The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
No bio...
User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
12hr ago
In the 1950s most people were making coffee with percolators, and there was no market for high-end coffee beans. Pourover Folgers is still Folgers.
By 1959 you can get decent coffee, at least in NYC; our rich man should be able to get it for home if he cares to. Some perhaps more available than today -- the Mocca (Yemen) of Mocca Java is not available today, for instance, and Puerto Rican coffee production has been falling for over a century.
Mountain biking is a loss, but road biking is doable; the modern two-derailler (though no indexing) road bike is available. Not sure if it's a max of 8 speeds or 10 in 1959. No Spandex kit for the rich cycling enthusiast, though.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
12hr ago
The people who end up as senior software engineers at a FAANG (a position I have held) are generally not bros of any sort. There's a few; they don't remain in the role; bros are generally climbers, and if they can't climb within the company they'll head somewhere else. Mostly it's geeks, as you'd expect. And the bros still DO go into finance, at least in NYC.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
13hr ago
If you pay each employee a generous $100k/yr then you can easily do that with 1/3 of your money.
2/3rds, because you lose almost 50% in taxes. 37% Federal + 6.85% NYS + 3.876% NYC.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
15hr ago
Certainly Italian would have been available in Philadelphia and Baltimore also. Washington, D.C. would have had French and Italian.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
15hr ago
The US is not going to be deliberately shooting down civilian airliners (not even Venezuelan ones) in Venezuela, and even another USS Vincennes incident would be bad for Trump's domestic support.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
I'd much rather live in a time (past or future) where there's no shortage of safe, affordable, walkable all-White urban neighborhoods.
I'm not sure any such time existed. You can get safe, affordable, all-White neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s (the new suburbs, many of which did not allow blacks), but mostly not walkable. Possibly the 1920s, but you know how that bubble ended.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The original post used not CPI but PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures). When the Fed talks about an inflation target, it's PCE they mean. $100,000 in January 1959 is $839,400 in today's money by that index.
(The original post also said $100,000 now was $12,500 then, so it was clearly rounding to a factor of 8)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
It's simply inaccurate.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
According to the original post, making $100,000 in 1959 would be the equivalent of making $800,000/year today, which probably does not mean you have full time domestic servants, today. I think you probably could have had them in 1959 with that sort of salary, though taxes were pretty bad then so it would depend on how effectively the rich person could shelter his income.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Or it might not.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
This is part of the problem. The tech bros are the founders, but the people losing their jobs are regular techies, and are tarred with the same brush.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Ending up like Google is not exactly the worst fate in the world, especially if you're a current Jane Street employee. Google is a money-printing machine, after all. Google is definitely a dinosaur, but they're a tough top-of-the-food chain dinosaur, which is a fine place to be until the asteroid hits (and no place is good then!)
Of course, unlike Google, Jane Street can't really remain itself if it goes public.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
No, it's not O(log(N)) overhead. It's at least O(N) overhead. O(log(N)) is the depth of the hierarchy, but the entire thing is O(N). That is, the number of people doing the coordination tasks is a linear function of those doing the work.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I think you also see changes in how quality is perceived: it's easy enough to put printed posters on your walls and sit in injection-molded chairs, but many (probably not all) who possess that sort of slop, to use a term coined by AI skeptics, will wish they had hand-crafted wood chairs and original paintings.
In fact they seem to prefer the posters. Nobody's willing to pay for original art, even when they can afford it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
At $100,000 a year in 1959, one could hire either a personal assistant to go to the restaurant and pick up the food for you, or a cook to make the stuff.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Trump's been saying some variant of this for a while now. I think it's mostly just blather, because he hasn't moved to prosecute anyone covered by autopen pardons. Most executive orders are cancellable by the executive anyway; while IIRC there have been a few cases where courts have found one administration (Trump's) can't cancel a previous administration's orders, I expect any such cases still in question to be overturned. What can't be overturned are pardons and signatures on legislation, and as far as I know Trump has made no attempt to bypass any particular one of those, though he's claimed on social media that they are invalid.
As for what he's saying, it's certainly true that if Biden didn't give the order, an autopen signature is invalid. It's a forgery. And no, having Biden stating they were done on his order now doesn't cure the issue; he would have had to have said so during his term.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Even on the Motte, where a lot of folks are in theory very big on masculinity, I've never seen a single person mention any physical project in the Tinker Tuesday thread, or anywhere else on the site, for that matter.
I fly model helicopters. Like real helicopters, they require more time spent repairing than flying. And it's a ridiculously male hobby. I also do my own bicycle maintenance and general fixing of stuff (e.g. I restrung my blinds and fixed my humidifier recently), though that's instrumental rather than for its own sake.
There's no real shortage of hunters, at least once you get out of New Jersey (Pennsylvania: America Starts Here).
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Yeah, the people potentially losing their jobs due to AI aren't as sympathetic as that bunch.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Serving others is no longer considered an acceptable use of humans. Further, the humans most likely to be laid off by AI are not well-suited for it. During the dot-com bust there were plenty of software engineers waiting tables in Silicon Valley, and it wasn't pretty.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
You're right that lying flat is the correct tactic, but it's not bargaining, it's just coping; no change for the better is possible. The rules and procedures are not going to be repealed -- parents will not accept any case of child molestation that could have been stopped by a rule or procedure they have experience with or can think of. And such rules and procedures will tend to select for the wrong people even from a "Scouting virtues" point of view. After all, what is the point of being honorable if you are assumed to be dishonorable until proven otherwise.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Get fingerprinted at the police station? Maybe, but not VOLUNTARILY.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Then "society" has made its choice. You can make people jump through flaming hoops to be considered moral enough to associate with children (Padme: Other than your own, right? Anakin: ... Padme: Other than your own, right?), or you can have an ample supply of volunteers. You can have neither but you can't have both, and counterarguments involving the word "should" (as in men "should" be willing to go through these simple and vital procedures) are not really arguments but just social pressure to avoid this point being made.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
AI taking over some human work doesn't make it practical for all humans to work less. It makes it so some humans are useless, while the others need to do as much work (or even more!) as they ever did.
Odd, since it's just a screenshot from one of the Fallout games showing the wrecked US Capitol, National Mall, and Washington Monument.
More options
Context Copy link