It is though. It’s not like they’re brave undercover heroes going into cartel territory, trying to protect their families from retaliation. These are in general population hiding their faces because they know what they’re doing is illegal, unethical, and would be shamed by pretty much everyone. They’re are trying to escape charges. They are criminals

That’s hilarious, thanks for the image! Not the first time I’ve been accused of not being gentle enough

They’re not ruining their economy by fighting what makes them great or their people healthy. They have their grift and corruption more under control. They’re not cutting back on investments for their future in favor of investments for their past. They have the attention span to commit to a plan for more than four years at a time.

Or at least waste and abuse

I’m lucky to live in a place with reliable power and few natural disasters. My chest freezer will keep food frozen for longer than any power outage I’ve had.

Of course it can still happen, but if it hasn’t in 20 years of living here, it seems pointless to try to prevent.

Everyone: holy shit, $1T! We need to do something

Senate Republicans: hold my beer

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/06/18/climate-solar-oil-tax-senate-trump

I like their idea of a “polluter pays” or climate superfund” bill, but do those work?

• We do have some form of “polluter pays” laws now but unless it’s enough to actually clean up, then it’s not effective. Also if it “gives them permission” to pollute since they already paid, are we potentially making things worse?
• superfund idea is a good one - taxes not meant to be punitive or guide behavior but just to face the reality that that industry has an impact they need to be held responsible for

I didn’t see a link to any such proposed bill but I’m confident in saying the problem is it’s not enough, not comprehensive enough

There are several diseases commonly carried by ticks, depending on region. However these days you probably need to look more locally - many state have programs to monitor and try to react:

• https://www.mass.gov/tick-borne-diseases

At least where I live, encephalitis is more of a problem with mosquitoes

• https://www.mass.gov/mosquito-borne-diseases

Won’t that just cut off its head and leave the parts behind? I thought that was the general problem with using tweezers.

Luckily we don’t generally get ticks but the last time I tried to remove one I completely screwed it up, so I always take my kids to urgent care to have it done. It wouldn’t take much for that to become ruinously expensive

Selling Progressivism won’t work because that’s not the problem.

• I’m watching a video now where they’re blaming lack of success. Apparently young men don’t support democrats because they don’t get anything done. I saw this during the election as well where people only looked at the short term, only blamed one party, instead of looking at why
• my brother is more conservative, although he won’t say how much of it he actually believes. But we clearly are living in different realities. If you can’t agree on basic facts, how can you agree on solutions? If I lived in his reality I might have similar beliefs. However he can’t see my reality, nor why I think that’s the real reality

That’s what I’m hoping. After many years of not going to a gym and not using crappy home equipment, will I use nicer equipment more conveniently at home? I can hope so and at least you only buy it once

When I was a kid, we got a cheap barbell set and used it regularly. As a parent, I’m horrified they were allowed to sell cheap rickety dangerous equipment and would insist on heavier duty with more safety.

A squat rack is a great example. You don’t need it and I never used one as a kid, but it will save you from accidents getting the bar onto your shoulders and back down when you’re exhausted. I would not allow my kid to do squats without one

If you’re motivated at home you can run on street/walk/trails, you can do core body workouts, you can get some cheap equipment that will get you most of the benefits of a gym at much less cost. You can always find cheap used equipment for sale from people cleaning out their houses

Going to the gym gets you better equipment, more equipment, and helps establish a routine to keep you going when motivation isn’t enough.

If you get home equipment similar to what you’d use at a gym, the payback time is much longer, it may be difficult to move or store, and you can’t get rid of it when it’s time.

At home I have a good set of dumbbells, an Exercycle, and exercise mats I never use. However I’ve never really been able to establish a gym routine so that’s a waste of money. My brother has a good half ton of exercise equipment he’d give me free of charge but I have no way to transport it and it would cost too much.

I actually am considering getting more home exercise equipment. At least my teens would use it and maybe I would too. It’s expensive but it’s not continuous cost like a gym would be.

Altitude of 300m …. This is older than 8 years, this corresponds to the first SpaceX tests …. I don’t see that level of historical detail, but Wikipedia lists a milestone of a recovered falcon 9 after launch to orbit. Hondas technology is somewhere over 15 years old …. And the article doesn’t say whether it’s comparable size or power, so no.

I think this actually plays into GOP hands. We’ve already seen Republican voters seem to vote with their feeling on their local situation, without much overall awareness or larger perspective. So now this situation gets worse for them and it’s easy to see karma at work. But from their perspective things suck and we see they’re easily manipulated by people claiming they have the solution, demonizing a scapegoat, claiming they’re going to disrupt and change, claiming it’s “a big beautiful bill”.

Isn’t this more of the same? Rural voters descend into ever worse situation, are unable to lift their eyes to see the full picture, get manipulated into ever more extreme actions.

As a European those power draws listed sound absolutely absurd to me

Let me clarify - those are standard sized circuits, not actual draw. However the service has to be sized to handle it, and over-provisioning to account for it.a customer might install a stove that draws the full load and might use all the burners at once, and you have to account for typical usage patterns.

For sure it’s a well earned stereotype that Americans use more electricity than many other places. We tend to have bigger houses, more and bigger appliances. We not only don’t have that base charge per size of service but too some extent are charged less to use more: essentially we subsidize people electric resistive heat, who can pay a lower usage rate. We also don’t usually have time of use metering, although some do: my rate is the same whether I charge my car at night or at peak time. And of course our current leadership is intent on rolling back the efficiency standards we have.

Taking your heat pump dryer example, those are finally available here but tend to cost a lot more than a traditional dryer: savings on efficiency will never make back the extra purchase cost More importantly they’ve only been available in small sizes, not typical for houses, especially with families

That may be the entire difference, we don’t have that base cost. Our monthly bill is mainly the actual useage, itemized into generating cost, transfer cost, fees and taxes. There is usually an administrative fee but that’s fixed cost.

1. Sometimes breakers don’t trip, so there’s a small risk of fire
2. Restarting the whole house may have large initial loads as everything starts at once: more chance of it happening again or potentially damaging some appliances
3. Risk of heat damage to wiring with repeated trips, risk of broken connections from more frequent expansion from heat/cool cycles
4. Inconvenience, especially in the old days when you’d have to go through to set clocks. If while asleep you might not be awoken in time. If you weren’t home, maybe food gone bad
5. Occasional home health appliances are critical to keep going

Realistically it comes down to how conservative you are with over-provisioning. You might also expect it to handle the load for 50 years of growing usage. In the US we have the expectation of rarely to never tripping the main and when that happens it’s more likely an electrician call

There’s a standard

• https://ask-the-electrician.com/residential-electrical-load-calculation.html

Then you’d round up to the nearest service level. Realistically, I believe most recent-ish houses are 200a service now with larger ones or hot climates tending to 300a+

In my experience people get by with a 3x25A (17 kW available, matches approximately a 70A service in the US)

Wow, how do you do that?

Of course over-provisioning is a thing but that’s crazy. Maybe you have much smaller appliances or assume much lower usage, but 70a basically assumes 2 major appliances at a time, using close to max load, and with nothing else turned on.

Typical 240v major appliances

• level 2 EV charger: 50a
• stove: 50a
• central ac: 40a
• dryer: 40a
• heat pump: 50a+
• water heater: 50a

Of course you won’t use them all at once and they won’t usually be drawing their full rated load but I would not want to deal with being limited to one at a time so I can also turn on the lights or use the microwave

That can theoretically draw 280a, before you even count things like lights and small appliances. If you added up all possible circuits, you may be hitting 1000a theoretical in a modern house. I’m comfortable that My 200a service will handle any combination I might use, but 70a definitely not

By contrast I once lived in an apartment with 60a service. It did not have most of these large appliances but I frequently tripped the main with combinations like stove + window ac + microwave + lights