Apple Donating to Texas Relief Efforts

[GeoStructural]

TBH though I don't think many places with Texas' climate would have handled this significantly better. Regions adapt to what they know - it's how northern areas don't grind to a halt in the winter, but if they get freakishly hot summers they get rolling blackouts from the air conditioners or just don't have them, and areas that get forrest fires once in a couple decades don't have enough response.

I've been fortunate enough to have lived in a few different countries in the northern and southern hemisphere and almost universally when the weather goes this far out of spec it's a total poop show and you get people asking questions like why texas doesn't have enough snow plows with a straight face

I have two friends in Texas..praying for them two as well millions who have effected by this very unusual weather phenomenon. Stay warm, stay safe and stay healthy.

It is not as simple as that, this was much unexpected, we have been with no water and energy since Monday morning and hundreds died on the roads. In terms of temperatures, it wasn't this cold since 1989, in terms of snow fall we had not have this much since 1937.

As you see this is an episode of rare occurrence, so I do not really think the state is at much fault for not being prepared. I hope we can be ready for the next one, we must.

Still many towns are without electricity nor water. Some families are melting snow for consumption and stores have trashed their dairy and meat products due to the power outage.

 

[cmaier]

It is not as simple as that, this was much unexpected, we have been with no water and energy since Monday morning and hundreds died on the roads. In terms of temperatures, it wasn't this cold since 1989, in terms of snow fall we had not have this much since 1937.

As you see this is an episode of rare occurrence, so I do not really think the state is at much fault for not being prepared. I hope we can be ready for the next one, we must.

Still many towns are without electricity nor water. Some families are melting snow for consumption and stores have trashed their dairy and meat products due to the power outage.

Funny how every other surrounding state which also rarely gets cold weather was able to keep the power on and the streets plowed.

 

[Scotticus]

TBH though I don't think many places with Texas' climate would have handled this significantly better. Regions adapt to what they know - it's how northern areas don't grind to a halt in the winter, but if they get freakishly hot summers they get rolling blackouts from the air conditioners or just don't have them, and areas that get forrest fires once in a couple decades don't have enough response.

While rare, this kind of weather is not unprecedented. We had a similar storm back in 2011 on Super Bowl Sunday that knocked out power. Instead of putting money into preparing for this eventuality, our deregulated energy sector focused on maximizing profits. And now people are dead, bills for some customers is in the thousands, and many homeowners and renters have houses filled with freezing water because pipes froze and exploded.

This was entirely preventable, and our leaders were warned about this for years.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

So one CAT 5 hurricane hitting the US every 10 years is “regular”?

Yes. The primary meaning of “regularly” is “at uniform intervals.”

Our Sun orbiting around the center of our galaxy every 240 million years or so is “regular.”

 

[SuperCachetes]

For anyone interested, here is a success story from at least one part of Texas... El Paso is a major city but so remote it is not on the deregulated Texas power grid. They took note of the storm in 2011 that crippled them. The whole state should’ve followed this same playbook, but didn’t. The result of this series of decisions is now national news, unfortunately.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/02/19/el-paso-texas-winter-weather-gallagher-pkg-tsr-vpx.cnn

 

[AdonisSMU]

And yet Americans think they live in the best country of the world. It’s miles behind Europe.

But not it’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

 

[AdonisSMU]

my wife was born and raised on a ranch in central Texas. She says the worst snow she has ever seen before this was maybe an inch. Kind of hard to prepare for something like this if it never happens.

I’m from Northern Europe where snow like this is the norm, we deal with it pretty OK, but if we endured the Texas summer heat people would quite literally be dying in their thousands as no one has AC. Does Texas need to fix things? Definitely, but the extreme weather is so unusual I can’t blame them for not being prepared.

I’m from Texas and I crashed a car in a snow storm in Texas some years back. It’s not rare enough to ignore.

 

[Ashwee]

And yet Americans think they live in the best country of the world. It’s miles behind Europe.

This is unfortunately the truth from what I have seen myself back in 2019, coming from the UK.
I did a month road-trip in California 18 months ago, from San Diego to San Francisco. I imagined a country (or state at least) to be similar to my own, but what I experienced was vastly different... from the airport to the airport shuttle bus being some kind of 70's thing from the different motels and hotels every day. There were a lot of Teslas on the road which was a nice sight but then every other car was really old, seemingly a massive wealth gap.
The roads and infrastructure was the same and I was disappointed with my pre conceived ideas of what I thought it would be like, even seeing an Am-Trak train was eye opening as it was some old monolithic 80's train travelling really slow.
Basically most of what you see on the TV of the USA is a lie until you experience it (or Cali in my example).
Still, I loved the trip and would go back there in a second. I just know what to expect now, which is like an 80's/90's version of the UK/Western Europe.

 

[ervingv]

Europe is a continent, not a country. Now that that's out of the way, I'd be careful with that comparison. There are some European countries that are in some pretty poor shape...just saying.

🤣 Just like there are states in pretty poor shape…just saying.

 

[iOS Geek]

🤣 Just like there are states in pretty poor shape…just saying.

Yep, I know. I live in one of them 😂 Illinois doesn't know what preventative maintenance is either, though in our case, it's not our power grid and the weather. We just wait to repair roads and bridges until some of them are on the verge of collapse and then it costs more to fix than it would have if they did it earlier. I'd say power is one of the few things we do right (at least in my part of the state). Cold, snow, heat...we manage to keep the lights on. The only thing that's knocked our power out in the last year was a tornado touchdown and we were only in the dark for 3 hours.

When it comes to preventative maintenance..."This can wait until later" is a pretty evident attitude basically everywhere.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

This is unfortunately the truth from what I have seen myself back in 2019, coming from the UK.
I did a month road-trip in California 18 months ago, from San Diego to San Francisco. I imagined a country (or state at least) to be similar to my own, but what I experienced was vastly different... from the airport to the airport shuttle bus being some kind of 70's thing from the different motels and hotels every day. There were a lot of Teslas on the road which was a nice sight but then every other car was really old, seemingly a massive wealth gap.
The roads and infrastructure was the same and I was disappointed with my pre conceived ideas of what I thought it would be like, even seeing an Am-Trak train was eye opening as it was some old monolithic 80's train travelling really slow.
Basically most of what you see on the TV of the USA is a lie until you experience it (or Cali in my example).
Still, I loved the trip and would go back there in a second. I just know what to expect now, which is like an 80's/90's version of the UK/Western Europe.

And yet we Californians managed to master the trick of getting hold and cold water to run through the same faucet decades ago, while in Britain separate hot and cold water faucets are still common. 😄

(I make this observation as an unabashed Anglophile, as you might have guessed from my forum name!)

 

[DownUnderDan]

Europe is a continent made up of many different countries. US is just one country.

Fair call. The US is miles behind Australia then.

 

[Rochy Bay]

Marketing expenses, like this one targeted to making the company look good to increase sales, are like every other expense and, of course, are deducted from income and reduce taxable profit. They expect, though, that the increase in sales due to goodwill towards the company will exceed the cost of their nominal donation to help out.

Yeah but its not an expense, this is tax write-off. They also upsell benefits with lower than market salaries for the same reason. Really they upsell the hell of even the brand to pay people less. They pretty much tell you to your face and show you videos saying that the only thing that matters in your life is that you work for them. It's not, believe me. They operate like a Chinese company when it comes to employees. God bless.