My most recent Deutsche Bahn train was announced as being 3 hours late. I watched a few passengers leave the station to grab coffee nearby. The train arrived 10 minutes later, and left 5 minutes after that. The whole system seems broken.
> You're arguing that "Black" is an identity in the US because the people thus identified share a common history within the US, even though their ancestors originated from different regions and cultures before they were enslaved and shipped to North America. Yet in the next paragraph you argue that "White" is not a valid identity, because their ancestors originated from different regions and cultures, even though they share a common history within the US. How do you reconcile this double standard?
The ethnic, cultural, linguistic, familial, etc., identities of enslaved people in America were systematically and deliberately erased. When you strip away those pre-American identities you land on the experience of slavery as your common denominator and root of history. This is fundamentally distinct from, for example, Irish immigration, who kept their community, religion, and family ties both within the US and over the pond. There’s a lot written about this that you can explore independently.
I’m not actually a fan of “Black” in writing like this, mostly because it’s sloppily applied in a ctrl+f for lower case “black”, even at major institutions who should know better, but the case for it is a fairly strong one.
The absolute mess that is US privacy legislation is going to undermine the US single market advantage. Truth is the big players don’t sell your data, they use it. Only small companies are hurt by this.
> I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans.
Why would you suspect that a company flying in hundreds of laborers can’t afford a lawyer to give the same guidance your HR company gave? It’s tax evasion and cost cutting.
When I was much younger I was sent 'onsite' regularly to set up machinery that had been made by the company I worked for. This is still pretty common in anything related to industry because you're just simply not going to be able to train a local to troubleshoot/install a machine that they have no clue about. Some of this stuff takes years to become familiar with.
Seems short-sighted by the investment firms. They aren’t just competing with other Florida firms, they are competing with NYC and London and Hong Kong. Why would top talent move there?
The manufactured perception of weather, really. What folks discover after moving to FL:
Florida has 6 or 8 seasons and none of them resemble fall, winter or spring.
The 13th month of summer is the worst.
In Oct, trees finally succumb to heat stroke and drop their leaves.
Hurricanes are much better than summer except for a few hours.
Rainfall doesn't stick around; drought begins when rain stops.
Drought season varies between 15 min and 15 years.
Wildfire seasons vary from all day to world class.
The least-hot months get warmer every decade.¹
The other months probably are too.
At night, the dew point can plunge to 85°.
Sweat is your constant companion but so is sand.
Schools cleverly time summer break between May (Hell) & Aug (also Hell).
It's funny: I lived in a state with similar weather (hotter at the hottest, colder during the winter, but on balance similar humidity and climate generally) but fewer imports from NY/NJ/CA/etc., and we were outside all the time enjoying it. In Florida, everyone spends time inside with the AC set to 64 degrees and complains endlessly about the heat. It's odd to see: a bunch of folks move to "Endless Summer!" and then ... stay inside all the time. I'll happily march around outside on a 100-degree day while my NY colleagues absolutely refuse to.
As someone who lives in the NYC area it’s always entertaining to me when I go to Florida and see how low they set the AC. Basically every house from before 2010 doesn’t have AC in the NYC area. I’m currently working in an office that’s 85 and it’ll hit mid 90s before the end of the day. Climate acclimation is pretty neat.
> I have never been so cold, so very cold to my bones, as when I walk into a Florida Five Guys.
Funny. I said the same exact thing when I first moved to FL (except inside everywhere). Now I stay inside most of the time because there is little joy to be had when dew points push 85°F.
I am from the California desert with family in Florida and 100 degree here is almost nothing, back east it is pure misery. As bonus the dry desert air retains heat poorly so it is always cool at night. The humidity there tends to keep it hot all night.
Now having said that, I do note how much they complain how dry it is here, so perhaps it is what you are used to.
It totally is. I'm not saying I ENJOY 100 degrees and 89% humidity. I'm not a monster. But it's ... fine. I can go for a walk and not die, because it's what I grew up with. I'll happily sit on the front porch, sweating profusely, and enjoy a summer night. But people not from here--and, weirdly, a large proportion of people from here who have adopted the AC habits of the imports--treat it like a personal affront, a vigorous assault on their very being.
I'll never forget living in Atlanta and we had a bizarre blast of dry heat, totally out of character for the area. It was 112 degrees or some nonsense. I remember sitting in my car in the Fry's parking lot, getting myself mentally ready for the march to the store. I opened the door and it was actually really pleasant, almost enjoyable, because humidity wasn't there.
Only one of those hit the area my family has a vacation home in the past 40 years. There was another big one in the 90s. So 2 times in 50 years and both were not catastrophic.
Listing all the hurricanes that hit any part of Florida isn't useful for evaluating the real risk faced by a family with a home in Florida. Most hurricanes that hit Florida won't effect most of the homes in Florida. If you just look at the raw number of hurricanes you might think the average Floridian home can't last more than two years without being flattened, but that's not reality.
Not sure what you mean. The GP listed out a bunch of hurricanes since 2000. Only one of those hit the panhandle in a way that was slightly impactful to my families vacation home(s). 2 storms in 50 years isnt enough to say I wouldn’t live there because of storms.
Insurance costs might scare me away more than the chance of a storm.
Personally I'd take 10 feet of snow year round over a single week of Florida's muggy heat. I get that old people like it because they're always cold, but why anybody young lives anywhere in Florida, besides maybe Miami, is completely beyond my comprehension.
> I get that old people like it because they're always cold, but why anybody young lives anywhere in Florida, besides maybe Miami, is completely beyond my comprehension.
To get jobs tending to those (often well-off) old people. It's not for nothing that Florida is a top destination for pharmacy grads.
I live in Texas, and I often hear about people moving here for the weather. And I can't help but think... why? I've been to NYC, the weather is better.
Yes, the cold is inconvenient. But the heat is debilitating. I can wear a coat and boots and go outside in the north, but you can't do jack shit about the heat. I mean, we get 6 months of summer in Texas. You can't do anything.
Forget physical activities like golfing or jogging, even going to the grocery store practically saps all your will to live right out of your body.
Lol... Florida has some of the worse weather in the US. The winters can be nice but it has incredibly hot/humid summers. Miserable. It's why all the snow birds leave early spring and come back in the winter. I'd take a winter in North Dakota vs a summer in Florida any day.
Offset by exceptionally high fees, insurance rates, etc. The taxes argument is generally a benefit only for the owners (which may well have been your point).
But the admins, marketing team, junior employees, etc. get screwed, and the worst part is they are genuinely not expecting it. "I thought it was going to be cheaper to live here than NYC" is something I hear _weekly_.
Absolutely. But the mgmt does not really care about them, they can just hire locals. They only care about “top talent”, something they talk about all the time…
They can hire locals ... until they find out that the talent they genuinely need isn't here in the numbers they require, either driving up their costs or requiring importing people. But they're drooling about replacing all of those troublesome nobodies--their perspective--with AI ASAP anyway.
> It was also the result of Europe (now the EU) choosing not to oppose the US (at least mostly - they did in small areas). The EU has more people and combined could - if they wanted - be more powerful than the US.
Europe was destroyed by war, and then occupied by the US and USSR. The US liberated Western Europe and backstopped their independence. The Europeans didn’t choose to be on the American side, they were forced to by circumstance of their own making.
> The Europeans didn’t choose to be on the American side, they were forced to by circumstance of their own making.
Europeans choose to follow the US. Even recently Sweden joined NATO. If they wanted to develop their own inter-European military alliance, they could have done so but instead joined and alliance where the US calls the shots.
Also since the fall of the Soviet union, the European countries decided to basically gut their military budgets and redirect the money to other things, as seen by the fact that until very recently only a small fraction of the NATO countries actually met their 2% military budget targets.
De Gaulle after the war did not want to join NATO because he understood what that meant, alas his successors all be gave up on the concept of military independence.
In the 1950s that was true. By 1960 it was already changing. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s Europe was plenty rebuilt enough that they could have redirected their efforts to opposing the US, but they mostly choose not to. Sure the US had a head start, but they have plenty of power. China is moving in the direction of opposing the US in the world, and seeing results.
Assuming you’re not a haywire LLM, if you’re alive and posting here, you eat. If you eat, you’ve already internalized and practiced the notion that it’s acceptable to kill other life forms to stay alive.
The study of biology also serves to keep people alive; our modern practice of medicine evolved from the understanding gained by scientists, studying in the name of science.
If you are wealthy, perhaps set up a donor advised fund in their name. Let them do more good in the world, give to causes they contribute. Especially as folks age this is a way to get meaning.
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