Just a reminder, the “major questions doctrine” is bullshit, used by the partisan conservatives to ignore the plain text of a statute whenever they want to engineer an outcome. Don’t pretend that this is anything less than make-believe judicial bullshit.
I just want to tip my hat to Elizabeth Lopatto’s writing in this piece. I miss following her on twitter and had forgotten how spicy and on-target she can be. Good stuff.
The current Indian government has prosecuted or detained employees of foreign companies in the past for actions taken by the company. There is a real risk here.
I do think the Indian government has a point if you read the lawsuit. This is a ongoing lawsuit and the page taken down had info on it and a discussion page where people were talking about the ongoing lawsuit. The lawsuit says that this “…Complicates and compounds the issue at hand.”
Hard disagree. Ongoing lawsuits often have complicated issues, but are nonetheless topics of public concern. It’s sometimes inconvenient for governments and large corporations to have the public aware of the lawsuit and the underlying facts and issues, but that’s no reason to impose a gag order.
Frankly, whenever I hear a court give vague rationales like “complicates the issues,” I assume they judge just doesn’t like the criticism. That’s what it sounds like here.
I live in a small city built out a couple decades ago
It’s probably a fair point to mention that smaller cities and towns have wildly different parking needs than NYC, where the majority of residents don’t own a car. The existence of parking minimums in a place like New York is just bonkers. (Thanks, Robert Moses!)
I still expect plenty of parking to be built after any city repeals parking minimums, it just isn’t an excessive amount, and the city and developers soon start arriving at a natural equilibrium (compared to an inflated floor) of what is actually required, depending on what kind of business or residence it is, where it is located, etc.
The big factor about parking is how much it adds to housing costs. The Government Accountability Office did a report in 2018 that estimated that parking requirements added $50,000.00 to every housing unit sold. Obviously, some parking will probably be needed, but just reducing the amount has the effect of an immediate per-unit cost reduction for a given multi-family project. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-637.pdf
Bring us back major concert tours from Hole, Veruca Salt, Garbage, the Breeders, and the Chicks, you cowards! (The Chicks are still filling arenas, actually, and they put on a really good show.)
Where’s your bike seat?
Mint
I see Mint as the more reasonable option that keeps 98% of the advantages of Ubuntu, with less of the crazy. I was a xubuntu user a decade ago, but have been very happy with Mint xfce since I switched.
If you’re ordinary and you never get enough sleep, I have just the place for you. New York’s hottest nap club is “Off to Dreamland!” Located in the heart of Queens at the corner of Sleep Street and Sleepytime Drive, this converted mattress store park was the ceremony spot for a lengendary nap taken by Adam Conover when he was a boy. This place has everything: body pillows, comforters, blankies, cuddle buddies, sleep masks, and CPAP machines. And be sure to hit the converted traincar section and lean your head on the shoulder of MTA Chair Janno Lieber, the celebrity sleeper in residence.
Don’t forget the huge energy savings (heating/cooling, transportation, infrastructure) by having denser housing. It isn’t just a measurement of “I can see trees,” but all the daily human activities that have a reduced environmental impact in denser development. It’s counter-intuitive, but rural areas that are “nearer to nature” are often worse for the environment.
There is probably a break-even point, I don’t think everyone living in skyscrapers is ecologically ideal and I wouldn’t want to live there anyway. But medium-density development with multi-unit (shared wall) buildings allows huge energy costs, while also making public transit more viable and providing a tax base that actually pays for its own infrastructure.
Thanks for the rec! I also love that you presume that there will be a next time, cuz, uh, that’s accurate. These little boxes are powerhouses, I probably want one for a TV set-top box now that all the TV boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, even Android TV and soon Apple TV) are riddled with ads.
At this point, my only hope is that the failed business model will kill most of these before they get even worse, regulators don’t seem to have any appetite to monitor or restrict/tax the runaway energy usage.
Beelink and Minisforum are legit
I wish I knew a lot of this when I first started shopping for a mini PC. I ended up with a Beelink model that I’m quite happy with, but it seems almost luck that I didn’t pick another one, and I would have liked a “reputable brand” search function.
Pigs are the only animal I struggle with eating, morally.
Yeah, they’re pretty intelligent and emotionally aware, at least as much as your average dog.
Taxing carbon at its source is the only feasible way of doing a carbon tax, we have to get serious about this if we even pretend to care about the safety and national security threats that come with global warming, rising sea levels, severe/changing weather, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MO9CUyuwf4
“. . . and you can put so much stuff in there, you wouldn’t even know!”
That’s basically the wave in the water planet scene from Interstellar. That’s terrifying.
“What baby” 😆
Love love Hark! A Vagrant. And a lot of the other comics are way funnier, especially the historical ones. The comics about “marauding women on bicycles” (like this one) crack me up. I still think the “strong female characters” series is one of the funniest things ever.
I wish Beaton would keep doing Hark! A Vagrant, but given what her family went through and her sister’s misdiagnosis and death from cancer, I understand why she finished it up. Her graphic novel/memoir, Ducks, was one of the best books I read last year.
Credit unions used to have some limitations, like no national or regional reach, but now they link their ATMs in networks together, and depositing a check is as simple as taking a picture with your phone. They’ve given me good loan rates, relatively good interest rates on checking accounts and CDs, and I always get a human when I call. Your money is insured up to $250k through the NCUA, basically the credit Union version of the FDIC. And you own part of the credit union, and the income stays local. There probably isn’t a perfect financial institution, but credit unions can be close.