https://www.ilwulocal142.org/news-item/jones-act-fact-vs-myt...

Few things listed there are clearly false.

"Myth #2: The Jones Act Raises Prices for Hawai‘i Residents.

However, a comprehensive 2020 study by Reeve & Associates and TZ Economics found that this is simply not true.

Their survey compared the prices of 200 consumer goods—including groceries, household items, clothing, and automobiles—at major retailers like Costco, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart in both Honolulu and Los Angeles. The results showed that prices in Hawai‘i were, on average, only 0.5% higher than on the mainland, a negligible difference that cannot be attributed to the Jones Act alone."

As a frequent visitor to Oahu, i stop by Costco on the way from the airport and i can see that most consumables including milk and meat is 30-50% more expensive than at Northern California Costco. This is representative across local supermarkets as well.

So its seems that this union is trying to minimise the impact of shipping on costs of everyday goods

Critics dismiss this study as bogus:

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/2020/07/shipping-industry...

"using online prices to compare food prices at Hawaii versus Los Angeles stores is problematic. A visit today to the Keeaumoku Street Walmart showed an 18-ounce box of Cheerios selling for $4.26, before tax, versus $3.64 for its listed online price, and a four-pack of 5-ounce cans of albacore tuna for $8.43 versus $6.74 online."

That is actually true, Keamoku Walmart does not pricematch to their online prices and the only way to get those prices is to place an pickup order and wait for several hours to pick up at those prices.

The thing about my area (Peninsula, 20 minutes south of SF) is that its not hot enough to really justify A/C, my electrical+gas bill averages out below $200 a month and my roof is old enough where it would need to be replaced before solar is installed. So a $15-$20000 expense cost for solar would actually be closer to $30-$40,000 with roof replacement, plus potentially bringing ancient wiring in my home to code will cost another handfull of thousands.

Its akin to trying to fix a slow memory leak in your application and realizing you need to also upgrade a bunch of dependencies which no longer support the current version of your tools AND refactor the frontend.

Both cost $133 to drive 1000 miles(including ammortized oil changes for camry). Camry was $15000 cheaper AND has a 500 mile range.

Even at todays war-time gas prices, the EVs are not always the financially sound choice thanks to runaway costs of electricity in my state.

I’m a child of Soviet Era and our parents did not think twice if they can afford children with their meager salaries. I remember going to a kindergarten as soon as I could walk.

The reality is that a family can always make choices that enable them to care for a kid, but there are of course trade offs.

Public daycare would mitigate one of those trade offs

Im not sure what is being taught in orthodox jewish schools in Israel, but I’m pretty certain that in secular Israeli public schools, death of Arab neighbors is not glorified, terrorism and martyrdom is not glorified. [1]

Unlike that of UNRWA.

In other words, one side promotes violence, the other does not

[0] https://www.cfr.org/articles/teaching-hate-palestinian-schoo...

[1] https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/ArabsPa...

Quick google search shows that my district has nearly a budget of $195,927,382 for years 2024-2025 serving 10,278 students. Thats nearly 20k per student. THe district employed 481(<22 student per teacher on avg) teachers and 480 admin staff.

Residents of my school district constantly vote for bonds to pay for capital school upgrades(thanks Prop 13) in addition to high amount property taxes. We dont have an issue of defunding the education here.

Our education is non-competitive with Asian and European ones not because we cant afford it, but because its mismanaged, incorrectly incentivised and often ideological (math is racist).

Im not sure about this particular school, but i am greatly disappointed at baseline california core requirements for math and science in middle school and the parents choice is to either have your child be bored in school while complementing their education with RSM or Singapore Math after hours Or to choose a private school that will make your child more competitive with kids being educated by other countries systems.

1) How is your energy/stamina following the 35% loss

2) Have you done any dexascans/bodyspecs to measure your lean mass percentage before and after your loss

3) Did you take any steps to reduce the muscle loss?

4) with 35% loss, what BMI are you at?

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/blue-ca...

Multiple 2% cashback cards

Amazon prime - 5% off Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, but you have to be a prime subscriber

Robinhood gold -3% off anything for $60/year

Amex blue cash rewards - 6% off groceries(and gift cards bought at supermarkets) for $75 per year

Im hoping to use LLMs to help with this process.

Will try to use LOINC dataset to standardize against

I’m not in love with the idea of sharing my biomarkers with multiple health-tech companies and really want a self-hosted solution to import biomarkers from multiple sources such as Apple Health, arbitrary csv and jsons while avoiding duplication.

Claude Code is something that will make this dream a reality for me pretty soon.

Do you have any tips on biomarker data design or import gotchas?

I recently asked my doctor at Stanford - a pretty expensive hospital but one of the top cardio hospitals in the country - to get me an APoB test. He said that it may not be covered by insurance.

So instead I spend $360 or so on a year worth of biomarkers from Function Health that included ApoB and others