adalante

@nikitabier It’s gotten so bad with the spam

Every time we do a user survey. What would make X better for you? Normal Person: > Maybe a podcast feature? Guy who reposted 370 videos from TikTok using Scheduled Posts, has never opened the app, and has a bot writing replies: > *Foaming from mouth* > Gib…more…money….

@JulieChangRE Why do they all look like that?

All for more housing But is this best design? Looks like a hospital or hotel or office? New Hillcrest units on 6th which was an assemblage of lots

@bethesdabeth @mattyglesias Continue going east! The Maritime provinces boggle my mind that people live so far out beyond Maine

@mattyglesias Growing up in New England I always thought northern NH and ME were the end of the world so when I visited Montreal I was really surprised.

The boundary between vacant western Maine and populated Québec is very funny

@AdamBtweetin @Entombdmachine @FalconryFinance Or those big wooden wire spools

@Entombdmachine @FalconryFinance Put a couple pallets up or and old tractor tire

i guess you don't really learn worthwhile tactical skills at this sport anymore

@pennswoodman @AlDefinitely @_fat_ugly_rat_ That’s interesting, because here in CT people (specifically retirees but also young people) speak of Florida as the promised land of affordability. I wonder if there are people who retire to florida and then move somewhere else after that. Too humid for me tbh

@AlDefinitely @_fat_ugly_rat_ Anecdotally, I know of a few people (~25) who moved away from Martin and St Lucie counties back to the Midwest and to New England. The cost of living was the reason they all cited.

We knew that Florida as a whole took a nosedive in population growth last year but some of these county specific numbers are awful Orange: +7K (+0.5%) Hillsborough: +2.9K (+0.2%) Palm Beach: +1.5K (+0.1%) Broward: -372 (-0.02%) Miami-Dade: -10.1K (-0.4%) Pinellas: -11.8K (-1.2%)

@eugelin06 @DrDiGiorgio Eugene, if you had a magic wand, what fundamentals would you change to help make the whole system more affordable, accountable, and deliver better results. Is it even possible given how much of our GDP is middlemen and rentseeking?

@DrDiGiorgio It’s worse - even if they could recover the cost, the cost reflects rents captured from subsidies through 340b, inflated facility pricing, etc Bad policy inflates revenue, which inflates costs Having the state reimburse a percentage over cost.. wait, we’re doing that already

Mark, you are getting close to understanding why single payer cannot work. But I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we could ever just "know" costs well enough to make it work. Hayek was right about this. The relevant knowledge is too dispersed, too local, and too dynamic to ever be gathered and priced correctly by central planners. Take basketball. Imagine single payer basketball. The government is the only purchaser of basketball entertainment in all its forms. Fans are not allowed to just buy a ticket to the Mavs game. Instead, a central office decides who gets to attend and hands out tickets based on "need." The central planners also handle the TV deals, merchandising, concessions, and every other revenue stream. Everything goes through the government, with no out of pocket cost to any consumer. Now teams no longer compete for fans on price, experience, convenience, or innovation. They submit cost reports to Washington explaining what it allegedly costs to run a game. But here is the problem. If there is no market price for tickets, media rights, parking, merchandise, or concessions, how exactly do you decide what the game is worth? How do you decide what players should be paid? How do you know whether a courtside seat is underpriced, overpriced, or priced just right? You do not. You are guessing. So bureaucrats step in and decide the approved reimbursement for a regular season game, a playoff game, courtside access, halftime entertainment, parking, and concessions. What happens next? If the approved rates are too low, teams do not magically become leaner and more innovative. They cut where fans can feel it. Fewer games. Worse arenas. Less staff. Delayed upgrades. Lower quality. Longer waits. Less access. Maybe smaller market teams shut down altogether. If the approved rates are too high, you do not get efficiency either. You get lobbying. Every team hires consultants to prove that its fan base is poorer, sicker, more rural, more complex, or otherwise deserving of special payment adjustments. Soon the league is no longer about basketball. It is about coding, compliance, modifiers, subsidies, carveouts, and political influence. Teams make money not by pleasing fans, but by persuading Washington that their costs are uniquely deserving of reimbursement. And once government is the only buyer, there is no real price discovery left. There is only political bargaining disguised as pricing. The Knicks get one deal. Rural teams get another. Old arenas get subsidies. Favored constituencies get carveouts. Every interest group insists that without one more special adjustment the whole sport will collapse. Fans are told this is fair because nobody has to pay at the gate. But of course they still pay. They pay through taxes. They pay through rationing. They pay through fewer choices. They pay in lower quality. They pay by being told which arena they can use, which game they qualify for, and how long they have to wait. That is the key point. Knowing the accounting cost of hosting a basketball game does not tell you the right price of a ticket. Price is not cost. Price emerges from supply, demand, scarcity, quality, preference, and competition. A central planner can know what it "costs" to turn on the lights, pay security, and clean the arena. That still tells him nothing about what a seat is worth to fans, what kind of experience teams should offer, which franchises are efficient, or where new arenas should be built. Healthcare is even less suited to central planning than basketball. It is more heterogeneous, more personal, more local, and far more dependent on dispersed knowledge. The fantasy is always the same: if only the people at the top had better data, they could set the right prices. No, they could not. They would still be guessing, just with nicer spreadsheets.

@lyngeman @f_hieronymus @DrDiGiorgio Damn and this is 2020, I would be interested to see 2026 data.

@f_hieronymus @DrDiGiorgio At around half the cost and with better outcome.

@aglassbrightly1 @woke8yearold @paul_hundred Don’t they have auto unions in japan?

@woke8yearold @paul_hundred Japan makes far more cars per worker than we do. Probably unions.

This is Baumol's Cost Disease in a nutshell. If the productivity of working in a shipyard remains relatively constant but the productivity of working for Amazon skyrockets then you simply have to pay more if you want to employ someone to work at a shipyard

@voidsrus4 @usgraphics I’m happy with my 2026 Toyota Highlander. Physical buttons for everything, plus touchscreen.

@usgraphics ~19-22ish automakers had a good mix of “large carplay screen but normal layout & buttons”, then they all blew it. previous vs current bmw x3:

Accumulated small changes over the years shows the horror of consistently making bad decisions. However you slice it, may be they're targetting a different market now and their priorities have changed; the ethos of the company was eroded in small indiscernible steps.

@red_beard_guy @fuckkiev @plzbepatient Ditto. Never had a problem finding parts for washer, fridge, washing machine

@fuckkiev @plzbepatient I’ve never had a problem getting parts. Often times the part numbers will get “changed” because new part numbers are used in new units but still work in the old units. I can’t speak for all parts/brands but I’ve never had a problem. Parts are even easier now cause of Amazon IMO

Got a new dishwasher to replace my failing 5.5 year old one because appliances are just disposable now

@ripplebrain We have let corporations become more powerful than the government. Every politician has a price. Average person is too tired, broke, and distracted to do anything.

I've noticed a pattern over the last few years in financial markets, tech, and diplomacy where everyone seems to understand they're being lied to, massive scams are more or less out in the open, but each individual thinks they're one step ahead of all the other gullible rubes, so it's ok. Who is this ruse for, if everyone knows it's a ruse? The idea seems to be that we'll collectively accept the can being kicked down the road, we'll assure ourselves that there is some plan, but we'll do this by openly lying to each other and ourselves. It's a kind of willful mass delusion. Somehow everyone else will left holding the bag, we seem to think. Just choose to believe the lie, play pretend, act like you're in on it. Even though the "it" here makes no sense and no one truly believes in it. Grift and deception have become an overt and central tendency of the culture.

@BenjiPeirce @rceclipseg2 You can still find decent Toyotas/Hondas for 7-11k under 90k miles. People wish there were still $1,500 Civics…but those are clapped out

@rceclipseg2 I saved up $4000 and bought an old Corolla with 70k miles. This was like 2004.

This USED to be a mortgage payment....wtf are we doing lol

@i_zzzzzz @harleybaghdad I’m Chimpy

Showing up at a city planning meeting in futuristic sunglasses and saying I'm a XIMBY and not explaining what that means

@CloudyBRM @MetamateDaz Burritos/quesadillas/tacos are all super affordable and easy to make at home just saying

@MetamateDaz You mean hiring a private limo for my burrito 5 days a week won’t bring me generational wealth?

as a 27 year old i now truly understand why we were eating spaghetti multiple nights a week when i was a kid

@zillowgonewild Damn property taxes only 13k?

For #zgwmansionmondays, here’s a Neo-Georgian estate, built in 1902 for Francis B. Greene by PEabody & Stearns for the son of a New Bedford whaling magnate. The manse has over 12k sq ft of space on 4.22 acres. CLFO $1,850,000. Also 12 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms.

@Alex_Bukich12 @linaposting “You either make stuff, or sell stuff. Everything else is fluff”

@linaposting Sales jobs are basically the only jobs left

american job listings are either “sales representative - sell knives door to door: $13000/month” or “shit pipe cleaner: $20/hour, four certifications you’ve never heard of which cost $7000 each to obtain the education for, plus a bachelor’s degree in scatology”

@xiaowang1984 Xiao, please, you’re our only hope

Kinda funny they make an assertion about the economic case for a pipeline without looking at market prices and the economic effect of the constraints. Did we not have the most expensive winter ever in ISO-NE. They would just keep loving to burn that oil.

@UsuryIsSatan @Jaccusepaper I’m pretty sure they tried something similar in Hungary to little effect

@Jaccusepaper The real solution: Home loans for newlyweds. For each child they have, 25% of the loan gets forgiven. Having 4 children would get you a free house.

Bronze Age Pervert proposes a bold solution to the fertility crisis, in J’accuse today. jaccusepaper.co.uk/p/fertility-cu…

@critsergolf Happy for you

@GordonCole_XRP @eightyhi @kingsoph1e 5.8 mil. Damn ok

@eightyhi @kingsoph1e zillow.com/homedetails/11…