lxm

Very classy guy, sad day.

They explain it towards the end - the videos are specific enough and the team was small enough that affected parties would identify him easily anyways.

Interesting that they bring up water consumption https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

The debate you seem to be aiming toward is whether we should have public universities

Apologies if my argument came out that way. I agree with a need for public universities, I just disagree with the need to have them at any cost. Ad absurdium, a public university that costs $1,000 / $10,000 / $100,000 / $1,000,000 per student are all a good deal to a purist because hey, a need is a need.

The current system, however, incentivizes extracting maximum value for the stakeholders (administration) while delivering minimum results to customers (students). With a single-payer there's even a stronger incentive to inflate the operating costs.

If you went through US higher education, you've probably witnessed a few tricks designed for maximum revenue extraction.

* credits from one [cheaper] accredited institution are not transferable to another [expensive one], ensuring that you'd be subjected to a higher tuition

* courses that can be delivered online are not

* courses that are delivered online are paywalled to ensure only those who have registered and paid can view the precious content (something Open Courseware stood up against)

* there's no system where one can test out of pre-requisites by taking similar courses cheaper (or free) elsewhere. E.g., if you self-studied through some MIT or Stanford courses online, you still have to pay full tuition at Fill In The Blank State University

Granted, it's not always about effort duplication and resource waste. California Community Colleges, for instance, is good at centralizing student registration, identity management, and financials, so that each community college doesn't have to run a fully staffed department doing all that.

Ideally, though, an eager high school student should be able to

* load up on as many courses as they can manage online on their own schedule

* have an ability to test out of the courses for a fee that's lower than the full price of the course

* arrive at the university and pay full tuition for the courses that do require in-person training (nursing, medical sciences, any course requiring labs)

You're right, end of the day a public university is an extension of secondary school, but with higher concentrations of students (and hence fewer locations required and all sorts of economies of scale at play). There's no reason that grades 13-16 should cost more than grades K-12, so why do they?

Has this - “effective oversight of public assets and administrations” - happened in other systems with significant state involvement, like secondary ed, healthcare or infrastructure projects?

My view is skewed towards California, where admittedly examples of cost decreases through economies of scale are lacking.

Does subsidizing lower the cost, or just mask it by having it covered from a different wallet, e.g. robbing Peter to pay Paul?

What stops the higher ed players from regulatory capture of the state agency in charge of those subsidies and milking that cow for all it's got?

their place will be other businesses that employ people of higher than minimum wage

Worth noting that California’s regime extends to fast food industry exclusively.

Presumably some of those job losses were absorbed by industries still paying minimum wage - retail, construction, warehousing, etc.

Presumably if those losses were not absorbed by those low-skill sectors, the job loss figure would've been higher.

So I guess, as you said, data is conclusive.

Ukraine is outmatched on ammo.

Also, some of the Western kit comes with restrictions on what exactly and how far they can hit inside Russia.

many hopeful people uproot themselves to go into that field

uproot from what, though?

It's not like people disrupt their investment banking careers to become plumbers.

The alternative (perhaps a pointless college degree with debt + barista job + realtor license) is worse.

There's a bunch of newsletters and blogs advertising those changes, as credit card affiliate programs tend to be generous, especially for driving new sign-ups.

Not endorsing, but these are the ones my "newsletters" email account subscribes to:

* https://yourbestcreditcards.com/ for credit card bonuses

* https://www.frequentflyerbonuses.com/ for hotel, airline and other travel programs

Isn't that usually indicative of a winner-takes-all sector running on pretty thin margins?

ETFs are a relatively recent phenomenon, the criticism I remember from 2008 era is having paycheck + employee stock purchase plan + 401k concentrated in a single stock - employer's.

BKLC is 0.00%.

What's your take than on HELOC?

A product design team staffed only by men is destined to collapse unless they're only trying to market to other men

If this is demonstrably true, where are the hedge funds shorting male-dominant firms and venture funds getting the edge by doing the opposite in the startup land?

Seems like an obvious trade.

The younger two dropped out of college

He left college after his first semester when, like his older brother Daniel, he couldn’t figure out what he was doing there.

Daniel, who left college midway through his sophomore year after indecision about his major spiraled into a larger existential crisis.

Perhaps the effort to shove everyone and their brother into higher education is a bit misguided?

With schools lowering standards to boost graduation rates, and politicians conveniently promising yet more college affordability every 4 years, it’s hard to avoid perceiving one’s self-worth through the lens of college performance.

Those craving character are probably not the target audience.

Liu was motivated by Irvine’s good schools and low crime rate

As long as the fundamentals are there, it just seems poised to attract LA money and SF Bay Area money, even if Asian buyers move on to something else.

Production and consumption might match, but the grid throughput might not.

The greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet were not specialists, they exceeded in a wide pool of areas

For each polymath there's also Michael Jordan and golfing.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19288640-how-we-learn

Tubi has a crazy deep catalog including shows like Ranma 1/2, Accel World, My Cat from Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, and The People's Court.

Can't speak authoritatively on this, but I think same catalog is shopped around to other free or semi-free providers, like Roku or Samsung TV+.

The majority of outlays comes from entitlement programs.

Whether to sell new debt and to what extent is up to every respective administration.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president...

Between two elevators in my building (11 stories) at least one is always out of service for a few days. I attend HOA meetings, and like 8-10% of our ongoing budget is elevator maintenance. Few reasons according to the guy on HOA board:

* the service companies are either Otis or an Otis dealer, so essentially 2-3 companies have an oligopoly on Los Angeles

* all parts must come from Otis (which mattered during COVID supply chains, when you either paid Otis directly for faster service or waited forever for the part to arrive)

* all shafts and mechanisms seem to be custom-built - there's no drop-in replacement service or alternative product (from likes of Mitsubishi or others) we can easily switch to

It's a small industry with few dominant players designed on extracting maximum revenue. Servicing is pretty much mandatory, limited to a few authorized dealers, who know you have limited options.

Baccarat Lucky Butterfly $250.00 Purchased

Maybe not as lucky as advertised?

Why not exploit the absurdity by opening a short position then?

Substitute "china" for "japan" and roll back the clock a few decades. Even though Toyota, Nissan and Honda are top-selling brands, Detroit spiffed up its quality controls, and a bunch of those manufacturers set up factories in the US anyways.

Wasn't a negative COVID test a pre-requisite for getting a vaccine?

but it's an inconvenience that costs them money

Does it? It’s not like they have to hire someone extra, they just call up someone from the crew that walks over as slowly as they possibly can, and projects as much attitude as they possibly can. That agent’s highlight of the day would be making opt-outers wait.

Wouldn't this create an incentive for increased management bonuses in order to "tax-optimize" the profits?

Probably a better link but PDF https://collegecampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2023_...