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We have a large ~20K person BuyNothing community in my area (also NYC), and a few of us have thrown the same idea of a tool library around. We always hit a wall on the discussion of liability & liability insurance. Any ideas on how other organizations solve this?

Oui, la question de la responsabilité revient souvent. Certaines communautés utilisent des décharges de responsabilité, systèmes de dépôt, et/ou assurances.

On aimerait vraiment collaborer avec votre communauté pour comprendre les besoins et mettre en place quelque chose avant le lancement de notre service de location. N’hésitez pas à me contacter à [email protected] si vous voulez en discuter !


Re "UK electricity prices are set by the highest priced generator which is normally gas"

Worldwide, electricity prices are set by the highest priced generator at the given moment of needed generation -- it's the dispatch curve. And generally, the generators that are the fastest to spin up to meet that incremental load are natural gas fired generators.

As to the GP's point, my intuition (happy to be proven wrong) is more that natural gas, and therefore electricity, is cheaper in the US, simply because it's more abundant in the US.


I think a big reason why cruising sailors would remove the labels is that there's a belief that cockroaches & other bugs would lay eggs in the paper / glue [0], and having an infestation on a sailboat is then challenging to deal with while at sea.

[0] https://www.spinsheet.com/cruising/sailors-offer-tips-long-t...


In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...


In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not people so directly connected to a president, though.


Laws no longer apply to them - laws bound people below. If you're interested what will follow, look into Russia or Hungary.


Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh wait...


yes, after months and months of investigations and hearing and non-stop new coverage and a Republican led committee that admitted in their final report that while there was negligence, they couldn't find any wrong doing.


Who's going to arrest them?


Fun fact, initially when places were setting up police forces, people railed that it was an infringement on their right to do a Citizen's Arrest.


This is why you have a constitution, codified laws, judicial system, separation of powers, etc. We're just learning now none of these things are worth the paper they're written on.


The issue is that there’s nothing that requires prosecution, just allows it.

This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.


Well, in the idea of the system there is: The system is built around the assumption that Congress would impeach a president who fails to to the right™ thing (or fails to make his administration do ...)

However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?

The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.


It's just as useful and effective as the international law and order that was setup after WW2.

So nada.


As long as you build an order around independence of countries and diplomacy (instead of, say, force) any organisation will only be as useful as countries are willing to follow and any structure can only be as good as the ones in charge are willing to go.

In consequences there are many flaws and a lot is stuck in post WW2 thinking, but I doubt there is a realistic chance of anything overall better.

The current U.S. administration tries to reshape things by disruption, we will see how this goes, but I doubt this will earn trust and buy-in from others. Thus not lead to a stable and "better" system. (While better, of course, is not globally objective, which again is key to the problem)


Would you say that was always the case, or just a more recent development?


Our entire civilization has always rested on a tacit "it's nice to have civilization, so we play by the rules" by everybody involved. Voluntary restraint is what keeps us from being animals, not nature or laws.

As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

We're currently exploring how many of those rules are really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to mostly shrug off that exploration.

That is the part that's changed. A willingness to ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.


I think it's partly the way the US state is set up. When the president picks the Supreme Court judges and they have lifetime appointments you don't truly have separation of powers. Then the whole thing is meaningless. When you have "liberal" and "conservative" courts based on the make up of the judges you need to start again.


Rules for thee but not for me. Now get back to work, peasant.


it's not unauthorized use of signal;

"Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...


It absolutely is an unauthorized use. Authorize use is "let's go to lunch". This was "let's bomb these people at this time".

Big difference.


Let's assume for the moment that the discussion of military plans on Signal was covered by this policy. That's debatable as others have said. Other parts of that policy would seem to suggest this kind of conversation is expressly forbidden on Signal and similar unofficial chat apps, while other less sensitive conversations are permitted.

How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?

Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.


Did you read the article? Signal is not approved for this kind of communication and has long been advised against. They also had messages set to autodelete which violates the records act. It's blatantly illegal


Buttery Males!


It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather than have this fade away :)


Because their claim is false and unsupported by their quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government employees to conduct discussions like this on services like Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions, and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very quickly.

Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.


This is the sort of counterargument I'd have liked to see instead of disagreement-driven downvoting, yes.


swiftymon created an account just to post a lie. That comment absolutely should be downvoted, with or without rebuttals. This isn't about disagreement.

You disagree over opinions. Should Signal be an appropriate system for discussing classified data? I'd say no, you might say yes, we disagree and debate.

Legally, is Signal an appropriate system for discussing classified data? No. Unless you believe in alternative facts, there is no point to disagree on, it's just a fact that it is not legally an appropriate system for what they did.

And then swiftymon lied and used "evidence" to bolster their lie that didn't even agree with their lie.


You assert things strongly, but you are not an arbiter of truth about data classification in the federal government - this is certainly an area where discussion can be had and where becoming more informed increases the quality of discussion. Interestingly enough, many of the people in charge of data classification in the federal government were on said Signal thread!

I could assert that you're lying, etc - as you're effectively committing the same sin as the poster who originally got downvoted - but that wouldn't be having a conversation; it'd be a rude refusal to tolerate a conversation. I encourage you to assume good intent and engage instead of hurling accusations at people - even if they're new accounts.


TFA article discusses how officials have long used Signal for routine logistics, contrasting that with the national defense plans being discussed in a group chat with a journalist


I've been unemployed from the finance world for ~18 months now. I've applied to over 1000 jobs (per my LinkedIn), though lots of those jobs just seem to be evergreen reposts on LinkedIn & not actual jobs. It's absolutely demoralizing.


I was at an Open House at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory [0] a few weeks ago, and one of the researchers was doing something adjacent to this -- recording the sound of earthquakes for analysis. Will try to find who it was.

[0] https://lamont.columbia.edu/


It's likely a Chapter 11 reorganization, not a Chapter 7 liquidation [0]. So basically the equity holders get zeroed out and debt holders get some level of recovery in the form of new debt or combination of debt & equity.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/differences-between...


Just FYI on the Babboe line of bikes, be aware that there was a recall [0] on some them recently! (And I say this as a Babboe owner myself)

[0] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2024/Cargo-Bicycles-Recalled-Du...


Yeah, we saw the conundrum and went through the inspection and all, and our bike's fit for biking! At that price... well, we earlier hoped it would be recalled and we would buy a competitor's version. But now everything is green, we're back on the road...


Hopefully there will be some sort of study released relating to the restart of the grid. From memory of the 2003 East Coast Blackout the restart mechanics are fairly complex.


Just FYI - at least through the HD website, they will tell you aisle Y bay X (though it may not say "bottom right"). So the assistant at HD isn't adding a ton of value.


> So the assistant at HD isn't adding a ton of value.

They are, in that then I don't have to pull out my phone, wait for the app to load, wait for the app to interrupt my workflow to flash up the latest sale ad, wait for the search to time out a few times, then realize I'm in the store so it reloads to show the in-store experience, then go back to the search and have it not remember the history, then have to wait for the search to go through, then scroll through the list to find a version of whatever item that's actually in the store I'm at, then wait for the item to load, then finally get the isle and bay info. Pulling out the app is often my last resort.

Or I just ask the person standing next to me "hey where are replacement blades for utility knives?" and instantly get a response.


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