What does the A-380 have to do with the Panamax?

Is there some component of the aircraft that has to be shipped where the ability to put it on a sea going freighter actually imposes a size constraint?

Flextape can fix anything right!

Can't wait to see the new infomercial. We cut this Jet Liner in half!

Except no not really there is basically no evidence to support that claim. Got look at some charts the portion of the public with health coverage was basically flat from the 70s on, then it ticks up a little in the early 2000s, and into the 2010s (ACA era) it rejoins the earlier trend.

Almost any expansion in coverage can be credited to expansion of medicare / medicaid eligibility. Which is just the fully socialized medical model the ACA claims not to be.

So no there is no real metric that indicates the ACA was successful in any way.

I am not racist here, the racists are the ones given Obama credit for the fat-lot-of-nothing he did. They exist in both directions, people who run around saying he was the worst thing that ever happen are by and large expressing racist sentiment, but anyone claiming he was actually a good and at anything are equally doing so out of racial bias. The Obama did nothing besides be more Gorge W. Bush, and the ACA. The ACA failed, and failed completely.

Insisting it Obama is relevant is just lying.

Turning the senate into a state wide popularity contest, and fundamentally altering what the body was intended to be, a place where the States themselves were represented vs the Peoples house is hardly nutty.

Arguably the current system is not just flawed but down right nutty. The House provides equal representation where by each person gets roughly the same weight in voting for representation. On the other hand the Senate no-longer represents the States because they are also elected by the people but for some reason living in a low population states entitles you to extra proportional representation? WTF?

It does not fit into the 'we're actually a republic not a democracy argument' nor does it fit into the "on man one vote" argument. Its just crazy. Either the Senate should do what it was designed to do and represent the interests of State Governments or it really ought to just be eliminated as a body.

The theory behind the ADA is completely irrelevant. It failed, objectively by any measurable metric it failed. As I said maybe it was legislatively sabotaged. Nothing stopped Obama from saying this won't work as implemented, it isn't what I asked for, refusing to sign it and telling the legislature to try again. He did not do that, why well because it was never going to get past the legislature again and he wanted his name on something transformative. That isn't good leadership its pure vanity!

And no the divisiveness came from the President. He is the one who made those statements. He chose to use the pulpit to make fun of people. That is also on him.

As I said Obama wan't actually a bad president. He was and continues to be someone who is actually vapid and empty headed but does good job sounding insightful. Its an act, he is good at it. He also accomplished exactly nothing other than getting elected while Black. It is literally the only significant thing he did.

The other thing to consider is this stuff is not magic its a bag or numbers and software.

Its going to boil down to a 1A argument and ultimately government attempts to prevent the publishing, sale, SaaS offering of models is likely to look to the courts like "prior restraint" it probably won't fly, once someone with money decides to spend it lawyers without or without LLM assistance.

"Obama was one of our better presidents"

I don't understand where this sentiment comes from. He was a care taker president, and frankly a very divisive one.

The right gives him a lot of hate, but realistically Obama did not do much earn, just as he did little to earn any of the accolades he gets. He continued and expanded foreign conflicts he in inherited. He continued the recovery strategy and policy choices chosen by the out going Bush administration.

His signature health package is a completely failure on all fronts as far as the original stated objectives especially the top lines around cost control, universal coverage, and keeping plans broadly similar in terms of coverage and cost for those who already had them. You can say the legislation that got passed was watered down and what not but he signed as enacted so you can't give him pass.

He really started the identitarian political style that has taken hold today. Sure it was little longer form than the "meme wars" we get today but everything the man said tried to cross cut America by race, class, or some group like making gay marriage an issue etc. Don't forget the complete normalization personal insults in modern politics (or the return to Jacksonian politics however you view it) began with him as well "Bitter Clingers", "your brothers keeper", "you didn't build that", anyone? The line from Obama -> The worst of Donald Trump's behavior is pretty direct one.

Next you have to consider just exactly how Trump 1.0 got elected, he did by animating not just a lot of generally non-participatory voters, but one that nominally would have been Democrats. I still say policy-wise Obama and the legislative leadership of the period were lightweights but non the less whatever they did or did not do between 2008 - 2015 left enough American's feeling left behind they bolted from progressives to a GOP platform with a little populism injected in, hardly an endorsement for a two term president who enjoyed his own party controlling at least one legislative body throughout most of it.

In all seriousness take away the title 'first black president' and ask yourself would anyone anywhere along the political spectrum still consider the man remarkable? I think the answer is without that the man is a foot note.

Most of those cars were not so tall though, and you could see out of them. If there is a 7 year old standing in front of your 70's GM A-body you can see them.

Belt-lines in cars got really high because that is how you achieve that roll over safety rating.

As a driver I hate that every sedan and SUV has these super high belt lines and wide as my head A-pillars now. Every time I get in my 80s classic on the weekend it reminds me how much my visibility is in fact impaired in my daily.

Do and realistically am I much safer in my 2020's car - yes, do I also belive I am more likely to be involved in some for of accident because I can't see as much also yes.

Most common case country T intersection with yield on one road and no stops. (Probably the most dangerous type of intersection) There will be a 30 yard long space along the perpendicular road, that is a blind spot because of that thick pillar. Obviously that leads to the only safe driving practice being, be slow enough to come to a complete stop at the intersection until you are near enough to see completely down the road looking over your shoulder. Which by extension forces you to approach quite slowly or subject you and your passengers to uncomfortably short stops, should there be another vehicle approaching.

Meanwhile in the vintage car with A-pilars just bulky enough to hold up the roof, there basically isn't a blind spot large enough to conceal a vehicle or cyclist for any period of time, so they will be detected on the second look if not the first, and you able to see for miles down the perpendicular road over top of the soy beans..

Modern cars kind of suck for driving..

There are ethical questions here thought.

Some might argue that as the purchaser the vehicle owes its safety optimizations toward those owners/operators. You bought the machine the best product should do what you ostensibly would want it to, and that is safely transport you and yours wherever you are going.

Others might say we operate cars/trucks in public space some of which belonged to pedestrians first and buying a car does not confer upon you some right to impose safety risks on them.

I would argue that we are car-centric society. We have 100 years of social decisions that went for the automobile, the default policy position on subjects related to automobiles should go in favor of automobiles and their owners/users until we have had a broader debate on if the collective we "General Welfare" remember *want* a society/economy built less around the automobile.

Imagine if the US the operated that way. The rest of the world would be writing in Cyrillic.

If you actually believe any of that I have bridge to sell you.

Collecting finger prints, logging serial numbers, and finally correlating any of that with other data sources means at the very least getting hold of the notes to make some comparisons. You are talking about a high friction high cost effort that generally speaking can only be employed against someone already being watched.

Digital currency on the other hand means we are few SQL joins from tracking any token thru the economy as far as one might wish, and just as easily from source to sink and sink to source. Going electronic changes EVERYTHING..

I overheard two idiots arguing in the park the other day. "You don't know where I live", I am maybe 30 feet away at the next picnic table thinking, "well you seem to know each others names so if you own your place and live in the county, he certainly does after a 5 min of GIS lookup, which he could do right here from a mobile". Sure if the name is real common like Joe Baker there might be 15 hits or so but then which one is convenient to the current local, probably narrows right down to 1.

Anything uniquely identifiable, and searchable electronically isn't anonymous. Privacy around a digital currency, any digital currency is likely to be a polite fiction at best if National banks even bother with that in the end.

Lets go with the UN number. There are 195 nations in the world. We can argue there are more but the odds of getting any good data out of the ones the UN does not even recognize are low.

A good deal of those, all EU members for example are shall we say less than independent in their ability to determine tax rates at least for certain types of taxes.

Check writing has been around in various forms as long as there has been banks, but as far as day to day transactions go, ie not weekly payroll and major purchases there has been any alternative to cash for very long. Diners Club in the 50s, but really it isn't until the 80s anyone could reasonably expect to use a credit card at certain types of establishments. It probably isn't until the middle 90s Joe Public could really anticipate a day out without using any cash if he did not wish to; and that still would limit his options.

All this in the USA. I'd be surprised if the US wasn't near to the vanguard when it came to reduction in the use of cash. Yes I know parts of Asia / India etc do literally every thing on mobiles and have for a while. My point here is this all brings us into the era of current political animals and current social expectations around tax rates and where those tolls are levied.

Considering all the other noise and confounding forces in tax policy, I don't think there is nearly enough data out there to draw any sort of meaningful insight as to cash use vs tax rates required.

Nothing will happen because there is zero reason to expect anything should happen.

If you tell me tomorrow the sun isn't going to rise. You're the one making the extraordinary claim. You need to show your work, and explain why it is going to be different and what the agent of that change is.

We have need AI is at the end of the day automation technology. The latter half of 20th century and most of 21st has seen the introduction of new and more automation nearly constantly, and guess what we have hovered near full employment most of the time.

So yeah i am trying to clear it up for you, because you're about as sharp as the typical brick. Either explain why this is different or STFU, because if you don't know why it should be different, there is no reason it should be different.

You're not speaking reasonably you are breathlessly repeating the same nonsense over and over.

At no point in history has the market failed to grown and employee more people after the introduction of new technology. For any of what you prattle on endlessly about to have even a grain of truth we must first accept that something which has NEVER occurred in the last four centuries of market economies is about to happen.

You have no evidence it is about to happen you can point at. This is reason enough to dismiss you entirely.

The next issue is we actually have experience dealing with work shortages. The WPA was created to address just that, if things do go really really sideways we could use the same playbook. We have fiat currency now to so the government can just print money to pay for it all. Effectively redistributing wealth from the people who have it to the wage workers it is paying. The economy would respond be producing the basic staple items those people need to buy at the expense of luxury items and by extension more complex specialized goods. Generally that isn't desirable and would not be good policy, but in Great Depression like emergency it worked before, should work now.

Realistically we have no lack of jobs, stopping illegal immigration, eliminating ag visa programs, and deporting illegals already here (a perfect good makes work project of its very own) will create significant labor shortage anytime as a policy we decide we want one. The best part is all those people you claim have the literacy of a 12 year old will be OVER qualified for most of it! Wages will rise until jobs get filled or hunger will rise until people accept the wages, the market will find equilibrium.

So which is it, are we about to have NO jobs, or are we about to have nobody to do all the jobs? Can't be both! Neither should really keep us up at night. Because either problem itself or the solution failing to resolve it has to have metric ton of "But this time will be different" applied before they even start to interface with reality. You're stupid, that is literally the entire story here.

ok, full Office Outlook certainly had/has a ton warts but lets get real about it being 'good'.

Rewind to 1997. There were some other really capable mail clients out there that really could manage very large 10k+ message mailboxes offline (key word for the time), the space got pretty rarefied as you started looking at elegant support for things like shared mailboxes or 'public folders' and of course mail integrated calendaring..

Of the few options that remained suitable for large corporate mail deployments Exchange 5/Outlook was certainly as good or better than much of what was left.

Of course Notes/Domino was massively supperior in terms of capability and security, but by 2000 Microsoft go so very much better at mail/calendar and UX that all the rest of that capability and reliability still could not cut it. That and Notes cost to damn much..