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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I don’t really know the details here as I can’t find any other sources or articles, let alone statements by the affected parties.

    But the statement that wikimedia is rich because it has 17 months of operating reserves and a profitable unit with $8.1M in revenue seems a bit naive when said about an organization with 650 employees (likely $50M annual payroll) and misses the point, if indeed the point is about union busting as the headline claims.

    For me, I’m less interested in the financials and more about the story from the fired individuals. As a monthly donor, if the team comes out saying they were fired for unionizing, then I’m happy to cancel. But if it was more to do with business or operating disagreements, that’s another story, even if I disagree with the specific operational decision.

    But I tried following the links to the discussion pages and the solidarity pages. But most of the comments seem to be upset about the direction of the community wish list, the loss of the wishlist, and no direct statements about union busting. I then tried searching team member names and fired keywords, and couldn’t find any sources or direct statements.

    So I dunno. I’ll wait for credible first hand statements from the team before I cancel my donation. Cancelling a community request team sucks, but union busting is a completely different ballgame.


  • It’s interesting; I was listening to a recent NPR Planet Money podcast about why the US doesn’t have guaranteed vacation like all other high income countries. Much of it boiled down to history and politics, but one point that stuck out to me is that unions actually at one point opposed guaranteed vacation days, because if the government has laws for worker rights and leave, it reduces the demand for unions.

    I don’t know how much of a factor it is today, but for reference, I have a highly sought set of skills and experience in the US, and I get 35 paid holiday days per year, virtually unlimited sick leave, a two for one 401k match, comprehensive medical and dental, continuing education stipend, etc. Not guaranteed by law, but provided as work incentives.

    I wonder if much of the middle class here didn’t have such things, how many more laws or unions we would have to get them.


  • So mathematically that serves as a pay cap, because once you get to 100x you are taxed 100%. Some countries do have compensation caps for CEOs that are a multiple of the lowest paid employee, and I tend to like the model because it incentives increasing pay of employees who aren’t generally considered competitive or in high demand, and those are the folks that need market intervention most.

    In this exact formula, I suspect it would underwhelm. Someone who earned the federal minimum wage, $7.25/hour working full time would get a paltry $15,080 per year. Someone making $250k/year would only pay 16% income tax, a meet decrease. Now, maybe it is good to shift the cost burden more to the ultra wealthy giving relief to even those making good money. But that would require some data crunching to see where the breakpoint is.


  • I think the idea that taxing the rich is difficult or our tax code is too complicated feeds into the narrative around the problem being too hard to solve. I think the reality is more straightforward:

    • Bring back the previous top tax bracket of 39% that Republicans did away with. That will bring in a significant revenue.

    • Raise or add the top brackets on the capital gains taxes.

    • Add a new top tax bracket of you want to raise more revenue, e.g. 46% above X millions.

    When you look at reports by the congressional budget office or independent budget groups, most of the other proposals are noise in the grand scheme of things. Even the buy, borrow, die strategy that gets a lot of airtime (because it rightfully violates most people’s sense of fair play) only really accounts for something like 2% of the funds used by the ultra wealthy.

    Most of the things like wealth taxes would require more complex legislation and be treated by the courts, certainly going to the supreme court. But the above three bullets would meaningfully raise revenues, are simple in terms of legislation, and have clear statutory authority and case law on their side.

    The only thing hard is electing enough people who actually care about the budget and the people.



  • I worked in enterprise IT for years, including running mail servers, and ran my own personal servers for my home domains for years. The best feeling ever was outsourcing that responsibility. If you want to do it for fun or learning with a test domain, I’d say go for it. If you want to do this for email that might matter, I would not do that. For an illustration on why, research email delivery and email reputation topics. It’s not that everything is too complex, but you can easily have something to wing without ever knowing and you just lose email.

    If you want a good middle lane, I moved my personal domains to mxroute after buying a lifetime plan. I also know and have tested failing over to a second provider if needed. This let’s you make as many accounts and aliases as you want, without dealing with all the delivery issues personally.


  • I think the science needs to mature more before making causal life choices. Or maybe I’m just living on the edge with my unfiltered coffee. 😃

    Studies show that it can increase serum cholesterol, but might also have anti carcinogen and neuro protective effects. My cholesterol is checked yearly and comes back healthy each time, while I don’t have the same ready screening for cancer or brain health. I think as part of a healthy lifestyle it comes out in the wash for most people, and an annual blood panel is a good thing to trust but verify.


  • My daily driver is a 1L French press. 40 grams of beans, ground to 800 micron’s in a Kingrinder K6, with a long steep to let fines settle down to the bed, and the plunger only partially depressed to avoid disturbing the bed. Gently poured as consumed. This makes a good cup with a variety of types of beans and roast level. I mostly use locally roasted fresh coffee.



  • krellor@fedia.iotome_irl@lemmy.worldme_irl
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    27 days ago

    This, of course, is a ridiculous extrapolation. By focusing on the rate of change (doubling) every three months we of course get an absurd result.

    Instead, if we simply extrapolate the absolute growth per unit time then assuming the baby went from 10 lbs at birth to 20 lbs at three months (doubling), and we have 40 such time units until age 10, then we get a much more reasonable expected growth to 400 lbs. Which of course is much more reasonable for a 10 year old. Totally reasonable.



  • Lots of people have lied, but one situation stood out.

    Years and years ago I trained in MMA with two guys who were brothers from Europe and we competrd in martial arts tournaments around the country. This was before MMA really took off, so think lots of gyms with competition mats hosted by regional kyukushin and other styles of karate dojos. We grew pretty close, training, competing, traveling.

    One day get a call from one of them from jail. With no accent like they had always had. They had abducted a 17 year old highschool kid and murdered him execution style in the middle of nowhere after being paid by a drug dealer the kid owed weed money to. And they had priors for abuse against minors.

    Never had a perception of a person do such a complete 180 so fast. Literally makes your head spin. Never really trusted strangers until I did independent verification of their backgrounds after that. They completely lived a lie to a whole crowd of us while training and competing. Just crazy to think about.


  • It’s so situational, and aggressive/inconsiderate drivers never seen to think on the details of why people are driving a certain way.

    I’ve only driven through Boston a few times, but I’ve noticed on the East Coast there are lots of old highways and freeways built before all of the lessons learned and modern practices, so you have things like alternating exits on the left and right of the freeways. So some people need to be in the left lane to exit, and others to the right.

    I figure, if you are within 1-2 miles of your exit, go ahead and get in whatever lane you need even if you are going slower, because the alternative is an aggressive merge two minutes later. Likewise, if you are going 5-10 over in the far left and continuously passing relatively dense traffic in the middle lane, I don’t think you need to slow down, merge over, and then try and fight your way back just because one guy wants to do 10-20 over.

    That said, of the middle lane is mostly open and you camp in the left lane going barely over the limit, that just creates a hazard as people pass to your right.

    And this doesn’t even touch on HOV lanes in the far left. Like, of in driving with my family and want to be in the HOV, I’ll get people who want to go 20 over tailgating me acting like I should leave the HOV lane because it is the far left lane. So I dunno what the etiquette even is in some situations, but some aggressive drivers are just never happy if they can’t speed like the highway is their person race track.


  • 50% probably wouldn’t be enough, but I don’t know that details of residential development well enough. I think that baking it on size and amenities more than cost to determine if it is reasonable might be better.

    Doing a one off upgrade/remodel/rebuild is always more expensive per unit or sqft than a large development that follows variations on one design and overhead diffuses costs over many units.

    Add in custom design for security, which probably includes fire suppression, gardening against attack, and security infrastructure, and you are likely much more than 50% over market per sqft of remodeled space.

    But you can compare features more readily. If it has five kitchens, a grand entrance with marble columns and a double stairwell, then it’s well into luxury wants and not living and hosting needs plus security.


  • Most lawyers never litigate or actively engage in matters before a court. There are whole armies of lawyers who do contract law, agreement reviews, general counsel in organizations, tech transfer specialists, etc. These folks advise clients and help manage risk and would never be in a position to need to lie in most cases. Their job is to advise business decision makers, and you don’t need to agree with the decisions made to advise on the risk landscape.

    Even outside of that, there is a lot of ambiguity and conflict in large amounts of our statutes and promulgated policy, such that two lawyers can disagree about the application of law and neither one is lying.

    The kind of lying that is objectively lying, like suppressing or mischaracterizing facts, are also breaches of their ethical code of conduct and would put them at risk of professional repercussions from the courts or the BAR.

    So while there are bad apples like in any profession, most lawyers don’t lie more than anyone else, and probably less given they have incentives to be transparent in their role.