alt.hn

3/21/2026 at 7:55:23 PM

Hawaii's worst flooding in 20 years threatens dam, prompts evacuations

 https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/floods/hawaii-worst-flooding-in-20-years-rcna264573

by geox

3/21/2026 at 9:04:44 PM

It is truly tragic to see 5,500 people on the North Shore forced from their homes as the century-old Wahiawa Dam threatens to erase their livelihoods. One can only hope the evacuation orders were received in time to save what is most precious. Sentiment aside, this is a textbook case of a natural audit. The Wahiawa Dam is a 120-year-old stranded asset that should have been liquidated decades ago; instead, it was kept on the books as a "high hazard" liability while the state and Dole Food Company bickered over a $20 million repair bill. Governor Green’s $1 billion damage estimate is simply the market finally collecting on 20 years of deferred maintenance and mispriced risk. Those living downstream without private insolvency insurance were effectively shorting gravity, and the "Kona Low" just called their margin. If the dam breaches, it isn't a disaster—it's the violent, overdue restructuring of an obsolete irrigation system. Nature is the only regulator that doesn't accept a settlement.

by user2722

3/22/2026 at 5:58:11 PM

And having seen what happened on Maui after the fires, and seeing just how real the concern of many was - that so many homes were in family for generations, and that's the only way some of those families can afford to be there, and seeing them being unable to rebuild or ... tragic. (Though I don't know that there's the same human element to the Lahaina fires).

by FireBeyond

3/21/2026 at 11:31:33 PM

I like the way you write, fwiw.

by datsci_est_2015

3/21/2026 at 10:59:44 PM

So I guess the hacker news downvote police got after this one because it was actually informative? Am I reading this right?

by GorbachevyChase

3/22/2026 at 1:10:39 AM

One cool thing about reading different forums for decades is you get this instinct on spotting AI-generated content. Obviously not 100%, and if you tune your prompts properly it’s impossible to catch. However this just doesn’t sound human-y. No clue how to explain it.

But it also sucks because I’m sure I incorrectly tag some real comments as AI slop.

by tokioyoyo

3/22/2026 at 3:21:21 AM

You are right. However I've found most market absolutists write similar to this. The fault is always someone else's. I had thought I had gotten the contents humanly sociopathic enough to go below the LLM radar.

I actually intended to leave a comment explaining but I started to lose points and deleted the explanation; I was however unable to delete the main comment.

by user2722

3/22/2026 at 5:52:12 AM

I wouldn’t trip

It’s pervasive at this point that “its AI” is a lazy retort when people have to use a portion of their brains

by AndrewKemendo

3/21/2026 at 11:35:54 PM

More because it's AI-slop that doesn't say much more than "government and big business bad".

by alex43578

3/22/2026 at 12:27:03 AM

I don’t see a trace of mark down or em dashes. I think maybe you’re perhaps a little too emotionally invested in politics

by GorbachevyChase

3/22/2026 at 12:58:16 AM

Firstly, I could care less about the regional politics of Hawaii's infrastructure. I was just answering why this was likely getting downvoted.

As for it being AI, GPTZero puts it at 99% AI. "Insolvency insurance" is used out of context, incorrectly mixing the financial metaphors he told the AI to use with the more-relevant idea of flood insurance (was insolvency supposed to be the AI's attempt at a pun around liquids?). There's the classic AI "it isn't X, it's Y" structure structure at the end. The whole thing reads as a prompt of "Recontextualize the potential flood caused by the failure of Wahiawa Dam in Hawaii through a lens of politics, business, and finance".

Markdown, em-dashes, and emojis were AI-slop 101 a year ago. You gotta keep up.

by alex43578

3/22/2026 at 1:10:14 AM

There is actually an em dash in there,

it isn't a disaster—it's the violent…

by ses1984

3/22/2026 at 2:46:15 AM

I didn't say there wasn't an em dash, but thought it was worth pointing out the totality of things that stuck out to me as AI evidence.

by alex43578

3/22/2026 at 1:09:24 AM

> disaster—it's

by pfannkuchen

3/21/2026 at 9:10:28 PM

I was in Oahu last week in a place that experienced 10 inches of rainfall in one day. I had never been in a situation where stepping outside felt like turning on a shower.

by tadfisher

3/22/2026 at 12:25:43 AM

Hawaii gets a lot of rain. IIRC there are some places that are amongst the highest rainfall anywhere. I experienced a flash flood on Maui near Hana. We were hiking there with no rain when we started and turned into torrential rain. Quite an experience. The campground turned into a swamp with knee high water.

by YZF

3/22/2026 at 1:09:39 AM

Regular thing in Hilo or Waiʻaleʻale.

by storus

3/21/2026 at 9:17:27 PM

Is it me or is infrastructure in Hawaii in general really terrible and falling apart? Much more so than the mainland.

by longislandguido

3/21/2026 at 9:25:06 PM

Everything's more costly in Hawaii, including maintaining infrastructure

by semicolon_storm

3/21/2026 at 9:40:47 PM

This is true we work with emergency management in Hawaii. Look up the Jones Act. All shipped goods end up having to hit the mainland before going to Hawaii which is a major contributor to increased costs of goods there.

by GunnarHolwerda

3/21/2026 at 10:14:55 PM

A quick google search on jones act and hawaii reveals this page hosted by International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)

https://www.ilwulocal142.org/news-item/jones-act-fact-vs-myt...

Few things listed there are clearly false.

"Myth #2: The Jones Act Raises Prices for Hawai‘i Residents.

However, a comprehensive 2020 study by Reeve & Associates and TZ Economics found that this is simply not true.

Their survey compared the prices of 200 consumer goods—including groceries, household items, clothing, and automobiles—at major retailers like Costco, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart in both Honolulu and Los Angeles. The results showed that prices in Hawai‘i were, on average, only 0.5% higher than on the mainland, a negligible difference that cannot be attributed to the Jones Act alone."

As a frequent visitor to Oahu, i stop by Costco on the way from the airport and i can see that most consumables including milk and meat is 30-50% more expensive than at Northern California Costco. This is representative across local supermarkets as well.

So its seems that this union is trying to minimise the impact of shipping on costs of everyday goods

Critics dismiss this study as bogus:

https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/2020/07/shipping-industry...

"using online prices to compare food prices at Hawaii versus Los Angeles stores is problematic. A visit today to the Keeaumoku Street Walmart showed an 18-ounce box of Cheerios selling for $4.26, before tax, versus $3.64 for its listed online price, and a four-pack of 5-ounce cans of albacore tuna for $8.43 versus $6.74 online."

That is actually true, Keamoku Walmart does not pricematch to their online prices and the only way to get those prices is to place an pickup order and wait for several hours to pick up at those prices.

by vladgur

3/21/2026 at 10:31:56 PM

IlWU are crooks, but I thought jones act said intranational trade had to be by us flagged and manned ship. Not that foreign trade couldn't unload directly there on foreign ship or that it had to go to mainland first.

I've never heard of them having to go to the mainland before unloading in Hawaii. But if they do unload directly in Hawaii maybe they can't unload elsewhere without violating jones act so it's not worth the trip there instead of going to LA to unload and then a US flagged boat has to be used to get it to HI.

by mothballed

3/21/2026 at 11:44:30 PM

It’s the latter. If you stop at HI you aren’t allowed to also stop at LA. Better to skip Hawaii.

And yeah, watching someone cite ILWU is like watching someone cite Philip Morris on the urban myth that cigarettes cause cancer. Pretty funny that subsequent generations just forget things and people become authorities who are brazenly self-interested.

Reminds me of how Chelsea in the Prem were accused back in the day of “financial doping” by spending vastly more than any other club to get the best players and now you can sometimes find articles for how they’re the best run club in the last 10 years (conveniently timed for after they were given a billion). With a little time, all sins are forgiven.

by renewiltord

3/21/2026 at 10:53:20 PM

Land anywhere useful is also extraordinarily expensive and developing industry is commonly blocked on the thinnest of reasoning. Hawaiians even sabotaged the interisland ferries on some trumped up environmental concerns (they complained a couple people loaded sands or rocks) seemingly being scared shitless of their own people from other islands having cheap access (the tourists just fly so it has nothing to do with overtourism concerns). You can hardly develop any infrastructure that's not tourism or residential, and residential is also usually tough outside the big island.

Also the various cultures on the islands have a tenuous peace as a legacy of cane plantation owners purposefully segregating and pitting the natives, Chinese, Filipinos, and whites against each other. This lives on in everyone sabotaging the development of any other part of the islands and things like 'Kill Haole Day' in the very welcoming public schools.

As a result of this everything is even more expensive than just the shipping and isolation issues.

by mothballed

3/22/2026 at 2:36:24 PM

Hawaii is halfway a reservation, and lots of things get tied up in those politics. Doe vs Kamehameha for example.

by eudamoniac

3/22/2026 at 3:24:57 PM

Indeed. People of the wrong 'blood' didn't gain full voting rights until this millennia, in a shocking case where RBG bizarrely went on a racist dissent where she argued the 15th amendment didn't create racially equal voting rights (Rice v Cayetano).

by mothballed

3/21/2026 at 10:50:10 PM

Well, this is not directly related to department of transportation is surprisingly helpful when it comes to providing information. Some states have absurd policies like a pseudo classification system for public projects like bridges as if the construction plans would tell you anything you couldn’t have seen with your own eyes or the bad guys are looking at rebar diagrams to find weak points. It’s just silly. HDOT on the other hand is quite laid-back. My assumption is that it’s because everyone is happy just living in a tropical paradise.

by GorbachevyChase

3/21/2026 at 11:17:03 PM

All I know is that places like RoK, Taiwan and Japan get typhoons every year and pretty much the only thing that happens is that flights are cancelled.

by PearlRiver

3/22/2026 at 12:51:25 AM

Not so in Taiwan’s east coast and rift valley, and sometimes in the lowlands. Regular road and rail washouts and sometimes whole bridges wash away. Southern cross island highway was closed for years the last time I visited the area.

by ilamont

3/21/2026 at 9:59:50 PM

Will Zuckerberg swoop in to buy all those properties?

by raziel2701

3/21/2026 at 9:17:16 PM

Hawaii again? I hope it’s not too bad for the non-zuckerbergs

by huijzer

3/21/2026 at 9:39:08 PM

Are there people out there with Zuckerberg derangement syndrome, who can't hear about something only distantly related without bringing him up?

Kauai, where Zuckerberg's estate is, has not been affected. So yes, it's been bad for non-Zuckerbergs

by phainopepla2

3/22/2026 at 7:14:32 AM

Why are you defending the billionaire?

by huijzer

3/22/2026 at 1:27:39 PM

So we have many moral frameworks we can pull from

Deontology judges actions based on rules and principles

Consequentialism judges actions based on the consequences

What would you call it when the morality of the action depends on the income level of the victim?

by arwineap

3/21/2026 at 10:55:12 PM

I mean, he did sue a bunch of poor people to remove any possibility that they might make ancestral claims on or around his super abundance of land. It is in really bad taste and a testament to his lack of character.

by GorbachevyChase

3/21/2026 at 11:29:24 PM

There's a long history of rich assholes moving in and using their property rights in bizarre ways that gain them basically nothing while fucking everyone else.

Oprah bought a huge estate in Maui, then used it to block the back road from Kihei to upcountry, forcing a much longer drive around. It doesn't go through anything of interest to Oprah or gain her anything, just a big fuck you to everyone else because she can.

by mothballed

3/22/2026 at 12:37:00 AM

Sometimes I see a silver lining to this behavior but it comes down to personal taste. A number of people likely appreciate that nice buffer between them and Kihei.

by beacon294

3/22/2026 at 12:34:39 AM

Do they not have eminent domain laws in Hawaii?

by markdown

3/22/2026 at 5:33:47 AM

Not sure, but during the wildfires people went through anyway.

by mothballed

3/22/2026 at 2:41:05 PM

Gross mischaracterization. He filed an action in court to buy the land, because each parcel had dozens of owners that nobody even knew who they were, including the owners, until the court discovery happened.

" The land is made up of a few properties. In each case, we worked with the majority owners of each property and reached a deal they thought was fair and wanted to make on their own.

As with most transactions, the majority owners have the right to sell their land if they want, but we need to make sure smaller partial owners get paid for their fair share too.

In Hawaii, this is where it gets more complicated. As part of Hawaiian history, in the mid-1800s, small parcels were granted to families, which after generations might now be split among hundreds of descendants. There aren’t always clear records, and in many cases descendants who own 1/4% or 1% of a property don’t even know they are entitled to anything.

To find all these partial owners so we can pay them their fair share, we filed what is called a “quiet title” action. For most of these folks, they will now receive money for something they never even knew they had. No one will be forced off the land."

by eudamoniac