"Myth #2: The Jones Act Raises Prices for Hawai‘i Residents.
However, a comprehensive 2020 study by Reeve & Associates and TZ Economics found that this is simply not true.
Their survey compared the prices of 200 consumer goods—including groceries, household items, clothing, and automobiles—at major retailers like Costco, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart in both Honolulu and Los Angeles. The results showed that prices in Hawai‘i were, on average, only 0.5% higher than on the mainland, a negligible difference that cannot be attributed to the Jones Act alone."
As a frequent visitor to Oahu, i stop by Costco on the way from the airport and i can see that most consumables including milk and meat is 30-50% more expensive than at Northern California Costco. This is representative across local supermarkets as well.
So its seems that this union is trying to minimise the impact of shipping on costs of everyday goods
"using online prices to compare food prices at Hawaii versus Los Angeles stores is problematic. A visit today to the Keeaumoku Street Walmart showed an 18-ounce box of Cheerios selling for $4.26, before tax, versus $3.64 for its listed online price, and a four-pack of 5-ounce cans of albacore tuna for $8.43 versus $6.74 online."
That is actually true, Keamoku Walmart does not pricematch to their online prices and the only way to get those prices is to place an pickup order and wait for several hours to pick up at those prices.
IlWU are crooks, but I thought jones act said intranational trade had to be by us flagged and manned ship. Not that foreign trade couldn't unload directly there on foreign ship or that it had to go to mainland first.
I've never heard of them having to go to the mainland before unloading in Hawaii. But if they do unload directly in Hawaii maybe they can't unload elsewhere without violating jones act so it's not worth the trip there instead of going to LA to unload and then a US flagged boat has to be used to get it to HI.
It’s the latter. If you stop at HI you aren’t allowed to also stop at LA. Better to skip Hawaii.
And yeah, watching someone cite ILWU is like watching someone cite Philip Morris on the urban myth that cigarettes cause cancer. Pretty funny that subsequent generations just forget things and people become authorities who are brazenly self-interested.
Reminds me of how Chelsea in the Prem were accused back in the day of “financial doping” by spending vastly more than any other club to get the best players and now you can sometimes find articles for how they’re the best run club in the last 10 years (conveniently timed for after they were given a billion). With a little time, all sins are forgiven.
I couldn't hit my macros on tirzepatide - couldn't get enough protein without feeling sick to my stomach. One of the reasons I swapped to reta.
(though as a general note for anyone reading, just getting enough protein isn't enough - you need muscle stimulus too. Getting enough protein will help reduce the amount lost but if you really want to stop it, you gotta do resistance training)
I did a cost per 1000 miles comparison of Camry hybrid vs Tesla model y back in 2023 when i was shopping for a new car.
I just pulled up that spreadsheet and updated my area gas prices($5.50 per gallon) and my area off-peak energy costs ($0.50 per kwh).
Both cost $133 to drive 1000 miles(including ammortized oil changes for camry).
Camry was $15000 cheaper AND has a 500 mile range.
Even at todays war-time gas prices, the EVs are not always the financially sound choice thanks to runaway costs of electricity in my state.
PG&E in Northern California. Same for Edison in Southern California.
The thing about my area (Peninsula, 20 minutes south of SF) is that its not hot enough to really justify A/C, my electrical+gas bill averages out below $200 a month and my roof is old enough where it would need to be replaced before solar is installed. So a $15-$20000 expense cost for solar would actually be closer to $30-$40,000 with roof replacement, plus potentially bringing ancient wiring in my home to code will cost another handfull of thousands.
Its akin to trying to fix a slow memory leak in your application and realizing you need to also upgrade a bunch of dependencies which no longer support the current version of your tools AND refactor the frontend.
The best thing our(I’m in US) society can do to dispel fears like yours is to offer public daycare where kids are well cared for and socialized.
I’m a child of Soviet Era and our parents did not think twice if they can afford children with their meager salaries. I remember going to a kindergarten as soon as I could walk.
The reality is that a family can always make choices that enable them to care for a kid, but there are of course trade offs.
Public daycare would mitigate one of those trade offs
But what GP said is true - we can see UNRWA educational materials.[0]
Im not sure what is being taught in orthodox jewish schools in Israel, but I’m pretty certain that in secular Israeli public schools, death of Arab neighbors is not glorified, terrorism and martyrdom is not glorified. [1]
Unlike that of UNRWA.
In other words, one side promotes violence, the other does not
HN flagged a post that pointed out that Palestinians continually attack Israeli civilians. One can listen to any news article to point out each night’s rocket attacks and confirm them.
It’s not surprising they would also flag a post pointing out UNRWA curriculum.
Because people flag facts, this site is essentially a cesspool when it comes to discussing anything political. The moderators have recently been manually un flagging political posts, and then writing their own comments about people they dislike such as Dan’s recent comment about Elon Musk.
It’s a cliche that everyone thinks a site is going downhill, but Hacker News is absolutely going downhill.
> HN flagged a post that pointed out that Palestinians continually attack Israeli civilians
I think the people might have chosen to downvote it for omitting the critical context that israelis continually attack Palestinian civilians, more frequently and in greater numbers.
Personally, I don't think that critical omission was done intentionally. People make mistakes! It's how we respond when those mistakes are pointed out, which defined us. Do we acknowledge the mistake, correct ourselves, maybe apologize? Or do we double down and complain when people point it out?
For the collaboration between two different models — I’d love to explore that. Expanding model compatibility to broader providers (Codex, Aider, and other API models) is already on my roadmap. I’m planning to add a reviewer feature that supports multiple models, configurable simply by adding an API key to the .env file. Thanks for the suggestion!
I’ve been running OpenClaw Docker agents in Slack in a similar setup, using Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite through OpenRouter for most tasks, then Opus 4.6 and Codex 5.3 for heavier lifts. They share context via embeddings right now, but I’m going to try parameterizing them like you suggested because they can drift prettyy hard once a hallucinated idea takes off. I’m trying to get to a point where I don’t have to babysit them. I’ve also been thinking about giving them some “democracy” under the hood with a consensus policy engine. I’ve started tinkering an open-source version of that called consensus-tools that I can swap between agentic frameworks. Checking out if it can work with openswarm to work for me too.
You dont need to be a billionaire to be able to afford a good school for your children if the public ones dont meet your criteria.
Im not sure about this particular school, but i am greatly disappointed at baseline california core requirements for math and science in middle school and the parents choice is to either have your child be bored in school while complementing their education with RSM or Singapore Math after hours
Or to choose a private school that will make your child more competitive with kids being educated by other countries systems.
Public education caters to the common denominator…the public. If you want higher rigor and standards set for your children, then you will need to find alternatives - which, in some areas, are no better than the public schools.
I wouldn’t blame the system for poor standards. Their standards are actually decent for most children. The problem is that teachers are forced to spend a significant portion of time and energy on classroom management.
Couple that with the fact that most parents aren’t reading to their children at night, so those kids grow up falling behind the curve. Reading comprehension drops -> other subjects follow suit. Rinse and repeat each year, and you eventually end up with high-school seniors reading far below their grade level.
The teachers now have to scaffold all of their content. The kids who didn’t fall behind? They receive no attention from the teacher who is instead focused on helping the kid with a 3rd grade reading ability to try to understand the content.
An indirect tragedy of the commons, where parents are relying on public education to raise and teach children with no input of their own.
Not a billionaire, but pretty well off. Unlike the college loan grift that we also need to address, you're not getting a parent plus loan to help your 3rd grader.
>i am greatly disappointed at baseline california core requirements for math and science
Don't look at the other states, then. I agree the standards are low, but they can't even meet those marks. You don't improve that by raising bar and expecting students to keep up. All while continuing to defund education.
For me, it was a matter that they identified me early on elementary and basically put me a year ahead in studies. By middle school they called it "honor students". And I only studied in public schools (well, a charter high school. But I was guaranteed in since I lived in the neighborhood).
I dont think California education is defunded. Mismanaged yes, wrong incentives and priorities, yes.
Quick google search shows that my district has nearly a budget of $195,927,382 for years 2024-2025 serving 10,278 students. Thats nearly 20k per student. THe district employed 481(<22 student per teacher on avg) teachers and 480 admin staff.
Residents of my school district constantly vote for bonds to pay for capital school upgrades(thanks Prop 13) in addition to high amount property taxes. We dont have an issue of defunding the education here.
Our education is non-competitive with Asian and European ones not because we cant afford it, but because its mismanaged, incorrectly incentivised and often ideological (math is racist).
I also lost 35% body mass, from 318-208 today. It took from September 2024 to beginning of January 2026.
1) amazing, I can actually do things now. I didn’t realize how much I was resting and just not doing anything around the house. I managed to do my work with stimulants but that’s about it.
2) I did a scan and am currently around 110% for with 100% being the baseline for the average male my age, for my muscle mass. I did lose more muscle mass in the 230-210 loss than most of the previous, but I think that’s because I couldn’t ride my bike everywhere as it’s winter time. I had to chug protein shakes while losing weight and do physical therapy for a few body parts, especially my hip and my shoulders as they were easy to hurt. Going to the gym regularly solved this long term.
3) I guess I answered question 2
4) I’m now 27.1 BMI, although my percent body fat is only 18.9%, so I’m not concerned about the number since I have access to a body scanner and can see I’m fine. My visceral fat levels have dropped below concerning levels, which is great.
I also sleep way better, and the heartburn I thought was just a part of life went from “literally every day” to “once or twice a year, and only if I do something I shouldn’t have”.
I was also way more aggressive about just going to the dose and hit 15mg in April of 2025, and have stayed there. I might go for another 10 pounds mostly out of vanity.
> the heartburn I thought was just a part of life went from “literally every day” to “once or twice a year, and only if I do something I shouldn’t have”.
I feel this, too. I was on Prilosec indefinitely, gastroenterologist said I have a mild hiatal hernia and that I'll probably be stuck on PPIs forever. But after losing a lot of weight, I was able to switch to occasional Pepcid instead, with Prilosec temporarily if I get tolerant to the Pepcid. The hernia won't heal itself, but taking the pressure off has really reduced the GERD symptoms.
Not the original guy, but down 32%, for a point of comparison:
1) Amazing, like being a decade and a half younger
2) Not before, planning one in the next couple months, but I use skinfold and impedance and they say I've dropped from about 48% to ~20% as I've dropped from 272 to 186, lean mass seems maybe 5kg lower than I started with? Less lean mass loss than I expected.
3) Weight bearing exercise and medium-high protein intake (>80g/d)
4) Per above, starting BMI 37.9 -> ending BMI 25.9
Your stats are very similar. I started at something like 274 (though my overall highest point ever was 284 a couple years ago) and now I'm down to 181. It's a huge difference, as you say it's like being 15-20 years younger. Life changing.
To add my own anecdata, it took me a bit over a year (September 2024 to December 2025) to lose the weight. I averaged about 1.5 pounds a week consistently.
1. I feel wonderful. Things that were hard are now easy, exercise is invigorating instead of exhausting.
2. I have not. Considered it, but locally the scans are expensive and I could not convince myself what I'd do differently if I knew the numbers. My goals would stay the same.
3. I lift weights, but there's no way around it, losing a lot of weight means caloric deficit and I have definitely lost some mass. I'm trying to establish a slight caloric surplus now combined with a heavier focus on lifting-for-growth to see if I can claw back some of what I've lost. I got big enough at my largest (and I am just over 50 years old, which does not help) that now I have a little bit of loose skin on my belly, thighs, and upper arms ... I'm hoping that if I can regain some muscle that I can alleviate much of that. Otherwise I'll get a surgeon to do it.
4. Currently at 25.2. Could lose some more, but happy enough where I'm at and my test results are spectacular now, so I am no longer targeting further weight loss. I still weigh myself but I am now refocusing my definition for success in how I look and feel.
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