As a stoner, I vote :) My local growers club has a newsletter and we discuss pro-cannabis politicians, and the importance of voting for them. What inspires me - to a degree - is how diverse our group is politically/socially, but this is one issue we agree on.

This has been a long time coming. Now let's tax it, and use that money to pay for drug and mental health treatment, much in the same way that the lottery is used in places to pay for education.

expected Oregon to leap all other states in education with the marijuana taxes over a decade ago and just no results

This is wonderful!!! I have been Postcrossing for years and it's so much fun to get a postcard randomly out of the blue from someone. Regrettably the cost to send a postcard international from the USA is over $1 now, and the cost of a postcard means you might be spending around $2 per card, but it's so worth it.

In the UK it's £3.60, which is nearly $5!

Wowww ok, mea culpa maxima, I should not feel so bad. I would send domestically but the international cards are so much more interesting to me.

The cost varies a lot by country, yeah. It can be more expensive like the UK or cheaper like in Japan ($0.65).

In Denmark, 46DKK ~= $7.15.

Well, if you buy N of these global forever stamps, the cost will just get cheaper over time (inflation).

Since the non-postcrossing Global Forevers are circular and a bit annoying, I use 2 Forever stamps plus a 20¢ stamp (6¢ wasted - i suppose i could switch to 15¢ stamps...).

> if you buy N of these global forever stamps, the cost will just get cheaper over time (inflation).

Not if you buy them today to use later I would think. Since you gave up the $$$ today, it won’t do anything for you anymore even if you don’t buy another stamp again I’d think. Compared to buying a stamp whenever you need one in the future but not tying your cash up until that moment.

Really depends if you would be otherwise investing that money in a way that beats stamp prices. Stamp prices very consistently outpace inflation.

Over the past 5 years, they've beaten:

* VT stock (total world index fund)

* US I-Bonds (inflation-indexed bonds)

* Fed rate for T-Bills / any HYSA

* Any other bonds

I would be very sad to lose services like ChatGPT. It has significantly improved my workflow by digesting and analyzing huge documents, and helping me to synthesize and respond better. May be I am part of a minority.

The good news is local models have significantly improved. If it all goes down today, you can still run e.g. Qwen 3.5 at home, and it's "good enough" for most workloads.

With a gaming GPU you can run Qwen3.5-35B-A3B. I use 122B-A10B on my local rig (1x6000 Pro), and 397B-A17B on my 2x6000 Pro server (some spillover into CPU/RAM). It's pricey now but probably within a few years it'll become very affordable.

Don't worry lol. It's not going anywhere. The article is just ragebaitng. Verbatim:

> Anthropic is already in a push to reduce costs and increase revenue

Yeah, it's totally a bad sign when a company tries to... reduce costs and increase revenue.

Their point is it is a bad sign at this stage in the game, there's a lot of competition still.

Usually in a land grab like this you spend, spend, spend.

Uber was still paying to subsidize customer's rides until fairly recently to kill off the competition.

When AI companies spend a lot: a sign of bubble bursting.

When AI companies look to cut cost: a sign of bubble bursting.

When RAM price goes up: a sign of bubble bursting.

When RAM price goes down: a sign of bubble bursting.

Those who were purchasing it need to go to the global market instead, increasing overall demand on that market

China is by far the largest customer for Iranian oil, with 'teapot' refiners being a very large proportion of that: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE63A01120100413/?pageN...

China buys 80% of Iran's shipped oil. But this affects the prices of pretty much anyone who imports oil - if China can't get oil from Iran, they'll purchase it from someone else. Less supply => higher prices for everyone.

It also affects China less, they have huge strategic reserve, and massive coal to petchem industry that only becomes economic after $80 barrel. AKA all other big industrial players are energy exporters who has pay spot price. High oil price = PRC competitive advantage on top of being able to brrrt EVs / batteries to displace oil.

Prices are about the future, not the present. Even if this didn't immediately effect anything, it could signal that other energy infrastructure is a potential target, or merely that the war is going to last longer.

China has been buying Iranian crude and gas for many years, mostly due to simply needing as much as they can get.

The eleven tankers that have so far transited the Strait of Hormuz after the 3rd without being fired upon are all owned by, operated by and delivering to Chinese state-owned companies (AFAIK). The Iranians know they are transiting and are deliberately refraining from shooting, because of the Chinese information support, such as the Mizar-run near-realtime satellite geolocation of parked US aircraft and radars for attack.

This bit I'm adding is speculation but the likely role of the Marine detachment aboard the USS Tripoli which is currently being sent to the Gulf of Oman is to start sinking these China-bound tankers so as to use the offer of not sinking them to coerce China into supporting the reopening of rhe Strait.

There's no need for Marines to sink tankers, an SSN in the Gulf of Oman would do that neatly and deniably.

"You mean to tell me you've lost another tanker? Crazy. Anyway, about this intelligence you're sending Iran..."

Most likely the Marines are heading for Kharg Island.

econ 101 - supply and demand…

This is really good to read. I hung on to my 2012 MBP for the replaceable battery, hard drive, and memory far longer than I wanted to. It's great having a thinner machine, but repairability - really extending its longevity - will always be a huge selling point for me. I have bitterly disliked the idea of "disposable technology."

This. Spotlight has gotten awful under Tahoe. I was forced to upgrade at work but in my humble opinion, it's best not to update MacOS unless I really need to. Things get worse, things get better, but overall the experience is diminished.

Why not let Claude do our dating? I'm surprised someone hasn't thought of this: AI dating, let the AI find and qualify a date for you, and match with the person who meets you, for you!

I suspect this is going to be an iteration of the Simpsons meme soon, but...

Black Mirror did it first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_the_DJ

Does anyone have a good study as to how much advertising is too much advertising? There are some content creators on YouTube I enjoy watching but it's an ad every five minutes and it just ruins it all. For some, I've reached the point where I don't bother watching anymore because the ads are just too much. I sympathize with creators wishing to make money, but ... it's just becoming relentless. I'd love to see a study or even better YouTube internal analysis of how much viewers are willing to take before they just say enough.

>0 is too much, in my view.

Ads are a toxic weight on everyone who views them.

I use ad-blocking as much as possible, along with things like SponsorBlock to skip such content within the video itself.

I am pessimistic that the reason it is so high is because someone making $220k per year said "yea but what about me, I have to pay for childcare too..." The number should be significantly lower. Anyone making a combined $200k a year has other options and opportunities, the immigrant family making $60k combined does not. This feels like a policy designed to "help" the poor but also benefit the rich..