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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • It would have to be a pretty novel (and likely much more complex, less reliable, more costly, etc.) design to attach to a thing that has multiple degrees of freedom as opposed to an immobile window sill with a built in clamping mechanism. Also worth noting that window-mounted a units often introduce some gaps in the insulation that the window would otherwise provide. In America, no biggie on that, we build with double pane windows primarily and many existing buildings even still have single pane windows. The net loss of insulation (if it is even a loss) is easy to justify/mitigate with some cheap treatments like foam inserts. For European triple pane windows, the loss of insulation is still not a huge deal (especially if you account for luften), but it is yet another factor that discourages market penetration of a hypothetical window mounting solution. Window units have been around for decades because they are successful at taking advantage of the nature of American windows. Because European windows and building construction have a fundamentally different nature, it’s not surprising that this approach has not penetrated that market. It’s not as simple as capitalizing on the original idea, it would essentially be coming up with an entirely novel idea that may or (more likely) may not be viable







  • The Harris campaign literally did this, I want to say in a sideswipe during the debate. And Trump said nuh-uh, it’s not a tax, and the campaign more or less shut up about it, wasn’t a core feature of their advertising, stump speech, or debate strategy going forward, they opted for “save our institutions” and “he’s going to raise the ever nebulous cost of living” (which got lost in the Biden is responsible for bird flu egg prices noise from the other side). Can you imagine betting it all on courting Republican voters, and being so easily talked off of the “he’s going to tax you more” hill? I know hindsight is 20/20, but that’s some frustrating shit to think about




  • There was a lawsuit from the AFGE (federal employees union) I think that they had to drop because it relied on the assumption that DOGE was a federal agency. When it was revealed that DOGE was just a renaming of the US Digital Service, that invalidated the premise of the lawsuit. Idk how the USDS had money lying around in its budget for a bunch of new and unqualified GS-15s to just be added to the payroll like government billets aren’t painstakingly difficult to establish, but that is another question, I suppose





  • Low income taxes. And our sales tax is typically lower than European VAT when the comparison is valid. But those generally go to the feds and the state, that do not fund municipal services, so municipalities have to collect the remainder they need through property taxes, typically on real estate and cars. And none of them fund healthcare, so we have to pay a company premiums for that. Basically the same for higher education. When you look at our total financial burden to receive the kind of services that are funded by taxes in other developed countries, we can be deceptively expensive, especially if you start thinking about the comparative quality of those services. But our income and capital gains tax rates are low, especially if you are very rich! I made myself sad