pgdave

167143 pts ยท February 19, 2013


I'm not sure what you're correcting? A normal taco was 59 cents and a supreme was 79 cents. The things for 39 cents weren't things that I checked.

6 hours ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Well...worked to address it...some of us still do.

2 days ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

America wears its racism openly, and works to address it. Most countries have not yet begun to wrestle with their xenophobia and bigotry, and mistakenly think that means that they're not racist.

2 days ago | Likes 12 Dislikes 1

Yes, a significant amount of it.

2 days ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 6

39 cents in June 1991 is the equivalent of about $1 today, and there's no food on the menu that cheap. The closest is the $1.40 potato soft taco (which is delicious, to be fair) followed by the $1.50 cheesy bean and rice burrito. Wait, not true - you can get 2oz of "chili", basically a spoonful of their meat, for $0.99.

2 days ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

They launched the menu in the early 1990's - a normal taco was 59 cents, a supreme was 79 cents. Adjusting for inflation, a normal taco should cost $1.55 and a supreme $2. Currently, I'm seeing online prices of $1.99 and $2.89, so they're about 25-50% more expensive than they used to be.

2 days ago | Likes 13 Dislikes 1

I understand what you're saying, but the original commenter didn't say anything actually negative about modern art, only that it remains a mystery to them. Yes, it *is* a dog whistle that many people have used, so it could be that, but I don't think it needs to be. The irony, of course, is that our conflicting interpretations of it are just the reason and purpose of post-modernism. There doesn't need to be one, universal truth - we can both support our interpretations via the text itself.

2 days ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

Art is always created at least twice, by the creator and the consumer. Everybody looking at the art brings their own perspectives, their own understandings, their own histories. Part of post-modernism is recognizing that despite reality having tangible facts, our understanding of those facts and our experience of them is still wholly individual. Not incorrect, just differences of perspectives.

2 days ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 1

Do you think the majority of modern art is being sold for millions

2 days ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

#11 So I definitely get it, for sure, but for my friend here who doesn't, how would you explain this to them?

2 days ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Also dead people

2 days ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

That's fair, though it does sound like the art is a mystery to you mostly because you haven't tried to learn about it. Which is okay - not everybody needs or wants to learn about everything - but it's a choice.

2 days ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 3

Have you tried studying it and its history?

2 days ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 4

Do you think I'm endorsing him by saying "killing the president wouldn't make the US less risky"?

2 days ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

The simplest way to check his power would, unfortunately, likely lead to further instability and potential violence.

2 days ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 2

If you're in the US, you've had tax cuts. They haven't been massive only because you don't make massive amounts of money, but percentage-wise it's massive. The average (middle quintile) pays ~7-8% in income taxes today, vs. about 15-18% in the 1990s.

2 days ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yes, it's called shorting. Don't do it.

2 days ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

It's a bubble, just like the dotcom bubble was a bubble - it's a new technology, so there's a ton of investment all chasing what could be the next big thing. But of all the investments, only some of them will actually become the next big thing, while the others burst. The two incorrect ways of thinking are that the technology is useful therefore the investments will all grow, or that the investments won't all grow therefore the technology isn't useful.

2 days ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Football is a physical game of chess. Each play is only a few seconds, but every minute on that clock matters, and it's all actively being used. Saying there's only 11 minutes of action is as ignorant as saying that a 1-0 soccer game is boring because there was only one goal.

3 days ago | Likes 14 Dislikes 15

Okay, and do you think that implies anything, that it means any action should be taken, or is it a fully neutral thing, like a graph showing, idk, the phases of the moon across the year?

3 days ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 2

What do *you* think your graph is showing, and why?

3 days ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 2

Some day we'll use fusion to boil water and spin things fast. And eventually, long down the road, we'll reach the pinnacle of science - using anti-matter/matter annihilation, releasing the most powerful forces int he universe, in order to boil water and spin things fast.

3 days ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Okay, but no lie - this is what blazoning in heraldry is. Reduce a complex image into a statement that can be provided to a different person to replicate something which is close enough

3 days ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Falling birthrates leading to economic decline can be avoided through dramatic increases in productivity per workerhour, which technology can produce, but it definitely needs to be something society considers and is aware of, rather than something dismissed out of hand.

3 days ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

We had weeks of protests in the past, but because the US is so spread out, it's harder to get the kind of concentrated media attention. In France, everybody is at most an 11 hour drive or so from Paris. In the US, hundreds of millions of people live farther than that, so people tend to protest in their nearest city.

4 days ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 1

It's really, really hard to measure actual corruption, because the definition is so complicated to actually apply. It's a lot easier to measure perceptions of corruption, because like yourself, most people "know it when they see it" and so the perception of corruption is pretty tightly linked to actual corruption.

4 days ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

Yeah - given the option of a racist who fights nazis or a racist nazi, I'll take the racist who fights nazis, generally.

4 days ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

solution is to have governments (state and local) provide loans for builders who increase housing stock by some amount at inflation + 1% rates, making it really, really cheap to build new housing at almost no cost to the taxpayers, since their loans and not grants. Could even lower the rates if they sell to owner-occupiers instead of landlords. Would help increase housing stock where it's needed and drive prices back to normal levels (again, this is based on empirical studies, not just math) 2/2

4 days ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

With UBI *and* a competitive housing market, it's true - a $1k UBI per month could lead a landlord to raise rent by $1k. But then the landlord down the street could raise theirs by only $900, and people would rent there instead. And then another could raise theirs by just $500 and have every apartment filled and still see increased profits, etc. The problem is that we haven't had a competitive market for a very long time, so it's hard to imagine how it works when it works right. My 1/2

4 days ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 1