Beans, lentils and some other supplies arrive today for the depression that is well on its way.
And if no depression materializes, great. We can still eat the beans and lentils. That’s how insurance against calamity works.
(Hint: There’s gonna be a depression. It’s baked in.)
I just asked a user to log in using the password she chose less than 5 minutes ago. (She couldn’t remember it.)
Not that unusual for the average user. I’ve had many users over the years who would forget their passwords every 2-3 days.
Self-service password resets are a godsend.
It’s fucking hilarious that so many STEM clowns look down on philosophy when about 90% of science is, “How sure am I that I know what I think I know?”
Which is and always will be a philosophical question.
The ‘70s conversation pit is making a comeback.
Yes! I love the conversation pit. A lot of 1970s design language was pretty great, even if the colors were not optimal. I bet the colors worked better in the moment, though.
Our house was built in 1975 but still only has a few remnants of the 1970s features left. I wish there were pics of it when it was new.
When you say that tattoos look bad people always come out of the damn woodwork saying, “I have right to do whatever I want with my own body!” Sure do. I agree with that 100%.
But I also have a right to say, “Damn, that looks like absolute crap.”
Those rights aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, both need to exist to have a free society.
I wish there were a way to measure “practical literacy” vs. “can recognize some words and sound them out.”
That said, let’s talk about what’s pinging around in my brain. Literacy rates worldwide went from about 12% in the early 1800s to about 88% in 2016.
I suspect that 2016 number is about the peak of what I deemed above to be “practical literacy.” Already, large portions — perhaps even the majority — of Gen Z is not even close to being literate in any real sense. This will probably only get worse as TikTok and similar scourges take over the collective culture. Literacy is now passé in the literal French verb sense — as in “past.” It’s no longer required nor desired for and by the majority of the population.
This ramifications of this change will be just as large an alteration of society as widespread literacy was. And I do not have any idea how it will play out, but that future is well on the way whether we like it or not. In most important aspects, it’s already here.
North America is Dripping from Below, Geoscientists Discover.
What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
The death of the middle-class restaurant.
Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex.
Here’s the iPhone. Here’s the iPhone With Tariffs.
Beef Is Expensive. Meatpackers Are Scraping Every Morsel From Bones.
“Smart” book I just started: Paradoxes and Physical Limits of Information Theory by Philippe Jacquet.
It’s quite good so far.
Hours in Line, Cut-Off Calls: Accessing Social Security in the Era of DOGE.
The first step in killing Social Security, long a dream of the plutocrats. They will probably be able to do it this time.
I’d guess something like a 40% elderly poverty rate by 2040.
How do so many people just… not drink water?
I never drink plain water. The last time I drank just water was years ago. I don’t even remember when.
And I don’t because it tastes like absolute crap. Why would I want to do that to myself?
Stocks Plunge as the Market Understood What Tariffs Are: A Tax on Corporate Profit Margins.
Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought.
Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived. We’ve been building to that for a while.
Hot Schrödinger cat states created.
A Cowardly Congress Is Letting Trump Crash the Economy.
Trump’s Academic Purge Will Make America Stupid and Provincial Again.
What is up with car door handles these days? Everything everywhere getting worse all at once.
I’ve advised all my overseas friends and acquaintances to avoid visiting the US. If it’s for tourism, don’t even consider coming. If it’s a required business trip, work hard to convince your company that the risks far outweigh any gains, especially since the US Border Patrol and other related fascist agencies might steal your company’s private data. (The data aspect is most likely to convince employers.)
It’s in no way worth the risk to make the US your destination now. Avoid if at all possible.
A lot of people’s terrible behavior is related to them realizing one day as they were growing up that they were not in fact God’s specialest one and never getting over that trauma.
I have a big ego, but never fell prey to this as nearly everyone around me when I was young went out of their way to tell me how horrible and shitty I was. So I definitely never felt that I was God’s specialest anything.
Most overrated musical artist: Bob Dylan
Most underrated musical artist: Kitten
The less said about Dylan the better. Kitten, though, has a fantastic ever-changing lineup, years of great songs, and Chloe et. al have songwrting chops like mad. I’ve yet to meet a single person who has heard of them but they are wonderful.
The market crashed $3Trillion… where did it go?
This is an area where engineers and physicists (and other similar types) have real problems.
The short answer is that the money doesn’t go anywhere as it never existed in the first place. That does not, however, mean it is completely fake and does not mean it had no effect on the real world. A stock’s price is based on the current estimate of future earnings and works to fund company operations both directly and indirectly.
Yes, there are animal spirits, vibes, and short-term fluctuations as well as fraud and shenanigans — but the basic contention in the para above is still true.
Engineer types who are used to conservation of energy and such often simply cannot understand that the money is just gone when the stock market declines. Vanished. And that’s because it never really was anywhere. That is completely counterintuitive to them and their sensibilities.
But that is how it works.