FourPacketsOfPeanuts
@FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why do people say "quote unquote something" and not "quote something unquote" ? 16 hours ago:
o7
- Comment on Why do people say "quote unquote something" and not "quote something unquote" ? 17 hours ago:
Professors and engineers, in my experience, tend to say “quote… the thing… end quote”. Regular people on the other hand, are lazy, inconsistent and generally oblivious to whether or not they’re being ambiguous.
- Comment on How old is the average open source programmer? 23 hours ago:
Fwiw this chimes with my online experience
- Comment on Not disparaging the dead or anything. But why does it seem in the US we are expected to feel sorry for a person who overdoses on illegal drugs? Didn't they make the choice knowing the outcome? 1 day ago:
It’s worth continually highlighting that drug use led to death, deliberate or accidental because people have a tendency to overestimate how safe occasional use is or how glamorous the lifestyle is. Reporting the truth now and then is important, this isn’t even “anti drug” propaganda. It’s just what happened.
- Comment on Thames Water supply ‘on knife-edge’ with £23bn repairs needed 3 days ago:
That’s because you seem to be assuming nationalization has neither an actual nor political cost. It has both.
Chancellor’s budget had been under a microscope with people wondering how on earth they’ll balance the books without raising taxes on people (as they promised). Chucking in the nationalization of the country’s biggest water supplier like its spare change is nuts.
Private investment is fine, even preferable, so long as it’s regulated properly. That’s Ofwat’s job. If you don’t think Ofwat can do that job properly then I’m not sure why you’d think similar people would do better running the entirety of TW…
- Comment on Thames Water supply ‘on knife-edge’ with £23bn repairs needed 3 days ago:
You realize that when a business is privatized they don’t give it to the civil service right?
Of course.
Though what’s happening here is that Thames Water can no longer issue dividends to investors without permission from the regulator Ofwat given things are in such a mess. The government doesn’t want the service to collapse because it doesn’t want the cost of nationalising it. So some balance has to be stuck, allowing Thames Water to issue some return to private investors, (they’d previously not received dividend on their investment for 7 years) so that they don’t withdraw their investment altogether. Additional private investment that was in the pipeline was withdrawn when it was seen that Thames Water wasn’t able to offer a return from its profits, which has what’s made its cash situation worse.
But this is the nature of private investment. It has to be courted, motivated. The government is trying at all costs to avoid the huge cost of nationalising TW. And to do that it has to be allowed to issue plans where it’s both delivering its service obligations but also distributing profit.
It is being heavily scrutinized and the regulator has already put in controls over what it can do financially. My point (although I was being flippant) is that you need genuine good business experience and leadership to sail a group as large as TW away from being this close to collapse. A lot of it involves showing a credible plan for making it work within budget and delivering some return to investors so that vitally needed investment can be secured. This is really difficult to do but from reading their interim report, they’re just about managing it.
I think calls from various MPs for them to revise their compensation / dividend schemes are a type of virtue signalling. There is a huge amount of attention on this. They’re paying compensation packages comesurate with what it costs to buy leadership skill from the business world to be able to handle the complexity of the operation. MPs all know that, they just also want to make suitable noises so that when voters look at the numbers and go “how much?!” that they’ve looked like theyre right along side them tutting and shaking their head.
But in reality anyone in parliament knows they need to buy in leadership from the business world. It’s just political view much they publicly acknowledge that fact.
- Comment on Thames Water supply ‘on knife-edge’ with £23bn repairs needed 4 days ago:
While that’s obviously gross, I’m not sure some budget public service pleb who wouldn’t last 5 mins in a real business wouldn’t simply make things worse
- Comment on The 51 Percent: "Feminism is about taking power away from men" 4 days ago:
What does this look like in practise do you think? The steps she described didn’t sound like “taking power away from men”. It sounded like men encouraging one another to acknowledge truths about women’s and girls experiences.
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 4 days ago:
There is some logic to it… or so the thinking goes:
In the bible maleness is a God thing before it’s a human thing. It’s not that God chooses to be male, it’s the other way round, what we call male conveys something fundamental to the reality of God that has existed for all time and independent of everything else. When God makes the first human, he’s male, because he’s in God’s image (not that God invented maleness to create Adam, instead God’s imprinting something of his eternal self onto his creation, and we call that eternal quality “male”). Likewise when the Word becomes flesh, he’s male.
Stands to reason that all the other heavenly creations of God (his messengers, “angels”, including the “angel of the lord” which always appears as a man) are all what we’d call male. But this isn’t in a procreation sense, that’s something that was given to Adam. Rather the idea is that there’s something fundamentally “ideal” about the pure essence of masculinity in ancient Jewish thought.
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 4 days ago:
Ha that was my thought too. Joking aside, it’s actually one of the weirder anti-gay arguments from the new testament, that the reason Jesus is saying “obviously” there’s no marriage in heaven is that everyone is like the angels, who are all male. So Jesus was appealing to the “absurdity” of male-male marriage.
Not the strongest argument but definitely one of the weirder ones I’ve heard…
- Comment on Do the ultra-rich consume popular media? 6 days ago:
Bezos + Lauren Sanchez apparently binge watch Fallout, Baby Reindeer, Presumed Innocent and Severance…
“My favorite time is when the house is calm and quiet and Jeff and I are deciding what show we’re going to binge that night,” Sánchez told the magazine.
“It takes a little bit of time to decide,” she added. “You can imagine our tastes are a little different. But I love our TV time, we just have the best time.”
Among their favorites is “Fallout” – a post-apocalyptic drama based on the video game series of the same name. The series airs on Bezos’s own Amazon Prime TV. But the couple also watches shows on rival platforms Netflix and Apple TV.
“We recently saw Baby Reindeer, which of course everyone saw,” Sánchez told People. “We also just finished Presumed Innocent, which was incredible. Oh, and we loved Severance.”
- Comment on Why is Gen Z so Poor? 6 days ago:
Collapse of post war consensus -> deregulation of financial markets -> complete failure of political parties of all types to build and maintain social housing -> the present suffocating cost of accommodation
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 6 days ago:
Yes that’s the context - Jesus saying no one will be married in heaven. Either angels are asexual or they’re all male. The latter is a little more likely given all angels in the bible are presented as male. Which if that’s the case has weird implications for what female Christians become when they’re resurrected. Some weird male equivalent? So now we’re “all like the angels”?
- Comment on Why Don’t All Rivers Make Canyons? | MinuteEarth 6 days ago:
Wow, amazed I’ve never come across this before. Thanks
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 1 week ago:
The sentiment is there though…
2 Thessalonians 3:10 “While we were with you, this we commanded you: If someone won’t work, then neither shall they eat”
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 1 week ago:
Matthew 20:30
“At resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”
I think that’s where the sentiment comes from. It’s explicit in Mormonism (I think). In mainstream Christianity the saved don’t become angels, they become like angels.
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 1 week ago:
Matthew 19:28
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
[end quote]
Whether “12 tribes of Israel” here is figurative of the global church or not, there still definitely some role in judgement delegated out to the apostles.
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 1 week ago:
In Matthew 16 Jesus gives Peter the “keys to the kingdom” and in Revelation the new Jerusalem has pearls for gates. That’s where it comes from.
- Comment on I have been told ever since I was a little shit that when you die you go to heaven first wait in line for St Peter to judge you at the pearly gates? Is this in the Bible? I thought god did judging 1 week ago:
It comes from Matthew 16
15 “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
[end quote]
So, yes, authority to “bind and loose” in heaven and on earth. How that’s supposed to work alongside it being Jesus separating the sheep from the goats is anyone’s guess.
The reason this takes place at the “pearly gates” is because the new Jerusalem descending from heaven in Revelation is described as having giant pearls for gates.
- Comment on Why is the word "expat" a thing? 1 week ago:
Colloquially, expat tends to imply self funded, or at least bringing wealth with them in some respect. That’s not what the word literally means but it’s how I see it used. This is consistent even with foreign professionals coming to work in, say, London. Few people refer to them as immigrants though that’s what they are technically. (I’ve seen people be called an “ex pat from their country” or an “international worker”, these both in the city of London referring to office based professionals) The word immigrant seems to be reserved (at least in Britain) as a pejorative because it implies low skill and by further implication, a net cost on public services.
- Comment on Is it really possible to tax the rich? 1 week ago:
Thanks. Yes will certainly read up on it. I’ve come to finance somewhat backwards, having to learn very specific technical things for writing in IT and I’m now working backwards to some generalities I might have totally missed.
Is this a tax on the market cap of the company though? Or is it a tax on assets it holds?
I believe the general sentiment is “Bezos / Amazon is worth XX billion why can’t the state have a slice of that for social good?” But I think various smaller taxes are far removed from the headline value of the market cap of the business. And there isn’t anything that would enrich the public purse to that degree short of having a comparable stake in the ownership of the business.
I think Germany actually does something like this but I don’t know much about it.
Ultimately I think it’s right that something feels a bit ‘wrong’ about one man like Musk, Bezos, Gates having control over such huge wealth, but as I was saying above those complaints generally ignore that this is a value of an asset not cash and it’s not like the government could do something with Amazon shares if it has them other than just sell them. The complains also generally ignore that these uber wealthy are paying tax whenever they sell stock to have more cash on hand, and that one day whenever they cash out of the company entirely, that’ll be a windfall tax take for the government too.
I get that the inequality feels wrong. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s “we the people” that make Amazon (or whatever) so value by continually choosing to trade with it. Same way professional footballers have an absurd amount of money. But then millions of people are all willing to spend $x to watch them specifically play. If we don’t like it we have other choices, but we don’t want to.
- Comment on Is it really possible to tax the rich? 1 week ago:
Yes, tax havens are a problem
I’d almost say that companies should be taxed not on profits but on revenue
This is what sales tax is though. Tax collected at the point of sale (ie revenue). You can collect it direct from companies instead but all you’d see is the ‘sales tax’ line of your shopping cart go higher.
Profit is taxed instead of revenue (in general) because companies operate on wildly different margins (the difference between revenue and profit). So let’s ignore the fact it would get passed directly onto consumers and assume a revenue tax is borne by the companies… Say your revenue tax was 2% you might have a negligible effect on Apple, they have a large gap between their revenue and costs so they just absorb this as a tiny dent on profits, Tesla might be hit moderately hard (the amount of profit they turn compared to revenue is smaller so a revenue tax makes a much larger impact on profit), and it may have a catastrophic impact on Starbucks (very small gap between revenue and expenses so decreasing revenue via a 2% tax almost completely eradicates profits).
I’m making up which company’s which just to illustrate that a revenue tax doesn’t land equally across companies. Some industries are low margin some are high margin and a revenue tax disproportionally clobbers low margin industries. Which might not be the effect we wanted. So it’s better to tax profit.
This does create issues where companies deliberately don’t turn a profit because they aggressively reinvest in expansion and acquisition.
- Comment on Is it really possible to tax the rich? 1 week ago:
You don’t have to repay income. When you repay the loan should you get the tax back?
- Comment on Is it really possible to tax the rich? 1 week ago:
Yes that’s true, I was trying to make the point that the ownership of the company is usually directly responsible for its success, whatever form that takes. And forcing the dilution of ownership (by taxing a company on its overall market cap rather than its profits) is only going to be disruptive to whatever arrangement made it successful in the first place (be that forcing control out of the hands of a good founder or diluting the control of a group of investors that approved a good board). Don’t get me wrong, that might sometimes be a good thing. It’s just that the logic “you’ve made this company is so successful you’re going to have less control over it” is unlikely to work out well in the long run. Better to take more taxes from profits if anything (as long as that’s internationally competitive) or have stronger laws preventing companies with huge value from muscling in and taking over competitors or whole industries (eg Musk etc)
- Comment on Is it really possible to tax the rich? 1 week ago:
And what exactly is the difference between a loan and a loan acting as income?
- Comment on Is it really possible to tax the rich? 1 week ago:
Why? Are any loans ever taxed?
There were tax evasion schemes in the UK where wealthy people could take loans from an offshore entity they contributed to and never pay the loans back. But this was shutdown fairly quickly by HMRC (British IRS) and a bunch of people were fined / went to jail. Don’t know if the same is true in America?
- Comment on NHS-branded baby formula could prevent parents paying too much, watchdog says 1 week ago:
More of this sort of thing! State shouldn’t be involved in the market of choice. But in the market of “no choice” it should absolutely step in and give people basic quality options to help prevent them being gouged.
- Comment on NHS-branded baby formula could prevent parents paying too much, watchdog says 1 week ago:
I think they should do it and print breastfeeding class info on the container if they really want to
- Comment on Post Office: Fujitsu boss 'does not know' if Horizon is reliable 1 week ago:
“is it fit for purpose?” is a better question because if you don’t know if it’s reliable you have your answer already
- Comment on Password problem behind UK air traffic control failure 1 week ago:
Problem with one line of data? Better shutdown the airspace.
Amazing this hadn’t happened before with a strategy like that.
Also, duplicate waypoints are allowed, just not in the same region. But also exit points don’t have to be explicitly indicated and the system will just look for the nearest waypoint in another region.
Sounds like the whole thing was a needlessly hacky messy standard. I’ve dealt with quite a few of them, but to tolerate it in air traffic control? Good grief…