Off topic galore

[Jack6591]

Living in Northern San Diego County, our place is in the migration path of monarch butterflies. My wife and I are removing parts of our orchards, and planting milkweed. This article piqued my interest because of what the Mondavi family is doing with electric tractors. Plowing a field sure seems like low hanging fruit for autonomous driving.

The race to save California's rarest butterflies

From a breeding laboratory putting species on "life support" to the world's first fully electric smart tractor, scientists are working to halt the decline of California's butterflies.

www.bbc.com

 

[Lessmog]

Living in Northern San Diego County, our place is in the migration path of monarch butterflies. My wife and I are removing parts of our orchards, and planting milkweed. This article piqued my interest because of what the Mondavi family is doing with electric tractors. Plowing a field sure seems like low hanging fruit for autonomous driving.

The race to save California's rarest butterflies

From a breeding laboratory putting species on "life support" to the world's first fully electric smart tractor, scientists are working to halt the decline of California's butterflies.

www.bbc.com

Oh monarchs! Such wonderful creatures, and wondrous how they can migrate across the continent every year, in the hundreds of millions or even billions. We went to some small town much further north in California some decades ago that was famous as a waypoint for the insects. Human inhabitants were a bit fed up with all the tourists and had put up a sign saying they were the next block over this year, which was true. Local police were there to control the biofreaks, and I lent my binoculars to a female officer to let her get a closer look at the masses hanging on a tree. She was absolutely taken aback, had never seen such beauty so clearly.

Simple tools, magnificent pleasures.

Sorry for the off-topic, but that was really a momentous moment. For me, and certainly for that officer.

 

[JustSaying]

Living in Northern San Diego County, our place is in the migration path of monarch butterflies. My wife and I are removing parts of our orchards, and planting milkweed. This article piqued my interest because of what the Mondavi family is doing with electric tractors. Plowing a field sure seems like low hanging fruit for autonomous driving.

The race to save California's rarest butterflies

From a breeding laboratory putting species on "life support" to the world's first fully electric smart tractor, scientists are working to halt the decline of California's butterflies.

www.bbc.com

WOT
We live in Monarch Beach (a section of Dana Point Ca) development has wiped out much of the milk weed here( but wow what a great place to live) we buy a few milk weed plants every year to help in the Monarch fall migration and are rewarded with back yard vists and observing their amazing life cycle.
This one on our back patio door;

 

[lafrisbee]

Living in Northern San Diego County, our place is in the migration path of monarch butterflies. My wife and I are removing parts of our orchards, and planting milkweed. This article piqued my interest because of what the Mondavi family is doing with electric tractors. Plowing a field sure seems like low hanging fruit for autonomous driving.

The race to save California's rarest butterflies

From a breeding laboratory putting species on "life support" to the world's first fully electric smart tractor, scientists are working to halt the decline of California's butterflies.

www.bbc.com

Are you playing with us? did I miss something.
Tell me you didn't know that MONARCH is

World's First Electric Autonomous Tractor | Monarch Tractor

Monarch Tractor, the world's first fully electric tractor, driver-optional, autonomous tractor technology making sustainable farming economically superior.

www.monarchtractor.com

 

[2daMoon]

I conscientiously object to the mods' tyrannical anti-poetry policy. Move this to Off Topic, I dare you.

To this forum of those who bought TSLA
I have sin that I need to confess of
I must make y'all aware
I procured only shares
Not a contract of options to make best of

Uh oh ...

 

[Lessmog]

I conscientiously object to the mods' tyrannical anti-poetry policy. Move this to Off Topic, I dare you.

To this forum of those who bought TSLA
I have sin that I need to confess of
I must make y'all aware
I procured only shares
Not a contract of options to make best of

As one of the original sinners (2014, was it?) I do reserve the right to be upset over poetry. Mine was actually a rather good haiku for a change from the horrible limericks that littered these pages back then.

So will you get off my lawn?!11

 

[SunCatcher]

I conscientiously object to the mods' tyrannical anti-poetry policy. Move this to Off Topic, I dare you.

To this forum of those who bought TSLA
I have sin that I need to confess of
I must make y'all aware
I procured only shares
Not a contract of options to make best of

Hey, I posted a doozy of poetry weekend last, and look where we are now! What people don't get is that everything is poetry. EVERYTHING! Especially as relates to Tesla and TSLA. Doesn't have to rhyme to be poetry you know.

 

[Gigapress]

I conscientiously object to the mods' tyrannical anti-poetry policy. Move this to Off Topic, I dare you.

To this forum of those who bought TSLA
I have sin that I need to confess of
I must make y'all aware
I procured only shares
Not a contract of options to make best of

Seems there are some people here who don't appreciate art

 

[goinfraftw]

Holy moly, wind gusts in Tahoe area (the same area affected by Caldor Fire only a month or so ago...) reach 100 mph.

100 MPH Wind Gusts Recorded At Lake Tahoe Area Ski Resorts During Red Flag Warning

The extreme weather is creating fire danger in mountain communities.

sacramento.cbslocal.com

 

[Jack6591]

I know this is old, but I got a kick out of it.

 

[mltv]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1452999941534720001

 

[mongo]

I appreciate the sentiment, and it probably reflects a practical reality. Probably
But the real point is to remove ICE now. The distinction between is an acknowledgement of opportunity cost.

Agree, and I gave a truncated argument. Some of those ICE companies are making EVs now and would make more in the future (assuming they still exist). If VW, Ford, and GM all shut down next year it would reduce new ICE now, but would the long term area under the curve improve? Adoption can't exceed production, and older ICE are typically worse polluters than new.

 

[Darmie]

Bring back the butterflies please.

 

[larmor]

Looks like the Biden admin has nailed down a framework as of this morning: President Biden Announces the Build Back Better Framework | The White House

Relevant bits:

The jump from annual income of $400k to billionaire is pretty minimal i guess.

 

[jbcarioca]

Progressive consumption tax over progressive income tax, IMHO.

Have a prebate/UBI + sales tax, and a higher sales tax rate for luxury goods.

If I was made dictator for a day I’d replace income taxes with that, and probably cut capital gains and replace corporate profit taxes with a VAT. Also would create an agency that would try to calculate the costs of externalities (like carbon) and tax those as well.

Bizarrely that resembles present day Brazilian practice. Income taxes are lowish ~27% max. Transaction taxes and financial levies (capital gains, FX etc);are taxed at source. That resembles practice in many countries. Four big advantages are: 1) 100% compliance hence, 2) lower rates due to (1) 3) very simple tax reporting So (4);administrative costs are much lower fir everyone other than banks and brokers. Extortionate borrowing and transaction fees from banks and brokers keep them happy.The very structure is steeply progressive.

Tesla does essentially that with Supercharger fees and other customer payments other than vehicle sales. That results in lower operating costs and near zero collections issues. In turn that benefits everyone.

My view is that ‘invisible’ taxes such as VAT are imperfect, but generally more efficient and less fraught than is a post-facto system built on trust; such systems always produce fraud and compliance issues plus major political conflict. Bluntly the only net beneficiaries of such systems are tax attorneys and tax accountants. That is sad.

 

[Snerruc]

Further condensing the Biden plan to its brilliant core idea (TL;DR):
Let's make Elon pay for the union-made hybrid cars! (What has he ever done for us anyway?)


The stock's holding up quite well today considering such news. Don't want to get political, but: given your current choices, have you considered a third political party for the US?

Only for 40 years.

 

[raffiniert]

I'm more than happy to accommodate Elon here in Switzerland. We have a small house, guest apartment, rooftop full of solar (24kWp total). We just voted on taxes for stock gains and the people said NO.

Elon, just PM me and I'll prepare your cozy bed therm-a-rest.

 

[Jack6591]

uhhh....can we still say male?

At the funeral for political correctness, they laughed and laughed. I wasn’t able to attend the funeral, but I did send a nice letter saying I approved of it.

 

[mongo]

I've thought about that but it seems like if you have $100,000 IRA and convert it with an example of a 33% tax rate and then invest the resulting $66,000 in a Roth, you'll have a 1/3 less (but tax free) at the end instead of paying that 1/3 in taxes at the end. Seems like you end up with about the same amount of money.

Not advice:
One needs to run a spreadsheet with their projected returns and distributions. Rollover at the marginal tax rate is worse than spread out withdrawls over multiple tax years for a certain range of values. However, on a high return investment or high inital balance, you may end up in the max tax bracket in retirement, so rolling to Roth up front may be better.
Also, you can pull Roth contributions out penalty free after 5 years even if you are <59.5, this helps enable earlier retirement. A ladder conversion (portion of IRA to Roth each year) can reduce taxes now, make funds available sooner, and spreads out the taxes on conversion.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Can someone point me to the On Topic Galore thread? TIA!