Author: Chill

Compulsion

Chill Political Economy

Housing is a terrible investment, by the way. Real returns of around ~2% a year. And no, the recent run-up does not change that much at all. People only perceive it as a good investment as it’s forced savings.

But I don’t need that. I save without being compelled to do so.

We only bought a house when its expected investment “returns” could be in the sharp negative and we’d still financially be ok. That’s not the only time you should buy a house. That is up to you and depends on your risk tolerance and financial status. But you won’t even beat a money market fund with housing unless you get really, really lucky.

Housing as an investment is BS in all sorts of ways.

Bad Boom

Chill Prediction, War

If Russia nuclear strikes Ukraine, would the West really follow up with nuclear counter strikes?

No, that’s not what would occur. NATO and the US would utterly destroy Russia’s military capabilities using conventional means, though. And perhaps even occupy Moscow temporarily.

However, what China would do is another matter. That I don’t have a lot of insight on but I can guarantee it would not be nothing. Most likely it would occupy significant parts of eastern Russia and Siberia, I’d guess. But that I’m less clear on.

Reconfirm

Chill Clowns, Politics

Trump didn’t win just because of white voters. He didn’t win because all the rich people voted for him, he won because the working class shifted toward him. Trump won because an incredibly diverse electorate voted for him.

Yep. Many liberals are now completely lying about this, but it’s true. I saw Heather Cox Richardson just today completely making up false data and using utterly-transparent fabrications to justify why the win was all the fault of straight white men. The reality, though, is that only a few small demographics shifted away from Trump. Every other American group went Trump-ward — including black men, Native Americans and most of all, Latinos.

The liberal deniers of this sound just as clown-ass as the election-denying MAGA types. And will be even less effective. And I say this as someone who believes that Trump 2 will bring about the most disastrous era this country has seen since the Civil War. It’s just that I prefer to deal with the world as it is — uncomfortable facts and all — rather than whip up some absolute nonsense to reinforce my worldview.

You don’t win that way. And you aren’t right, which is even more important to me personally to be completely honest.

Chill Links

James Webb Space Telescope Finds Evidence for Alternate Theory of Gravity.

Astronomers discover two galaxies aligned in a way where their gravity acts as a compound lens.

Trump transition team compiling list of current and former U.S. military officers for possible courts-martial.

They’re going to waste our collective time to accomplish nothing. Such a great comment.

Female competition stress linked to disordered eating across the lifespan.

The reason I’m writing this is to shoot holes in the “If you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t worry” story. That story is one of the stupidest fucking things I’ve ever heard. And that says a lot, as I grew up in rural North Florida.

Russia’s Battering Ram Strategy and It’s Mission in the Donbas: Is Russia Reviving Its Operational Art?

Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning.

Regular people have spent years watching the price of goods increase “due to inflation,” despite the fact that the increase in pricing was mostly driven by — get this — corporations raising prices. Yet some parts of the legacy media spent an alarming amount of time chiding their readers for thinking otherwise.

Finding the money to make Europe great again.

Degrees of Degrees

Chill Tech

Please stop lying to people about Cybersecurity being in high demand and graduates getting jobs.

This high demand is only true for people with a lot of experience. For newbies, there is no demand. The reason is that you have to have seen a lot of things to be any good at cybersecurity, and someone with only a college degree hasn’t seen and doesn’t know shit.

I’m not even a cybersecurity specialist, but I do have 20+ years experience in my field. And with that knowledge I can run rings around the new-grad cybersecurity people without even the least little effort. IMO no one should be allowed to go into cybersecurity without at least 10 and preferably 15 years of experience in IT Operations and/or programming.

Not That High

Chill Politics

The Covid pandemic is starting to get so far behind us now that I occasionally meet or see a non-political Gen Zer who was young enough when it began to view it as, “Something that adults used to ruin my high school life completely for no real reason.” There is a lot of very deep, raw anger and resentment there. A ton.

Agree with them or disagree with them1, which way do you think those people are more likely to vote when they do pick up some politics?

Now look at the results.

  1. And I agree, by the way.

Conditional Collapse

Chill War

Ian Welsh and those types have constantly claimed ridiculous stuff about the war in Ukraine like, “Russia could win in a week if it really tried!”

No. Just no. That’s not how wars work. Especially not that kind of war. That’s a fundamentally ignorant take on the nature of war in general and what is occurring in the region. Russia possibly could have won quickly if they’d not completely misunderstood what sort of conflict they were getting into.

However, no country — not even as one as callous about human life as Russia — tolerates 1,000-2,000 KIA a day for months and years if they could just defeat the enemy if “they really tried.”

Ian Welsh just hates the West and the United States in particular and loves Putin. Everything else he writes and believes springs from that poisoned well. And he understands warfare about as well as a turtle understands astrophysics.

Chill Links

The most remarkable thing about wood frogs happens not in the summer when they transform from tadpoles to frogs, but in the winter when they hibernate.

As you get more people publishing, the intellectual quality of the average published work goes down.

The sad decline of on-the-job-training.

If you haven’t been car shopping in a while, brace yourself.

‘No Place For Discontent’: A History Of The Family Dinner In America.

Yes, stocks are crazy expensive right now. These 5 charts show just how extreme valuations have become.

Expect the Worst From Russia and North Korea.

Meteorite 200 times larger than one that killed dinosaurs reset early life.

Getting as active as the top 25% of the US population could extend your life by at least five years, according to a new study published Thursday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine