[spdrun]

Scrap any antiquated notions of patriotism or nationalism, pay the French, Germans, or Chinese to build a turn-key HSR and electrification system. They seem to be good at it.

Also, if you build SF-Fresno and LA-Bakersfield, you’re left with a gap of approximately 100 miles. May as well close this gap.

Electrified rail has environmental advantages — unlike aircraft and long-distance buses, it’s easy to power using any source of electricity, including clean sources like nuclear (yep, NUCLEAR) and renewables.

While we’re at it, time for Californians to overcome their cowardice and build two (or ten) new nuclear plants to replace San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.

[spdrun]

S&P and NASDAQ both cracked 20% down last week. NASDAQ was down closer to 24% in fact. Let those bears ROOOOAAAAAAARRRR BABY!

[spdrun]

Year-end last-minute portfolio balancing… let’s see what happens when the reality of the government shutdown, bear market, and flat yield curve start hitting next year. This should be amusing to watch — Happy New Year!

All it takes to transform a “good” economy to a “bad” one is a bit of confidence loss, and that’s coming…

[spdrun]

Mesh WiFi is a poor choice unless you have no other option. If you live in a home that’s wired for cable, but not Ethernet, you can hardwire routers over coaxial (via MoCA) and have a rock-solid network that’s not based on WiFi reception between nodes.

Also, are you going to stick everyone in the building on the same public IP, without access to a routeable IP, and with you implementing their “parental controls?” Great if you want to snoop on your tenants and control them, not so great for the tenants.

[spdrun]

Q: How do you clean the grids?
A: In a bathtub in an apartment, or just brush/soap/hose them down outside if you have a yard.

[spdrun]

Humm…. isn’t there carbon monoxide that causes brain damage?

Carbon monoxide is produced in insignificant quantities. Gas stoves in good repair produce a blue flame — this is a sign of complete combustion that’s unlikely to produce a lot of carbon monoxide.

I’ve also had a CO detector in my kitchen for years — it’s never shown harmful quantities of CO while cooking.

[spdrun]

Ocrenter: one can hope…

[spdrun]

Natural gas (as opposed to “artificial gas”, which was made from coal and water) is mostly methane, which makes CO2 and water vapor when burnt. Neither of which are terribly dangerous. The odorant used is theoretically toxic, but its concentration is so low as to be irrelevant.

You’re more likely to get cancer from cooking oil fumes than the gas itself.

[spdrun]

FlyerInHI: Afghanistan was broken long before we went in there…

[spdrun]

Good: we should have pulled out of Afghanistan 15 years ago rather than wasting trillions on a pointless military homicide spree.

[spdrun]

“Pleasant” == “boring.” Give me gritty, libertine, and somewhat corrupt (Amsterdam or Prague) over an antiseptic holier-than-thou shithole like Singapore.

[spdrun]

I’ve ridden Brightline in Florida, same company as is planning to do rail to Vegas. Clean trains, good service. What kills it for me is the fucking security theater — they have airport-style boarding where you have to pay more money to board early, and either way, you have to wait in line and have some dumb mouthbreather riffle through your bag before you’re allowed into the station waiting area.

Part of the benefit of taking the train is that you can literally arrive 5 minutes before the train leaves — their system is literally combines the worst aspects of rail and air travel. The Coaster trains in CA and Boston-DC Amtrak basically get it right. Walk onto the platform from the street or station, board, pick a seat, and take the trip. No nonsense designed to make cowards feel better that they’re “protected.”

NYC has boarding lines for some trains, but at least there’s no security theater and the lines themselves are easily circumvented (use the lower level for boarding at Penn if you’re ever there).

[spdrun]

I say go for it. Housing bubble needs to pop. Bonus points if the privacy-robbing tech industry falls alongside it.

A recession can be a good thing. At the end of the day, recessions are the only times when carbon emissions have gone down and income inequality has fallen.

If a recession could swing the US far to the left nationally (public health insurance, more public transport spending, more restrictions on employers’ working hours/time off) this would also be wonderful.

The US elected a chaos president — the backlash against him should be spectacular if the economy dumps.

[spdrun]

FoRD bottomed at 1.06 in Nov 2008, I think it was actually below 1.00 in intra-day trading.

[spdrun]

May F go down to 0.99, 2008-style. THEN it will be really cheap. Ford can stick their SUVs and trucks where the sun don’t shine.

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