#how estimators predict costs

[asestimationsconsultants]

How Accurate Is a Residential Estimating Service?

Accuracy is the backbone of any successful construction or renovation project. When homeowners or developers hire a residential estimating service, they often ask one crucial question: “How accurate is it really?” The short answer is that it can be highly accurate—if it's done by experienced professionals using updated data, proven methods, and clear project documentation. But to fully understand the reliability of a residential estimating service, it's essential to explore what influences accuracy and what clients can expect.

Experience and Methodology

The accuracy of an estimate depends largely on the estimator’s experience and the methodology used. Seasoned professionals analyze design documents, blueprints, specifications, and site conditions. They use standard estimating practices, historical cost data, and regional pricing databases. Services that rely on manual processes alone may leave room for human error, but those that incorporate digital takeoff tools and cost databases produce more precise results.

Level of Design Detail

The more detailed the construction documents, the more accurate the estimate. A preliminary estimate based on a concept drawing may have a 20–30% margin of error. In contrast, estimates based on full construction drawings with detailed specs can reach 90–95% accuracy. Estimators often specify the level of accuracy by the project stage—conceptual, schematic, design development, or construction-ready.

Use of Updated Cost Data

One factor that directly affects accuracy is the pricing data used. The best estimating services subscribe to national and regional cost databases or consult real-time supplier and subcontractor quotes. Accurate pricing includes labor, materials, equipment rentals, permits, and contingencies. Estimates that use outdated pricing or generic figures are more likely to lead to cost overruns later.

Accounting for Regional Differences

Costs for residential construction vary greatly based on location due to differences in labor rates, building codes, and material availability. A professional residential estimating service customizes the estimate to the project’s location, ensuring it reflects local conditions rather than national averages.

Contingency and Risk Factors

No estimate is perfect, but a good service includes a contingency percentage to cover unforeseen changes. These may include design modifications, site condition issues, or material shortages. Factoring in these risks doesn’t compromise accuracy—it improves the estimate’s realism.

Client Input and Revisions

Accurate estimates rely on good communication. Clients who provide clear goals, budgets, and decisions upfront allow estimators to craft more tailored and precise results. Also, reputable estimating services allow for revisions, especially if the project scope evolves.

Conclusion

A residential estimating service can deliver highly accurate results—especially when the estimator is experienced, the documentation is detailed, and the pricing is current. While no estimate is flawless, the best services offer transparency, account for variables, and include contingencies to avoid surprises. For homeowners and builders seeking clarity and control over construction budgets, a professional estimate is an essential foundation.

[ms-demeanor]

On insurance: I still live with my parents and don't know a lot yet about the sorts of things adults usually have to spend money on. I've always been skeptical of things like insurance and credit cards because it seems to me they wouldn't be selling that if they didn't expect to make money from it. I talked to my cousin a while ago about credit cards and basically came to the conclusion that they do that because they're betting on the customer getting sloppy and letting their debts stack up, and the way you beat that and get money from credit card companies is just by being careful.

I'm a little more confused about insurance though because it seems much more straightforwardly like a gamble they will simply not take if it won't pay off for them. Like, you don't go to a casino because every game they play at a casino is one they've done the math on and have determined that statistically most people will lose money on most of the time. Is insurance not kinda the same? Where they estimate the risk and then charge you an amount calculated to make sure it probably won't be worth it for you?

I know if you have a car you legally need car insurance so everyone knows you can pay for another car if you crash into someone, and I gather that here in the US at least health insurance companies have some kinda deal with hospitals so that the prices go down or something, and there's a reason I don't fully understand why not having health insurance is Really Bad. But we get to pet insurance, or like when I buy a concert ticket and it offers ticket insurance in case I can't make it to the show, and surely if they thought they were gonna lose money on that they just wouldn't sell it, right? Or they'd raise the price of it until it became worth the risk that something bad actually will happen? Wouldn't it only be worth it to buy insurance if you know something the insurance company doesn't?

So the deal is that most people don't use their insurance much, and often insurance companies will incentivize doing things that will make you use your insurance less.

So, for example, you can get a discount on car insurance if you have multiple cars because people who insure multiple cars are more likely to be responsible drivers (the ability to pay for multiple cars stands in as a representation of responsibility here). The longer you go without an accident, the lower your premiums get because that means that you are not costing your insurance company anything but you are paying into the system. The car insurance company's goal is to have the most responsible, safest drivers who never get into car accidents because they can predict (roughly) how much they're going to have to pay out to their customers and they want the number they pay out to be lower than what's paid in. So they try to discourage irresponsible drivers by raising their rates and encourage responsible drivers by giving them discounts.

Health insurance companies often do the same thing: I recently got a gift card from my health insurance company because I had a visit from a nurse who interviewed me about my overall health and made sure I had stable blood pressure and access to medications. It is literally cheaper for my insurance company to give me a $100 giftcard and hire a nurse to visit me than it is for me to go to my doctor's office a couple of times, so they try to make sure that their customers are getting preventative care and are seeing inexpensive medical professionals regularly so that they don't have to suddenly see very expensive professionals after a long time without care.

Insurance in the US has many, many, many problems and should be replaced with socialized healthcare for a huge number of reasons but right now, because it is an insurance-based system, you need to have insurance.

We're going to use Large Bastard as an example.

Large Bastard had insurance when he had his heart attack and when he needed multiple organs transplanted. He didn't *want* to be paying for insurance, because he thought he was healthy enough to get by, but I insisted. His premium is four hundred dollars a month, and his out of pocket maximum is eight thousand dollars a year. That means that every year, he pays about $5000 whether he uses his insurance or not, and if he DOES need to use the insurance, he pays the first $8k worth of care, so every year his insurance has the possibility of costing him thirteen thousand dollars.

The bill for his bypass surgery was a quarter million dollars.

The bill for his transplant was over one and a half million dollars.

His medication each month is around six hundred dollars. He needs to have multiple biopsies - which are surgeries - each year, and each one costs about twenty thousand dollars.

Without health insurance, he would very likely be dead, or we would be *even more* incapable of paying for his healthcare than we are right now. He almost ditched his insurance because he was a healthy-seeming 40-year-old and he didn't think he'd get sick. And then he proceeded to be the sickest human being I've ever known personally who did not actually die.

Health insurance costs a lot of money. It costs less money for people who are young and who are expected to be healthy. But the thing is, everybody pays into health insurance, and very, very few people end up using as much money for their medical expenses as Large Bastard did. There are a few thousand transplants in the US ever year, but there are hundreds of millions of people paying for insurance.

This ends up balancing out (sort of) so that people who pay for insurance get a much lower cost on care if they need it, hospitals get paid for the care they provide, and the insurance company makes enough money to continue to exist. Part of the reason that people don't like this scheme is because "insurance company" could feasibly be replaced by "government" and it would cost less and provide a better standard of care, but again, with things as they are now, you need to have insurance. Insurance companies are large entities that are able to negotiate down costs with the providers they work with, you are not. If you get hit by a car you may be able to get your medical bills significantly reduced through a number of means, but you're very unlikely to get your bills lower than the cost of insurance and a copay.

Because of the Affordable Care Act, which is flawed but which did a LOT of good, medical insurance companies cannot refuse to treat you because of preexisting conditions and also cannot jack up your premiums to intolerable rates - since Large Bastard got sick, he has had the standard price increases you'd expect from aging, but nothing like the gouging you might expect from an insurance company deciding you're not worth it.

Pet insurance works on the same model. Millions of people pay for the insurance, thousands of people end up needing it, a few hundred end up needing a LOT of it, and the insurance companies are able to make more money than they hand out, so they continue to exist. This is part of why it's less expensive to get pet insurance for younger animals - people who sign up puppies and kittens are likely to be paying for a very long time and are likely to provide a lot of preventative care for their animals, so they're a good bet for the insurer. Animals signed up when they are older are more likely to have health problems (and pet insurance CAN turn animals away for preexisting conditions) and are going to cost the insurance companies more, so they cost more to enroll (and animals over a certain age or with certain conditions may be denied entirely).

This weighing risk/reward is called actuarial science, and the insurance industry is built on it.

But yeah it's kind of betting. The insurance company says "I'll insure ten thousand dogs and I'm going to bet that only a hundred of them will need surgery at some point in the next year" and if they're correct, they make money and the dogs who need surgery get their surgery paid for out of the premiums from the nine thousand nine hundred dogs who didn't need surgery.

Your assessment of credit is correct: credit card companies expect that you will end up carrying a balance, and that balance will accrue interest, and the interest is how they make the money.

And it is EASY to fuck up financially as an adult. REALLY EASY. But you are still likely to need a good credit score so you will need a credit history. That means that the correct way to use a credit card is to have a card, but not carry a balance.

To do this, never buy anything on the card that you can't afford. In order to avoid needing the card for emergencies, start an emergency fund that is at least 3 months of your total pay *before* you get a credit card. That seems like a *lot* of savings to have, but from the perspective of someone who has had plenty of mess-ups, it's a lot easier to build up a $10k emergency fund than it is to pay off a $10k credit card debt.

If you don't understand how interest works on credit cards, or why a 10k savings is different than a 10k debt, here are some examples working with $10k of debt, 23% interest (an average-ish rate for people with average credit), and various payments.

With that debt and that interest, here's how much it costs and how long it would take to pay off with $200 as the monthly payment:

Fourteen years, and it would cost you about twenty four thousand dollars in interest, for a total amount paid of about thirty four thousand dollars.

To save $10k at $200 a month would take four years and two months.

Here's the same debt at $300 a month:

4.5 Years and it costs about six grand (again, just in interest - sixteen thousand dollars total). Saving ten thousand dollars at three hundred dollars a month would take just under three years.

Here's the same debt at $400 a month:

3 years, about $4000 dollars (fourteen thousand dollars total). Saving ten thousand dollars at $400 a month takes just over two years.

The thing is, with all of these models you're going to end up paying one way or another. Insurance vs out of pocket is you weighing the risk of losing a fair amount of money by signing up but not using the system, or potentially losing a catastrophic amount of money by not signing up.

For credit cards they really only work if you know you're never going to need them for an emergency, because an emergency is what you're not going to be able to pay off right away. I didn't have an emergency fund when Large Bastard had his heart attack and needed surgery, or when we moved between states suddenly, or when we moved between states suddenly AGAIN and needed to pay storage costs, or when Large Bastard needed a transplant, or when Tiny Bastard got in a fight with my MiL's dog, and the fact that I didn't have an emergency fund is still costing me a lot of money.

So, young folks out there: what's the takeaway?

Get insurance. Get the best deal possible, which usually ends up being the one you sign up for early. You may think you can let it ride without insurance, but man in the six months between when I graduate college (and lost my school insurance) and when care kicked in after 90 days at my job I got electrocuted and needed to go to the ER. If that hadn't been a worker's comp payout I would have had thousands of dollars in bills. Something could happen. You could break your leg, you could get hit by a car, you could suddenly find out that you actually have heart disease at twenty, you could develop cancer. Have insurance, you need insurance. You legally need car insurance in the US, and you financially need health insurance. If you have a pet, I think it's a good idea for them to have pet insurance.

Credit cards are not for emergencies, they are not for fun, they are not for buying things that are just ever so slightly out of your budget, they are for taking advantage of the credit card company and managing to get by in a system that demands you have a credit score. ONLY put purchases on your credit card that you already have cash for. Before you get a credit card, build up an emergency savings so that you aren't tempted to put emergency charges on your card.

If you DO end up with an interest-bearing debt, pay it off as fast as possible because letting it linger costs you a LOT of money in the long run.

Stay the fuck away from tobacco and nicotine products they are fucking terrible for you, they are fucking expensive, and they are not worth it put the vapes down put the zyns down put the cigarettes down I will begin manifesting in your house physically i swear to fuck. Knock that shit off and put the cash that you'd be spending on nicotine into a savings account.

Take care, sorry everything sucks, I promise that in some ways it actually sucks less than it did before and we're working on trying to make it suck even less but it's taking a while.

[technofeudalism]

What's New Experts are warning of a looming increase in grocery prices as agricultural soil becomes increasingly unproductive. In a concerning trend that could impact households across the globe, the combination of overfarming, climate change and insufficient sustainable practices has left vast swaths of farmland degraded and unproductive, threatening food supply chains and driving up costs. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 33 percent of the Earth's soils are already degraded and more than 90 percent could become degraded by 2050. Why It Matters According to the FAO, soil erosion "occurs naturally under all climatic conditions and on all continents, but it is significantly increased and accelerated by unsustainable human activities (up to 1,000 times) through intensive agriculture, deforestation, overgrazing and improper land use changes. "Soil erosion rates are much higher than soil formation rates," the FAO said. "Soil is a finite resource, meaning its loss and degradation is not recoverable within a human lifespan." A map previously published by Newsweek predicts that 95 percent of America's soil will be degraded in less than 30 years. Only a 5 percent area is marked not degraded.

i absolutely love (/s) how this story is being framed as further price inflation and economic woes being the primary thing to worry about. the worst part of barren food stores isn't related to high prices.

the soil of our earth, our home planet, is dying/being killed by industrial agriculture, and as such we are now struggling to produce food. what this describes is imminent global famine within most of our lifetimes (~30yrs). sticker shock is not the biggest threat. that award goes to malnutrition and starvation.

it's possible to recover from this. but the solutions involved cost money and also winds up reducing overall crop yield, so many farmers aren’t going to pursue these solutions as frequently because they just aren’t feasible. the biggest concern for the average farmer is economic viability. point blank.

thus, any efforts at taking even baby steps to solve this problem will require centralized governments, particularly in the west, to enact direct, formative changes. unfortunately, all of them happen to be collapsing at this very moment. so... hang on tight, i suppose.

[amethysttribble]

A personal headcanon manifesto:

Maedhros was a brilliant military leader. Able to command respect, love, and fear all at once, adept at soothing egos, but also at knowing when a particular burr needed pulling and not pacifying. He could look at a map and see the full picture for what it was and not what he wanted it to be. He had an innate knack for swiftly deciding how to best allocate resources, both material and in terms of bodies. He could make sacrifices.

His only real fault was his inability- or, Amras suspected, lack of will- to truly read his enemies and make accurate predictions of their next move.

Always getting surprised, Maedhros. He couldn’t stand the prospect of identifying too much with his enemies, both the ones he pitied and the ones he reviled. But, luckily, he had brothers willing to do that for him.

Maglor was his most trusted commander, because he was a damn skilled one, as he was at most things. By Amras’s estimation, Maglor was the only one to inherit their father’s genius- that was, his ability to be near effortlessly good at basically everything he tried- and it showed. It was no coincidence that Maglor was there to cut down Uldor, who he never trusted and privately protested against giving such an important place in their column.

A shame that Maedhros always listened to Fingon over any of his brothers.

Then there was Celegorm, who Amras wouldn’t call a strategist, but had provided invaluable knowledge and expertise in organization. The Hunt of Orome had been the closest Valinor had to a host of warriors, and they hunted not just animals but monsters. Celegorm was the only one among them who knew how to create formations, to run drills, maintain rotations, to organize relief and extraction and medical aid. He’d spent most of the early days as Feanor’s, then Maedhros’s, then Maglor’s quartermaster until someone else could be trained to take on those duties. To say nothing of how his warriors loved him.

To the end, he was the best field commander.

Caranthir and Curufin were no help.

Oh, Caranthir was a dab hand at supply lines and a decent strategist, but he got flustered too easily. If one piece of his intricate plans fell through, he wasn’t able to recover fast enough. He got frustrated, angry, scared. He was much, much better at negotiating trade in his office, where he was given hours and days to think his way through everything thrown his way before he needed to send a reply back. The battlefield was too chaotic for his tendency to focus on one thing and one alone. His greatest strength, and also probably how he let himself be killed by a half-grown archer with shaking hands while trying to save Curufin’s already doomed life.

And the less said about Curufin, the better. He tried too hard at everything; if it wasn’t about measuring up to Feanor, it was about outdoing Maedhros, and that was no way to command men or win a war, to say nothing about stealing cities from cousins. His every move reeked of insecurity and that was a pungent smell.

Amras knew nothing about Pityafinwe’s prowess as a general.

Except, a small part of him that he quickly crushed whispered, his propensity to run.

Amras didn’t think he himself was half bad at it, though he came to the skills late. Only truly after Doriath, when Celegorm, Caranthir, and Curufin were gone and their number of trusted people were so few. Perhaps he did not have Maglor’s sharp instincts or Celegorm’s deft ease, but he felt he struck a medium in between both their particular talents. As Maglor became more and more reluctant at the end, it was Amras who Maedhros leaned on for Sirion. Cost him his life. Maybe that was actually indicative of a lack of skill. Oh, well.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign of the Day - Boston again… another great overpass banner sign there….

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 4, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jun 04, 2025

Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth.

The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war. It projects global growth slowing from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026. That economic slowdown is concentrated primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China.

The OECD predicts that growth in the United States will decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two analyses today of Trump’s policies that add more detail to that report. The CBO’s estimate for the effect of Trump’s current tariffs—which are unlikely to stay as they are—is that they will raise inflation and slow economic growth as consumers bear their costs. The CBO says it is hard to anticipate how the tariffs will change purchasing behavior, but it estimates that the tariffs will reduce the deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years.

Also today, the CBO’s analysis of the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is that it will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade because the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the measure do not fully offset the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Republicans have met this CBO score with attacks on the CBO, but its estimate is in keeping with those of a wide range of economists and think tanks.

Taken together, these studies illustrate how Trump’s economic policies are designed to transfer wealth from consumers to the wealthy and corporations. From 1981 to 2021, American policies moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. After Biden stopped that upward transfer, the Trump administration is restarting it again, on steroids.

Just how these policies are affecting Americans is no longer clear, though. Matt Grossman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that economists no longer trust the accuracy of the government’s inflation data. Officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles a huge monthly survey of employment and costs, told economists that staffing shortages and a hiring freeze have forced them to cut back on their research and use less precise methods for figuring out price changes. Grossman reports that the bureau has also cut back on the number of places where it collects data and that the administration has gotten rid of committees of external experts that worked to improve government statistics.

There is more than money at stake in the administration’s policies. The administration's gutting of the government seeks to decimate the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights and to replace it with a government that permits a few wealthy men to rule.

The CBO score for the Republicans’ omnibus bill projects that if it is enacted, 16 million people will lose access to healthcare insurance over the next decade in what is essentially an assault on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The bill also dramatically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) benefits, clean energy credits, aid for student borrowers, benefits for federal workers, and consumer protection services, while requiring the sale of public natural resources.

These cuts continue those the administration has made since Trump took office, many of which fell under the hand of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” But, while billionaire Elon Musk was the figurehead for that group, it appears his main interest was in collecting data. His understudy, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, appears to have determined the direction of the cuts, which did not save money so much as decimate the parts of the government that the authors of Project 2025 wanted to destroy.

Vought was a key author of Project 2025, whose aim is to disrupt and destroy the United States government in order to center a Christian, heteronormative, male-dominated family as the primary element of society. To do so, the plan calls for destroying the administrative state, withdrawing the United States from global affairs, and ending environmental and business regulations.

Yesterday the White House asked Congress to cancel $9.4 billion in already-appropriated spending that the Department of Government Efficiency identified as wasteful, a procedure known as “rescission.” Trump aides say the money funds programs that promote what they consider inappropriate ideologies, including public media networks PBS and NPR; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food and basic medical care globally; and PEPFAR, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that was established under President George W. Bush to combat HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries and is currently credited with saving about 26 million lives.

Vought appeared today before the House Appropriations Committee, where members scolded him for neglecting to provide a budget for the year, which they need to do their jobs. But Vought had plenty to say about the things he is doing. According to ProPublica’s Andy Kroll, he claimed that under Biden “every agency became a tool of the Left.” He said the White House will continue to ask for rescissions, but also noted that, as Project 2025 laid out, he does not believe that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend the money that Congress has appropriated, is constitutional, despite court decisions saying it is.

Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told Vought: “Be honest, this is never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable is what you fear the most. You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization, for the biggest companies to have unchecked power, for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge. Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.”

The use of the government to impose evangelical beliefs on the country, even at the expense of lives, also appears to be an administration goal. Yesterday, the administration announced it is ending the Biden administration’s 2022 guidance to hospital emergency rooms that accept Medicare—which is virtually all of them—requiring that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act they must perform an abortion in an emergency if the procedure is necessary to prevent a patient’s organ failure or severe hemorrhaging. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients.

The Trump administration will no longer enforce that policy. Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press found that even when the Biden administration policy was being enforced, dozens of pregnant women, some of whom needed emergency abortions, were turned away from emergency rooms with advice to “let nature take its course.”

Finally tonight, in what seems likely to be an attempt to distract attention from the omnibus bill and all the controversy surrounding it, Trump banned Harvard from hosting foreign students. He also banned nationals from a dozen countries—Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from entering the United States, an echo of the travel ban of his first term that threw the country into chaos.

Trump justified his travel ban by citing the attack Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, on peaceful demonstrators marching to support Israeli hostages in Gaza. An Egyptian national who had overstayed a tourist visa hurled Molotov cocktails at the marchers, injuring 15 people.

Egypt is not on the list of countries whose nationals Trump has banned from the United States.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Lawmakers in Hawaii have passed first-of-its-kind legislation that will increase the state’s lodging tax to raise money for environmental protection and strengthening defenses against natural disasters fueled by the climate crisis.

Hawaii’s governor, Josh Green, supports the creation of the so-called “green fee”, and is expected to sign it.

“This legislation, which I intend to sign, is the first of its kind in the nation and represents a generational commitment to protect our ‘āina [land],” Green said in a statement. “Hawai‘i is truly setting a new standard to address the climate crisis.”

The bill passed on Friday adds a 0.75% levy to the state’s existing tax on hotel rooms, timeshares, vacation rentals and other short-term accommodations. It also imposes a new 11% tax on cruise ship bills, prorated for the number of days the vessels are in Hawaii ports.

Officials estimate the tax will generate nearly $100m annually. They say the money will be used for projects like replenishing sand on eroding Waikiki beaches, promoting the use of hurricane clips to secure roofs during powerful storms and clearing flammable invasive grasses like those that fed the deadly wildfire that destroyed downtown Lahaina in 2023.

The state’s house and senate, both controlled by large majorities of Democrats, passed the measure by wide margins.

Experts say the bill is the first of its kind in the US.

Hawaii already levies a 10.25% tax on short-term rentals. As of 1 January, the tax will rise to 11%. Hawaii’s counties separately charge a 3% lodging tax, and travelers also have to pay the 4.712% general excise tax that applies to all virtually all goods and services. The cumulative tax bill at checkout will climb to 18.712%, among the highest in the nation.

Green, the governor, argued the increase was small enough tourists would not feel much of a difference. As many visitors travel to the state to enjoy the environment, he predicted they would welcome committing dollars to protect shorelines and communities.

“The more you cultivate good environmental policy, and the more you invest in perfecting our lived space, the more likely it is we’re going to have actually lifelong, committed travelers to Hawaii,” he told the Associated Press.

Zane Edleman, a visitor from Chicago, said he could envision the extra cost prompting some travelers to head elsewhere else, like Florida. But, he said, it would depend on how the state shares information about what it does with the money.

“If you really focus on the point – this is to save the climate and actually have proof that this is where the funds are going, and that there’s an actual result that’s happening from that, I think people could buy into it,” Edleman said.

The first draft of the legislation called for a larger increase, but lawmakers pared it back.

[uboat53]

Here we go, in no particular order, here are some of my thoughts on what we'll see in the next year or two based on the election results:

THE ECONOMY

Unless something pretty serious happens, it's very likely that Trump will make good on his promise of massive tariffs on all American imports. Given that we import a lot of stuff from the rest of the world (check any manufactured item in your house, I'll bet it doesn't say "made in America"), that means prices will likely increase substantially. The predictable result of that is probably a pullback of consumer spending and a recession. If we're really unlucky, we'll have inflation and a recession at the same time, the dreaded "stagflation".

More broadly, it's likely that the only thing Republicans will do economically in terms of legislation is pass a massive, deficit financed tax cut for the rich. Again. Honestly, this is an easy one to guess because it's what they do every time they have power. It's direct effect will probably be minimal (though any effect is likely to be inflationary) although it remains an open question how long the US can run up the credit card without any major economic consequences.

We're also likely to see a wave of deregulation. Expect the new administration to try to roll back all of the consumer protections that Biden has put in place, end the lawsuits against big corporations that are exploiting their market power, and generally tilt the playing field back in favor of big corporations and wealthy people.

Oh yes, and let's talk about the immigration thing here. Trump is promising to deport millions of illegal immigrants (by current estimates there are about 11 million of them). And, look, I'm not a professional economist, but I think it's reasonably easy to guess what happens when you remove millions of people of working age from the labor pool. Again, this is likely to be inflationary (less workers available, so pay and, thus, costs, go up) and recessionary (fewer consumers buying things) at the same time.

PUBLIC HEALTH

With a knowledgeable public health expert like RFK Jr. leading the government's public health efforts, what could possibly go wr… sorry, couldn't finish that with a straight face. Yeah, Trump's gone off the deep end public health-wise ever since the public health people kept pointing out how badly he was screwing up his last major public health emergency, so now he's only listening to quacks and nut jobs.

The odds are pretty good that vaccines are on the target list and the administration will reduce or eliminate programs that encourage them. It's a good bet that, in the next decade or so, we'll see a resurgence of diseases like measles and polio that we thought we'd eradicated. Of course, if we get another pandemic like Covid, I'd bet on a high body count and massive economic impact as well.

We're also likely to see more and more women dying due to pregnancy-related complications. Biden was pushing hard to enforce a federal law that requires hospitals to save women's lives, but it's doubtful that Trump will keep doing that. He'll also likely not enforce any other protections and allow even stronger crackdowns on abortion in states that are eager to do so.

MINORITIES

If you're not a straight, white, cisgender, Christian man, things are likely to get a lot worse for you over the next four years. Look for the administration to take every opportunity to attack gay and trans people and to promote Christianity over other beliefs. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice is also likely to be neutered, as it has been under every Republican administration since at least Reagan, so many states will happily violate the rights of racial minorities without any federal pushback. The same is true of laws and regulations that protect women.

Beyond the official, though, we also have to face the societal effects of another Trump Presidency. Despite the loud protestations of his supporters, Trump is beloved among the racist far-right, and for good reason. His administration borrowed heavily from their ideas and their language and even used their personnel and there's no reason to expect a second term to be any different. There is a reason that right-wing terror surged in our country in Trump's first term and it'll probably do the same now.

Expect more shootings of black and brown people and more attacks on Jews and Jewish places of worship. The racists believe the President is on their side and he's given them no reason to think otherwise.

THE NEXT ELECTION

All right, I'm going out on a limb here and this is my longest range projection, but it's a fairly reasonable bet that Democrats will take/retake the House of Representatives in 2026. I can confidently predict this because the party that controls the presidency has lost House seats in nearly every election since the Great Depression. Based on current results (which may change as western states count more votes), the Republicans will have a 4 vote margin in the House and the average midterm loss is 27 seats. Heck, they lost 47 seats in 2018 the last time Trump was in office. Even the Democrats who had a good year in 2022 still lost 10 seats. Seems like a pretty good bet.

As for the Senate, that's a bit harder to predict. At the moment, Republicans will have anywhere from 52 to 54 seats when all the votes are counted from this election. Based on the 2020 Senate elections map (that's the class of Senators that will be up for re-election in 2026), I'd count anywhere from 2-4 seats that the Democrats might be able to flip, the rest are probably safe. So is it possible that Democrats could retake the Senate in '26? Absolutely. Is it likely? Good question. Ask me in a year or so.

CONCLUSION

It's likely that life in America is going to get worse over the next year or two, how much worse depends a lot on how we react. At best, we'll likely face further inflation (every economic policy Trump has voiced support for is inflationary), increased sickness and disease, and increased attacks on the lives and well-beings of anyone who isn't a straight, white, cisgender, Christian man. At worst, well, all of those things but much more intense.

If we're fortunate, Democrats will take the House and serve as a much-needed check on the worst impulses of President-elect Trump. If not, at least the next election will likely do it, though a good deal of damage will be done between now and then.

[mariacallous]

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to conduct “the largest deportation effort in American history,” no matter the price tag—but the economic costs of such a campaign may be bigger than he has bargained for. 

Trump soared to victory in the recent presidential election after campaigning on a hard-line immigration policy and promising to oversee mass deportations, pledging at one point to target between 15 million and 20 million undocumented immigrants. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has said that the administration would “start with 1 million,” beginning with “the most violent criminals.” 

When the former U.S. leader returns to office in January, those plans are certain to face logistic, legal, political, and financial obstacles—all of which have raised questions about what Trump can actually do, and how quickly. But if Trump does succeed in conducting deportations close to the scale that he has promised, economists expect the effort to deal a blow to the U.S. economy, driving up inflation and undercutting economic growth.

“Leaving aside the human issues, leaving aside the law issues, we think that would be very destructive economically,” said Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “I don’t think people have really understood how potentially big that effect is.”

Around 11 million people are estimated to be in the United States illegally, according to the Department of Homeland Security, a population that accounts for nearly 5 percent of the total U.S. workforce and comprises particularly large shares of the labor force in agriculture, construction, and leisure and hospitality.

As of 2017, an estimated 66 percent of undocumented immigrants had lived in the United States for more than a decade, while some 4.4 million U.S.-born children lived with a parent who was in the country illegally.

The removal of such a sizable labor and consumer force would likely reverberate throughout the U.S. economy, economists told Foreign Policy. 

The “mass deportation of millions of people will cause reduced employment opportunities for U.S. workers, it will cause reduced economic growth in America, it will cause a surge in inflation, and it will cause increased budget deficits—that is, a higher tax burden on Americans,” said Michael Clemens, an economist who studies international migration at George Mason University.

While it’s difficult to predict what exactly Trump’s deportation effort will look like, his ambitions are now coming into sharper focus. The president-elect has confirmed his plans to declare a national emergency and enlist the military to carry out the deportations. Stephen Miller, who served as the administration’s immigration czar in Trump’s first term and will be his next deputy chief of staff for policy, has said that the administration will oversee sweeping workplace raids and build “vast holding facilities,” likely in Texas, to detain those who are awaiting deportations. 

“We’re already working on a plan,” said Tom Homan—whom Trump has named his next “border czar” and who was formerly acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—in a recent interview with Fox News. “We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE.” 

That will likely entail a steep price tag. Mobilizing the resources to arrest, detain, legally process, and then ultimately deport 1 million immigrants per year—as Vance has suggested—would cost some $88 billion annually, according to estimates by the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrants. Removing all 13.3 million people who are either in the United States illegally or under some sort of revocable temporary status would require $967.9 billion over the course of more than 10 years, the group estimates. 

“Deporting a person is very expensive,” said Andrea Velasquez, an economist at the University of Colorado Denver. “That is going to impose a huge fiscal burden,” she added. 

And those are just the upfront costs. Undocumented immigrants comprise a major labor force in the United States—particularly in the agricultural sector, where they have accounted for some 40 percent of the farm labor force over the past three decades—often earning lower wages for jobs that the vast majority of American voters say they do not want. 

These immigrants are also a major consumer force that spends money and contributes to the U.S. economy in the form of taxes, all while being ineligible for most federal benefits. 

There are “the indirect costs of the lost economic contributions, productivity, and taxes of the people who would be removed,” said Julia Gelatt, an expert in U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute. 

In 2022, for example, undocumented immigrants paid some $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes—the majority of which went to the federal government, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 

Given their tax contributions, Wendy Edelberg, an economist at the Brookings Institution, said that undocumented immigrants are “really good for the federal budget.” But that’s not always the case for state and local governments, which don’t raise as much in taxes from them but are responsible for supplying schooling and health care. Supporting undocumented immigrants can often be a “net negative” for their budgets, she said.

Texas, for example, shelled out more than $100 million on for undocumented immigrants’ emergency hospital care in 2023; New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that the city’s ongoing migrant crisis could cost some $12 billion over a three year period. 

Proponents of mass deportations, such as Vance, argue that the plan would be economically beneficial for American workers, including by helping to ease an affordable housing crisis and generating more employment opportunities. Given that undocumented immigrants are often working at lower pay, they reason, removing them from the country would push U.S. firms to hire American workers at higher wages.

“People say, well, Americans won’t do those jobs. Americans won’t do those jobs for below-the-table wages. They won’t do those jobs for non-living wages. But people will do those jobs, they will just do those jobs at certain wages,” Vance told the New York Times in October. 

“We cannot have an entire American business community that is giving up on American workers and then importing millions of illegal laborers,” he added. “It’s one of the biggest reasons why we have millions of people who’ve dropped out of the labor force.”

Past mass deportations, however, indicate that the scheme may actually harm employment outcomes for American workers. To understand the labor market impacts of mass deportations, a group of economists, including Velasquez, studied the effects of the Obama administration’s “Secure Communities” program, which expelled more than 400,000 undocumented immigrants. 

Rather than boosting American workers’ job prospects, the study suggested that the Obama-era mass deportations actually cut their employment numbers and wages. With almost half a million undocumented immigrants removed from the labor pool—either through deportations or more indirectly—the economists found that 44,000 U.S.-born workers also lost their employment. 

That’s likely because undocumented immigrants and U.S.-born workers often compete for different jobs, so the result of mass deportations is “labor shortages,” Velasquez said. “That is going to lead to higher labor costs, so now it’s going to be more expensive to produce, and that is going to create a ripple effect that is also going to affect their demand for U.S.-born workers,” she said. 

“The idea that removing [undocumented immigrants] causes U.S. workers to rush in and fill the same jobs is a fantasy,” said Clemens, who was not one of the study’s authors. 

And it’s not just American labor outcomes that could be affected, either; studies suggest that the impacts of mass deportations would likely be felt across the U.S. economy more broadly. 

An analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, for example, found that if the Trump administration deported 1.3 million people who are in the country illegally, both the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and overall employment would suffer. GDP would drop 1.2 percent below the baseline scenario, in which there are no deportations, while employment would fall by 1.1 percent by 2028. 

In a more extreme scenario, where the Trump administration deported 8.3 million undocumented immigrants, the economic outlook would be even worse. Compared to the baseline forecast, GDP would plummet by 7.4 percent by 2028 while employment would drop by 6.7 percent. 

In both scenarios, deportations would also drive up inflation through 2028, with the agricultural sector being especially hard hit. 

“Take an essential ingredient out of the economy, and the ripple effects extend,” Clemens said. 

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Anthropocene Magazine:

U.S. states can decarbonize on their own for about the same price as a federal-led effort to reduce emissions by the same amount, according to a new study. The findings underline that a “coalition of the willing” could not bring the country to net-zero emissions on its own. But they also represent a hopeful vision of how climate action in the U.S. could continue despite Trump Administration rollbacks.

The Biden Administration pursued ambitious decarbonization policies via the Inflation Reduction Act and other initiatives, while the Trump Administration has taken a very different approach to climate policy. The situation highlights the volatility of national-level climate action in the United States, even as the American public broadly supports developing alternative energy sources, and urgent action is needed to avoid locking in fossil fuels with new infrastructure.

Enter “climate federalism,” a concept that casts U.S. states as laboratories not just of democracy but of climate action. In theory, this bottom-up approach might be more effective and durable than top-down action. In the new study, researchers sketch out what it might look like in practice.

“Ultimately the most important takeaway here is that state-led action can achieve substantial emission reductions, even without federal support, but that the world looks very different from one where there is federal coordination,” says study team member Jeremiah Johnson, an environmental engineer at North Carolina State University. “This has some important implications, not just for those states that choose to participate, but also for those who don’t.”

Johnson and his colleagues identified 23 U.S. states that are most likely to pursue net-zero emissions by 2050, based on the number of climate policies currently on the books as well as their overall political leanings. They fed publicly available energy system data into a computer model to estimate the cost of decarbonization and predict the green technologies that the states would likely turn to in their efforts.

Action by this group of states could reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 46% by 2050, the researchers report in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers then used the same model to explore what federally coordinated action to reduce national emissions by the same amount would look like.

Federal led climate action would be about 0.7% cheaper than state action, the researchers found. “We were surprised [the state-led] emissions reductions would be achieved at costs comparable to federal actions,” Johnson says. Since only about half of U.S. states were expected to pursue net-zero emissions, “we expected to see this considerably push up the costs of achieving deep decarbonization.”

However, the mix of green technologies that would be used in a state-led decarbonization effort would be different from the federally coordinated one. The state-led effort would lean heavily on green manufacturing technologies to decarbonize industry, while the federal approach would rely more on clean energy such as solar and wind power.

The net-zero states would likely rely on electrification to reduce emissions from transportation and industry, as well as direct air capture to neutralize residual emissions. They might also purchase more electricity from neighboring states, leading to the potential for “emissions leakage.” In the state-led scenario, “we observed substantial new electricity exports from the Great Plains states into the Upper Midwest while those exporting states increased fossil fuel-based use,” Johnson says. “This would undercut the efforts of net-zero states unless their policies are designed to address this.”

The state-led scenario also leaves some cost-effective mitigation opportunities on the table, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in the Southeastern United States, where states are unlikely to pursue decarbonization without federal action. Still, if state-led action is the only option, this can lead to substantial progress on climate, the study shows.

[luv4estiebestie]

Does McLaren exceed the cost cap? 

In the course of this year, the McLaren car has been updated from a midfield car to the arguably fastest car on the grid, being able to build a twenty second gap to Verstappen in a RedBull and keep all the other teams that have shown to have a race winning pace behind. Shortly after the win in Zandvoort, Zak Brown revealed that they would bring even more updates for the car in Monza. Quite a few people are confused by this, and ask for McLaren to be investigated on their monetary spend, because people think that they have already exceeded the cost cap, but I want to share my thoughts on McLarens financial situation.

I am not quite sure how people think the teams work the cost cap, but generally we can assume that the administration of the finances works the following; 

First of all, there are certain amounts that teams are aware of from the beginning of the year on. This includes the wages, equipment and the base car that they build at the beginning of the year (important here; base car, excluding updates and crashes). This part makes up the biggest portion of the cost cap, and although teams can save here a bit by not employing as many people, teams that work well will try to stay with similar numbers here.

Second of all, there are expected expenses. Crashes, faulty parts that need replacement, ect. These things can only be predicted and not be guessed as accurately as the fixed costs which is why teams can lose or win most in this category.

Last but not least, there is everything that they have left, such as updates, making spare parts, ect. While teams will also have an estimated amount for these expenses, they are dependent on the expected expenses, and by this, McLarens seemingly financial freedom can be explained.

McLaren has been very lucky this year. Every single one of their updates work, so there is no wasted money there, but they have more money left than probably expected. Why? Their drivers are pretty cheap. While driver wages do not fall into the cost cap, any expenses made by crashes do. McLaren hasn’t mentioned it, but for RedBull the opposite is the case; in the past few years, they didn’t lose as much in crashes; in 2023, they lost estimated $3.5 million, in 2022 only estimated $1.6 million.This season though,they’ve already lost an estimated $4.5 million and we still have nine races left. Important is to keep in mind that these amounts are only estimated, but Dr. Helmut Marko himself said that especially Perez’ crash in Monaco is dangerous for their cost cap, and although I usually do not necessarily think he tells the truth at all times, this does make sense. It’s been discussed by multiple sources that RedBull has probably planned less for crashes this season and had thus to cut back on possible updates.

McLaren on the other hand, has most likely more money left than expected. With only nine races left, they have only had to spend an estimated $1 million on crashes. They won’t use all of their funds of predicted damages for updates, but winning the constructors championship would be of incredible performance for McLaren.

Furthermore, different than RedBull, not only did all of their updates work, but they also have had less than RedBull. While RedBull has had to try their hardest to make their car drivable again, thus bringing rushed updates almost every race week, McLaren has only had updates in three races. These were bigger packages, but they were also better planned and worked so well that they did not lose any money having to redo them.

In the end, these are mostly guesses though, but I am fairly positive that all teams try their hardest to stay below the cost cap. I guess, the reason McLaren finds themselves under scrutiny, is that people quickly make up things because they dislike the team and others just read it and believe it, so as usually, I don’t expect, nor do I want, anyone from just believing my thoughts without any questioning. Look at the data, read the official FIA regulations and think about what is logical yourself, without just listening to others. Sapere aude and all that.

[atiny-for-life]

Mini Lore Nugget #8:

Mini Lore Nuggets - Masterlist

In the Fever Part.2 Diary Entries, we learned that Z-World's government really started shooting up on the waking-nightmare-scale after they began running AI simulations to come up with the "best" policies to implement for maximum control and efficiency.

What resulted from these simulations was that the AI determined all crimes and terrorism were strictly the result of human emotions. Therefore, the best way to rid the world of such suffering must be to eradicate emotions and all which might evoke it.

Z's government developed technology to essentially numb the population - the chips we later learned about in the World Ep.1 Diary Entries. In the Fever Part.3 Diary Entries, we then got some additional info on the AI software used by the government: it was an AI system which utilized deep learning technology and ran uncontrolled for a while as the government awaited its results.

During this time, the system began treating human emotion as a bug - perhaps because it couldn't understand it - and it also started estimating humans' individual energy, thereby reducing it to a product. And since it found it to be a product, it also began treating it as a tradeable commodity.

Instead of questioning these results, the government was more likely delighted, because they immediately took over this new energy trading platform, banned all arts and emotions, and wilfully stripped the population of its humanity by treating them as nothing more than components needed to maintain the governments' idea of a utopia.

Out here in the real world, we've also begun to see the crazy amount of negative consequences since AI technology has become widely implemented in pretty much all areas of life:

#1 - Use of AI in Healthcare

In the US, the healthcare system has been relying on AI powered algorithms to guide health care decisions, but due to the data sampled by the AI, extreme racial bias has crept in and is actively putting black lives at risk. To quote Science Journal:

At a given risk score, Black patients are considerably sicker than White patients, as evidenced by signs of uncontrolled illnesses. Remedying this disparity would increase the percentage of Black patients receiving additional help from 17.7 to 46.5%.

Furthermore, the data sourced by AI for global use (such as in risk-prediction) is often extremely biased in other ways as well: radiology manuscripts are over represented, the majority of documents sourced are authored by men, and data-poor regions are grossly underrepresented, meaning the majority of information sourced comes from the US and China. [Source]

#2 - YouTube's Algorithm Is Messed Up

According to the Tech Transparency Project which has gathered data from another study:

YouTube recommended hundreds of videos about guns and gun violence to accounts for boys interested in video games. Some of the recommended videos gave instructions on how to convert guns into automatic weapons or depicted school shootings. Many of the videos violated YouTube’s own policies on firearms, violence, and child safety, and YouTube took no apparent steps to age-restrict them. YouTube also recommended a movie about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to minor accounts.

Further watching on dumb stuff YouTube AI features have done to fuck people over:

#3 - Ethics Has Left the Chat

#4 - The Physical Cost of Generative AI

Where Meta has recently constructed a 2 million square foot data facility in Georgia, a nearby living couple have documented the devastating consequences to the environment and their lives.

Facilities like these are used to power stuff like Chat GPT, Gemini, etc.:

In order for them to function as needed, they put a huge toll on the power grid and require the construction of an entirely new infrastructure atop the usual servers, storage systems and networking equipment.

For one, AI data centres require high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) which come with their own required infrastructure needs (advanced storage, networking, energy and cooling capabilities). The sheer number of GPUs necessary for AI use alone then already add a ton more square footage to the size of the data centre.

On top of that, living in a county with a data centre like this in the US drives up the cost of electricity for everyone in the county.

And what does all this mean for the environment? Deforestation. Light pollution. Air pollution. Here is a still frame from a video shot by a woman living over 366 meters away from an AI centre's construction site:

All this pollution then started seeping into the ground water, resulting in this:

And what does that mean for someone living nearby? Dishwashers breaking. Washing machines breaking. Water pressure dropping to the point where you can't even flush a toilet anymore because all the pipes are clogged with sediment.

On a global scale, it should also be noted that:

According to the Washington Post in collaboration with the University of California, Riverside, writing a single 100-word email in Open AI's ChatGPT is the equivalent of consuming just over one bottle of water.

Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of engineering at UC Riverside, says that while "We haven’t come to the point yet where AI has tangibly taken away our most essential natural water resources," the use of AI in places with frequent droughts has caused rising tension between communities who need the water and data centers. Not to mention, hardware production pollutes water, per a study initially published in January 2015 in the Journal of Cleaner Production, due to the extraction of precious minerals like boron, silicon, and phosphorous.

[Source]

UPDATE:

A new video has been released which takes a look at Memphis where Elon Musk had the data center built that allows for Twitter's Chat-Bot Gronk to exist, and here is what was discovered:

No regulatory body has been informed of what is operating within that facility.

Large turbines are causing noise pollution (far more turbines than is reasonable).

The building emits a disturbing smell.

Aerial and thermal footage obtained of the site has revealed that:

The air quality in the entire area has been severely degraded to the point of causing health issues for people living in the area:

Continuing, Alexis shared her grandfather's story of how he developed Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) despite being a non-smoker-

- and continuous by saying her, her mother, and grandmother all three also developed respiratory illnesses (asthma and bronchitis in Alexis's case and just bronchitis in her mother and grandmother's case):

Another local is dealing with much the same issue:

If you're still not convinced of how truly horrific the situation is:

And if you're now wondering how all this could happen, I've got one word for you: DOGE. Together with the Trump administration, funds for the EPA have been slashed to the point where they're basically non-functional:

Presently, should everything continue on this set path, then...

These videos provided the screenshots used above:

#5 - Use of AI in Warfare

Israel has been using untested and undisclosed AI-powered databases in order to identify targets and plan bombing campaigns throughout Gaza, which has reportedly led to the loss of thousands of civilian lives.

And who provided this technology? Google. For fear of losing business to Amazon. And not just them. Microsoft too has been collaborating with the Israeli military, as has Amazon who collaborated with Google in 2021 to establish "Project Nimbus" which continues on to this day with zero transparency or accountability.

Sources: x | x

Beyond that, even after the bombs were dropped, drones would come in to specifically target surviving children and it is known that Israel utilized AI-powered drones for carrying out precise assassinations and various combat missions.

The video below is timestamped to when this surgeon retells the horrors of what happened to the children while he was working in the Gaza strip:

Outside of Israel, Ukraine has also been using AI-technology in its warfare:

Further reading on the topic:

#6 - AI-Generated Art

With AI-generated art flooding social media and streaming platforms on the daily, it's getting harder and harder for new artists to enter the scene. On top of that, all the recommendations you're getting online - be that on an image search, streaming platform or elsewhere - are also all the result of AI-powered algorithms.

And as we all know, generative AI is trained on data banks filled to the brim with stolen art from non-consenting artists across the globe - be that musicians, painters, photographers, voice actors, chefs, or writers.

All of this ultimately shapes the world we live in. Those in the know are now full of mistrust of corporations, new information, articles, and media. Anything and anyone is being accused of using AI when they post something online by skeptics, and those who don't know any better are living in blissful ignorance while they're being spoon-fed misinformation left, right, and center.

Further watching on generative AI as a whole:

Further reading:

Final Note:

Not all AI is bad, of course. There have been major breakthroughs in all fields of science thanks to AI which will bring about positive change for (hopefully) all of humanity.

But the problem is that the technology is developing far too quickly for lawmakers to keep up with (as planned, most likely, by all the billionaire tech bros on this planet) and generative AI in particular should have never been made publicly accessible. It should have remained in the hands of trained professionals who know how to use it responsibly.

[asestimationsconsultants]

How Accurate Are Estimates from a Cost Estimating Service in Australia

Accuracy is the cornerstone of every cost estimating service in Australia. For builders, developers, architects, and clients, the reliability of an estimate can determine whether a project proceeds smoothly or falls into financial risk. When provided by qualified professionals, cost estimates in Australia can be impressively precise—but several factors influence just how close an estimate is to actual construction costs.

Factors That Influence Estimate Accuracy

Accuracy in cost estimating depends on the quality of project documentation. If the design drawings, scope of work, and specifications are complete and clear, estimators have a strong foundation to deliver a tightly aligned forecast. Australian estimators also rely on robust local databases like Rawlinsons and Cordell, which provide real-time pricing for materials, labour, and equipment across different states and cities.

Experienced estimators also factor in regional conditions such as soil quality, access challenges, local labour availability, and even weather patterns, which can impact both scheduling and costs. This attention to detail leads to highly accurate projections, particularly in urban centres like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane where market data is consistently updated.

Industry Standards for Estimate Tiers

Cost estimating services in Australia often use a tiered system to indicate the expected accuracy range. For example:

Order of Magnitude Estimate: Used in early planning, typically accurate within ±25–40%.

Preliminary Estimate: Based on schematic designs, with ±15–25% accuracy.

Detailed Estimate: Based on construction-ready drawings, with ±5–10% accuracy.

Definitive Estimate: The most accurate, often within ±2–5%, suitable for tenders and financing.

This structure ensures clients understand the level of confidence attached to the estimate and can make budget decisions accordingly.

Impact of Local Experience and Data Sources

A cost estimating service in Australia that’s familiar with local council requirements, builder practices, and regional pricing trends can deliver much more accurate numbers. For example, understanding the cost differences between building in inner Sydney versus rural NSW is essential for precision. Services that maintain relationships with subcontractors and suppliers also have access to more realistic figures rather than relying on outdated pricing averages.

Common Reasons for Variances

Even a well-prepared estimate can differ from final costs due to changes in scope, labour shortages, unforeseen site conditions, or price fluctuations. However, a professional estimator will include contingencies and escalation allowances to reduce the impact of such changes. High-quality services also offer post-estimate support to help clients revise budgets or value engineer where necessary.

FAQs

How accurate can I expect my estimate to be if I only have a basic floor plan? With minimal documentation, most services will provide a preliminary estimate, which typically has a ±15–25% margin of error. For greater accuracy, more detailed plans are essential.

Are Australian estimates adjusted for inflation or market conditions? Yes. Reliable services use cost escalation forecasts and market trend analysis to account for material price changes and labour inflation over time.

Can an estimate guarantee my final construction cost? No estimate can guarantee the final cost due to uncontrollable factors like design changes or market volatility. However, a well-prepared estimate can come within 5–10% of actual costs in most cases.

Is it worth paying for a high-accuracy estimate early in planning? Yes, particularly for large or complex projects. Early investment in accurate estimating helps avoid costly overruns and supports financial approvals or tender submissions.

Conclusion

Estimates from a cost estimating service in Australia can be highly accurate when built on solid documentation, local knowledge, and current data. While no estimate can foresee every variable, partnering with a qualified service ensures you have a realistic and strategic foundation for budgeting. In Australia’s competitive construction environment, estimate accuracy isn’t just a benefit—it’s a necessity.

[beardedmrbean]

Prices for goods and services moved up less than expected in February, providing some relief as consumers and businesses worry about the looming impact tariffs might have on inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a wide-ranging measure of costs across the U.S. economy, ticked up a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.8%, according to the Labor Department agency. The all-item CPI had increased 0.5% in January.

Excluding food and energy prices, the core CPI also rose 0.2% on the month and was at 3.1% on a 12-month basis, the lowest reading since April 2021. The core CPI had climbed 0.4% in January.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 0.3% increases on both headline and core, with respective annual rates of 2.9% and 3.2%, meaning that all of the rates were 0.1 percentage point less than expected.

Stock market indexes were mixed after the release after initially moving higher. reasury yields rose. Markets have been highly volatile as the Dow Jones Industrial Average has slipped 6% over the past month.

“A lot of this inflation data does not incorporate what is to come and what already has happened for tariffs,” said Kevin Gordon, senor investment strategist at Charles Schwab. “The vagaries and uncertainties associated with policy are still a much stronger force in the market than anything CPI-related or in terms of one data point.”

Shelter costs moved up 0.3%, less than in January but still responsible for about half the monthly increase in the CPI, the BLS said. The annual increase of 4.2% was the smallest since December 2021. The category makes up more than one-third of the total weighting in the CPI, with particular focus on a measure in what homeowners estimate they could get in rent for their properties, which also increased 0.3%.

Food and energy indexes both increased 0.2%. Used vehicle prices jumped 0.9% and apparel rose 0.6%. Within food, egg prices soared another 10.4%, taking the 12-month increase to 58.8% and pushing a broader measure that also includes meat, poultry and fish up 7.7% on the year. Beef prices also climbed 2.4% in February.

Motor vehicle insurance posted a 0.3% increase on the month and was up 11.1% annually. However, airline fares slipped 4% in February and were down 0.7% from a year ago.

Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings increased 0.1% for the month and were up 1.2% from a year ago, the BLS said in a separate release.

“The market’s interpretation is appropriate. We still don’t know anything about how inflation is going to work with the new tariff regime,” said Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies. “At least for now, the momentum is moving in the Fed’s favor.”

The report comes at a potentially critical juncture for the U.S. economy and financial markets, which have been shaken lately as President Donald Trump escalates a trade war and concerns rise of a growth scare.

In the latest developments, Trump’s 25% duties on steel and aluminum took effect Wednesday, prompting retaliatory measures from the European Union. Trump also has slapped 20% levies on goods from China.

“Today’s CPI report shows inflation is declining and the economy is moving in the right direction under President Trump,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement. “This inflation report, much like last week’s jobs report, is far better than the media predicted and the so-called ‘experts’ expected.”

Federal Reserve officials also are watching the developments closely. Central bank policymakers generally consider tariffs to have modest impacts on inflation and often are viewed as one-off measures that don’t have lasting impact on longer-term gauges.

However, a broader trade war could change that if the pace of increases becomes more ingrained in the economy. Markets currently expect the Fed to resume cutting interest rates in June, with a total of 0.75 percentage point in reductions by the end of 2025.

“The February CPI release showed further signs of progress on underlying inflation, with the pace of price increases moderating after January’s strong release,” said Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. “While the Fed is still likely to remain on hold at this month’s meeting, the combination of easing inflationary pressures and rising downside risks to growth suggest that the Fed is moving closer to continuing its easing cycle.”

The Fed meets next week and is widely expected to hold its key borrowing rate in a target range between 4.25%-4.5%.

Economic growth is trending negative in the first quarter, according to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker of incoming data. The measure has pegged Q1 growth at a 2.4% decline, which would be the first negative growth quarter in three years.

[penig]

So we're having a rough summer and I haven't been talking about it because why brood but it's different when you talk about people being nice. So, thumbnail sketch:

We finally (as I've been wanting to do for years) got an estimate on getting the house rewired (pretty sure some of the original wiring installed in 1910 is in use) and partially replumbed (can't use the shower tub because the iron pipes are too clogged), and the paperwork for the loan took forever, and then a high wind came along (on my birthday) and dropped a dead redbud tree on our porch and a large branch on our car, which was totaled, and we had to buy a new (used) car and get a tree service to come out and take care of the fallen wood and trim the trees so no more wood falls, but the cost to take care of the big branch and woodpecker damaged tree in the back yard was more than we could afford with the car business, but that could wait a few months assuming no more high winds come along; and the loan comes through and we get the car squared away and the tree service is scheduled to come and we're starting to breathe again -

And I spy somebody putting what I recognize as a code violation notice on the front gate so I open the door and come out to tell her that if this is about the redbud tree on the porch we've already scheduled the work and she says: "It's everything on the lot. Cut it down to 12 inches. You have ten days" So I point out that most of the tall stuff is legal garden plants that should not be pruned in August, that it's two years since I've been physically capable of doing yardwork of any kind, that the work she's demanding is impossible in that time frame and oh yes, it's August, in Texas, with triple digit temperatures predicted for the foreseeable future and it could very well kill me to try. She thought there might be a local program to help me (No; they're all for structural work) and wouldn't budge. So that was like being shoved back underwater when we'd almost crawled out on shore.

But we put out a call to our friends, and people came over Saturday and did miracles, and almost every day this week somebody has come over (in addition to the people putting holes in our walls and ceilings and arguing over how to run the wires and occasionally turning pale at what they find) to help me in the mornings before the third digit kicked in. We did not, of course prune any of the poor heat stressed legal plants, but great inroads were made on the rest of it, and one friend even cut up the big branch in the back yard and the tree service people hauled it off, along with a collapsed picnic table which they told me, when they quoted the price for this small secondary job, that they would not take.

This morning I could barely move. I'm getting a lot of pain in the good leg as well as the bad leg, and in my back, plus I was just weak with heat and tiredness, and for the first time in almost a year I decided I'd better break out the cane again, at least to take the stairs and walk in the yard to discuss with the friend who came today, the last day before the inspection, where best to put his effort (because it was plain to both of us that I wasn't lifting a finger) in order to convince the inspector that we really had done the best we could and to let the stuff we couldn't get to slide until fall and spring.

And I guess one of the workmen noticed the cane, and noticed that the handrail on the upper staircase had pulled out of the wall on one end (it had been anchored to the sheetrock, not the wall proper; the other end was anchored in paneling and was fine; this happened a couple of months ago and we had bigger worries), and just - fixed it. Because it's certainly fixed now. As is typical in Texas most of the workmen are people I can't even talk to because my Spanish is as bad as their English, so it's not as if we've made friends with them. And I didn't see it done, nor did the foreman know who did it when I brought it up and asked him to thank whoever it was, so it wasn't somebody looking to make points. They just saw a chance to do a small simple thing to benefit a total stranger, and did it.

The point here being that two people - whoever called in the code complaint (seriously, that should be illegal in August, at least for yard code with no clear and present danger) and the city employee who wouldn't listen to reason - went out of their way to force me to focus on the least pressing problem facing us right now at the expense of my own well-being. But they are far, far outnumbered by the people who have gone out of their way to help us, just because we needed help.

So, suck it, cynicism!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice:

Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that if he returns to the White House, he will deport every undocumented person in the US. Most experts say that would be 11 million people, but Trump has insisted that the number is closed to 18 million or even 30 million. Trump’s provided few details about how he would go about accomplishing such a massive forced relocation program, though he’s suggested he would deputize local police, call in the National Guard, and perhaps use the military. He’s also said, with some relish, that “getting them out will be a bloody story.” This past weekend, Trump turned his violent and dehumanizing rhetoric up to 11, proclaiming during an event in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, that migrants “will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”

“These people are animals,” Trump said, vowing that "I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We're going to liberate our country." This Trumpian dystopia bears no resemblance to reality. Trump went as far as to claim that “hundreds of little cities and little towns" in the Midwest are being "occupied" by migrants with "MK-47s." As untethered from reality as he is, Trump is deadly serious about attempting deportation on an unprecedented scale. Even making an attempt to round up that many people would lead to horrific suffering and the weaponizing of state terror against immigrants, Latinos, Black people, and Trump’s partisan enemies. In short, Trump is calling for a massive military operation that seems designed to lead to economic misery, concentration camps, and mass death.

Mass deportation would be massively expensive

Experts are skeptical that Trump could enact his terrifying deportation agenda in part because to do so would require vast amounts of money. The funds would have to come from Congress, and even far right legislators are likely to balk at the cost. In 2023, ICE deported 142,580 people with a budget of $420 million. Trump wants to deport at minimum 10 million individuals; proportionally, that would cost about $30 billion.

There would be huge additional costs as well. ICE currently spends some $2.4 billion a year on 41,500 detainee beds. Trump is calling for more than 10 times as much deportation; the cost for warehousing immigrants could also be tens of billions of dollars. Even that’s only scratching the surface of the cost. Immigrants contribute to the economy by paying taxes, performing needed jobs, and providing income for households that include US citizens. Undocumented people paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022; that’s all money that would be lost if Trump got his wish. In addition, the Center for Migration studies estimates that if a third of US citizen children of undocumented immigrants remain in the US after their parents are deported, the state would end up spending $118 billion to care for them. GDP could contract 1.4 percent in the first year. Losses could total $4.7 trillion over a decade.

As the Washington Monthly argues, deporting 11 million immigrants would cause a national labor contraction and recession; there could be 968,000 job losses for American citizens. National wage and salary income could fall by $317.2 billion. Total deportation costs could be $265 billion. In short, it’s impossible to fully anticipate or predict the cost of such a huge, wasteful, ill-considered program. But Trump’s deportation nightmare is likely to make the country poorer by trillions of dollars. Recession, contraction, and economic misery will afflict the US for years, and possibly decades.

Mass deportation will lead to mass human rights abuses

Analysts have struggled to quantify and describe the human rights implications of Trump’s deportation strategy. A militarized force going door to door throughout the country with sweeping powers to arrest anyone they deem suspicious is obviously going to lead to monstrous abuses.

Trump has also said that he would be open to creating mass concentration camps at the border to warehouse undocumented people. He’s claimed these camps would be temporary since he plans to deport people quickly — but it’s easy to imagine hundreds of thousands of people housed in “temporary” facilities without adequate food or water, subject to rampant disease and violence from guards. There are at least some historical blueprints that can give us a sense of how dangerous and vicious a mass deportation program could be. Trump has repeatedly touted the Eisenhower-era Operation Wetback, named for a racist slur, as an inspiration for his policy. The operation was conducted by a task force of around 800 agents, who set up roadblocks and raided homes and workplaces in 1954 and 1955. Eisenhower’s deportation program ejected between 300,000 and 1.3 million people in 1954-1955. The Mexican government helped, in hopes that returned migrants would help with the country’s labor shortage.

Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan to deport all undocumented immigrants is a catastrophic disaster for our economy and for civil liberties.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Dusty Days Are Here Again for El Paso

Spring and early summer are generally dusty in the Borderplex region of the Chihuahuan Desert—a transnational area that spans parts of southern New Mexico, West Texas, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. With the region gripped by exceptional drought, this has been especially true in 2025.

The latest in a string of storms lofted particles from dried lakes and other parched sources in northern Chihuahua and New Mexico and sent them streaming toward El Paso, Juárez, and Las Cruces. The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on April 27, 2025. The event followed a large dust storm that hit the region a week earlier, as well as other major dust storms in early and mid-March.

Research indicates that March, April, and May are typically the most active months for airborne dust in El Paso. But the dust season so far this year has been “truly exceptional—one for the record books,” said Thomas Gill, an environmental scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso. For decades, Gill has used satellite observations and models to track dust activity around the planet and in the Borderplex region.

He said this latest event is the tenth “full-fledged dust storm” of the year in El Paso, meaning it was dusty enough to restrict visibility to less than half a mile. For comparison, the average is 1.8 storms per year. “You would have to go back to 1936—during the Dust Bowl—to find a year with more,” Gill said. During the Dust Bowl years of 1935 and 1936, El Paso had 13 and 11 dust storms, respectively.

Unusual drought and windy conditions are fueling the surge in dust. “We’re in the worst drought we’ve seen in at least a decade, and this March was the windiest we’ve seen in more than 50 years,” Gill added.

Research shows dust storms can pose considerable hazards. In a 2023 analysis, Gill and several colleagues pointed out that the dangers of dust are often underappreciated. They contribute to deadly traffic accidents and elevate the risk of cardiorespiratory problems that lead to emergency room visits.

Dust may also help spread a fungal infection called Valley Fever, though the precise role of dust storms remains a topic of ongoing research and debate. In another analysis, Gill and colleagues estimated that dust storms cause more than $150 billion in economic damage each year, with farmers, the health care sector, the renewable energy industry, and households bearing large costs.

Several tools powered by NASA data and satellites are available to meteorologists, scientists, and others tracking dust storms. The Worldview browser hosts timely data and imagery from several satellites, and NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office has tools for real-time weather analysis and reanalysis.

Gill collaborates frequently with a NASA-sponsored health and air quality team led by George Mason University’s Daniel Tong. That team is working to develop better ways of forecasting and analyzing how dust storms can affect air quality. Researchers with NASA’s SPoRT (Short-term Prediction Research and Transition) project have also developed a new technique that uses machine learning to improve the tracking of dust plumes at night.

“It should be interesting to see how far the dust from this event travels,” noted Santiago Gasso, a University of Maryland atmospheric scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Some of it could be headed to the Great Lakes, New England, and maybe even to Greenland, as happened after one of the storms in March.”

Up to this point in the 2025 season, the Borderplex region has seen 28 days with dust. Over the past quarter century, the average for an entire year is 22 days. “We still have several more weeks of the dust season to go,” added Gill, noting that forecasters are warning of more dust as early as this weekend.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.