TrackerFF

So let's say you start taxing the ultra-wealthy based on their assets. They then have the option of:

1) Make the company pay out dividends, so that owners can afford to pay their wealth tax. Not ideal, because what happens during bad years where there's no dividends to be paid out? Or if companies want to re-invest in the company?

2) Sell stocks. Again, not ideal. This would mean that you lose some ownership year by year.

3) Take up personal loans to cover taxes.

etc.

Note, I'm NOT saying that we shouldn't do anything. But this is just the consequence of such assets (stocks) being the dominant asset among the wealthy.

I don't think I've had to do that in 15-20 years or so. At some point, shit just started working. Simple as. DLL hell is a thing of the past.

Then companies started testing it out, and have noticed that things like sick leaves plummeted, and that the employees produced the same amount, sometimes even more.

Our very first "real" program was some local network chat system, which I found extremely fascinating - because I had suddenly gone from writing a bunch of terminal/CLI programs which felt a bit...boring, to writing something which felt like "proper" software.

The students would then hand down the big book of problem and solution sets down to the freshman class.

The professors, still being a bit lazy, knew this. But instead of scarping the old problems, they'd just say that cheating only hurts the students doing it - as the homework grades would not influence the final grade. And sure enough, the students that never did their own work, rarely did well (if at all passed) on the finals exam.

Later on, when I became a TA, there were obvious signs of cheating in the homework, i.e. people handing in the same homework with the same step-by-step solution, with the exact same errors.

In any case, cheating on homework wouldn't help their grade.

But my point is: The one experience EVERYONE share (those that work there, or have worked), from the sanitary workers to the directors, is that they've gone through the security clearance process. A hefty enough credit card debt could jeopardize the clearance to any one of those.

In any case, Kushner - and rightfully so - could not obtain a security clearance the first time around, due to massive debt. But it was overruled / waived by higher ups.

I've worked in intel, and Kushner seems like the textbook example - a cautionary tale - on the type of person you do not want to grant anything of importance.

Honestly it sort of blows my mind that the US has a system decisions by security professionals can simply be overruled.

I'm not one of those, for the fact is that tech and politics has become more intertwined. It is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about the companies, founders, products of top tech companies without acknowledging that the very same things are entangled in the political landscape.

But, it is an explanation as to why people just flag these sort of posts. It's "too political" for their taste.

The only things his cronies can be prosecuted for after that, would be state crimes.

The problem is that people today do not have skin in the game for what happens generations down the line. No real consequences, little desire for actual change.

Meanwhile, we've had a AI-group that's almost 6 years now, where we've explored the models and uses since they became commercially available.

We're trying to get the word out that our colleagues should not get too invested or locked to a single model or supplier. Try to become a vendor-agnostic AI user, while we're working on rolling out org wide local models and tools.

We really do have to remind users, all the time, that the price they pay right now for a monthly subscription, might blow up anytime - as these subscriptions are obviously heavily subsidized.

One theory I've seen over and over again, as to why the current admin is cozying up with Russia, is that their bot farms and influencing campaigns are very good at what they do, and aligned enough to keep them up and running - purely out of self interest.

Mobilization turned out to be extremely unpopular, so they can't just do that without some exceptional cause.

That cause would be NATO attacking Russia. So they're engaging heavily in hybrid warfare, doing stuff like that in Europe. They're tying to provoke some small retaliation from NATO countries.

If that happens, they'll declare that the barbarians are at the gate, and they need a huge mobilization of troops.

But they have no interest in actually fighting against NATO. It would end disastrously for Russia, any way you slice it. Kaliningrad would be completely cut off and surrounded, their Arctic and Baltic sea routes would be hostile.

As a bonus, a potential real war with Russia would increase far-right isolationist popularity in Europe.

Personally I think this is all a play to mobilize a ton of soldiers, send them to Ukraine, and expand their occupied areas before a peace deal comes to the table.

In any case, said dentist that discovered this told her that she should urge any siblings to also get tested. I've bee absolutely meticulous about my teeth, but I've always had problems with them - they simply seem to break and crack far too often, among other things.

I've gone to three different dentists since that, and they've all been completely uninterested finding out more. All told me "I recommend that you go to the dentist that diagnosed your sister".

It should be said that where I live, Norway, you get heavily subsidized treatment for damage related to such conditions - so we're potentially talking about quite a lot of money.

Other than that, I've been quite happy with my experience (with dentists).

Their startups get acquired, or they get acqui-hired because of the founders and core people, who in turn have some pedigree which send strong signals.

If you look at the pattern, it is roughly:

- Top ML/AI researchers from the past 10-15 years - Top ML/AI engineers from top labs or companies

Those above people were hired by FAANG companies or AI startups.

But most important of all, it isn't a overnight success. Many of these have been going at it for 10+ years now. Of course some are relatively young, as in having joined Anthropic or OpenAI more recently (past few years), and launching their own startup after 2022.

If you're not careful, it is also super easy to extrapolate your own skills - and your peers skills - to the rest of the population.

Try being technical support to some non-tech people over the phone, it'll really open your eyes to the general computer knowledge of people.

But, I think the cold hard truth is that if you're a professional worker, with a six figure salary, the idea of going back to school, and working with something completely unrelated to your interest - all while taking a steep pay cut...it is unthinkable for many.

The alternative is of course unemployment.

It is hard to know if it is just bot traffic to sow discord, or if plenty of people are genuinely delighted that office workers are finding themselves unemployed.

Most were just let go. No severance, or comp packages. Just a good luck with your job search, it was nice while it lasted.

For his next gig, he worked in fisheries. His 10 years of experience at the factory didn't mater, and he started with entry level pay. This lasted some years, until some bigger company bought his employer, and merged. Lots of people had to go, him included.

Then he landed work delivering mail. Worked there for 15 years, until the postal service started downsizing due to ever decreasing volume in mail being delivered.

So his last attempt was to just go to trade school, and try some trade. 50+ years old working on a apprentice salary, once again starting at the bottom rung of the ladder.

My point is, there are many people out there that have lived this life. For every software developer that have made bank for the past 20 years, and are now faced with the reality of being made obsolete, there are probably 10 people who've gone through this multiple times, but gone from one minimum wage job to another. Going back to start every time.

It sucks for everyone. But you just have to adapt. I guess one silver lining is that when the "white collar professional jobs"-apocalypse arrives, that's when we'll finally look at things like UBI.

Time and time again, we've seen that when working class jobs disappear, it is met with some sort of aw-shucks / but-they'll-find-something-else-to-do reaction. Whereas when the middle/professional class is affected, it is seemingly a end of times sign.