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orclev

@ orclev @lemmy.world

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0
Comments
1094
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Cut the Failed Red States Loose: Why America Can't Keep Carrying the Dead Weight

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  • Hmm, I like this approach. How about this though. When a state fucks up bad enough to need a federal bailout, and it has to be the states fault not something like a natural disaster unless the state itself either caused it or demonstrably failed to prepare for it (looking at you Texas power grid) then the federal government does the following.

    First they decide how much they're budgeting to fix the problem. Then the State needs to decide if they're going to provide a plan to keep that problem from happening again. If the state provides a plan then the federal subsidy payments are done in installments and those installments are conditional on implementing that plan. If however the state either refuses to make a plan or doesn't make one that's acceptable instead that money is put into a fund that people can claim some amount of to cover expenses for moving out of that state and into another one. This could potentially go all the way up to the cost of buying a house in a different state, although they then actually have to move out of their current state including selling any property in that state or else the money gets clawed back.

    This way the problem gets solved one way or another, either the state improves or else there are fewer people stuck in shitty states.

  • Comey case hanging by a thread as judge squeezes DOJ over Halligan’s handling

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  • These days I'd say disbarment is a far more likely scenario than any prosecution.

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    apparently, the T button dosent exist for some people

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  • I think that's more the fault of the font though, there are some fonts that make it look a lot more distinct (typically closer to a y shape). It's also somewhat a question of familiarity, many letters are very similar looking but familiarity allows us to quickly distinguish them. Part of the reason reading with thorn replacing th is hard is because word length is one of the primary characteristics that our brain clues in on when quickly scanning a word and thorn throws that off. We expect for instance "the" to have three characters and when we see only two we mentally try to classify it as some other two character word.

  • Toyota’s Boss Said "Screw It" And Went Full MAGA Gear

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  • I'll be sad when I'm finally forced to replace my Mazda 6. This all SUVs all the time nonsense needs to stop. I'm surprised they haven't discontinued the Mazda 3 at this point.

  • US May Owe £760BN in Tariff Refunds if Trump Loses at Supreme Court

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  • Turns out letting the guy who habitually bankrupts businesses run the government "like a business" leads to financial problems. Who could possibly have predicted this? There's also the fact he's a complete moron, and likely is suffering from early onset dementia, and he's a felon and conman just for that extra bit of spice.

  • Trump’s Republican Party insists there’s no affordability crisis and dismisses election losses

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  • Really getting this kind of energy here.

  • 'Agentic AI' is current industry buzzword - but what does it mean and should we be cautious?

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  • Agentic AI is just a buzzword for letting AI do things without human supervision. It's absolutely a recipe for disaster. You should never let AI do anything you can't easily undo as it's guaranteed to screw it up at least part of the time. When all it's screwing up is telling you that glue would make an excellent topping for pizza that's one thing, but when it's emailing your boss that he's a piece of crap that's an entirely different scenario.

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    Careful with AI IPOs. Tech like Mamba is a huge risk for them.

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  • Thinking about investing in new AI IPOs?

    Not even remotely.

  • 25 Movies, Many Stars, 0 Hits: Hollywood Falls to New Lows

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  • They're in a death spiral. The ticket prices are largely controlled by the movie distributors not the theaters with a significant chunk of the profit from ticket sales going to the distributor. This isn't new, been that way for decades. In response the theaters figured they could charge more for concessions to make up their profit. With people not seeing movies much anymore the theaters raised concession prices to ridiculous levels to try to make up the difference. Their latest bid is cramming obscene numbers of commercials in before the movie plays because they get to keep all that money as well. The increased prices, tons of ads, and the too loud environment cause even fewer people to want to go to the theaters, which in turn causes them to raise rates and add more ads. They're circling the drain at this point because not only are they discouraging people from attending but we're also in an economic downturn where everyone is cutting back on whatever discretionary spending they possibly can

  • Poll: Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they have a good friend in the other party

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  • There's a time and place for disagreements, but basic human rights ain't it. If this was the 1980s and we were all arguing over whether the wealthy getting yet another tax break would actually benefit the poor you might have a point. At this point the argument is about whether trans people should be allowed to exist and whether birth right citizenship should be removed (to say nothing of the concentration camps). Those are not disagreements anyone needs to hear.

  • Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin

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  • Windows will be the default until suddenly it isn't. Valve is doing amazing at destroying the core of Microsoft's support. This story would be different if this was a decade ago, but these days most average people do their computing on phones and tablets. The ones sticking to traditional PCs are mostly gamers and now more than ever Linux is a viable alternative to Windows. Vanishingly few games can't be played perfectly fine on Linux. Once enough gamers are using Linux it will become the default choice, and once it's the default choice for gamers it will become the default choice for most people, at least the ones not on phones and tablets.

  • Trump Finally Reveals His Health Care Plan—and It’s Bad

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  • OK, but now, what if instead of everyone using that money to buy insurance the government just bought the insurance for everyone. And then what if instead of paying an insurance company to pay healthcare expenses the government just directly paid those healthcare expenses. It would be so much simpler with a lot fewer middlemen involved.

  • Sanders calls deal to end government shutdown a "disaster"

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  • Only the first one can be fixed by competition, the rest aren't impacted by that at all. There are too many moving parts for it all to magically go away by just saying "make them compete". For instance what happens when insurance companies compete to offer the best deals on group rates to employers but then charge exorbitant premiums to employees? Or what if insurance premiums all magically came down but pharmaceutical prices kept skyrocketing?

    Medical costs are an inelastic demand as well as a non-discretionary expense. That's an absolutely terrible combination which means they're almost entirely isolated from market forces.

    Consider for instance a situation I find myself in. I need a certain medication for a permanent medical condition. Fortunately there are multiple medications available (often due to patents there's only a single option). Unfortunately I'm allergic to all but one of them. That means it doesn't matter if the pharmaceutical company is charging $5 or $5000 I'm paying for it. I literally have no choice. Whether my insurance pays for 100% of that or 0% doesn't change what the pharmaceutical company is charging. Further for insurance I was offered a choice of about 5 different plans through my employer (which is a lot by most standards, often employers only offer one or two plans). My insurance is by all metrics terrible, I pay thousands of dollars every year in deductibles, but once I hit those deductibles it covers everything at 90% which with my medical expenses save me tens of thousands of dollars a year. There are cheaper plans of course, but then the tradeoff is that I'm restricted to a tiny handful of doctors who are all terrible and every single medical decision has to be pre-approved by the insurance company or they don't cover it and I'd rather pay the extra thousand dollars a year to keep those decisions between me and my doctors.

    The US medical system is a hydra and fixing any one part doesn't actually solve anything. The entire system needs to be overhauled top to bottom. Switching to a single payer system is just the first step in that process but it's a necessary one because otherwise the problem is intractable. It's likely the patent system is going to need to be overhauled at least with regards to medications before it's fixed as well.

  • Sanders calls deal to end government shutdown a "disaster"

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  • Mostly because:

    A) Insurance companies collude with each other

    B) are only half the problem (the other half being hospitals and pharmaceutical companies cranking prices up)

    C) Most Americans get their insurance through their employer

    and

    D) Healthcare costs are complicated because they're split between insurance premiums and out of pocket expenses and typically raising one lowers the other and vice versa

    Insurance was always a terrible way to handle healthcare expenses because healthcare costs are generally non-discretionary and have far too many moving parts and payers.

  • Drug dealer granted clemency by Trump sent back to prison for violating terms of release

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  • At first I wasn't convinced because it hasn't posted much in the last couple hours, but then I got back to about 3h ago and there's an absolute tsunami of posts. I stopped scrolling after like the 10th page of messages all in that same 1 hour period. It's either a bot or they need to cut back on the cocaine.

  • Drug dealer granted clemency by Trump sent back to prison for violating terms of release

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  • What are you talking about? Nobody said anything about AI?

  • Tech stocks suffer worst week since April after $800bn AI sell-off

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  • Just wait until they figure out that the hundreds of billions of dollars that keep showing up in deals don't actually exist because it's all a giant circle and all the deals cancel out. They're literally trading the same imaginary money back and forth to generate headlines to pump the stocks. Also apparently the company formerly known as Facebook might not actually have enough money to cover the cost of their shiny new data center. If Zuckerbot manages to bankrupt his company chasing the AI fad I am going to laugh so hard I might actually pass out

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    Experts Say Blue States Can Stop Paying Federal Taxes. There’s Precedent

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  • The merits are that the only "precedent" they have is an idea that was spitballed a while back, never implemented, and even back then regarded as blatantly unconstitutional and unlikely to survive a legal challenge. The article even says as much itself. The entire rest of the article is based on the idea that that idea would magically work rather than being smacked down by the Supreme Court instantly. They wouldn't even need to come up with some convoluted unconstitutional bullshit to do so, the constitution is actually on their side in this one.

  • Infantino says ‘you will see’ at World Cup draw if Trump receives new FIFA peace prize

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  • They should call it the FIFA corruption prize, it would be a far more accurate name and actually match what FIFA is all about.