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If the majority of mail stops are junk mail only, I would love to see some napkin math of the effect of all those diesel/gasoline accelerations per mailbox, dropped across the daily fleet of drop offs.

Stopping marketing mail wouldn’t change the number of accelerations per mailbox. USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail. The only difference would be in weight carried.

USPS would still need to check each stop for outgoing mail.

No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.


Depends. Where I live outgoing mail goes into the closest blue USPS bin. And given that most days all mail I receive is slop, removing the slop would remove the need to come to my house.

Of course, where I live the USPS person stops in a general area and does all the outgoing deliveries on foot, but it's conceivable that some days an entire block may receive no incoming mail. Also, we need to take into account things like fuel costs for planes & such throughout the entire supply chain.


They paid for an opportunity. Sometimes paying for a chance nets you nothing.

If you end up with nothing in aggregate for the chances you pay for, you're a loser. Not in a pejorative sense, just as a fact, you lost.

If you come out with more than nothing, in aggregate, you're a winner, in the same objective sense.

Probably controversial. Eh.


that's weird cause if i am paid in tokens, how do i use those tokens on my employer's workflows?

shouldnt the tokens belong to the employer?

i understand the concept of an engineering having tools they own but if they're gonna shove tokens-as-utility down our throats, no boss, i'm not hooking you into my well water.


You are not alone. There are people who prefer medium sized knives.


after 30 years of waiting for standard micropayments, I have stopped wondering if it's solvable. I perfectly believe we could have had it working 20 years ago but there's a reason someone doesn't desire it to be.

i also dont know how economics work so maybe paying 2/3 of a cent for a page view is not helpful. Maybe that's why it doesnt work. Maybe I'm in the 1% of people who would pay for ad-free content on a non-subscription model.

I'd rather everything have a price, nothing has a subscription, and everything is a decision to purchase per view instead of funneling into walled garden access per month


Al a carte content via a good standardized micro payment option sounds wonderful. Not sure if we as a society would pull it off well, but I can dream.

Define micropayments, but we kind of do it with television and movies if you rent from something like Apple, Sony, or Amazon. Would love if that model could apply to the written word as well.


it's like bragging you're Spartacus


I wouldn't mind it getting fully tested in court, to be honest.


> This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.

The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact. So getting comfortable that the whole system is damned and worth tossing is very convenient but too cavalier for me to find comfort in


> The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact.

I don't disagree with this at all, and on a personal level I do everything I can to reasonably leave things as good or better than I found them. I just no longer believe anything I do is going to pull humanity as a whole back from the edge.


no single raindrop feels it is to be blamed for the flood.

I've always enjoyed that line. I also find it interesting how people interpret it. I take it to mean that each raindrop should still try to not cause a flood, and at some point, the flood will be prevented. Others take it to say there are simply too many other raindrops and they won't try, so there is no point in any drop trying. I don't care for that version.


We don't need PCs or smartphones, we have AI now. They don't need to worry.


meddlesome priests?

there's always room for another software arms race. the personal area network is not ready and the evolution will be painful and good for someone - us, or them, without regard for what those divisions are, it's going to hurt.


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