That’s tough buddy

The “SSH” picture would work for SSH tunneling

In this context “well regulated” means like a smoothly-running clock, with the implication being that militia members will need weapons for training and practice.

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization

-Jo Walton, Among Others

I guess the argument is that they will raise rent by the maximum, even at excessive risk of losing tenants? Because if the tenants will pay that much, why wouldn’t the landlord charge that anyway?

Definite agree with the core of what you’re saying, though for US and EU (and to a lesser degree “High income countries”), the numbers are quite close, as clean grid energy is significantly outpacing electric vehicle adoption (and EVs rely on a clean grid to be clean).

If you return the tax to everyone as a dividend, then it becomes progressive, while still encouraging less polluting options

Effective systemic change requires changing the systems, not individual people or companies. If we want less virgin plastic or gasoline burning, it needs to be less profitable to extract oil, process it, and sell it to people who want it, otherwise somebody is going to do that.

This requirement is also the plot of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, As the Last I May Know

Every presidential election is important, and it never makes sense to make a “protest vote”. That’s just not how voting works.

I’m sure somebody has cried wolf at every election, but McCain and Romney never aimed to become dictators. Republicans currently have a published plan to institute fascism. It’s pretty obvious that these elections actually are exceptional.

Yes, you can always count on the right-wing to oppose all progress, with help from everyone’s favorite propogandist petrostate. What’s wild though is over half of Canadians don’t even realize they are getting a rebate! [0] Clearly whatever people’s opinions on the policy are, they aren’t driven by reality.

[0] https://abacusdata.ca/carbon-tax-pollution-pricing-carbon-action-incentive-payment-abacus-data-polling/

Public services (e.g. libraries) are so far the most effective at getting people’s buy-in. Many countries even provide healthcare this way. Food is a bit trickier, but is done in schools, and something like a public cafeteria seems tenable. Housing would be extremely difficult due to security concerns; the current housing shortage would also prevent this.

In general Universal Basic Income (UBI) still has the advantage that everyone gets it, so it doesn’t feel “unfair” (and people generally support getting money for themselves). It far more flexible than public services, but suffers from people stressing about the rich getting it.

Carbon Tax & Dividend has that advantage and even further justification. Tax polluters, and then give that money back to everyone equally (after all, everyone is hurt equally by pollution).

A similar argument could be made for nonrenewable resources and Land Value Tax (LVT) - the land belongs to everyone, and everyone deserves to benefit from its use.

This article is an abuse of the source data. “Working class” here is closer to manual laborer and excludes teachers, farm workers, military, emergency services, nurses, law enforcement, and others. The data is also fairly noisy, with typos and 2% of values being empty affecting the calculation.

To conclude that anyone not “working class” by this definition is “upper-class” is absurd. I guess for some it is hard to imagine the lofty former assistant manager at Burger King (D-AR) understanding the struggles of the common man.

There are certainly interesting discussions to be had about the disruptive influence of wealth on elections and about balancing representation with competence – and folks are having that discussion – but this article contributes less than nothing to those conversations.

Oh man, don’t stop

You got it! Here’s some other consumer protections the administration has introduced recently:

• Direct filing with the IRS
• Price limits on asthma inhalers and insulin for seniors
• Requiring ISPs to provide consistent up-front information and pricing
• Restrictions on college junk fees and disallowing witholding of transcripts

Hungry for more? Check this out:

White House Statement on Junk Fees

That’s from October, so some of it overlaps, but among other stuff there’s still a “Click to Cancel” rule working its way through the FTC.

Sadly Biden has been spending a bunch of time on lame crap like climate change, human rights, health care, infrastructure, election integrity, etc., so it might take a bit longer for him to single-handedly usher in consumer utopia.

This seems entirely opposite to my observation. I’d say Biden and his administration are unusually focused on unfair or annoying business practices. In just the past two weeks the Biden administration:

• Set clear rules requiring cash refunds for flight delays
• Banned non-compete clauses
• Set new rules on “junk fees” for credit cards
• Increased the minimum salary for overtime exemption
• Expanded fiduciary duty to retirement “advisors”
• Announced a lawsuit against Live Nation (TicketMaster)
• Re-instated net neutrality

The complete rules are here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/refundsfinalruleapril2024

The meat of it is the table on pages 9-14 and mostly comprehensible.

Worth noting:

• A change to your flight number is always a “cancellation” and you may choose to accept a refund
  • The expectation is most people would not, for the same reason most don’t cancel their refundable tickets - they want to go on the flight
• There are no carve outs for weather, etc.
  • I am really glad to see this because airlines could claim “weather” for connecting flights, so any weather anywhere meant they could delay your flight

Funny running across this article after reading https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Spoiler: the author does not have a high opinion of Raghavan.

Possibly from here: https://lemmy.world/post/14481959

I agree that saying gerrymandering affects everyone is sort of off-topic and distracts from discussing the precise impact being discussed, but it’s really not equivalent to “All Lives Matter”.

• “Black Lives Matter” => Stop police murdering black people
• “All Lives Matter” => La la la, I can’t hear you

• “Gerrymandering Denies Incarcerated People Fair Democratic Representation” => We should stop gerrymandering for the sake of prisoners
• “Gerrymandering denies everyone fair democratic representation.” => We should stop gerrymandering for the sake of everyone

The dinner example assumes only one person didn’t get dinner. If instead everyone went without dinner, wouldn’t it make sense to point out they weren’t the only one affected?