Maybe. But it also seriously helps to avoid being distracted. I live in Seattle and drive to my parents house in Vegas, almost always driving I-90 -> I-82 -> I-84 -> I-15. Washington is great. Hardly any billboards. Oregon and Idaho are about the same. Driving through Utah is awful. Billboards everywhere some of them are brightly lit and flashing. I feel much more distracted by them.
And bumped wages means higher costs which are passed on to customers. The higher prices means having to raise UBI, and the only way to afford that is by increasing taxes, and so effective take home pay from those bumped wages isn't as high as everyone thought and now we're back to square one.
The first half of your statement is perfectly true, through implementing UBI we're raising the floor on income inequality so that the relative gap between the richest and poorest shrinks. But, we don't end up back at square one, we just haven't given as effective a UBI as we originally intended.
Maybe. These kinds of system-level effects are extremely hard to forecast with any kind of certainty. At best, the evidence we have is from studying the effects of things like raising minimum wage or giving away money to more niche groups such as families with children (eg Canada's CCTB), or people living in specific areas (Alaska Permanent Fund).
As far as I can tell, none of these lesser programmes has had any effect above and beyond inflation on cost of living. Wasn't the sky supposed to fall when Washington State passed that ballot measure for a graduated minimum wage increase back in 2016?
Meanwhile, there are plenty of examples of awfully expensive large scale "back to square one" experiments that have been undertaken by other political ideologies with little to no opposition—where is the economic growth that was supposed to have happened as a consequence of the Ryan/Trump tax cuts in 2017?
I can't find any relevant data, but I wonder what effects previous quarantines (eg during Spanish flu) had on other infectious agents (eg common cold, norovirus, etc). Nobody was being quarantined for those other diseases, but I'd think a general quarantine would have had an effect on them as well. Maybe there ought to be a monthly quarantine every year, kinda like the Jewish year of jubilee.
I'd imagine on the whole it's wasted. Half the year they aren't just generating wasted heat, they're increasing cooling costs. The half of year that the heat is wanted, it's usually above you, and I imagine that heat is being generated less efficiently than a purpose-built device.
> that heat is being generated less efficiently than a purpose-built device.
“efficiency” is meaningless when heat is desired. if you pump 100W into a device, and it “wastes” all that power, you have successfully generated 100W of heat. only heat pumps can be more efficient.
Exactly. And if you have a whole house/apartment electric heating system it is very likely that it is in fact heat pump based. So you are better off using that for heat than the lights.
If your whole house/apartment heating system is gas or oil based, that will probably be even cheaper than the heat pump electric version.
>if you have a whole house/apartment electric heating system it is very likely that it is in fact heat pump based
Hmm, where? I have never knowingly been in a house with a heat pump in the UK, and lots of cheaper flats have electric radiators and immersion heaters.
Not quite – some energy was lost converting from its source form to electricity. If you heat your house by directly burning natural gas (the most common way in cool countries like the UK) then it can still have an efficiency advantage over converting electricity to heat.
This is true but - especially if your house is not well insulated - getting heat in the right place matters too - most people don't need to heat their roofs or ceiling spaces. There's also a more minor point on time of day you want heat or not.
The only thing that can be more efficient is one of the most common forms of heating devices.
During the summer, it's also extra inefficient to pump 100W into a device producing heat and then pump even more power somewhere else to cool down the room.
I had a friend with a condo in Chicago with a 400-500 dollar a/c bill plus another 200-300 year round bill because the builders hated the earth and universally used halogen bulbs. But on the plus side the heating bill was probably 50 bucks for the year.
Heat pumps have higher than 100% efficiency because they extract heat out of air / water. 100% is a very low efficiency for electric heating. Anything lower than 400% is considered below average.
I'm mostly in agreement with you, but the part that gives me concern is precisely how precisely the lasers will be aimed at the retina. I doubt anyone ever really looks at a screen in the exact same place (even if you are staring at a specific character) due to eye jitter. After a year or twenty of use are we going to start having burn-in on our retina's similar to plasma screens used as kiosks?
I have a number in Google voice that I ported from a regular old T-Mobile SIM years ago. I haven't seen many that won't send me an SMS message, but when I do, they are usually banks. I don't think it much matters where the phone number originates.
I just tried it on every platform I have access to; Android, Linux, Macos, Windows and Chromebook. I was able to take a screenshot of a show playing on Netflix on every one.
Thanks. Haven't tried it on four out of five of those platforms. Last time I tried it didn't work for me on macOS but maybe that has changed. Definitely does not work on any recent iOS.
Fair use is not a right; it’s a defense. You don’t have a right to use materials for educational purposes. What happens is: you’re sued and you argue that your usage was fair use.
Because of that distinction, you technically have no right to take screenshots of copyrighted media.
Side note: the reason for this distinction is that there’s no set criteria for fair use. Some people say there’s the “10 second rule” or whatever, but they’re wrong.
As an American, how does that work in practice? I know I can go to Vietnam and be treated for a small amount (I was in a Vietnamese hospital for a couple of days due to a really bad strep infection and dehydration as I was unable/unwilling to swallow, and in a separate incident, also had a round of rabies shots after being bitten by a dog there). I figured it was cheap because everything is cheap there and no one there could afford it otherwise, not because of government insurance. But if I go to Australia, Canada, UK, or any other country, how do I get access to this cheap healthcare without becoming a citizen or paying taxes? Do I qualify just by nature of being there with a valid visa?
> But if I go to Australia, Canada, UK, or any other country, how do I get access to this cheap healthcare without becoming a citizen or paying taxes?
You'd likely pay more than a resident/citizen who may not pay or may a token amount. But this full price will still be very small in comparison to US (eg full price of doctor's consultation in France is like 25 EUR).
Even Switzerland which is expensive for Europe in terms of healthcare is cheap comparatively (a simple ER visit might be a few hundreds, not thousands).
I work in a Canadian hospital. We have OOC patients all the time...Out of Country. During their stay, they or their family get told to visit the business office to set up payment. The business office is a tiny, one person desk in the hospital. They will take payment directly or will correspond with your insurance provider. This is mostly for people with emergency and unplanned admissions. I'm not sure how it would work for elective procedures or med purchasing. You could probably walk into a walk in clinic and pay out of pocket as almost all with have debit/credit machines since some things aren't covered in Canada (travel vaccines for example).
Most people are fully aware that what happened there is a tragedy. Most people also have an instant-no-thought habit to smile when having a picture taken. Is it really any better for them to take a picture and be solemn? Is that enough or do they need to express deep sadness for these pictures? Would others claim these sad emotions are just for show anyway? And if so, should we expect people to just not take pictures at all at the WTC memorial? And if so, at what point in time can we start taking pictures at a place with our normal happy faces?
People are there. They are happy they are there, even though 'there' (where ever 'there' is) may be a place that causes them to have emotions on the sad part of the emotional spectrum.
Think of funerals. It's a sad place to be (perhaps sadder since the person who died is someone well known as opposed to a lot of unknown people, but I won't judge either way). Family and friends are together, which usually makes people happy. It's a mixed bag of emotions. If someone happens to smile in a picture there it's probably more to do with habit of smiling for pictures or happiness to be with family and friends (perhaps first time in a while) than it is for being happy the deceased is deceased or for social status boosts.
