What are you reading?
Comments
-
These ai companies should be required to build their own electrical plants to make their own electricity.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
2 -
@ShawnOL said:
These ai companies should be required to build their own electrical plants to make their own electricity.Some actually are. Part of Three Mile Island has been bought and being allowed to open back up.
Not necessarily a good thing.If it don’t bother me, it don’t bother me. Just leave me alone.
2 -
I currently live in Londonderry Township, where TMI is located. It will be good for the local economy. It was bad when it shut down, but the township has made up for the loss of tax revenue and jobs by allowing multiple large distribution centers and warehouses, and now is considering data centers. I have mixed feelings on both of those replacements.
4 -
I am all for this solution to the Social security shortfall. Seems sensible to adjust the COLA of the people who are least affected.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/one-type-social-security-adjustment-could-cut-75-year-shortfall-half2 -
I hadn't heard of that strategy, but it looks okay to me.
Something else I've seen bandied about is removing the cap, or at least raising the cap, on how much income is subject to SS taxes. I forget the exact figures, but for example, the income cap is $165K, so a person earning $1M pays no more than someone earning $165K. Remove or raise the cap, and then stop plundering the SS funding for other things.
"I could've had a Mi Querida!" Nick Bardis0 -
@silvermouse said:
I am all for this solution to the Social security shortfall. Seems sensible to adjust the COLA of the people who are least affected.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/one-type-social-security-adjustment-could-cut-75-year-shortfall-halfThat's one remedial step, seems to be based on expectation that these people will die soon? Another approach might be to tax everyone at the same rate, no matter their income. Instead of saying that people only have to contribute to the program up to $X of their annual income they might continue to contribute from their abundance. I'm not sure what the cutoff is now, I think it used to be ninety six thousand dollars a year, I believe it's up to 125K - 140K now, and then whatever money is made above that amount is exempt.
Why?
Presumably this is because it's believed that people who made more than that won't need Social Security? Like, nobody who makes this amount ever goes broke? I don't think so.
Another might be to apply the same debt interest rate that the IRS applies to overdue taxes to the money that Congress has repeatedly "borrowed" from Social Security to fund whatever was popular with Congress at that moment in time, rather than having them pay back just the amount that they borrowed.
They do pay it back, don't they?
Maybe, maybe not.
I wonder.
At any rate, just my thoughts off the top of my head. No one should make the mistake that I believe myself to be an oracle in a burning bush sowing my wisdom to the earth.
Thank you.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain0 -
helpful analysis of the different approaches to increasing the solvency of social security https://www.pgpf.org/article/should-we-eliminate-the-social-security-tax-cap-here-are-the-pros-and-cons/
1 -
a look at the cost/benefit of speeding https://www.vice.com/en/article/speeding-barely-saves-you-any-time-new-study-finds/?
2 -
I'd have to see their data before I agree w/ that article. It looks like propaganda from the 'speed kills' crowd, and/or the nanny state that wants to control everyone in the name of safety or fuel saving.
"Drivers who complied with posted speed limits on highways and arterial roads increased their travel time by an average of 54 seconds per day, based on a mean daily driving distance of 28.6 miles. That works out to just over six minutes per week."
This may be true for city driving and poorly timed stoplights. For example, driving just a bit more distance than they quoted, say 30mi. at 60mph, it would take 30 minutes. Bumping up the speed to 70mph decreases (or saves you time) to 25m43sec. Chops off over 4 minutes in one trip.
So their results must include plenty of stop-and-go driving. I grant that 60mph will deliver better gas mileage than 70mph. I don't agree that driving 70 on the freeway causes more accidents: higher speed may increase the severity of a crash, but I contend that it's those who drive slower than the flow of traffic who cause more accidents than those going 10mph over.
"I could've had a Mi Querida!" Nick Bardis2 -
So you have a problem with speed limits? Rebel with a cause.
3 -
If it don’t bother me, it don’t bother me. Just leave me alone.
2 -
My daughter visited her boyfriend's family on São Jorge Island in the Azores and found out that swimming isn't very popular there at certain times due to the long tentacles of the deadly Portuguese man of wars (Physalia physalis) that live there. They are siphonophores, colonial organisms that drift with the wind and currents, not jellyfish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o'_war
Join us on Zoom vHerf (Meeting # 2619860114 Password vHerf2020 )3 -
I don't like things that sting, either.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
0 -
Large dolphin stranding next door
Cape has more stranded dolphins as largest bottlenose stranding in Mass. continues
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/cape-cod-ifaw-bottlenose-dolphin-stranding-rescue/3987798/
2 -
Its puzzling why so many of those intelligent creatures end up beaching themselves.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
2 -
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/30/italian-elixir-coca-cola-precursor
Was Florentine friars’ fatigue-fighting elixir a precursor to Coca-Cola?
Kola Coca, an alcoholic syrup made in 1885 by distillers in Valencia, Spain, has also been held up as a potential inspiration for Coca-Cola. Photograph: Régis Duvignau/Reuters
An Italian friar has unearthed a document from the pharmacy archives of an ancient convent in Florence describing a medicinal potion made from Bolivian coca leaves and kola nuts, prompting suggestions it could have been a precursor to the famous US soft drink, Coca-Cola.
5 -
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/30/1140927/a-fundamental-flaw-leaves-llms-vulnerable-to-attack/ ,"By taking advantage of this flaw, which concerns how LLMs identify who or what is giving them instructions, the researchers were able to make popular LLMs spit out information they had been trained not to provide, such as how to synthesize cocaine and how to sabotage a commercial aircraft’s navigation system.
“There’s a real probability that this is going to be a problem that’s fundamentally unsolvable,” says Charles Ye, an independent researcher and coauthor of the ICML paper."
1 -
Do these idiot geniuses honestly think this sort of thing was not going to happen?
If it don’t bother me, it don’t bother me. Just leave me alone.
4 -
AI surveillance cameras, warrantless intrusion.
1 -
What if the brain does not create consciousness? | ScienceDaily https://share.google/x9by6Vd4nsJ5M29D1
0 -
As Ničetić reminded me: "Why rush when you can enjoy life?"
2 -
Seven states reported cyber attacks on water facilities this week, according to the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency, a significant development as US spy agencies already suspected Iran targeted 30 similar facilities in Minnesota. Cyber authorities called on water utilities nationwide to take systems off the public Internet “as soon as possible.” The attacks come as the federal body responsible for digital protection of critical infrastructure, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is under strain. CISA doesn’t have a full-time director, and the agency is attempting to make hundreds of hires, after losing one-third of its workforce since the start of Trump’s second term.
0 -
Seems like a good time to send our jets in to bomb the snot out of their infrastructure, including their grids and water.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
0 -
The posts above made me think of these sayings from Sun Tzu's Art of War:
"Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are as inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more."
" The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege."
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain2 -
lol
Why Does This Jacket Cost $770? Because It Made Me a New Man.
Lots of men are geeking out over very expensive clothes — and I became one of them.0 -
@silvermouse said:
lolWhy Does This Jacket Cost $770? Because It Made Me a New Man.
Lots of men are geeking out over very expensive clothes — and I became one of them.Interesting, Edward. While I would never spend what I possibly could spend on a pair of cowboy boots, wearing them does make me feel good.
Also, how much do we spend on cigars over the course of a year, often for the affect cigars have on our mental well-being.
2
