it was dumb. Most people hate it. But credit where credit due- it is impossible to fuck it up. Now to throw: thumb/sweep up on confidence latch, sweep left on safety clip, pull right on pin, throw.