7thaccount

Yeah that is basically what I meant, but I should've said refrigerated and not frozen. It is still a far cry from what I would call a bakery.

Don't they just heat up frozen/pre-made bread? I don't know...just I don't think they have enough room to be a real bakery. Also, corporate financials would have centralized that a long time ago.

There are still a few regions that are fully vertically integrated and fully regulated with no market prices. However, much of the US is under a regional ISO that sets hourly day ahead prices and 5-minute nodal spot prices. Under an ISO the utility still handles distribution and often transmission, but generation decisions (like when should I turn on my plant and what should my output be) are handled by the ISOs optimization auction based off various inputs from the generator such as costs and constraints.

In theory, this ISO setup has saved untold millions of dollars (probably billions), by operating the grid regionally in a much more efficient manner than in the days of old. It is hard to tell though as you can't do a direct comparison very easily. The economists certainly like the price signals though, but there are numerous issues.

I'm sure they're correct about a lot of airline water being nasty - no argument there, but the organization/website sounds like it has a mission that is probably at least partly pseudoscience adjacent:

"Mission Center For Food As Medicine & Longevity is a nonprofit organization working to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and the use of food as medicine in the prevention, treatment, and management of disease while also increasing access to these treatments, thereby creating a more equitable food system that will improve health outcomes."

It might not be, but I'm skeptical of most articles coming from organizations sounding like that. Eating healthy and nutritious food is incredibly important and a good diet can prevent certain diseases. Maybe that is all they're trying to say. However, I come across a lot of people who just think you can avoid medicine all together and just eat certain foods and herbs.

Magnatiles are great for adults who want to play with their kids too.

The most fun my kid had was playing make believe games with me. Like I'd say "you're lost in a forest and you see a cabin up ahead and a trail that goes past it. What do you do"? And we'd go from there. Zero dollar cost and unlimited hours of fun until they grow up enough and don't want to play anymore.

Possibly an unintended consequence. Those abound in our governing systems as you're rightfully complaining about.

On the other hand, competition is good for consumers and letting Microsoft and Amazon use unfair tactics to crush the competition or their large revenues to just buy up all competition isn't good either. That is part of the problem today in that practically every industry is a monopoly or near total monopoly (maybe there are 2-3 firms colluding). There are no incentives to innovate or keep prices competitive in such a gilded-age system. There was a reason we broke up all the robber barons. There is also the hazard when you have businesses that are so large that they effectively control everything and the government can no longer regulate them. High inflation is at least partly coming from this lack of competition. There is also the issue of the money supply where we degrade our currency to make it easier to service the debt. That is also a really big component here.

Of course. My comment was just describing a very common view in the southern United States. Not all Protestants believe that (especially Anglicans which are basically Catholic without the Pope), but it's something I heard a lot growing up.

I didn't say I agreed with it, but I think it's important to mention when some comments on here are suggesting a unification can happen. As someone extremely familiar with both groups, they may share most of the Bible in common as well as some core beliefs, but there other core beliefs that are hugely important and different between the groups that can never be reconciled. One important aspect is that Catholics (and I think Greek Orthodox) believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ during mass.

Bahaha. I was looking for the Warhammer 40k comment.

For those that don't know, the writers of Warhammer basically copied off of history and many other IP like Dune. In Warhammer, there was also a Council of Nicaea where it was discussed whether the use of psychic powers was acceptable in the Imperium of Man.

A lot of evangelical christians (like the predominant factions in the southern US) are very suspicious of Catholicism and many don't view it as true Christianity.

The Windows 95-XP taskbar is good. Everything else has been downhill.

I think this is one of those things that can be situationally useful, but also come with huge risks to the majority of users.

I think you're exaggerating a little, but aren't entirely wrong. The Internet has completely changed daily life for most of humanity. AI can mean a lot of things, but a lot of it is blown way out of proportion. I find LLMs useful to help me rephrase a sentence or explain some kind of topic, but it pales in comparison to email and web browsers, YouTube, and things like blogs.