Ah yes, the Trump starvation agenda.

A strictly logical clock for a 24-hour day would have 0 at the top with 1 on the right and 23 on the left. And it would be only ever set to UTC.

I do have to admit though, most of the stuff on this page is actually pretty funny in that it’s exactly 100% what one would expect a Trump diss page on Democrats to look like and say with absolutely all the typical Trump-style trashiness presented as the pinnacle of class.

In terms of their utility as a cleaning tool, scrub daddies are actually quite good at what they do. They’re somewhat more expensive but remarkably worth the money.

If I had to guess this guy (or girl) is a Bitcoin millionaire or something. But that’s just based on the vibes of his speech with no concrete basis.

Question: how does this site differ in function to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine?

According to the article, they’re selling it for ¥97 billion but will lease it back, so they will post a ¥73.9 billion gain from the sale. But in the first half of 2025, they posted a loss of ¥221.9 billion. So selling their HQ will offset about two months’ worth of losses.

Hours are Monday to Friday 00:00 to 23:59. Responsibilities include learning tricks and doing typical lively human activities like Fortnite dances and TikTok challenges. Benefits package includes comprehensive health care, dental, vision, etc. Company-provided room and board for life. No retirement options though.

Sea World is like if aliens confined a human to an office cubicle and called it “City World”

Ordering all people to kill their grass is a great way to cause immense public opposition to any sort of water restriction whatsoever, so it’s not helpful if the goal is to conserve water.

Besides, the amount of water used by this activity is comparatively minimal, probably no more than a tenth of a cubic metre each time, especially since you are only allowed to water for 8 minutes three times a week.

https://www.ladwp.com/who-we-are/water-system/water-conservation/water-conservation-ordinance

L’Internationale starts playing in the background

That’s a lot more work than you think. You would need a new water meter and water connection installed on each lot and you would also need to file a bunch of legal paper work to do the subdivision, as well as wrangling with the Postal Service to get mailboxes installed for each lot, and so on…

On top of that, you’re risking being found out and pictures of your mansion posted on the front page of Variety being accused of cheating the water rates, which is very bad for someone whose career probably depends on their public perception. Don’t make yourself into the next Amber Heard. On top of that, public outcry means the Council might even intervene to put a stop to your plan by amending the Water Rates Ordinance to penalise you for your obvious attempt to abuse the system.

I think weekly, and the number of cubic metres you get at each price point should depend on the number of identification cards registered at your address.

If we use a model rate of $3 per cubic metre as a baseline, and you, your spouse, and two children all consume the average amount of water per day (225 L), the household would consume 6.3 m³ of water per week. You would be billed $3 per m³ for the first 4 m³. Then you would be billed $6 per m² for the next 2.3 m³. This totals $25.80 for the week.

If we consider a two-person household, just you and your spouse, water usage would be 3.15 m³ for the week and you would be billed $3 per m³ for the first 2 m³ and $6 per m³ for the last 1.15 m³. That totals $12.90 per week.

Under the current system, you would be billed $4.287 per m³ which comes out to $27.00 for the 4-person household and $13.50 for the two-person household per week, so my system results in roughly the same water bill for average consumers.

On the other hand, if you’re a Hollywood actor living in a mansion with your spouse and each using 5 times the average water usage in order to water a huge garden and run a water fountain, your water usage would be 15.75 m³ per week, for which you would be billed $1,434 for that week.

If you use another 12 m³ to top up your swimming pool because the Kardashians or some other trashy celebrities are coming over for a party hosted at your mansion, your water bill for using 27.75 m³ that week would shoot up to $92,147.

In comparison, even if you are being penalised by the Department of Water and Power for excessive usage today, you’re still only charged a maximum of $5.414 per m³, so that actor would be charged only $85.27 at most for the normal week and $150.24 for the pool week.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power uses lot sizes for this purpose, which is not without merit since it is easy to calculate, roughly correlates with the number of people living on that lot, and is hard to cheat, but I don’t think it’s actually a very good system. What I think would be better is to check with the Department of Motor Vehicles to see how many identification cards are registered at that address, then allow the rates double every N cubic metres, where N is the number of identification cards registered at that address.

And you are correct. But it doesn’t matter to my original point. For any reason, people trust the Government. Because of this trust, policies like the one discussed in the original post don’t alarm the average Chinese netizen.

Although an interesting side note is that while some people think that saying anything bad at all about the Government will get you arrested in China, that’s not really true. You are free to talk all the smack you want about the Government, in private. It’s when you try to start some kind of political movement or organise something in public that now you will be labelled a threat to public order and state security.

I do not claim that. The Chinese government absolutely lies when they need to. I am just saying that they have a track record of not lying in this manner, because they don’t need to.

You are half right and half wrong.

The Government controls all media. There are no major independent news organisations in China. Therefore, they won’t allow negative press about it to spread.

Because the news and social media only ever have good or at worst neutral news about the Government, never critical news, the result is that people think the Government does a good job governing.

At the same time, the poverty alleviation and anti-corruption efforts of the CCP have indeed brought millions out of poverty (even though that poverty is largely a result of bad leadership decisions by the same CCP in the past) and eliminated most forms of petty corruption. That is something that the Government makes sure everyone knows about and is always talking about. And to their credit, it isn’t wrong.

I do not and will not suggest that popular support for the Government would be anywhere near what it is now if it weren’t for the Government’s propaganda efforts and the suppression of speech, dissent, and criticism.

In China, the level of trust people have in the Government is very high compared to the US and Europe. That is the reason why this policy would work and would have reasonable public support.

In the US or Europe, a policy that seems reasonable but could be exploited by the Government for political control is a bad policy. In China, people have already sort of accepted that the Government is pretty secure in its position so it really doesn’t need to suppress speech in roundabout ways; if the intention is to suppress speech then they will be explicit about it by using the words “this threatens state security” or “this is offensive to public morals”. The thing about being a secure authoritarian regime with reasonable popular support is that you don’t need to come up with pretexts to suppress speech or dissent. You can just say “this threatens our power” and put a stop to it. If the policy states the goal is to stop uninformed people from spewing nonsense on the Internet then people will accept that to be true, and the reality is that it probably is what the goal is.

Also, not mentioned is the fact that celebrities in Los Angeles were using thousands of cubic metres of water to keep their massive gardens green, decorative fountains flowing, and their swimming pools full during a drought, while ordinary people were only allowed to water their lawns three times a week.

Water usage should be price exponentially so that each cubic metre costs double what the previous one did.