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Comment UK loans system (Score 1) 7

You get student loans to pay your course fees, which are paid back as via the income tax system, taking 10% of your income above a certain threshold. If your income doesn't reach the threshold, zero to pay - though interest does still accumulate. After 40 years any outstanding loan is written off.

Comment Re: No safety needed (Score 1) 76

They don't have the authority to arbitrarily decide where to put fracking wells either. Or mines, or oil rigs, or chemical factories...

In fact they technically get permits to do basically everything everything they do. Or at least that used to be the case when the EPA actually meant something. Never stopped them from completely fucking everything up to save money though, did it? And I bet you know it.

I guarantee that if any of these get built and fails, the way the public finds out about it is someone noticing a spike in cancer rates.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Hard and expensive (Score 1) 150

It likely means demolishing a lot of existing houses and businesses to make room for the train

It doesn't. What it means is cutting through a lot of big parcels whose owners have big money, so they can be big impediments. There has to be a happier medium than this between respect for individual private property ownership and the needs of the many, but we are clearly uninterested in finding it in this country.

Comment MA in Church History from Manchester Uni here (Score 1) 113

So yes, you're up against a student of the subject.

Here's my 8,000 words on Constantine; amongst other things he ordered that prisoners should get some daylight every day.

https://www.academia.edu/28971...

In the 19th century Christians not only led the moves towards the abolition of slavery - though, yes, there were Christians on the other side - they also pushed for factory safety legislation and child labour laws

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

Additionally the civil rights movement in the early sixties was led by and organised by Christians - both black and white; 'Dr Martin Luther King’s March on Washington was literally planned from the Methodist national headquarters'

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

Yes, you're right that in recent years that the visible and noisy part of the church, the Evangelicals, have largely become aligned with the Republicans. But there are many that aren't and are campaigning against the Trump migrant crack down; unfortunately those associated with Trump are getting all the publicity.

For a detailed discussion of the matter, agnostic Tom Holland's 'Dominion' provides a full history of the role of the church in moral change; over the centuries it has been extremely positive.

Comment Re:Can't Help But Think (Score 4, Informative) 16

JPEGXL really does everything webp does and so much more, and it's well thought out.

WebP isn't terrible; they are smaller than I would have guessed given that they have the container overhead, but there's no stunning argument for it. "Better than PNG for what we used PNG for." OK, true, but.

Google should just let AV1 be AV1 and focus on pushing HEVC out of the market with it. The real opponents of progress have left the image space and are mucking around with video and VR now. Google has the capability to do something about this and foster innovation.

Comment Re:Of course it could - but it won't (Score 1) 150

Sam D is very good, and I think his analysis is broadly correct, but I would be wary of treating him as apolitical. He's a leading thinker for the centre-right, along with Sam Bowman (Sam Freedman completes the clever-Sam-centrist trifecta, but is on the left rather than right).

Comment Re:It could (Score 2) 150

> Have grade-separated tracks that go above or below the roads.

Easier said than done.

Grade for typical trains is something like 2% or less, so raising a railway high enough to get over a roadway needs almost a quarter mile of track on either side minimum, so for a single rail bridge you just created at a half mile of impassible wall and cut a whole neighborhood in half. Automotive roads are better but still limited in a similar way. maybe triple the grade/a third the distance but you're still making a huge barrier.

So if you need to get through a town without having grade crossings you're basically stuck building the *entire* thing 14+ feet in the air, including the stations, which is outlandishly expensive both to build and to maintain.
=Smidge=

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