Me either. Seems like it would be a really handy site to use if you were making your own game and wanted to see some examples or best practices.

Had no idea it existed, I don’t make games though. But it’s always so cool to see something built that serves a unique niche I had never thought of before! Consulting used to be like for me but after a while, it was always the same kinds of business problems just a different flavor of organization.

Pffftft get bent. Providing military gear to Ukraine that was destined to be disposed of for reaching its end of life by sitting on a shelf doesn’t really cost the US much, other than on an accounting ledger. It’s either on the balance sheet as “N number of ATACMS valued at $X were disposed of for $Z (cost of disposal)” or “N number of ATACMS valued at $X were provided to Ukraine at a cost of $W (cost of shipping)”. Which end up being roughly the same.

Regardless the munitions are gone and off the books. Both outcomes mean US arms producers get to make more missiles — which is money spent within the US on US jobs.

So, who gives a shit? Let Ukraine defend themselves while Russia expends money and soldiers. Ya Muppet.

I don’t get the impression he gives a shit about his kids.

Kidnapped? He probably lost track of the other 12 that he isn’t using as photo op props in the Oval Office.

It looked like just weird angles and lighting to me.

Sucks but better than paying for cable to still see ads.

Can’t be old, Vivek’s there?

Hey I genuinely believe the legal teams pursuing holding him to just give it their absolute full selves. Proud to be an American because of people Jack Smith and their pursuit to justice.

I’ve never purchased a home but I imagine it’s hard to find a good realtor AND trust them. There may be tons of great realtors who are worth more than their commissions but the bad ones probably say the same things the great ones do AND have basically the same headshot.

I feel like I wouldn’t know if I had a good realtor until after the transaction, if at all, or until I’m fucked.

The only time I’ve used a realtor was to rent a house and I am pretty sure she worked with the listing agent to get me to agree to pay $100/mo more because there were other people wanting to sign for the house. Which, I feel dumb for but didn’t realize until later. But I’ll also never know if that was the case.

You could put solar on both?

I’ve done lots of tech projects within the retail energy industry in Texas - this is the right answer.

To expand a little bit:

Retail energy providers (REPs), like NRG, ClearSky, Just Energy, etc. make their money by forecasting the amount of energy that will be needed as far in advance as possible and purchasing that amount from power generators like CenterPoint and marking it up a few cents. The farther out, the cheaper they can get it. I’ve helped build forecasting engines for a few that ingest historical usage data from meters (all meters in Texas are smart meters), weather data, and others to use machine learning to forecast how much individuals will need and aggregate it together to help the energy traders make better informed trade decisions farther out.

If they mess up or an unforeseen event happens and they don’t have enough energy bought for that time segment (forgot the term for a window of time they use), they have to go to the spot market which is where the prices fluctuate and can be many many multitudes higher than the rate the customers are contracted to pay.

In a storm scenario or a freeze, it can be thousands of times more expensive because demand is so high and supply is so limited. This is when REPs go bankrupt if they don’t have the cash on hand.

There are also insurance plans that the REPs pay for that cover very specific conditions for different types of events or outages that can kick in to cover the huge costs they would otherwise incur on their own buying electricity at that spot rate. I’ve known a few that were only able to stay operating because someone a few years prior had bought an insurance policy that covered said weather event.

Griddy died because of the ice storm in Texas a few years ago and the huge costs people incurred. I actually met with their CIO the year prior as part of a technology assessment of their stack. Nice guy.

Edit: also you can largely thank Enron and Rick Perry for deregulating Texas’ energy - which directly led to the terrible “performance” of the Texas grid during the winter storm Uri in 2021. Same for Enron in the constant blackouts in California in the early 2000’s.

Hwat?

Fucking ouch to read.

I don’t disagree with the sentiment but the Ilyushin Il-76 is made by Ilyushin, not Boeing. Let’s not cross the streams incorrectly.

No way! What’s Vermont’s story?!

Ah shit, the bar must be so low then.

Ya know, that sounds super obvious but no that wasn’t a fact that I consciously knew. Great point! That is definitely not taught to us…Thank you for teaching me that! It does kind of change my perspective, too…

Am Texan. While it’s a fun little thing to kind of be proud of - that Texas was its own country before joining the United States - we stopped being a country for a reason. And today we are 100% less capable of independence from the United States compared to then.

We are taught “We can opt out of the United States whenever we want to. Other states can’t because they weren’t their own countries beforehand.” as a fun fact in 7th grade (Texas History) and no one seems to clarify that we can’t to the students or later in life when they’re grown ass adults. But by then, most refuse to believe it… like they do with most inconvenient facts.

sigh.

Lifelong Texan. Fuck it, you have my support. So tired of this.

You don’t sayyyyy