I bought an OpenGarage and then saw that it had MQTT integration.
So... installed MQTT and got that working.
Then asked how hard would it be to hook this up to Alexa and get voice control working? Not toooooo hard ... working.
Then... how hard to get all of my home automation IOT/OAUTHish stuff integrated into MQTT+Alexa? ... a fair bit of work, but .... done!
So, now MQTT is the heart of a system that can talk to my tempest weather station, Tesla, sprinklers, opengarage, ecobee, sense, flume, smartthings controller, all queryable and controllable via voice.
I was lucky enough to attend a lecture given by Dr. Sacks circa 1988. He was a resident speaker for the University of California campuses and had come to UCSC to talk about Awakenings and other topics. He was such a sensitive, kind, gentle person.
It was a privilege to simply be in the audience and the audience was very small. For some reason students didn't take advantage of the opportunity, right in front of them, to come and see him speak. Baffling.
When I saw him, he was in his mid-fifties and the picture of an English academic doctor/professor. It is a kick to see what he looked like in 1961. That BMW he's sitting on is a classic.
The world lost a very special person when he died in 2015.
A common objection is that the rich will 'just move' to avoid taxes. However, he goes in depth in his response, pointing out that the source of the wealth can't move, you tax that at the source.
If a corporation "moves" oversees to avoid taxes, they aren't allowed to reap the benefits of the country whose taxes they wished to avoid.
If a billionaire moves to avoid taxes, they and their assets are cut off from the system whose taxes they wished to avoid. Oh, you want to move overseas but keep your money in banking institutions propped up by the US government? Too bad. You want your corporations to keep the full protection of the US government (intellectual capital protection, copyright, etc...)? Too bad! You want your company to take full advantage of all the US has to offer (great education system, a large consumer base, secure capital markets, a relatively stable government)? Too bad!
Most of these folks are just greedy fucks who know how good they have it...but somehow they want more, yet expect that people with exponentially less wealth will pay for it. I don't like that.
Note - the government isn't always the best at allocating capital or resources...but neither are private citizens or corporations.
I'm a little confused on this. What is the evidence that it didn't work in the 60s/70s? My understanding is that, though we definitely had "stagflation" and other problems, none of them were caused by higher taxes at the top end.
Now, granted, I don't know that I have ever seen it put forth that they were ideal levels or anything. I just have never heard the top end tax rate blamed for that. Biggest thing I have seen it blamed on would be employer tied insurance and the like.
In some countries, certainly the UK in the 1960s with its 90% top tax rate, the government would've collected more tax if the rate were lower because there would have been more economic activity to tax -- or so say a lot of economists. "Laffer curve" is a good thing to search for if you want to learn more.
I mean, this is largely to my point, though? Last I looked, it seemed research into the Laffer Curve largely found most countries set their rates below the ideal. Agreed that a 90% rate would almost certainly be too high, but the general feel was 40-60 would certainly cover the maximum rates. Some folks saying as high as 70, no?
His most important point though is that things will not get better until a sufficient mass of public political pressure is brought to bear on the issue.
Unhoused is a term that has been used for a number of years. Just because you dont bother keeping up to date doesnt mean the world needs to cater to you.
You can keep up with the times or you can make angry posts on the internet about people being “woke” or “pc” or whatever insult you decide to hurl because things are different now.
The words become less fake over time and everyone, even the most conservative of conservatives, recognizes that.
There plenty, many, words you won't use because they've changed. That's how progress goes, it's always the way it's been. You can fight that, but it won't work. And then in 40 years you will sound like an insane person.
I'm not saying that "unhoused" is good or will be a largely used word. But I am saying that fake words are real and you will keep up or be left behind. We have people alive, right now, who have been left behind. Guess what, they sound insane.
I mean what I said. Sometimes people end up on the streets as a result of unstable living situations. They may still have homes while not being housed. And as far as I know, these not-quite-homeless people are the most likely of that category to have cell phones, so it is actually fairly relevant to my comment that I use that particular word.
It reflects poorly on you to choose the least relevant part of my comment to reply to, poorer still when doing so makes it clear you're missing the point.
