Iowa Opts Out of Federal Summer Food Assistance Program, Citing Sustainability Concerns
LordOfTheChia @ LordOfTheChia @lemmy.world Posts 3Comments 307Joined 2 yr. ago
LordOfTheChia @ LordOfTheChia @lemmy.world
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It's because they want the aid money instead to do what they want with it as opposed to directly giving the money to needy families who would likely only use it for food:
If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state's needs"
It's the foaming agent toothpastes typically use (sodium laureth sulphate - SLS) suppresses the sweet receptors on our tongues.
When you drink OJ right after, the sweetness is suppressed and you only taste the bitter and other flavors.
Edit: SLS also breaks up lipids that may be blocking bitter taste receptors on your tongue.
Just let it sit for 10-15 minutes, then reward yourself by washing it down with a cup of fresh orange juice.
Same vibes as this
"we had a vote and all my Nazi rhetoric using buddies agreed it was cool”
It's a 15 year old reference:
https://youtu.be/P0dXtOVi2yo?t=53s
(Original video was from 2008 but uploaded to YouTube in 2011)
It's not the "Node(.js) Package Manager"?
Option 1: https://youtu.be/fbGkxcY7YFU
Option 2: https://youtu.be/P9WVE2Ptbbk
Option 3: https://youtu.be/Lc1Ll-euRSg
Non-joke answer: https://youtu.be/Qr0-7Ds79zo
It's physics. The old satellite Internet used geosynchronous satellites. That orbit requires the satellite to be 22,300 miles up.
The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. So pretty much it takes almost a quarter of a second (250ms) just for the signal to travel up to the satellite and down to the ground station.
250ms added to the normal Internet travel time each way makes for a very delayed internet connection (in practice, 650ms average latency or 2/3rds of a second ). Voice chat has notable pauses, gaming becomes practically unplayable, and so on.
It's a bit hard to visualize sub 1s times, but if you say "how are you" at a normallish speed, the words "how are" would take close to 2/3rds of a second.
Starlink satellites are only 340 miles up. A round trip is less than 4ms. So the packet and the response from the Internet reach you sooner. Also each satellite can handle a fair amount of bandwidth which if the number of users is kept in check means closer to modern bandwidth. Looks like Starlink latency runs about 25ms on land and 100ms in remote areas (far away from a ground station).
Also HughesNet seems to offers a max of 50mpbs while Starlink's current top (business) service is 500mbps.
So they're both satellite Internet services, but because in the difference in how they are deployed they offer very different speeds and latencies.
Some may seriously joke about that "Oh I don't use X foodstuff, it doesn't directly affect me"
Demand for food is quite inelastic. If folks who use sunflower seed oil can't get any, they'll flock to canola oil, peanut oil, or whatever other oil is available and drive it up in price.
Same deal with wheat and other crops.
Heck, we saw the same thing during the GPU shortage! People who would have bought mid or high end GPUs were priced out, so cards like the GTX 1030 we're selling for $250!
Even the GTX 3050 and RX 6400 should have been bottom of the barrel $90 to $150 cards but ended up in the $250 to $300 range instead
Something that only Charlie Sheen can save us from.
Or what happens when you lock your knees while using the leg press machine.
(Don't google that last one. Some things cannot be unseen)
You don't have to be Ukrainian or even be in Europe to be affected by what is happening.
before the war Ukraine made up 9% of global wheat exports, 15% of maize and 44% of sunflower oil.
The Russian invasion is also affecting food prices globally. So those that don't care about the Ukrainians (which they should but hey let's explore the heartless approach to this) but do care about inflation should also want to support Ukraine in getting a speedy end to this war. This is to ensure that Russia does not create any further large scale disruptions:
in the first couple of months after Russia invaded, "food prices were quite high and quite volatile. Wheat futures jumped almost 60%. Corn and soybeans were up 15 to 20% in the first week or so."
while food prices reverted to pre-invasion levels for much of the past year, those levels are still a record high compared to the last decade.
In other words, the world remains in a somewhat precarious situation where, if just one thing goes wrong — a worsening twist to the war in Ukraine, a bad harvest in some important supplying nation – global food prices could spike.
What they should be saying is that it's like exercise.
Just because you know how to run or you know how to do a pull-up, you won't necessarily be able to do so to the extent needed in a pinch. You have to stay in shape. You have a car, but the car could break down and you might have to walk a mile to the nearest gas station.
Likewise, with math, we run into situations all the time where being able to do simple math in your head you can prevent you from getting screwed.
Like at a car dealership, some will show you different payments and ask you if you want to get the premium insurance or skip the premium insurance and go with the lower payment.
Most will choose the lower payment. If you did the quick math* in you head though, you'd quickly see that the "lowest payment" is off and has a minimal car warranty bundled in.
Grocery shopping. I've seen where the price per ounce on the shelf doesn't match the actual price per ounce.
Should you take the more distant job? It pays $5 more an hour, but is it worth driving 15 extra miles?
Should you take the delivery job that pays $20 an hour but will put an extra 50-100 miles a day on your car? It's not just gas. Cars are a finite resource. Can you figure out the depreciation per mile?
When you buy a house: Should you buy a house now if it's cheaper but interest rates are high or buy later when interest rates go down but the price may go up? How much money does each 0.25% in APR really mean to me? (Example: For a $400,000 house, a 0.25% APR difference is $83 a month or $1000 just that first year (not including compounding). With compounding, it can mean an extra $62 a month for the life of the loan for all 360 payments or $22,000! An extra 1% is quadruple that!)
If you think you would keep a house for only 5 years, which loan makes more sense? Pay a bit more in closing for a lower APR or pay nothing extra but get a higher APR? How many years in does the first loan come out ahead?
Quick loan payment estimation (without compounding for short loans (<6 years):
Takes a while to read, but with practice, it's quick to do in your head:
Take loan amount, number of years, and APR:
Ex. 10K at 6% for 5 years.
Think of it as a geometry problem. You have a triangle with one side at 10k (starting loan amount) on the y axis and 0 days (x axis) and the tip will be at 60 months (5 years) and $0.
At the halfway point (30 months 2.5 years) the principal balance (not counting interest) should be about $5000. So on average we can calculate $5000 * 6% APR for 5 years (or 30% total without compounding)
Original loan amount + non-compounded interest =
$10000 + ( $5000 * 30% ) = $11500
$11,500 divided by 60 payments = $191.66 /mo
0% interest would be $10,000/60 or $166.66
This already gets us really close to the real answer.
I threw the loan values into an online calculator and it came up with $193.33 for the monthly payment.
$193.33 - $191.66 = $1.67 difference or 99.1% of the real answer.
This % difference due to compounding will vary based on the APR and and loan term but not the loan amount. So if you know which terms and APR you qualify for, you can figure this out ahead of time. For our 6% APR for 5 years example we know to add 1%.
If the sales person presents us with a significantly different monthly payment, then we know they snuck something in. I've personally run into this where all the payment options had a different service plan and/or extended warranty snuck in.
Also it's good to know that the interest will cost us $26 a month vs 0% APR or paying in cash. Which helps us figure out if it makes sense to buy now (do we get $26 of benefit a month for having it now) vs waiting.
drove them so insane
This Onion story/video from right after Obama's 2016 2012 win is very relevant and oddly prescient:
Trump: "They claimed that Mar-a- Lago was worth only $18,000,000, when it was worth 50 to 100 times that amount".
Florida property tax assessor:
Deleted
Special counsel asks Supreme Court to immediately decide if Trump is immune from Jan. 6 prosecution
Jump
From the article:
Under the timeline proposed by Smith, the court — if it decides to step in — could hear arguments and issue a ruling in a matter of weeks.
There is precedent for such an outcome, with Smith citing the 1974 U.S. v. Nixon case, in which the court ruled on an expedited basis that President Richard Nixon had to hand over tape recordings sought during the Watergate scandal probe. Nixon resigned soon after the ruling.
...
In a brief order issued just hours after Smith's filing, the court asked Trump's legal team to respond by Dec. 20. The court also said it would consider on an expedited basis whether to hear the case, an indication that it takes Smith's request seriously.
Really poor journalism
It goes beyond that. They took news that broke 4.5 months ago:
Then they remove any and all mentions that the facility was manufacturing testing kits for COVID, HIV, and pregnancy tests (do a cntrl+F for test in the OP article). Now, without informing the users that testing kits were being manufactured, the presence of disease samples and rats sounds more nefarious.
It would be like reporting that tons of fertilizer were found in a building, and not reporting that the facility belongs to a landscaping company.
It definitely is. They go out of their way to avoid mentioning that they discovered they were making testing kits for various infectious diseases (which explains why you'd want samples of said diseases).
This information was in the original report that broke the story and the in the charging report:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/arrest-made-central-california-bio-lab-investigation
According to court documents, between December 2020 and March 2023, Zhu and others manufactured, imported, sold, and distributed hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 test kits, in addition to test kits for HIV, pregnancy, clinical urinalysis, and other conditions in the United States and China.
As I mentioned in a comment below, the word "test" appears nowhere in the "Scripps News" report.
There's also the same story on Newsweek:
https://www.newsweek.com/kim-reynolds-slashing-food-program-kids-ahead-christmas-sparks-fury-1855285
(One posted on /c/Politics)
As I pointed out, the Governor's response:
Seems to be code for " give us (the state government) the money so we can determine what to really spend it on. " Since apparently giving money directly to needy families is not "efficient".