jeroboam
1yr ago
DeSantis seems to be a master of using executive action (or less kindly, political stunts) to pierce motte and bailey arguments employed by Democrats.
For example, on voting access, the Democratic motte is "voting rights" while the bailey is "voting for felons, non-citizens, and really anyone with no checks whatsoever". By taking actions like this, DeSantis forces Democrats to explicitly defend the bailey. It will suck for people who were unfairly caught in the dragnet.
jeroboam
1yr ago
One thing about rare earths (or any resource really) is that there is a nearly unlimited supply at the right price. While China could hamper some industry temporarily, there are plenty of rare Earths available elsewhere, they just aren't economical to extract at current prices.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I agree with you that people are sleeping on the huge recent advancements in AI.
But I don't think there's much of a sweet spot between "productivity gains" and "destruction of the human species". Maybe a few years at most. Certainly, there have been almost no productivity gains in the last couple decades in the Western world (less than 1% per year).
jeroboam
1yr ago
VNQ (Vanguard REIT index) is already down 31% YTD. Most REITs already trade well below their net asset value. So if you want to speculate by buying puts, you're late to the party. Speculators have already priced in a huge decline.
I'm not sure you can compensate. All the real estate proxies are down much more than property prices. For example, Vanguard REIT index (VNQ) is down 31% this year. Investors are already pricing in the future decline in property prices.
So I guess maybe do the opposite. Sell the properties if you can, and then buy VNQ instead, which trades far below net asset values.
Edit: If you long-term loans locked in at low rates, then do nothing. Your properties might look bad now, but a 30 year loan at 3% is gift that may never come again in our lifetime.
We don't need TSMC for AI. If TSMC were destroyed tomorrow, it might set us back a year or two but it's not really a bottleneck. Software algorithms advance by orders of magnitude while hardware advances only linearly.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Having exams that get passed mainly on whether you can hack the scoring system rather than on whether you get the right answer is a bad idea.
Agree because the world should be fair, but disagree because it isn't. Learning to "hack the exam" works very well in any organization, not just the academy. He's unwittingly preparing his students to play the stupid games they will play in real life.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Well if it did reduce aging it would indeed be beneficial for the treatment of nearly all ailments.
Personal anecdote. I have taken it for about 2 years and have noticed absolutely no effect, negative or positive.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I assuming you're asking in good faith. If not, please pardon the overlong answer.
The United States is nearly unique among countries of the world in that it has both a high rate of violent crime and also the state capacity to investigate and prosecute crime. In the 1980s and 1990s, a "tough on crime" stance prevailed as the political consensus, epitomized by tough mandatory sentencing and "three strikes" laws. During this period, the prison population swelled and violent crime rates plummeted.
Things have changed since then. A new consensus formed, especially in blue states, that prior sentencing laws were too strict. Many localities elected district attorneys and judges who took an extremely lenient stance on crime. This was also exacerbated by the Covid epidemic when jailing criminals was seen as unsafe to their health. The per capita prison population peaked in 2008, and the murder rate reached a low in 2014.
Today, in many cities such as San Francisco and Seattle, criminals are routinely released on no bail even when they have several prior convictions on their record. In some cases, they immediately commit serious crimes upon release. While the most serious offenses are still prosecuted, most arrests never lead to charges or prosecution.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I think that this is a valuable post and what's more, you're correct in your assessment.
But I can see how a conflict theorist would map "caring about Trans kids" onto some more sinister. This entire issue of trans children sprung, seemingly out of nowhere, in the last few years. To someone not deeply embedded in modern, blue tribe culture its hard to believe that all of a sudden the incidence of trans identity just naturally explodes by 1000%. So the conspiratorial mind finds other explanations.
I think an analog would be the Satanic panics of earlier generations where day care operators and others were bizarrely charged with harming kids in the name of Satan. Surely nothing could be so ridiculous? But I think the promulgators of the Satanic panics were pushing a genuine quasi-religious belief. They really believed that Satanic cults existed. They weren't just looking for people to hurt.
Likewise, today's blue tribe feels genuine strong passions that transgender identity is important. Some would even say, or at least imply, that it is better than CIS identity. This belief would be considered quite ridiculous to almost any society other than the current one in which we live. Surely they can't actually believe that, the right-winger thinks. And so they must be doing it to own the right.
jeroboam
1yr ago
but that doesn't support claiming that common criminals get "released without bail and then have charges quietly dropped".
That is precisely what's happening in many jurisdictions in the country. The 2 million people in prison are there from other jurisdictions or from long ago. A high percentage of common criminals are very much having charges quietly dropped in places like Seattle and San Francisco.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I'll speak for the OP and say that there's really no point in litigating the Covid lockdowns again. They really are the ultimate scissor statement. To me, its obvious that the lockdowns were completely unjustifiable, failed at their purpose, and caused untold harm. A lot of very smart people feel differently, and I've yet to see anyone be swayed on the issue no matter how convincing the data. Personally, I doubt there's any data that could sway me in the other direction either.
If you can't answer "what would change my mind", there's not much point in having a discussion about it.
jeroboam
1yr ago
That's a good point. You can see a clear example with drawings of Mohammed, where people actually are scared to do it because they are afraid of being hurt. Attacking the red tribe imposes almost no costs and in fact often has lots of benefits to those who do it.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Is there any data to support the belief that masking on public transit reduces one's chance (long term) of getting a cold. In the sense that it might reduce your chance of getting a cold right now but won't reduce your chances in general due to your weakened immune system. I've certainly never worn a mask voluntarily and I am almost never sick.
jeroboam
1yr ago
An acquaintance recently emailed a large group of people to say how sorry he was to have exposed them to Covid at a recent sporting event. He had recently been infected despite having received 5 shots, including the Omicron booster. He also said that he wears an N-95 mask any time he leaves the house.
For many people, actually getting Covid was the cure to their paranoia. I hope for him it will be the same.
jeroboam
1yr ago
The people who are like "everything is totally back to normal" probably just don't live in the truly-insane areas of the West Coast where this stuff is still, still!, very much an issue. Last month I was on a trip with a large group of people. One of the people in my group was wearing a mask inside the restaurant, pulling it down to take a bite, and pulling it back up to chew. In Seattle, masking in grocery stores is still at maybe 10-20% and there are plenty of buildings that still have "masks required" signs.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I think we're all talking out of our ass here. Speaking of N=1, one of the posts above said they did an "A/B" test and determined that wearing a mask helped reduce their own incidence of getting sick. How many colds must they suffer to glean any useful information? Surely, hundreds or thousands at a minimum. How truly awful things must be for them.
The whole reason why you can keep getting colds is that they are new mutations each time you catch it, so you haven't been able to develop any immunity to that specific mutation. So it would seem sort of irrelevant how many colds you've caught before because that won't help with the next one.
That makes sense, but think about the consequences of that statement. There are thousands if not millions of different cold variants. A subway station can have hundreds of people crowded into a small area, many who are contagious. You would be nearly assured of getting sick every time you rode public transit. As this doesn't happen, it stands to reason that your immune system does protect you against some novel pathogens.
The unanswered question becomes: does your immune system become generally weaker when not exposed to pathogens? My lay person answer is yet, but with low confidence.
On another note, it's rather sad that we have to resort to this level of lay person reasoning because, with Covid, our public health apparatus has completely abdicated their responsibility to provide accurate and unbiased information. Even if an expert were to come here and refute me, I would be skeptical of their information until I knew more about them.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Capital gains are "realized" (and thus, taxed) only during certain events, usually sales. If I sign a contract for $1 billion to endorse Adidas shoes for the next ten years, I can walk into a bank with that contract and take out loans against that deal.
And this is why wealthy people who live off their investments don't pay taxes. Let's say I own $100 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock and I want to spend $4 million per year. I could sell $4 million in stock and then pay capital gain taxes. Or, I could borrow $4 million against the stock and pay no taxes. The interest on the margin debt is even deductible.
Note: This worked a lot better when margin interest was as low as 1%.
jeroboam
1yr ago
Definitely worth a visit for the cringe factor. I too am looking for a model to live in my mansion and bear me 5 children in rapid succession. I just need to know if her estimated IQ meets my requirements.
Like, why did they even photoshop in the baby? There are already FOUR young children in the picture.
jeroboam
1yr ago
As someone who watches the energy markets I'm going to say nah. The cure for high prices is high prices, and in a pinch the U.S. can temporarily suspend the Jones Act to bring diesel in by ship from other parts of the country.
Prices could go skyhigh, but in the short term the economy can bear prices that are 50-100% higher. Prices in other countries are already that high.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I've heard this said a lot and it doesn't make sense to me. I'm not at Pelosi's level, but I'm rich. I have no idea how to hire an escort. People think that when your net worth crosses some line, they send you a packet with ways to hire an escort, hire a hitman, not pay taxes, etc... The level of fantasy about wealth than exists in the minds of non-wealthy people is often absurd.
jeroboam
1yr ago
The average weight is up, but where the numbers have really gotten stretched is at the upper end. Rates of morbid obesity (defined as a BMI over 40) have increased from essentially 0 to nearly 10%.
The 2022 UN World Population Prospects just came out. Under the medium fertility variant, the population of Uganda is projected to more than triple by the year 2100. The U.S. population is expected to increase by just 15%. More than 100% of the U.S. increase will be due to immigration.
While African fertility has been decreasing, the decrease has been much slower than other countries such as India and Iran where the TFR has come down rapidly. The UN projects that Ugandan TFR will fall to replacement (2.1) by the year 2071.
Just providing some context, not disputing the overall thrust of your comment.
jeroboam
1yr ago
I'd just like to say that whoever built this site has done an amazing job. Clean, full-featured, information dense. This is how a discussion board should work. And while it's mostly a clone of old.reddit.com, it's very impressive to have built it with what I assume is a very small team. Kudos to the design team.
I have trouble accepting the claim that, unlike the author, you have a categorically different understanding of the technology that surrounds us. Famously, there is no single person on Earth that even knows how to even make a pencil. The bewildering complexity of modern microchips is likewise beyond the capacity of any one person to understand.
Going further, the emergent properties of neural networks can sometimes defy explanation entirely. It is likely we are going from an era where no single person can understand technology, to an era where human society as a whole is unable to understand the technology it has created.
Comfort with technology is an illusion created by a person's ability to interact with the human interface of that technology, not by actual deep understanding of the internals.
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