Last I checked the local government said so. They have indemnified waymo in every market they have launched their taxi service. I don't think that would hold up if they killed a human being, at least not one that isn't homeless, but so far it's held up for the more minor stuff that's happened.

Basically waymo cannot be cited for traffic violations and killing a pet is just a traffic violation. The most they could be held responsible for would be the value of the pet which is usually under $100.

It's that we all know this is a grift and we're all trying to figure out how the grift works.

I can think of a few possible things but I don't have enough of a finance background to really say for sure of what they are up to, but I know damn well that billionaires don't just hand out billions of dollars for the hell of it. There is a reason that Bill Gates is still one of the wealthiest people on the planet despite telling us 20 years ago he was going to give away his fortune.

Billionaires have been lying to us for as long as we've had billionaires, some of us just figured that out

But given this administration's history of corrupting everything they touch it's not something we should get behind from this administration because it's almost guaranteed to turn into some kind of scam that puts money in their pockets.

There is nothing wrong with a sovereign wealth fund per se if your government is relatively uncorrupted. Ours is not, the Trump administration is without a doubt the most corrupt and criminal administration in American history and that is saying a lot.

Simply put you cannot expect good things to come out of this administration even if the underlining ideas are fine. And I don't think that's any kind of exaggeration or partisan bickering. The Trump administration is openly murdering Venezuelan fishermen in the lead up to another war for oil without even the slightest pretexts. That alone should tell you we are in for a bad time. You don't have to be a genius to extrapolate from that data point and the dozens of other data points like the illegal tariffs or the huge bribes like the cryptocurrency or the jet Qatar gave the Trump or the fact that the taxpayer is going to be retro fitting that jet for his use...

If I had to guess, and it's just a guess, I would say that they are positioning themselves to profit from the money put aside for the kids. Probably sitting themselves up to redirect the money being invested in the companies that they own.

The one thing we can be sure of though is that this is a scam and the only question is what are the details of the scam.

You don't become a billionaire by being altruistic. People who genuinely care about society at Large stop accumulating wealth long before they become billionaires. To become a billionaire requires a certain level of sociopathy. There's a reason why the old phrase, never ask a Man how he made his first million, exists. That phrase has been around so long that a million dollars isn't a lot of money anymore but you get the idea.

The supreme Court has overruled 94% of the lower court rulings Trump has lost. It's painfully obvious they will just rubber stamp anything Trump wants. More importantly anything the heritage foundation and Peter thiel wants. Trump can't stay awake through an entire cabinet meeting so it's not so much that he wants anything but he would like to stay in power because he is making billions of corruption and bribes.

Meanwhile the Republican party does not have a viable candidate for 2028. Vance is a joke and a couch fucker and the rest of them are so mired and scandal they are completely unelectable. None of them have Trump's Teflon because they aren't perceived as outsiders.

So the Republican party is going to run Trump unless Trump is physically incapable of running. Meanwhile the news media will protect Trump and will convince the public that it is perfectly normal for Trump to run for a third term. We saw this in 2024 with sane washing. Which is the practice of crazy shit Republicans do, especially anything crazy Trump does being reported as normal and good in the news media.

This probably isn't enough for Trump to actually win a third term but the Republican party will use common voter suppression tactics to stop enough casual voters from making it to the polls in order for Trump to win.

It is possible the voters won't buy into this but at the same time they did elect a felon with 28 credible rape accusations for a second term because he promised cheap eggs and because trans people gross them out...

And of course if anyone can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory it's the Democratic party. They are on track to nominate Gavin newsom and he's fine but I could easily see them coming up with some scandal to take him out so they can put yet another unpopular woman forward. There is a contingency of the Democrat party that is obsessed with the first female president and will do anything to get it. And unfortunately they have a lot of pull in the party...

So yeah Trump cares because Trump is going to run for a third term. This is why he's backing off on some of his tariffs

Then check the flood maps instead of what analysis some fly-by-night group with a ChatGPT subscription produced. I checked my house in Realtor.com, looked at the First Street section, and laughed. The historical trends appeared to have been made up.

They seem to assume a linear increase in risk, regardless of what actually happened the prior year.

I looked at First Street's data for my house, and I question their accuracy. The historical data, and thus all of their projections, is wrong. And it's all wrong in the same way - despite a random walk, they show linear increases.

And seriously, if a place hasn't flooded in generations, isn't that a pretty good basis for a prediction? It's been a while since I studied statistics, but I just did a linear regression on 50 years of 0's, and it indicates more zeros are coming.

Actually, that's a perfectly fine way to look at it. What's the statistical trend for the area? 0 floods every year for 50 years. That's not a hard trendline to draw.

And let's not forget that First Street may just be crap. Have you checked what it said about where you live? Where I am, their historical data was as bad as their predictions are likely to be. They show a steady increase in wind and fire risk. I have lived here long enough to remember how there were quite a few tornadoes a couple years ago, and I think one this year. According to First Street, I'm wrong, there was more damaging wind this year than the year half the town blew away. It simply isn't true.

So, were I a realtor (like all the ones I used to work with or the one I married), I would be a bit annoyed if some jackass on the other side of the country said my listing was worth far less on the basis of their false assumptions.

I was unimpressed by the accuracy of their results for my home as well. Apparently, I'm at risk for increasing wind. Comparing their graphs to my memory, I think it's just an alarm factory. They claim the wind has been getting steadily worse (stronger), but this isn't true. We do get strong winds and tornadoes, but their graphs show a steady increase rather than the wild variation that is what we actually get. According to them, this (calm) year was worse than the years when there were multiple severe tornadoes in the immediate area. Also, a wildfire risk that they show as increasing, but should be going the other way. We had a persistent drought, but it's well over and done.

F-k off with the impersonations. It is neither funny nor useful.

Also good luck getting that check. It can take years.

Florida in particular is a mess right now and nobody is doing anything to fix it. We've got a fuck ton of retirees who can't afford to move, aren't dying any time soon and are stuck in condos we know are likely to fail without expensive retrofits they can't afford. It's a miracle there hasn't been another collapse and we're just hoping they drop dead of old age before it hits them.

Hell, I do that just because Amazon's playback isn't reliable anymore. Seems weird to have to pirate something for which you already pay, but that's the position Amazon has forced me to adopt.

In the end, what is the actual difference? How often do the Liberal Democrats find themselves at odds with Labour? Does the DUP tend to vote with or against the Conservatives?

How is it any different? I look at the Reform UK Party and think, "oh, so like the Freedom Caucus faction of the Republican Party?" Do the Democrats not have a strong faction analogous to the UK's Green Party? And are the outcomes any different? No, they aren't. The UK has two coalitions made up of one big party and a few smaller ones, the US has two Parties, each with a dominant faction and a number of smaller "caucuses" (ok, technically only a ruling coalition, but the opposition parties exist as a de facto coalition). Beyond nomenclature, the only real difference seems to be the added complexity of the UK's election and coalition-building processes.

He is a Republican, but he is more Populist than Conservative. I think that's what you're picking up on.

Sure, throw the separation of powers out the window and adopt a system that isn't doing the UK any favors? Do you know what the difference is between a two-party system and a coalition government? Neither do I. You still have two groups with shared political views arguing with each other, you just call them coalitions instead of parties.

Also, have you thought through your idea of an "independent non-private federal bank"? How is it to be all of those things when they contradict each other? If it is fully independent, it must be private and cannot be Federal. If it's Federal, it must be part of one of the branches of the Federal government, thus neither independent nor private.

There is a way to thread that needle and get close to what you're saying. That is a semi-independent, Federal, privately managed but publicly owned organization. Which is what we have and call the Federal Reserve.