greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
User ID: 68
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
2d ago
He would have at least been preluded from running . I think the deep state didn't want to risk an uprising if that happened.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
2d ago
When everyone has a college degree no one does. I think we've already passed the threshold for too many degree holders being paid too much money to do menial wrist and finger labour.
the data does not bear this out. the college wage premium remains persistently high despite more degrees. They are paid a lot because evidently employers see the value. Companies are obsessed with profit, so they would not spend more on labor, which is among the biggest expenses, unless necessary.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
2d ago
Anyone can afford to go to college. Anyone. It's just not that expensive. Yes, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be, and yes, the ROI is not as obvious or inevitable (though it was never inevitable) as it once was. But "working class" people buy more expensive things all the time--houses, boats, cars--and those things continue to cost money (beyond loan interest--there's also upkeep). A wisely-curated program of education will in almost any economy be a better long term investment than any of those things.
Yes, after accounting for scholarships and other programs, affordability is typically not the problem. The student loan debt is cheap compared to private debt like credit cards or car payments.
meanwhile, plenty of lower-middle-class people go into debt for frivolities as you describe.
Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling.
yeah, it's status-seeking behavior, they are not morons. They are optimizing for status and an upper-middle class lifestyle.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
2d ago
I had a different idea. See my thinking is that qanoners are overwhelmingly middle class and below, and a lot of them are the kind of people who couldn't go to college even if they could afford it, which they can't. Not all of them, there are some very clever people involved, but most of the qanoners I've spoken to were primarily uneducated poor people.
interesting analysis, although I disagree about them being poor. I think they are representative of the 'low-status upper/middle class'. These are people who may have decent incomes and jobs, like involving contracting , HVAC installation, and small business, but they do not have much cultural capital or influence individually ,unlike journalists or academics. Their impact is felt at the voting booth other other collective action, like putting Trump in office due to high turnout in swing states or memetic warfare online, but they do not write Substakc or think pieces. Their social media accounts have few followers. Individually, they are unimpressive and not elite human capital , but collectively work as a singular driving force.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
2d ago
wow that is impressive
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
2d ago
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
3d ago
Trump had made it abundantly clear during campaign and after winning that there would be tariffs, and even when he floated some tariffs in January 2025 and Feb against Mexico and Canada , the stock market brushed it off, only to crash a month ago. The market seemed to have no problem with tariffs until only a month ago.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
3d ago
He didn't sound like this during The Apprentice . There are plenty of videos of trump pre-2016 when he's not campaigning and he sounds more normal. It's like he knows he has to dumb it down when on camera. it's like code switching. But it's hard to argue with success.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
3d ago
agree. it's like thinking that imports subtract from GDP and should be avoided at all costs
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
3d ago
Although an interview is insufficient to diagnose dementia, I think there is something to be said for age related mental decline . I have seen it. Just go to anywhere old people tend to congregate and eavesdrop. Their conversations tend to be very simple. Even if they have advanced degrees and were successful, by their 70s they have regressed a lot. Now compare to conversations by college students, which are faster-paced and more complex. This is why I spend so much time on writing and math, to avoid a similar fate. I am not going to be 70 and sounding like one of those people who have mentally checked out for the remaining 20-30 years of their life ("dead at 50 and buried by 80"). I don't think Trump has checked out, but this is a speech pattern of his.
For what it's worth, i can easily eat a lot of the stuff raw without it affecting me much . Sweetness is subjective, i guess. During my diet I was unwittingly adding 200 calories a day by using too much of it, so the calories do matter. I originally thought it was zero calories, but I was wrong.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
3d ago
What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them
A tax cut to help the very companies that promote wokeness and censor its users on its platforms. Big handouts to AI companies. But I don't see much else happening legislatively. The real power is in the courts--things like judicial appointments, pardons. SCOTUS is where the real lasting change is. The 2024 ruling on affirmative action, for example. Stimulus and tax cuts tend to be popular.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
3d ago
Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.
yeah, these big companies have the cashflow, pricing power, and market dominance to withstand tariffs, smaller competitors do not. this works to their advantage, especially after trump is gone and tariffs are reversed. Its not so much about tariffs being good economically, but that it hurts their competitors.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
My hypothesis is Trump did not think the stock market would react as negatively as it did, so he has since backtracked.
JD Vance is competent, but these people are chosen for loyalty
In 2004 I watched some episodes of The Apprentice and he seemed sharper. Trump today is not quite there. Not quite dementia, but not at 100%. Trying to make a diagnosis based on a transcript or TV is always going to be unreliable. There is a reason the criteria for dementia are defined in a certain way. Specific criteria have to be met, like the failure to recall a small string of numbers, fewer than even at the low-end of an IQ test. A diagnosis of dementia entails a significantly reduced level of mental performance, not just sounding bad on TV.
I think also some of this is playing to the audience. Trump repeats himself and uses simple language to prevent being misunderstood.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
I wish this site had a decent user block feature as twitter does.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
Also, has he shared any of his stats (weight, height), before after, etc.? Anyone can give advice, but results are another matter
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
It is often, which was my point which you missed. I support the unconditional use of IQ tests for hiring/promotion, but it's wrong to say that testing is uncommon or that Griggs is preventing companies from using screening.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
The idea of your body being 'tricked' into producing a flood of insulin by the apparent encountered sweetness seems like some kind of psychological intuition that some people may find useful, but that wasn't backed by evidence.
This is 99% of health/diet/nutrition research...just hunches without any evidence or only cherry-picked evidence. All macros produce an insulin spike. It's how digestion works. Otherwise, it would be type 1 diabetes. The same pleasure you get from candy or ice cream is no different from a fatty steak even though the macros are different.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
isn't that just sugar?
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
4d ago
In fairness, themotte readers are not average. The average IQ here is probably at least 120
Ouch. 4-pleb detected. The cool kids are over here getting a dozen 5s each and couldn't imagine getting a 4.
is this supposed to be a diss. Maybe I can send some passages of the math paper I am working on, and you can proofread them, as you've obviously way smarter. You must be so successful at life with that attitude.
If disparate impact is actually ended, expect every Walmart level job to have the equivalent of an IQ test.
This what the Wonderlic accomplishes (along with interview, which also is a screening mechanism), and according to people on reddit, it's very common and many companies use it. AFIK, the Wonderlic or any company that has used it has never been successfully sued for disparate impact on the grounds off the test itself. https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/x5qv4v/an_employer_gave_me_a_wonderlic_test_is_this/
What makes the Wonderlic particularly useful is it's not only very quick and cheap to proctor (no psychologist, unlike a full-scale IQ test), but it screens for both competence, like reading and math, and also functions as an IQ screen/filter on the high-end, due to rarity of top scores, which map to a bell curve and highly correlated with full-scale IQ.
Wonderlic is the test that literally lost Griggs.
The outcome is more nuanced. https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/Cognitive%20AbilityTesting%20EF%20wonderlic.pdf
While the Griggs case is often mistakenly cited to call into question the lawfulness of cognitive ability testing, in reality the ruling on this case recognizes that these tests, as well as educational requirements and other hiring tools (e.g., criminal background checks, credit checks, experience requirements, physical requirements), are appropriate for assessing job applicants as long as certain criteria are met
My broader point being: The tests are widespread, as shown on reddit. Wonderlic and employers work together to ensure the tests are compliant and used appropriately, hence and there are a paucity of lawsuits, let alone successful ones, indicating it has been a success. I support unconditional use of tests for hiring, but it's wrong to say such testing does not exist or that a full-scale IQ test would be better, when the Wonderlic is by many measures better and already does that.
This means a pardon will be on the table as soon as it's an option. My complain is that the FBI and prosecutors have too much power overall whether it's sentence length or the scope of indictments, affecting both sides of the aisle, so this leads to more pardons and preemptive pardons. The abuse of pardons is really to lessen the the power of the judiciary. Compared to the rest of the developed world, the US hands out long sentences and indictments like candy, for all sort of things. The scary thing is how many files the FBI has on people who are never actually charged...it's immense.
Many of the elite human capital types are nominally middle class or even below, but are elite through degrees and reach, like low-paid journalists/interns or ppl with lots of twitter followers despite not having much money.
More options
Context Copy link