"That assertion is wrong. The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November. In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle, according to Blumenfield’s office, although overall concerns about the department’s staffing level have persisted for a number of years."
Strange, I would have thought a pro rata refund would be allowable in these cases. I'm pretty sure that's how it works with insurance so I'm unsure why a toll pass would be any different.
Because they only sell them for durations of 10 days, 2 months and 1 year. So if you only need to cross the country for 5 hours, they would lose a lot of money.
There are signs that the blackout will have an affect on their bottomline if it's kept up [1]. I'd imagine that's why they're making these moves to remove moderators participating in the blackout so quickly. I think it'll be interesting to see if they can find other moderators who participate for free and bring as much value to reddit as the current mods do.
My guess is that the changes will still go ahead and the general quality of content on reddit will go down longer term although how much is an open question.
This is one the factors as to why my partner and I have decided against having children. Not because we think it'll make the situation worse, but because we believe they shouldn't have to deal with the significant fallout from resource contention, climate migration etc. that is more than likely on the horizon when they had no hand in creating the problem
This is a weird take to me. Even if climate change turns out to be significantly bad, I have a hard time imagining it would be worse than most times in human history. Only a few generations ago people lived through two world wars. We could have a third world war at some point, or the AI doomers could be right, but would that stop you from having children? This feels to me like someone who doesn’t leave their house because they are worried a car might hit them…it’s an unhealthy anxiety about one of many potential risks, that shouldn’t prevent you from living life.
Keep in mind that I've said it's one of the factors, not the only factor.
But why should my standards be just better than most times in human history? That seems a low bar to me, most times in human history were miserable for the majority of people compared to the living standards I've become accustomed to.
To be clear, I don't feel there is any moral duty to continue my particular genes and the world population will continue to increase for the foreseeable regardless. If I were to have children I personally would feel guilty if they had it significantly harder than I have and I think the likelihood is that will be the case - it's really as simple as that.
If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did?
If you could be born in America in 1925 and live until 2015, would you? Or would you decline because the standard of living dropped right away with a Great Depression followed by a world war?
I agree with you that if I knew, with certainty, that my children’s lives would be filled with nothing but suffering, I would make the same choice. But a fear of a theoretical drop in a standard of living, and which may not even impact an American over the next 100 years all that much, does not seem to me like it should reach that threshold, and I suspect it is starting to for others because of the media playing into their anxieties. There are people living that lived through the holocaust and are still happy to have lived and, over their lifetime, have had fulfilled and happy lives. I suspect your children could likewise carve out a happy life, even if their standard of living is somewhat reduced.
I agree you have no moral duty to have kids, and if you don’t want them, don’t have them. But if you want them, but are not having them because you find that to be cruel to your unborn kids, I question whether that is really a rational choice.
> If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did?
I'd agree there's nuance to this. For your cherry picked scenario, no, that wouldn't affect my decision. I can accept a single person having a reduction in living standards. However, when most of Western society (I'm British, not American) is struggling to attain housing at a rate similar to the generation before, when the middle classes as a whole aren't able to become as financially secure as the generation before then it is enough to give me pause.
So ignoring any climate worries I already think things will be much harder. When you add on that it's estimated that billions will be without sufficient water in a few decades it's not hard to imagine that there will be significant problems of which I have very little confidence that we will be able to handle well as a species.
Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. But as I say, this isn't the only factor we've taken into account, it's more a tertiary concern.
You realize the house price obsession is rather uniquely British, right? It's a bit of a national stereotype to people outside the UK. In many countries it's considered normal to rent, including rich countries.
Weirdly, the dominance of renting in Switzerland doesn't stop the Swiss having children. So this is really very much a media induced anxiety disorder of some sort. It's not rational to decide whether or not to have children based on whether you can get a mortgage.
Perhaps I worded it poorly, but I meant housing as in a place to live regardless of if that's achieved via ownership or renting. Both are getting more expensive compared to median wage as we build less than the increase in population. I didn't think that was a uniquely British phenomenon, but I'd be happy to learn otherwise.
General housing pressure certainly isn't a unique phenomenon, just the obsession with ownership. But many other countries have managed immigration levels better and don't experience the same level of pressure on the housing market as a consequence. Again Switzerland is an example.
I realise the UK is starting in one of the worst positions for house price pressure, but it does seem to be a general trend in all Western countries. My point is that it seems like my potential children would need to work harder to get the same level of basic necessities. It might be getting tougher more slowly in some countries than others, but that doesn't meet the criterion I feel is necessary of mostly getting better for most people.
As you can see, Swiss single family house prices were stable since 2016. It's
a different lifestyle, there's a lot of apartment living with shared gardens for example, but it can be done.
The absolute cost isn't a perfect measure for what I'm considering though because it will need to be compared to median real income. Looking at this: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/ILC_MDED01__c... it appears housing is costing a bigger share of household disposable income over time in Switzerland
Always is a bit strong isn't it? Prior to the Wii their consoles tended to be similar to their contemporaries in processing power.
I certainly experienced areas in BOTW which took a heavy FPS hit and it sounds like TOTK is similar. Such an FPS drop does take me out of the game so if the console was powerful enough to avoid that then you could argue it would allow more fun games
While their older consoles weren't as far away from modern stuff as the Switch, Nintendo wasn't often the more powerful console. Well-designed with good developer buy-in and incredibly strong first party titles, but not really pushing the envelope in terms of raw performance.
The GameCube was the weakest hardware-wise between the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and ~~Dreamcast~~ edit: guess not the Dreamcast, but definitely behind Xbox and PS2. ~~The Nintendo 64 was weaker than the PlayStation or Sega Saturn~~ edit: was wrong here, N64 was definitely the stronger console of this generation.The Super Nintendo had less computing capacity than the Mega Drive/Genesis.
Even when it came to handhelds, the GameBoy was often much weaker hardware. Compare the GameBoy to the Lynx on a spec sheet and it's clear which is better. Actually hold and play both of them and you can see why Atari doesn't exist anymore. The Game Gear was practically the current gen home console in a handheld form and could even get a TV tuner attachment before the GameBoy Color was even announced. Later, the Genesis Nomad was a full blown Genesis console in handheld form. Good games, cheaper hardware, better pocketability led to Nintendo dominating that market despite usually having the weakest hardware around.
> Always is a bit strong isn't it? Prior to the Wii their consoles tended to be similar to their contemporaries in processing power.
Yup, you could say Nintendo always thrived on underpowered (compared to competition) hardware.
NES was twice less powerful than SMS;
GameBoy didn't even have a color display;
SNES vs SMD similarity as NES vs SMS;
GBC was weaker than Neo Geo Pocket or WonderSwan;
GBA didn't have competition (although, if we count N-Gage...);
Wii had hardware from previous generation;
NDS was way worse in raw numbers that PSP;
3DS analogically with PS Vita;
Switch isn't even comparable to PS4/X1, let alone PS5/XSX;
What all of those Nintendo consoles have in common? Being their the most successful.
Whereas when Nintendo focused more on being on par in hardware power during 5th gen. (N64) and 6th gen. (GameCube), they didn't sold nearly as much as other generations.
The exception to the pattern are Virtual Boy and Wii U. The former was poorly designed then sacrificed as "filler"; the later flopped due to bad marketing (and naming) + poor decision on betting on "casuals".
In conclusion: as we can see, there is a clear trend, not a rule, but a trend nevertheless.
This is the actual issue, spending isn't keeping up with the demand. I'd agree that "the Tories are to blame" doesn't capture it, but I don't think they're equipped to deal with the problem. Real terms spending per age adjusted capita appears to have been on a downwards trend [0] since they took power. I think this has gone up since the pandemic, but I think it's likely too little too late and will probably be a short term increase.
I'm also skeptical the IFS have managed to accurately estimate the required increase in funding. They don't go into their workings from what I can see, but I doubt they've accurately included the effect of the lifetime allowance on pensions causing doctors to avoid overtime or the £100k tax bracket where you lose your personal allowance not moving since 2009 which more and more doctors will fall into. I'd imagine they've underestimated it, but would be happy to hear evidence to the contrary.
That's not to say that I think any other party has a solution or is properly holding the Tories to account on this.
I'll admit I haven't thought too hard about the problem, but I think the fairest solution would be to make pensioners pay national insurance on their income. It wouldn't affect the poorest pensioners and since national insurance is no longer ring fenced for pensions/healthcare I'm not sure what the justification for a tax break based on age even is anymore.
As someone who intends to subsist on more in retirement that change would negatively affect me, but I still think it's fair. I know that this would be deeply unpopular though, so I don't hold out much hope of it happening anytime soon.
Maybe that isn't the best solution, but I really wish we'd start to have real discourse on how we need to restructure our society as the demographic of the country continues to skew older.
Interesting - nice to have a sensible debate on it. I think your idea is worth pursuing even if it's not perfect.
Young people should not be subsidising old people who no longer work - especially those same young people who don't own house or have savings or a pension.
It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time. It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.
The approach we took was to keep the new cat in a separate room for the first few days to allow them to begin to get used to the new scent. We would then swap blankets to give them further time to get used to each other's scents. Then we'd open the door and allow them to interact under supervision for short periods and then we gradually increased the time they could interact each day.
I'm not sure this would work if you had outdoor cats. We didn't actually intend to get the third cat, but we ended up taking him in as our friend's original cat refused to acclimate to the point that he was spending all but 20 mins a day outside of the house and so they needed a good home for their new cat.
> It takes a long time to introduce a new cat, we have 3 indoor cats all introduced one at a time.
Yep.
> It took around a month for both the second and third cat to be completely accepted.
Oh boy that's nothing. I think we were like 10 months. They still don't get along flawlessly but it is now tolerable. We did precisely the recommended steps (scent swapping, separate spaces, associating each other with food, play nearby each other).
It's funny if you think about it, in a certain way cats are very much like people. Those that are poorly raised or socially isolated when young have issues later on to adapt to having others around, whereas if they've been brought up properly (and maintain that through practice) then it's a lot easier for them to make new connections later in life.
It's probably true for a lot of other animals as well.
It is hard because adopting is important but you can't really know what was in a cat's past. One of our cats is very grumpy at the other. This could be caused by something in her past that we aren't aware of. Our other cat also has very poor manners for a cat (he stares at everything) that might have developed by being raised with other animals.
What I wish people told us was that sometimes it isn't enough to do everything right. We planned everything and did as much as we possibly could to socialize them effectively and it ended up only fine after a lot of struggle. I had always figured that people who had cats who hated each other simply didn't follow the best practices when introducing them to each other. But that's clearly not the case.
+1, Outer Wilds is one of the best gaming experience I've had in over a decade. If you decide to play it, it's absolutely essential that you go in knowing as little about it as possible. You can only ever play this game once, since your only progression in this game is your knowledge about the world.
Both The Witness and Outer Wilds were two highly acclaimed games that I fully expected to really enjoy, but with both of them I left feeling very disappointed, for different reasons.
I respect what the Witness does and the craft of how it's all put together, very clever. But it just ends up feeling like a bumper book of puzzles to me, after a few dozen of the same kind of puzzle I just get very irritable. I was expecting a more Myst-like experience where the puzzles are varied and integrated into the environment, where there's equal focus between world/story building and the puzzling. To me The Witness felt like it took a long time to say very little, it's very rare that I use the term pretentious but I do feel like it applies here.
The Outer Wilds also has some very innovative and interesting ideas and craft, but left me very underwhelmed. I won't go into details but I honestly think it's pretty overrated. It all hinges on how well the story and world captivates you though, I can see how many people would like it.
Riven is still the absolute high point of the explorative puzzle genre for me.
I played Myst 2022 and Riven in the past month. Riven is still as amazing as I remember. I didn't remember any dialog, plot, or books, but remembered all the puzzles and settings - after 20 years!
The Witness and to a lesser extend OW were evidently influenced by these games. Overall, I liked them more! Subtle and clever in ways the Cyan predesessors are not.
I love the comparison - I've heard a number of outer wilds players not seeing the comparison due to lack of story in The Witness. I think that's missing the point - TW and OW are the best exploration-driven games I've played, and I'm suspicious they're the best ever made.
