blarghly
@blarghly@lemmy.world
- Comment on Is there any way the average American can insulate themselves from the AI bubble bursting? 6 days ago:
This time it’s different, though.
Why?
Homelessness world wide is at an all time high, and a huge swath of people can’t afford all the basic necessities anymore.
I highly doubt your homelessness stat. If it is at an all time high by any metric, it is almost certainly a statistical artifact from (1) increased homelessness in developed nations, where tracking is decent and (2) improved tracking in developing nations. Meanwhile the people who can’t afford “basic necessities” are, again, in developed nations - places where the notion of what constitutes basic necessities would be considered grand opulance in many parts of developing nations.
Instead, the majority of people in the world have seen improvements to their quality of life over the past 20, 40, and 60 years. Improved water and sanitation systems, more robust and resiliant food systems, greater access to life saving medical care, huge drops in infant mortality, hugely increased access to technology and education.
If an economic crash happens now, will the 99% of the people finally wake up and just TAKE the resources from that 1%, like it or not?
This is, quite frankly, a ridiculous fantasy. The wealth of the top 1% primarily exists not in vaults of gold bars, but in the ownership of what are intangible human constructs. Particular segments of land (lines on a map); businesses (organized structures of people); intellectual property (literally just ideas).
Elon Musk, for example, has a large portion of his wealth in Tesla. Of course, Tesla has physical assets in its factories and such. But most of the value of the company is speculative - people expecting Tesla to be wildly successful in the future. The next part of its value comes from IP - the exclusive ownership of its various inventions and innovations. And another part comes from the organizational structure itself and the knowledge and intelligence of the individuals who make up that structure. At its root, the value of Tesla is the goose that lays the golden eggs (Musk’s cult of personality and the expertise of the individuals that make up the business) and investor confidence that the goose will continue laying golden eggs. In your glorious revolution, presumably Musk will be beheaded, and all the Tesla employees will scatter to the far winds as the proletariat storms their offices. Without the stable interaction of these technical experts, no more innovation happens, and investor confidence dries up (assuming the investors weren’t also beheaded). The wealth of Tesla, then, does not go to the people, but goes up in smoke.
A revolution premised purely on taking assets from the rich has a predictable ending: in the slim chance that the revolution succeeds, even if the tangible wealth is equally distributed to the people (also a slim chance), the engine that generated that wealth has been destroyed and, deprived of the ability to generate new wealth, the people eventually spend away their windfall and are left with less than they had before they started. This sort of phenomenon was literally the impetus for Adam Smith to write The Wealth of Nations. Spain had spent a couple centuries robbing the Americas of its gold via murder and slavery - enough to literally collapse the price of gold in Europe. And yet, during Smith’s time, Spain was in dire financial straights while England was the world’s predominant economic power. Why? Because England had invested in technology and had developed industrial factories. It had invested in public and private institutions (ie, structures of people) that would continuously generate new wealth, rather than relying on hoarding gold bars.
The “glorious revolution” fantasy, meanwhile, is largely counterproductive to the actual goal of improving normal people’s lives and improving the equality of political and economic power, because it plays into the childish notion that if we just throw a big enough temper tantrum, then we will get our way. And maybe that might be true for a brief moment. It is certainly true for some children some of the time that if they yell and scream and cry enough, they will be given the ice cream they want. But they only get that ice cream because there is an adult there, listening to them cry, who has a job that makes money that they can then use to buy the ice cream. The problem is that, ice cream or not, at the end of the day the child is still a child, completely dependent on the adult to provide for all their needs and make all their important descisions. The child gains real autonomy in their lives not when they throw “The Glorious Temper Tantrum” - they gain it when they get a job outside the purview of their caregivers and are able to spend the money they make at that job on the things of their own choosing.
So, too, with average people growing out of the controlling influence of the political and economic elite. Independence is achieved via building things - communities, relationships, physical infrastructure, businesses, governments, unions - which can be relied on instead of the options presented to us by the elites. And building things takes time and effort. It doesn’t happen overnight with a few molotovs and a good photo op - that’s the narrative the elites want you to believe, the one they put in all the popular movies and tv shows, because it is the strategy that is absolutely sure to fail. The idea that The Great Battle will be followed by Happily Ever After serves the elites because it tells us that we will win when we just put in a reasonable amount of effort right at the very last moment, and then we can relax. This is not how the world works. No - the world gets better when people put in unreasonable amounts of effort right now to gradually improve things and build things bit by bit, and keep putting in that effort for years and years and years. Sure, maybe there will someday be a tipping point or a big marker in history that we can point to and say “ah, that’s when things changed”. But make no mistake - that moment can only happen, and will only lead to a better world after the fact, because of the long term, boring hard work of people who care more about building things to help their friends than destroying things to hurt their enemies.
- Comment on Is there any way the average American can insulate themselves from the AI bubble bursting? 6 days ago:
I dont think this is why no one is saying this. But the reason you shouldn’t do this is because of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. This is the same for basically any investment where you are trying to be “smart”, whether you are buying gold, low tech stocks, various currencies, crypto, etc. The fact is, sitting on your ass and clicking a few buttons on an investment website takes literally no effort - which is why there are trillions of dollars in investment funds trying to do it as profitably as possible. Every dollar in the market is competing to eak as much value out of every minute in the market as possible, and these dollars are very smart.
Like, if you graduated top of your class from MIT in financial analysis, you are still at an unimaginable disadvantage, because the evil capitalist hedge funds hired all your classmates, and also all the equivalent graduates for the past 40 years where they have all been competing against each other that whole time. And they have shit tons of money to spend on the best tech they can possibly afford in order to make tiny improvements in trade returns.
You can exchange dollars and euros on the open market, which means the banks and hedge funds can do that too, which means that the anticipated difference between the two is already priced in.
- Comment on Is there any way the average American can insulate themselves from the AI bubble bursting? 6 days ago:
Right.
I will say also that if you want to hedge against AI, then you could invest in non-US based index funds.
Another option is to invest in something like real estate. Do the math and find something you can profit off of even with a down economy and you’ll be able to get your investment to ride out the hard times and earn in the good times. But similar to index investing, these investments should be made with an eye on long-term gains (on the order of decades).
A final option - possibly the best - is to invest in yourself. Put the money into good health (physical and mental), skills that pay dividends (like being able to cook or do your own repairs, or building a community around yourself of hard working, optimistic, and sensible individuals. Skills education can be a great investment - either going to a university (careful here with costs, but college graduates still do tend to have better lifetime earnings than non-graduates), a technical school (AI probably won’t replace plumbers for quite a while), informal self-teaching (you can learn a lot of skills just making personal projects at home or in a makerspace). And for the more ambitious, you can start your own business, which could be as simple as buying a ladder to clean people’s gutters or a snow plow attachment and truck to plow driveways and parking lots.
Hard times are coming - they always are. The people who do well in hard times are the ones with a diverse set of useful skills, a resiliant set of assets, a positive mindset, and a supportive community around them.
- Comment on Is there any way the average American can insulate themselves from the AI bubble bursting? 6 days ago:
Riding out economic ups and downs is really just about good personal finance. The good advice is the same in good times and bad, which is why it is good advice - in economics, you never really know when good or bad times are coming.
- Spend less
- Earn more
- Invest the difference
- Comment on Why do so many hand dryers not dry hands? Am I doing something wrong? 1 week ago:
They fuckin’ blow that’s why.
lol
- Comment on Protect yourselves! 1 week ago:
The heros we need. To warn us of geese teeth
- Comment on hows keto working out for you 1 week ago:
Sure, the plural of anecdote isn’t data. But the existance of anecdotes is what drives scientific inquiry.
Anyway, the last time I was on the keto diet, I came down with a serious illness and underwent a battery of blood tests - essentially everything came back as totally normal, and healthier than an average adult. Turns out I had rocky mt spotted fever.
- Comment on hows keto working out for you 1 week ago:
I mean, I sure do like pizza and beer. But my personal experience is that low carb diets are awesome. I’ve done the keto diet probably about half a dozen times in my life, and (after ensuring my electrolytes stay balanced) it has consistently given me positive results.
I first tried it with the notion that fat and protienn were satiating, and therefore it would be easier to stick to a calorie deficit. Simple. I disregarded all the people who talked about “more mental energy” or whatever bullshit - I just wanted to lose fat. But the results blew me away.
Without counting calories and while eating lots of deliscious food, I lose fat basically without trying and get a six pack. My athletic performance isn’t diminished, and my hunger levels drop noticeably. Hunger itself feels less important, and my emotions in general become more positive - I am more likely to feel happy and grateful and to fall into flow states, and setbacks and bad moods bother me far less. I fall asleep easier and sleep more soundly. My skin looks better. And these effects persist as long as I am on the diet - it isn’t just “losing water weight” or whatever.
Why does it do this? I dunno. Just does. Typically I eat a diet with lots of veggies, beans, some meat, and the occasional pizza and beer night. But comparing a whole foods keto diet to a standard american diet of processed junk food, I’m gonna go ahead and say that keto will come out far ahead, and I’m not gonna let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- Comment on hows keto working out for you 1 week ago:
I’ll fall back on my default null hypotheses here.
- The effect is probably minimal if it exists at all.
- If there is any effect, it is probably negligible if you are doing the big things right.
- Your body is smart, and responds to changes in its environment with an eye towards improved survival and fitness. It is not a simple CICO machine.
So suppose we have an overweight person who is trying to lose weight. They hear about cold water exposure, and how being cold burns more calories. So they start running 10 miles every day at 5 am wearing nothing but a t shirt and shorts in the middle of winter. Then they go to starbucks, buy some hfcs with a touch of coffee, and go work at their office job that they hate because capitalism or something. Almost certainly, this person’s jounts would start to give out quite quickly, but let’s say they hate themselves enough to keep at it all winter. At the end of winter, I would be unsurprised if they gained weight. Sure, they exercised in the cold - but more importantly they were over training, consuming a poor diet, and living an otherwise stressful life. One of the body’s best defences against coming hard times is to store calories for future use - by increasing appetite, decreasing subconscious calorie burning, and shunting resources towards fat storage rather than, say, growth and maintenance of muscle, skin, hair, etc.
On the other hand, suppose we have the same individual. They start with the premise that their body is already great, but they would like it to be better, and the way they will achieve this is via having fun and living well. Thus, their fat loss program consists of learning how to ice skate at the town park after work, going snowshoing on the weekends with their local hiking group, adopting a journalling routine before bedtime, and frequently inviting friends over for dinner parties where they make sure the emphasis of the meal is on protein and vegetables. They also open up to friends about how they aren’t really motivated in their job, and their network of friends helps them gain the skills and industry contacts necessary to get a job that is more to their liking where they get to do interesting and meaningful work with other people whose company they enjoy. At the end of the winter, I would expect this individual to have lost fat despite exercising in the cold. While fat is good for energy storage and insulation, hiking and ice skating are activities where the body generally benefits from having a lower bodyweight - and warmth can be achieved via increased muscle activation rather than fat insulation. Meanwhile, they were spending a lot of time in beautiful natural environments, interacting with people they liked, eating healthy food, sleeping well, and working towards improving their lives in all aspects. “Things are good and I can expect them to get better” is the antithesis of the doom and gloom stress that will likely drive weight gain. Instead, the body will think “the present is not bad, and the future looks easy - and meanwhile, this extra weight is hindering my ability to move easily. May as well get rid of it.”
This is why we find hot people hot. In the past when calories were scarce, a high bodyfat percentage indicated that in the hard times you were living in, this person had access to a lot of calories, and you could expect this trend to continue. These days, life is relatively easy, and storing excess calories is an indication that a person finds life to be hard. A lithe person’s body indicates that they have rarely experienced difficulties beyond their abilities, and that they generally live a happy life. This is a good indication of genetic fitness, and hence, they are hot. Same reason why having good skin, healthy hair, a cheerful and outgoing demeanor, and perky tits are hot - they indicate a prolonged state of positive life circumstances which potential mates could generally count on to continue.
- Comment on They say remote working less productive 2 weeks ago:
No no, you don’t understand. They are being forced at gunpoint to commute to air conditioned office jobs where they fuck off for hours every day by complaining about their jobs on Lemmy. It truly is the worst existance. If only they could escape that farm potatos in Kamchatka!
- Comment on They say remote working less productive 2 weeks ago:
I mean, it’s rather gauche. Plenty here are happy to make fun of, say, rich people’s problems with social relationships, white people’s problems feeling comfortable talking about race, or men’s dating problems. And yet the disparity in privilege between these people and the average lemming is trounced by the disparity between a peasant farmer in a developing nation and the average lemming.
It seems the problems of the privileged are only reasonable to talk about when those problems relate to being a potentially-remote office worker in a developed nation. Strange that this is a disproportionately represented population here on Lemmy…
- Comment on What is an industrial product that, if you could purchase as an investment, you know you could find **local** customers ? 2 weeks ago:
I like the thought, and if people come back with ideas then that’s great.
For me, I know that in my area if you just get a set of cleaning supplies, a car and a laundry machine, you can pretty much immediately get a job cleaning airbnbs. Similarly, heavy equipment like backhoes or skidsteers or jackhammers can be used for any number of profitable tasks, or else can be rented out when not in use. I personally have considered buying a mechanical tamper (used, about $1000), renting it on marketplace for $50 per day until get my money back, and then just owning it for my own personal projects.
But in general, your idea of micro-factories to produce generic goods won’t pan out great. The problem is that no one really cares where rubber grommets come from when buying rubber grommets - they just want them. Now, and cheap. Supposing you were able to even get up and running and work your way onto some stores’ shelves, you would still need to compete on price with identical grommets made in china by megacorps. Which you can’t do, because you are paying western wages to your workers and do not have their economies of scale, and global commodity markets are in fact competitive, and the margins are already razor thin.
Modern manufacturing in developed nations tends to start with niches or novel ideas. If you see a problem in your community, or something in life is pissing you off - that might be an opportunity to make something useful that other people would like to buy for a price you would sell it for.
- Comment on Why does the GOP think “ANTIFA” is bad? 2 weeks ago:
I feel like this is obvious.
(For the record, I voted blue in the last election.)
The vast majority of America’s view on antifa falls somewhere between “they should all be arrested” and “they’re kids who mean well, but are using the wrong methods”.
Do not know what “ANTIFA” truly means?
This seems like the easiest point to explain. A name doesn’t have to mean exactly what it says, and everyone knows this. I could just as easily say “Why are you opposed to MAGA? Do you not want America to be great?” You, presumably, do want America to be great (according to your own definion of “great”) - but you don’t support MAGA. Why? Because MAGA is not the amorphous concept of making America better. It is a political movement with its own cultural context, specific goals, typical methodology, vocal supporters, etc. This is very easy to understand.
Same with Antifa. Sure, the word literally means “antifascist”, but people are going to look at the broader context of their actions, their goals, and the people who are actually in the movement.
I will step back for a monent and say that I personally know little about what the antifa movement actually does. Maybe they spend most of their time operating soup kitchens or lobbying politicians for electoral system reforms with greater transparency. But for the purposes of this question, that is all irrelivant, since this question is about perception.
And what is the perception of antifa? Of what they actually do, who they actually are, and what they actually want? The perception is an angry young man wearing all black throwing a brick through a Starbucks window. His goal is to bring down the amorphous concept of “the system” or “capitalism” via violent extremism to create a world of anarchy - without much of a plan for what to do afterwards if he ever succeeded (which he won’t). The mainstream dislikes this, because in the case that he succeeds (which is unlikely) we would very predictably have everything good in our lives ruined - jobs, stability, secure finances, enough food, clean water, physical safety, etc - because these things depend on the continuation of the system we live in. And in the case he fails, now they have to endure an annoying draft when buying coffee until Starbucks can replace the window. And the mainstream left especially don’t like him because they feel like he is setting them back politically by associating more left leaning ideas with violence and instability, which most people dislike.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with MAGA. The mainstream does not view these as two equal and opposite factions where one side is clearly good and the other evil. The mainstream sees ICE deporting Australians to El Salvador and says “oh, I don’t like that”. And then they see antifa rioting and say “oh, I don’t like that either”. You may ask that if the mainstream’s plan isn’t supporting antifascism, then what is their plan, and the fact is, they don’t need to have a plan to have a opinion about what they do and don’t like. People don’t like slaughterhouse conditions, but still eat bacon. They don’t like climate change, but still want to buy a fancy sports car. The views of any given person will almost never form a logically sound thesis for an idealized state of the world, because people don’t think logically. We see the world, we feel emotional responses, and then we spin up just enough of a logical framework to support our emotional response… That’s it.
- Comment on Why can't we have a static vintage web? 3 weeks ago:
Ad homenim attacks just make you look more wrong.
- Comment on Why can't we have a static vintage web? 3 weeks ago:
I mean, this is all true. But these web sites which mostly work fine and are fine with small audiences already exist - and yet OP is here, on Lemmy. Apparently the demand actually doesn’t exist - ie, OP is choosing not to visit these sites because they find them less enticing than sites with js.
- Comment on Why can't we have a static vintage web? 3 weeks ago:
Guy who wants to offset the costs of his diy fursuit forums by hosting banner ads in the sidebar.
Uuuuuuuuuhhh…
- Comment on Why can't we have a static vintage web? 3 weeks ago:
I mean, the alternative is that all those people who want a way to offset server costs don’t find a way to do so, and therefore pack up and go home. And then we don’t get those websites.
- Comment on If A.I. is so fast and efficient, and CEOs are paid so much, why not replace CEOs with A.I.? 3 weeks ago:
Get out of here with your sensible economic logic. The answer is obviously because CEOs and shareholders are catagorically evil, and make all their descisions with the sole intent of making my life miserable.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Here, you lost this
u
- Comment on A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side 4 weeks ago:
Scientific validation that Mambo No. 5 is a banger
- Comment on A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side 4 weeks ago:
A LITTLE BIT OF TINA’S ALL I SEE
- Comment on YSK that only by being yourself will you find people who like the real you. No one can beat you at being you, but you’ll only ever be second best at pretending to be someone else. 4 weeks ago:
You arent the first to note the relation between a good democracy and self sufficiency. In Jefferson’s ideal America, everyone would be a self-sufficient subsistance farmer, thus allowing each to freely speak his mind.
- Comment on Has anyone else experienced these psychological changes after eating meat? 4 weeks ago:
Hi, YES!
Okay, so like half your post is pure lunacy, but low carb dieting is known to commonly cause hypomania in many people. This is often one of the desired effects of the diet, which often simply manifests as feeling more energetic and optimistic. It sounds like you might be experiencing this effect to an extreme.
I recommend that you (1) immediately come to terms with the fact that you are not in your right mind and (2) eat some carbs and see if you feel more normal. Then work with a mental health professional if you want to continue experimenting with low carb diet strategies.
- Comment on whatever happened to in-store coffee grinders? 4 weeks ago:
Chiming in to say that I still see them fairly frequently. But also, as others noted, most people who want fresh ground coffee can just do it at home now.
Also, I imagine that the grinders were only ever really introduced to try to sell customers on more expensive whole-bean coffee that had a higher margin than folgers. But now every independent coffee shop sells beans in-store and you can choose from 10 million options online. So its not really drawing in new customers there either.
I imagine the stores keep the grinders because they’d be a hassle to remove, but then remove them when they break, since they aren’t worth it to fix.
- Comment on Is there a drink with taste of energy drink without caffeine? 4 weeks ago:
Sometimes the best answer to a question is questioning the premise.
- Comment on Is there a drink with taste of energy drink without caffeine? 4 weeks ago:
Have you tried drinking water with your dinner instead?
- Comment on Which career to pursue? 4 weeks ago:
Honestly, dude, fuck what degree you get. Spend all your time in school learning how to talk to people. That’s the most valuable skill in your life that you are missing.
- Comment on How long can someone physically walk for? 4 weeks ago:
and the hard-core ones will just piss themselves anyway.
If you’re a guy, you can walk and piss at the same time. Just walk sideways and whip your dick out.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
It can be both. We can say the DNC was dumb for not choosing a better candidate or platform, and also say voters were dumb for not voting for Kamala.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Holy shit, doomer takes like this are so cringy.