I am fearful of losing my first.last@gmail.com and last.com access presently. Any Google Wallet/Payment folks that might help me..? Please see email in profile if so. Would really appreciate it.

Story is I started a new job. I tried to add a corporate address for a corporate card to Google Wallet. This tripped some security indicator requiring me to upload government-issued ID. I did so twice without it working despite first/last/address match. I have tried also submitting an employment verification letter with the corporate address. Haven't heard back on the last attempt.

I have also written but I have low hope that'll work. (Update: Nope, "Billing and Collections" isn't "Payments" but at least they wrote back).

Because of the incomplete verification, all Google service payments are rejected right now. I am presently frantically emptying my Google One storage to get back under the free tier before my paid One subscription runs out. Literally, because I cannot submit a $2 payment I am right now removing attachments from 20 years of correspondence.

This stinks. I just need a human to review what I submitted given the above context. There should be some middle ground between rejecting a new credit card address and de facto locking down someone's entire collection of Google services via manufacturing an inability to pay.

It'd be super fun to take that as an axiom of physics then to see how far upwards one could build from that. Above my skills by far.

The minimum amount of energy needed to compute decreased asymptotically to 0 as the temperature of space goes to 0. This is the reason a common sci-fi trope where advanced civilizations hibernate for extremely long times so that they can do more computation with available energy.

That’s a common trope? Can’t say I’ve run into it. But I’d like to! What are some good examples?

In the book Calculating God, a character notes that this is a common civilization-wide choice. Living in virtual reality, rather than trying to expand into the vast expanses of space, is a common trope as much as it's a logical choice. It neatly explains the Fermi Paradox. In some fiction, like The Matrix, the choice might be forced due to cultural shifts, but the outcome is the same. A relatively sterile low-energy state civilization doing pure processing.

I wonder if it's illogical to think that all civilizations must always pick the most logical of the options

Logical and optimum are not the same.

Those civilisations that make too much illogical choices probably die off.

True. But it's not a binary choice. All it takes is to make one sub-optmial choice for the universe to be filled up with von-neuman probes in all star systems

Kurzgesagt just made a video on it a couple months back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMm-U2pHrXE

it's called the first law of thermodynamics

The first law involves cwork. The axiom I am thinking of involves information.

vim-slime is another variant, easing pasting across a screen multiplexor. It works well with IPython.

https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-slime

In the US the child tax credit serves a similar purpose and is precisely a negative tax: $300/month under age 6 then $250/month thereafter.

Essentially the same amount as Germany give or take currency. That has long been in place though the amounts have changed over time.

Not every family gets this credit. It phases out at sufficiently high income.

interesting. how does that work specifically? if your income is so low that you don't pay taxes, do you actually get cash?

the german system simply pays out the money unconditionally. regardless of income. it doesn't affect your taxes, but if the regular taxes happen to lower then you get more money than you pay.

From the IRS...

> A portion of the Child Tax Credit is refundable for 2024. This portion is called the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). For 2024, up to $1,700 per child may be refundable.

can you elaborate how that works in practice?

say i am earning 2000$ per month. i pay $100 on taxes on that. so that's $24000 income and $1200 in taxes per year.

$1700 as a tax credit, does that mean my taxes are 0? or do i get $500 on top of my income?

so after taxes how much do i have? 24000? 24500? and where are the $250 per month you mentioned?

here is how it works in germany:

24000 euro is my income. 1200 euro are my taxes. but i get 3000 euro unconditional per child. so after taxes my total income is 25800 euro with one child. add 3000 for each additional child.

the actual tax rate is made up, and just set to 5% to make the comparison easier.

Much, but not all, of 'Phoebe and Her Unicorn' has just-enough echoes of C&H while doing its own thing.

https://www.gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn

Thank you for that!

Ordering the first boxed set for my daughter's birthday next year.

This is so cute!

You're not alone in this feeling. I occasionally smile when it's not my kid.

Chilean Space Bass.

I second the utility of the Kagi Assistant. I didn't think I would use it much but now do so constantly. Especially because ending a regular search query in a question mark will cause the results page to lead with the Assistant answer! It's a delightful way to try both search and LLMs in one UI interaction.

Isn't that what all of the search engines do now by default?

They do it by default, Kagi lets the user control if and when they want LLM results.

> The problem is that hiring in New York City government is subject to possibly the most insane rules in the country.... And I say that as someone who didn’t think anything could be worse than the federal hiring rules.

This piece is a great, accidental argument for smaller government in NYC.

> We have these supposedly merit-based hiring systems because in the mid- to late-19th century, positions in government were filled through patronage, or what’s known as the spoils system.

One can either have "supposedly merit-based" or definitely spoils (i.e. graft). Smaller government that accepts some (smaller) spoils to gain nimbleness is a good balance IF the free press calls out egregious graft and IF the electorate will throw out any bums.

Therefore no one should study alternatives to the public schools...?

We accept that different colleges (and other post-secondary training) at different cost points serve different populations.

We somehow do not accept the same idea for secondary or primary education. Why not improve educational outcomes for some of the population?