dingdongmetacarples

Abnormally normal

The farmers have the most senior water rights, so there's a lot of legal hurdles to that solution. It's definitely something that needs to happen though. Letting them go bust means the Southwest US needs to get food from somewhere else, most likely shipped in on trucks. It's not as simple as people make it out.

Heat pumps are AC in reverse, so why's that so much more efficient? And most new homes are built with good insulation and lawns are illegal for new homes. Most grass has been removed and replaced with rocks, only older homes are allowed to keep their lawns. There's cash incentives to get them to remove it though. In fact, Las Vegas has actually decreased it's water usage in the past few decades, while increasing the population.

More energy is used in the US to heat homes than to cool them, so I'm really not seeing why people should live elsewhere. At least not from a pure energy use standpoint.

No, but born in the same city. They don't have a common prefix or anything like that.

That's not true anymore. My kids have very different SSNs.

https://www.paperkarma.com/3-steps-stop-junk-mail/

I declared it!

Yea, I didn't even go into how much my wife's nephrectomy cost.

For a real example, my 10 year old swallowed a button battery (yes she should know better). Of course we went to the pediatric ER immediately. She was seen by a doctor, got some X-rays, then puked the battery out. She's totally fine. In the end I'm paying about $2000 out of pocket for that. That's on top of the monthly premiums I and my employer pay.

My premiums are about $280 per month for health, dental and vision for me and my kids. Premiums are pre-tax so there's a bit of savings there. My employer pays about $1100 per month on top of what I pay. My wife is on her employers plan because they would charge about triple that for all of us to be in the same plan. that's about $100 per month for her.

On top of that I have a special pre-tax savings account for health expenses only called a Flexible Spending Account, which helps a bit but it's kinda silly and not very flexible. I have to determine at the beginning of each year how much I might spend that year, then that amount will be taken automatically out of my checks. If I don't spend it all, it's gone.

I really recommend this video to understand (or not) the complexity of the US health care system https://youtu.be/-wpHszfnJns?si=Wi48w7TCkETdIUQQ

It's easy to passively cool things, as long as you're okay getting them wet :)

If the Hoover Dam becomes inoperable, the entire Southwest US is in trouble. It provides water for farms and power, both mostly in California. Las Vegas would actually be the last to feel the effects of Lake Mead drying up because they've installed a deeper "straw" to draw water from, along with a pumping station.

https://www.snwa.com/where-southern-nevada-gets-its-water/our-regional-water-system/intake-no-3.html

At an individual level sure, it's easy to throw on a blanket when it's cold. But at a household level, much more energy is used to heat homes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-10/why-we-always-fight-over-air-conditioning