[–] 105 points 1 year ago (11 children)

There's a lot of externalizing of costs going on. The trucks are idling because the drivers are operating at the slimmest possible margin under the assumption that idling doesn't cost anything.

What we actually would want to get to is that idling does have a cost (environmental, health, pleasantness of the area, etc). And that cost ought to be passed up the chain so that the various goods being shipped are more expensive.

But without a more centrally-managed economy, the implementation is to put all the pressure on the truck drivers and leave them responsible for passing that pressure to the next step up the chain. It doesn't work out very well in practice because the drivers need to make a bunch of capital expenses for something like adding a cab AC and adding a batter-powered lift, but they've been operating at low margins so they're not in a position to do it.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    A year ago, I saw some local work being done on city pipes. The team was using a bot with three telescoping radial wheeled legs like

    \   /
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    and wheels at the end of each leg. They put it in one end of the pipe, extended the legs so the wheels touched, and then drove it around in the pipe.

    It was a welding device, so they could do spot-fixes from the inside.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    The current state of things is that they cover their faces and refuse to give any ID. Even fake ID.

    I think if you followed the post suggestion and the result was that ICE would give fake names and fake badge-numbers, that would actually be positive because "agents lie about their identity" is something new and interesting. Then the strategy will need to change, but in the mean time it was useful.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Iran's not shooting missiles in defense of Palestine, just in retaliation for Israel shooting at them.

    But there's certainly a level of "oh, is blowing up an apartment building a bad thing? Then WTF have you doing???"

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