booly

The base price of TVs have gotten so cheap that in terms of absolute savings, even a true 50% discount wouldn't seem like a big deal.

30 years ago, when a big screen TV might cost the same as 3 months rent in a 3 bedroom apartment, getting 50% off was like getting 1.5 months rent. Now, when a big TV costs less than a quarter of a month's rent for a studio apartment, getting 50% off a TV is like getting 3 days rent.

Modern life is expensive because of housing, not because of stuff. Giving us better prices on stuff doesn't even help make this life more affordable.

By this logic fat shaming is acceptable?

I mean, yeah, in many contexts. For example, when a professional athlete shows up to training camp after putting on a bunch of fat in the off-season, that's fair game. It's literally their job to maintain their bodies and if we're allowed to criticize their job performance then we're certainly allowed to criticize their maintenance of their physical fitness. There's obviously a clear parallel here between that and other public figures where their intelligence may be fair game for criticism.

More broadly, when people are engaged in unhealthy habits of any kind (from smoking to sleep deprivation to overwork/stress to terrible relationship decisions to unhealthy eating/exercise habits), I think it's fair game for loved ones to point that out and encourage steering their lives back towards healthier choices. I'm not advocating that we go and make fun of strangers, the range of acceptable conversation in our day to day relationships is going to be different.

No, that's not OK to mock people's medical conditions, and it's always a good idea to exercise some empathy and humility to know that things might not always be as easy for others as for yourself. But I've never been on board with the idea that fatness is somehow off limits, in large part that I don't believe that most people's fatness is inherently innate. Correlations between moving to or away from high obesity areas (most notably between countries or between significant changes of altitude, but also apparent in moves between city centers and suburban car-based communities) make that obvious that fatness is often environmental.

TLDR: I make fun of Trump's fat ass all the time.

But because intelligence is an inherited trait

I don't think this is true, practically speaking. Intelligence is like endurance running speed in that there are heritable components to it, but at the end of the day environmental factors dominate on who is or isn't faster than another.

I can make fun of someone for being dumb in the same way that I can make fun of someone for being a slow runner. It's only problematic when their slowness is actually caused by something out of their control, like some kind of health issue.

Yeah, circumcision is near universal in Muslim-majority countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision

Allah = God (Islamic)

Are you under the impression that Muslims don't circumcize? In many Muslim societies, they make sure the boys are old enough to remember the mutilation, with circumcision around the age of 7.

I don't like the methodology of the study (done by Oxfam if you want to look it up). It attributes emissions to a person when it is done by a company they're invested in. From the press release:

Billionaires’ lifestyle emissions dwarf those of ordinary people, but the emissions from their investments are dramatically higher still —the average investment emissions of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires are around 340 times their emissions from private jets and superyachts combined. Through these investments, billionaires have huge influence over some of the world’s biggest corporations and are driving us over the edge of climate disaster.

Nearly 40 percent of billionaire investments analyzed in Oxfam’s research are in highly polluting industries: oil, mining, shipping and cement. On average, a billionaire’s investment portfolio is almost twice as polluting as an investment in the S&P 500. However, if their investments were in a low-carbon-intensity investment fund, their investment emissions would be 13 times lower.

I'm of the opinion that we should look at people's consumption behavior rather than their production behavior. When Exxon Mobil or Delta Airlines pollute, they're doing it for their customers. Reducing the consumption from the customer point of view does reduce the overall emissions, so I'm gonna continue to reduce my own contributions to this crisis.

do they really want returns ?

Some portion of their investment is strategic, and may earn non-monetary returns that they would rather have than money.

But they do still need some of their investments to actually return money. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund might not be doing too hot right now, and has almost all of its cash tied up in illiquid investments (some of which appear to be at risk of going bad).

They've been quietly trying to unload some of their more liquid assets, and outsiders (and some reporters who claim insider access) say it's because they're running low on cash.

If that happens while oil prices remain low (or while they lose market share from artificially lowering their own production) they might not be able to afford to ride out these investments long enough to actually see a return. The whole thing looks financially fragile, and governments can only prop up bad businesses for so long.

When a team loses a basketball game by 1 point, literally every missed shot or turnover (or blown defensive coverage leading to an easy basket for the other side or foul leading to made free throws) could be pointed to as the "cause" of that loss.

So yeah, if she were an actual better politician she probably would've won with the cards she was dealt. But there were also dozens of other causes that would've made her (or an alternative candidate) win, all else being equal.

And it's hard to see how a better politician would've ended up in that position to begin with. The circumstances of how Harris ended up as VP probably wouldn't have happened if not for the specific way that her 2020 campaign flamed out.

Budgets are approved every two years, so it just means people will lose their coverage in one year.

The budget process is an annual process. Not sure where you're getting the idea that it's a 2-year budget.

There are 2-year appropriations, but that's less common than the default 1-year. There are also other multi year appropriations and no-year appropriations that don't expire at all (agencies can spend the money until it's gone, however long it takes). You can read about those here.

Either way, though, Congress needs to pass a budget every year (or at least continuing resolutions).

Because it's #3 in the nation in per capita impact of opioid use disorder, after West Virginia and Ohio?

Fact is, these places that MAGA wants to label as hellholes are the cultural and economic engines of our country. Even places like Texas are driven entirely by their urban blue counties.

It's a couple of different factors at play:

• Sales of this particular product are up and Fox News, the largest and most influential conservative media source, ran a story about it as if it's a sign of the nostalgic return of something today's old people remember from their youth.
• Most younger people correctly recognize that this trash is actually a bad sign for the economy, because it reflects a shift down market where people are opting to make this stuff instead of the more expensive option of restaurants or takeout.
• Consistent with worsening economic conditions, the price of beef in the United States is skyrocketing, so that the product itself is changing the label to recommend replacing the beef (which customers would ordinarily buy separately) with something else, like cheaper hot dogs.

The political and economic discussion is happening in the United States, and that generally means that it spills out onto the internet where national borders are less significant for where conversations might end up.

How long before we see that in the States?

We're about 5 days away from federal food assistance being canceled for the month of November, so less than a week, maybe?