It’s almost like he’s a fully fledged, complex human being and not an avatar of one side of a highly simplified model of political thought.

He’s quite “left-wing” (from a US Overton Window) on most issues. MTG was relatively early speaking out for Palestine. That doesn’t make her a leftist, either

I never beat Hollow Knight (yeah yeah, I know), so I’m working my way through that. I think I’m about half way? Obviously hard to tell.

Rock and Stone, brother.

Deep Rock Galactic’s great game design has caused it to grow one of the most positive, supportive communities in online gaming, IMO. While problematic players do exist, they are the exception rather than the rule.

TL;DR: Yes, you subsidize, because the amount each seat pays is proportional to their ticket price, but it’s a small amount per flight. But you also need to think about what you consider “fair” in this instance.

Sorry, been offline for a few days. I’m curious, so let’s check the math:

Their example is a flight from Atlanta to Orlando. The most common flight on that route is a Delta B757-2001. SeatGuru can provide us with the most common seating layout: 24 First class, 21 Comfort+, and 135 Economy.

The tax that the NYT Editorial Board is looking at is mostly likely the 7.5% Passenger Ticket Tax, which is about 1/3 of total fees on a two-leg itinerary2.

Looking at Delta’s fares for about two months out on randomly chosen dates in October, I see economy fares of about $270, economy plus at about $350, and first at about $570 (I tried to take a median, but it’s very approximate). Those fares are round-trip, so let’s cut them in half for $135/175/285. At 7.5%, the tax comes out to ~$10.13/13.13/21.38 per seat. That tallies up to $2156.40 when we multiply out by the number of seats, pretty close to the $2300 value the video claims, so I’m comfortable saying my numbers are “right enough” for the example.

Depending on how one structures the ownership of their private jet, the equivalent tax for them is zero dollars (they are exempt).

There are then taxes that both flights would pay on a per flight basis or based on fuel consumed. A private jet would pay proportionally more of those than a commercial airliner (due to the lower % passenger weight of total weight), but those are a small part of the total fees, especially for the commercial flight. (I’m seeing about $300 per plane, so I think NYT was counting some of those fees but not all, as they said that the private jet would be paying about $60 in fees).

The problem with the whole “subsidizing” conversation is that it depends on what perspective you take. If you look at it on a person-by-person basis, then sure, each passenger on the commercial flight probably pays less than the passengers on the private jet (assuming 2 ppl or something).

But FAA resources aren’t provisioned on a “per-passenger” basis, they’re provisioned on a “per-flight” basis, with some modifiers based on:

1. Origin and destination airspaces: busier ATC spaces require more resources, and the gain for an additional resource is not linear because of handoffs;
2. Size of plane: bigger planes do take up “more room” in the sky, and therefore tax the ATC more than smaller planes, plus they compete for larger runways, where smaller planes can use smaller runways at airports that have them;
3. Distance flown: Planes that fly farther use more ATC resources en-route.

Let’s be generous and say that our B757-200 takes 4x the ATC resources that the private jet does (I would bet the real factor is closer to 1.5-2.5x). So for a total of 5 units of ATC resource, 4 are used by the commercial jet, and 1 is used by the private jet.

The commercial flight therefore pays $(2156.40+60)/4=$554.10 per ATC resource, and the private jet pays $60 per ATC resource. Equal distribution would be $(2156.40 + 60 + 60)/5=$455.28. So the private jet is receiving a “subsidy” of $455.28-60=$395.28 per flight.

If we divide that subsidy over all of the passengers on the flight by fare, then we get about $1.81/2.34/3.81 based on seat class. That isn’t much of a subsidy per passenger, about 1.4% of your ticket price.

But let’s think about the other side of the equation: Chartering a plane from Atlanta to Orlando costs about $12,5003. Taking on an extra $395.28 would be an additional 3.2% per flight, which is admittedly more than the 1.4% of the fare for the commercial passenger.

And hold on… we are talking about passenger transport when we’re talking about both flights… so let’s look at how efficiently those FAA resources are used. Keeping that 4x factor for a flight of the same distance, we have 4 FAA resources spread over a flight with a capacity of 180, let’s assume 80% full for 144 passengers, using about 0.03 FAA resources/person. Now let’s look at the private jet, which recall uses 1 FAA resource for the same flight plan. Let’s be generous and assume 6 passengers. That’s 0.17 FAA resources/person. The commercial jet is more than 5x more efficient in its use of FAA resources.

These are people who literally create complex corporate structures for their private jets just to avoid that 7.5% excise tax, AND they tend to have much more disposable income. I think they can pay the extra $400 for their inefficient use of FAA resources.

If I were making the rules (which is absurd because not only am I not an expert but I am also Canadian), I would make the FAA fees per-itinerary filed with the FAA and incorporate three factors:

1. Category of departing and landing airports4
2. Takeoff weight of aircraft
3. Itinerary flight path length

The FAA has a whole section on their website about airport planning, so I would use that to figure out how to apportion these factors to best approximate the factors required for FAA resource allocation. I’m sure there are planners at the FAA that have this all broken down already.

So yes, unless you get a super-discount fare, you are subsidizing private jets assuming that the fair apportionment of costs is based on how FAA resource capacities are planned. It’s not much per passenger, but it adds up across all of society, and is another way that the US economy moves wealth from the lower classes to the upper class.

While that’s true, and so First Class and Business Class subsidize private jets more than Economy Class does, that doesn’t change the fact that Economy also subsidizes private jets.

As a percentage of the total weight of a plane, passengers and their luggage constitute a much larger percentage of a commercial flight than a private one. So they are “more utilized” than a private jet, and can spread that cost over all their passengers.

Also, larger planes that fly longer distances cross more ATC zones, using up more ATC resources. They also take up more “room” in the sky, as e.g. ATC needs to leave more room for jet wash behind a heavy. So it makes sense from multiple perspectives that bigger planes pay more.

You also have to consider hobby pilots. Charging them the same amount as a 747 would be insane.

So it’s a tradeoff: the Canadian system makes smaller planes pay more, proportionally, than a per-ticket model; but not so much more that it harms the smallest personal planes.

It’s also just simpler. Personal plane? Private jet? Commercial passenger flight? Cargo plane? Same calculation for all of them.

(Yes, you could try to make it “only for flights with paid passengers”, but then pilots of private jets would all of a sudden have a lot of very rich friends with whom they do a lot of personal flying. It’s just so much easier if there’s nothing subjective about it.)

“Let them eat cake” - Ghislane Maxwell, probably.

“Hurt people hurt people”? (potential explanaiton, not justification)

I can’t remember who it was, but sometime in the last few years a VC or CEO wrote an article documenting their day and how they “worked 12 hours a day” or something like that. What I remember most is that their accounting of their work included their time at the gym, at least one meal, and something else that few if any employers would consider “working time”.

I agree that sometimes C-suite execs do work long hours sometimes, and I’ll differ from you in that sometimes those long hours are legitimate and valuable for a company. IMO, it’s not the norm nor is it generally worth the premium that most companies pay for those hours.

I can only imagine the world where we got to keep Aaron instead. 😭

The worst thing is that looking at this case, at least from what I’ve seen, Blake Lively’s side isn’t as “pristine” as they first appeared. “They” might be right. I hope I don’t end up siding with Candace Owens by the end of it. What frustrates me about both of these cases is that unless and until there is a public trial, nothing close to the truth will come out. But of course the tribalism has to start already.

In the Depp/Heard case, we got to see enough evidence that a relationship with either of them would have been problematic at best, abusive at worst. You can argue about who the worst was, but neither came away looking “clean,” IMO.

Here, it’s way too early to be “picking sides.” 🙄

I’m cool with your disagreement. It’s not known right now what the best strategy is, and I’ll concede I could be wrong on that one. I don’t know if it will resonate more to “focus on the worst billionaires” or push “no such thing as an ethical billionaire”.

I don’t see anything wrong with talking about the oligarchs as “kings” as well. I think that language could work just as well with Zuck, Bezos, etc. as it would with Trump.

I think it would have been better if she had used a “yes, and”, recognising that the Sanders/AOC rallies are bringing a lot of people out and getting them more engaged, then suggesting using the “kings” language on top of it.

For those who don’t know, Bluesky isn’t really federated. The only way to host a non-Bluesky instance required 1TB of storage in July 2024, and 5 TB of storage in Nov 2024. Could be way more than that now.

You basically have to be a company to federate into the ATProto (Bluesky) ecosystem. You can’t just “stand up an instance”.

Lots of detail: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

(I know you’ve already realized that you were conflating Mastodon with Bluesky, I’m putting this here for others who come along so they can get the facts).

There was a good discussion online between Christine Lemmer-Webber, one of the editors of the ActivityPub W3C Standard, and Bryan Newbold, protocol engineer at BlueSky.

• CLW - How Decentralized is BlueSky Really?
• BN - Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization
• CLW - Re: Re: BlueSky and Decentralization

These are long reads. But they are worth reading. Christine and Bryan agree that ATProto and ActivityPub have different design goals and so what you get from “federation” with each is different. ATProto makes a centralized index of the entire system possible, at the cost of relying on very few (practically likely one) centralized providers.

As a result, the Lemmy ecosystem, as it exists today, wouldn’t be possible with ATProto. It would probably look more like Reddit, but with a “credible exit” possible as a defense against enshittification.

The fight for justice, democracy, and civility knows no borders. You (singular), and those who fight against oppression will always be our brothers/sisters IMO.

We know you’re there, and we know who we are and aren’t booing when we boo the Star-Spangled Banner.

I think I can speak for most Canadians if I say we’re sorry that standing up for ourselves means hurting you, but we’re not sorry for standing up for ourselves.

I’ve been saying “Canadians are nice by choice, not because of something in the water.”

I like this one, too. I intend on stealing it and spreading it. #ElbowsUp

I think Trudeau is best when he gets to lead a country, and not have to deal with politics. I mean, he’s not the best policy maker, IMO, but we’ve had worse PMs. Whenever he has to do “politics” stuff though he’s… well, bad.