Nonprofits in the USA are basically failings in government.
Non profits at their best provide services that any half decent government should provide but do it at a fraction of the efficiency that the government could.
At their worst they are private individuals spending tax payers money (that’s what tax breaks actually are) on personal causes and self enrichment.
That’s why it’s interesting seeing a right wing publication advocating for fewer non profits, I’m all for it. Cut tax breaks for non profits, reduce funding of non profits and fund government to provide the services.
They sold their real estate for 1.5 billion and then red lobster paid 200 million a year in rent.
That’s insane.
In 7.5 years they would pay back the purchase price.
That just seems like a massively bad deal for red lobster, I wonder was there another way the private equity firm made out on that deal ?
What’s most weird to me is that the PE firm owns Red Lobster. So if a deal is bad for Red Lobster, the deal is also bad for the PE firm.
I guess the reason that isn’t true is differing time horizons. If the consequences of the deal only become apparent years later, then the PE firm can sell the business before the chickens come home to roost.
But how do they sell Red Lobster without the buyer realizing what is going to happen? Who would be dumb enough to buy from a company that has a history of crippling companies it owns then selling them to suckers?
The hit from above-market leases vs. owning the land might be clearly visible in hindsight, but that's not necessarily true looking into the future. A buyer could have focused on the economies of scale from being in the seafood business and actually thought "we're not a real estate companye, and rentals are preferable in this inflated market". The got all that current debt off the books in exchange for future liabilities; that could also have looked good.
>> PE firm can sell the business before the chickens come home to roost.
It's really no different from pump and dump. Founders love it because it unlocks a huge pay-out without the hassle, costs and reporting obligations from going public, but if you've worked at a company before and then after a major PE investment it's universally worse IME.
Hilarious to think that everyone is worried about AI becoming sentient and murdering us all - it's more likely it will just give bad advice to enough humans that we all lazily murder ourselves attempting something stupid like a real life version of idiocracy.
Are you working for Big Sprout? I seem to remember seeing that exact phrase on here in the last couple of months.
"Not your parents sprouts anymore"
For the record I loved them 30 years ago and still love em.
My recipe is very different to the modern fashion, boiled until mushy with a slice of smokey bacon, drain and eat with butter. They literally melt like butter - delicious.
This. Llms aren’t very good and are just predictive text. And I say that as someone who has a lot of experience using them.
We don’t have anything to fear from AI for quite some time.
As an aside, the AI generated search snippets in google are messing me up. They seem good for random things I don’t know about but are awful for programming things where I’m looking for a specific solution to a specific problem. They always just give me the “right” way no matter how much it doesn’t really work like that.
An example would be trying to figure out how to solve a weird edge case or error, something that stack overflow is amazing at and it just feeds me generic instructions - which honestly fooled me for a while before I learned to ignore.
Building physical things in the real world takes more than a couple of years. Think how long it takes to plan and build a regular building and these are buildings with insanely high energy requirements.
This seems to be just partisan point scoring.
Besides half the Republican Party is still advocating for coal and oil extraction, it’s a bit hypocritical to be complaining that EVs aren’t happening fast enough.
Don’t blame the messenger. Of course when a democratic president fails to execute on a policy, his political opponents are going to be the ones that point it out. That’s irrelevant. The point is that it should not take years to build out some goddamn EV chargers with $7.5 billion in funding. If it does, then we shouldn’t spending that money because there’s a more fundamental problem with the government’s ability to execute that needs to be fixed first.
The reaction you expressed is exactly the wrong one for anyone who wants to see government build infrastructure, or do more in general. It would be a disaster for republicans if democrat-run governments could actually deliver on their promises and deliver cost-effective, efficient public services in transit, education, healthcare, etc. The defensive reflex that seeks to insulate government failures from accountability only helps republicans.
Are they permitted, funded and planned and built in less time than years? Not very many are. This a good thing, we don't want people cutting corners and building wherever they want.
The downside is that we need to wait a little before we get what we want. I'm actually impressed that 7 have been fully constructed and opened in 2 years.
Ok. I'll bite. And ask this: What does Tesla know that everyone else doesn't? Their charging stations are decently common in high population density areas. I presume their ability to GTD wouldn't change if they ventured into less dense areas. So what do they know?
Yes. But just like the 4 minute mile, once possible is manifested those that follow know it can be done. Or is the gov buying million dollar screwdrivers to build a 2 mill charging station?
The Federal gov has plenty of land, plenty of office space with parking lots, etc. It could easily find partners, etc. Instead it feels like ground up wheel reinventing with million dollar screwdrivers.
Petrol pumps also have insanely high energy requirements and take a long time to permit and build. And for good reason. They just get their energy via tanker.
The fact that something needs energy doesn't mean we shouldn't build it.
You keep talking about diesel generators. So what if these chargers have diesel generators for backup. People in EVs are probably ok with a fall back to diesel generators - they probably all used to drive petrol cars. It's not this smoking gun you think it is.
The point is that we are moving from oil to not-oil and EVs make this a reality even if occasionally they fall back to the way things are done at the moment (i.e. using oil)
1 megawatt connection is not question of some paperwork and permits, but massive underlying infrastructure. And that infrastructure is simply not there.
If EVs use diesel generators and coal, they are not zero emmisions. In fact ICEs produce less CO2 emmisions, if you count energy losses from charging, battery production etc...
That’s why it takes time to build the infrastructure, that’s my point.
It’s taken time to build all the other infrastructure, why do we think that a whole new transport infrastructure across all the states should just magically appear in 2 years.
Non profits at their best provide services that any half decent government should provide but do it at a fraction of the efficiency that the government could.
At their worst they are private individuals spending tax payers money (that’s what tax breaks actually are) on personal causes and self enrichment.
That’s why it’s interesting seeing a right wing publication advocating for fewer non profits, I’m all for it. Cut tax breaks for non profits, reduce funding of non profits and fund government to provide the services.