Tar_Alcaran

And it hurts absolutely nobody.

Turns out, the problem isn’t carrying ID, the problem is US cops.

The odds of that happening are pretty damned low.

It’d be great, but super unlikely

Being the Big Boss is really easy. Being the underboss (which mods generally are) is much harder. Doing so in a committee is the worst.

The helicopter is a helicopter. After about a week, it arrives and if it spots you, it follows/observes you for nonspecific reasons.

The helicopter is also extremely loud, drawing zombies from a huge distance to you. The best way to deal with it is by being inside, so it doesn’t spot you. Then it’ll just fly around and not do much.

It’s a bit of both, or four things, really.

Measles is insanely infectious. Covid has a reproductive number around 4 to 5 depending on urbanisation etc. Measles is generally estimated around 15 in the general population, but numbers go all the way to 200 for children in schools (as in 1 kid infects 200 kids).

The measles vaccine is not perfect. It’s only about 97% effective after 20 years, meaning that if you had the shots, you still have about a 3% of getting measles.

In Canada (and basically everywhere) measles vaccines are given at age one.

And Alberta is full of complete fucking idiots who never got vaccinated. And those absolute morons tend to cluster is “crunchy suburban mom” clusters as well as “far right conspiracy nutcase” clusters.

What ALWAYS happens is some unvaccinated kid gets measles, spreads it to other unvaccinated kids, and you get a small local outbreak. Some random unlucky 3%ers might get caught up, or some even less lucky babies, but generally that’s the end of it. That’s what used to happen, because overall immunity was high, and importantly, the parents of the unvaccinated kids were vaccinated.

Now, the unvaccinated kids from the 90s are having kids. So when a small local outbreak happens, the sick kids bring it home. The parents spread it outside, to their also-unvaccinated friends and THEIR unvaccinated kids, and we’ve got not one outbreak, but a whole bunch.

And that’s where the trouble starts, because 97% immunity is actually damned low. That’s 126000 people in Alberta who can get sick, and that’s much higher than the number of unvaccinated idiots (thank god). But now we’ve got tendrils of measles reaching out anywhere, finding new pockets of unvaccinated idiots where it can pop up.

And there’s a fifth problem. And ironically, that’s the problem that nobody gets measles anymore. If you asked your great grandmother what you should do with a kid who has ten thousand little red bumps, she’d tell you to lock that kid in the bedroom, slide food under the door and keep them away from your other eleven children. If you ask your 28 year old neighbor, she’d probably tell you to rub crème on the poor kids irritated red skin.

People don’t recognise measles anymore. It’s not a scary disease like it used to be. Nobody knows anyone who lost sight or hearing thanks to measles. Nobody knows anyone who lost a child to measles. I don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who has seen measles. And that’s great… Unless your collective health depends on it.

It’s not still running, it’s being decommissioned. But doing that are people, and those people technically work at the powerplant. The phrasing is pretty bad.

Chernobyl on the other hand just kept running for another 14 years.

President Trump said on Monday that he was “disappointed” with President Vladimir V. Putin over the war in Ukraine,

Abbreviating a patronymic to a single letter is a very weird thing to do.

It was a joke about how nobody wants to buy cybertrucks.

You’re the one who fucked up by picking an example that’s actually the reverse of what you wanted to show, and still not understanding it.

International trade is often done simply because it is cheaper. China is a manufacturing hub for a reason.

So, do you imagine there are factories producing goods that simply go unsold, (Tesla doesn’t count) just waiting for a reduction in foreign imports and/or an increase in price?

No, they’re producing to meet demands, having too much excess capacity is a waste of money, so they don’t have it.

cars are actually a funny example, because the tariff used to be 25%, so it actually decreased. But let’s pretend it didn’t. Let’s say a BMW just started costing 15% more, and people look for an alternative. They spot a US car, how much do you think that will cost? If you answered “14.5% more than yesterday”, you’re spot on!

But here’s the thing. There aren’t suddenly, magically more US cars to make up for the difference. The people who want that BMW-like car, will find it doesn’t actually exist at the previous price, simply because demand went up (and due to profit seeking).

This is horrible for the EU. They now have a huge economic disadvantage over the US.

Yeah, that IS the point of tariffs. It’s also a very basic understanding of global trade.

When you buy something from another continent, you’re already paying WAY more than when you’re buying it nearby. So why would you do that? Well, in most cases, it’s because you can’t buy it locally.

Global trade is global because lots of products aren’t produced everywhere. Much of what the EU is selling to the US is stuff that the US either doesn’t make, or doesn’t make in enough volume to cover its needs. And vice versa. Trade balances group products together, so it doesn’t usually show, but you can sell me a billion worth of ball bearings, and I can sell you a billion worth of ball bearings, and if I tariff you heavily, that won’t change at all because there are a thousand different types of ball bearings.

Now, traditionally, a tariff can promote growth of local industries, but you can’t just make a new factory in a few weeks, months or sometimes even years. If we assume the industry reacts immediately, it will be many years before simple factories are up, and decades before entire chains are reproduced.

And the industry won’t react immediately, because nobody trusts that these tariffs will stick. You need to put a tariff in place for decades to be effective, and Trump can’t even stick to a plan for months.

So in practice, just having short term stability is worth it. Plenty of industries are actively holding off on large purchases because it might suddenly have a 20% tax hike on top. Or lose one, or god knows what the orange idiot does next that will destroy your profit margin.

Because again, they’re not buying abroad for a small advantage, they’re doing it because that’s where this product is made, and they can’t buy it elsewhere.

Strike breaking

That doesn’t remotely apply. Assuming International Trade is like your personal bank account is a Trump level misunderstanding of economics.

The article really should have covered some basic economy.

The US consumer and factories are paying the US government 15 cents on every dollar of product they import from the EU.

That’s annoying for the EU, because it will mean fewer exports to the US. But it’s WAY worse for the US.

And on top of that, it’s really not so bad for the EU, all in all, the tariffs are lower than for many others, meaning that we might actually sell more. Of course, that’s assuming the US keeps imports steady, which they won’t, because prices will go up and thus demand goes down.

And it’s costing US companies a shitload of money, not just directly to the government on tariffs, but also in lost sales.

Which brings us to just one of those bizarre US things, “artificial flavor” versus “natural flavor” is totally arbitrary and random. It’s based on which molecule, not what the source is,

But, that’s sensible. If it’s the chemical you find in raspberry, then its natural raspberry flavor. If it’s something we invented or discovered that’s like raspberry, its artificial. Who cares if it came from a bioreactor?

will kill you if you touch them in pure form without the proper protective gear,

While I wouldn’t recommend eating concentrated artificial flavours, touching them won’t kill you. Unless you jump into the reactor, but jumping into one would kill you no matter what the substance inside is.

Chainsaws are fast, imagine doing it with a manual saw

And the maxim gun is still in use today. Not new ones, mind you, the ones from his lifetime.

Are these hordes of unemployed cheap tech people in the room with us?

The Ohio class nuclear missile submarine is named for its feared ability to turn any place in the world into Ohio

I used to cheat the credit system by taking mind-blowingly easy exams from management courses (they’re literally all the same) or from business studies (half of them are like maths for dummies). Weird minor courses were extra fun, and sometimes actually interesting to do read a book for.

Zero studying, just sign up for the course if it doesn’t have an attendance requirement, take the test, free credit! Sometimes you could even shape those wildly unrelated courses into a Minor, which I how I have 4 minors on my diploma (1 normal one, 3 Frankenminors I assembled myself out of whatever I had already).

I used to do that with a few friends, and we almost got in trouble once for telling the truth (“no, showing up to class isn’t mandatory and we’re pretty sure we can pass the exam with zero effort”). There were zero rules against this, and the only harm was to the professor’s egos, but I did get several stern talkings to.