rmah

your professors. your classmates who got a job. your family and friends of family. anyone else you know that respects you.

lack of skilled labor, probably

First, you are correct. However, the reason GDP is used as a proxy metric for economic growth because it's convenient. Doing so does make a few assumptions though, foremost of which is that the structure of the economy will change very little from year to year. If that is so, than a rise in GDP should correspond to a rise in economic prosperity (and by extension wealth). Thus, using GDP change to measure changes in prosperity works (more or less) year by year. but the longer the periods you compare (5 years, 10 years, 20 years), the less meaningful the number becomes.

That is, IMO, arguable. Entertainment has always been valued by humans. It is just the non-physical equivalent of fancy clothing or jewelry. And clothing/jewelry is most certainly a form of wealth. So, it can be argued that things that you can buy that make you feel better emotionally or increase your social status are forms of wealth.

That some forms of entertainment may be detrimental if abused in the long-term is an orthogonal topic.

IMO, combining gold money arguments with observations about the price of gold is contradictory. If gold is money, then you should never wonder about the "price of gold" as gold should be used to price things.

While Dr. Morgan makes a few reasonable points about "real wealth" (aka points I agree with), he also hand waves many assumptions which are, at best, questionable.

Finally, be aware that he's been predicting imminent economic collapse for almost 20 years now. He'll probably be correct someday (assuming he lives a very long life), but that doesn't mean much IMO.

I don't understand why tesla (a car manufacturer), uber (a ride services company), robinhood (financial services), doordash (meal delivery service) are in the treemap of "tech market" companies. OK, I take that back, I understand why (i.e. good PR by those companies to be included in a sector other than their own in order to get higher market valuations), I just don't agree with it.

It scales horribly. Essentially, as the ship gets larger, the sail area has to be even larger (proportionally) to maintain the same speed. Further, the larger the sail, the more susceptible to damage and the harder it is to control.

luxury goods are shipped by air

While I agree with your general sentiment, in fairness, Powell didn't say "revenue", he said "earnings", which is near equivalent to profits in financial reporting lingo.

Sounds like Niven and Pournell's Moties civilization cycle from "The Mote in God's Eye"

If you think the next generation will be any better, I have bad news for you...

Well, then they're not easily replaceable. Which implies those workers have other options. And thus employers that treat workers worse than other employers will see workers leave and/or find it harder or more expensive to hire. So it all works out.

The key phrase is "the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption".

While I have not read the quoted book, the first quote "Because European colonialists saw no jails, police, lawyers, judges, or courts in African indigenous societies, they mistakenly concluded these cultures had no way to address social conflict and wrongdoing" is more than odd given that most Europeans didn't have most of those things either until the 1800's. Thus, people would have been alive who remembered days before police and jails (as punishment, not holding before judgement/punishment). The first police force (as we would understand it today) in the world was formed in London in 1829.

The second quote, "In Western culture, we are socialized to believe that the desire to inflict counterviolence upon or retaliate against someone who has hurt us or a loved one is innate and that justice has always been done and will always be done in this way. In fact, far from universal or natural, this adversarial vision of justice is a relatively recent cultural and historical construction, arising around AD 1200 with the dawning of the nation-state and racial capitalism [my emphasis]." is also a strikingly bizarre take. I don't understand how anyone could think this.

newsflash: permeable materials are permeable

Has anyone used both kson and hjson? We use hjson as a more forgiving json-like config format and really like it. kson seems more feature rich, but I'm a bit concerned about things like embedding code in configs. So any thoughts vs hjson?

There are herds of wild deer a half hour outside NYC. Deer seem to be able to thrive anywhere as long as there aren't many predators.

The continental US (i.e. excluding alaska) has some 20+ mil wild deer, 200k bison, 1 mil bears, 3-4 mil coyotes, 13,000 wolves, 5 mil alligators, 10k+ mountain lions, etc, etc. Yes, most are in the vast western states. But deer and bears are common even in areas a just a couple hour drive outside of NYC. Thankfully no gators near NYC (except in the sewers, of course :-)

I have to strongly disagree with this. From what I've seen, it's very rare that positions espoused by those being called "nazi" have anything to do with fascism.

Calling people who hold beliefs you find wrong "evil" is, IMO, counter-productive and will lead not only to conflict but to worse outcomes for yourself (even if your side "wins"). The root of cultural differences (both within and between societies and sub-cultures) are differing beliefs of what is right and wrong; what is morally good and morally bad.

What you view as hateful, others will view as loving. And what you view as loving, others can view as hateful. Painting the opposition in simplistic terms like "evil" and refusing to even try to see why they feel they way they feel solves nothing and empowers extremists. And when groups led by such people "win", the majority still lose.

IMO, any side of any belief, be it individualism vs collectivism, atheism vs religion, sexual openness vs sexual restraint, free speech vs censorship, capitalism vs socialism, etc, etc. can easily morph into something harmful. You may have discovered "evil", but after many decades, I've come to see that most people's hearts are in the right place. But there are always a significant fraction on any side of any issue that, for whatever reason, cannot regulate their emotions and seem to need to strive for the extremes.

Compromise can happen if you reject extremists. Solutions can be found if you understand that the extremists on your own side are as much the opposition as the other side of an issue. Purity of belief always seems attractive on the surface. But moderation is not a cop out, it's pragmatism. Moderation is the practical philosophy through which solutions can be found. Fundamentalism, extremism, dogmatism, are approaches that lead to worse outcomes. Moderation leads to better outcomes. History has shown this again and again.

The 70's isn't really a fair comparison because PC's did not exist yet. Thus, it was very rare to find programmers with experience anywhere.

I'm in my 50's and I feel smarter than I did in my 20's. I'm less energetic certainly, but I can focus better now. And I feel like my knowledge and understanding of mathematics, politics, economics, sciences, history, people, etc, is much better.

What the hell?

Software distribution control didn't start with phones, it started with game consoles.

The random website cannot access arbitrary files on your computer's file system and send it somewhere else. An html file with javascript running locally, if trusted, on a typical personal computer could do that.

This is exactly what I meant when I said I was mystified.

The other religious texts you mentioned are not part of the western civilization canon and did not have much effect on western literature. Thus, while I think they should certainly be available in school libraries as they are important works, they need not be required reading.

On the other hand, in different areas with different cultural traditions, each of those books should be required reading as they were central to their literary tradition. And, one assumes, are.

To deny that contemporary American culture has its roots in European culture (i.e. western culture) is to deny reality. And honestly, it mystifies me why so many seem to want to be ignorant of their own cultural roots.

To me, it's disheartening to see this sort of knee-jerk reaction to the grandparent posting (and to see that post be down-voted). What btilly wrote is not a defense, it's reasonable and, more importantly, practical advice in combating tyranny. Moreover, IMO, if you actually want to reduce or put an end to tyranny, you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy. Empathy is not agreement, it's not sympathy, it is understanding. Screaming at others that they're bad people will not change anything. If anything, IMO, it causes them to dig their heels and makes change harder.

If you set a recurring meeting, every Friday at 10:00AM, New York time, the time in UTC varies (either 14:00 UTC or 15:00 UTC) depending on the date. Further, what is displayed depends on the viewer's location (because daylight savings times change differently based on location/date). IOW, the time of the meeting occurs on TWO UTC times, not one. You can't just store UTC and be done with it. You need the originating timezone too. In other cases you may need the date the item was created as well.

More sophisticated calendar software will take into account holidays or use offsets from month start/end. i.e. "we'll have a meeting at 9:00pm Tokyo time, every last business day of each month".

Isreal proposed international peacekeeping forces in Gaza, but Hamas has rejected it. If I may quote Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, "We stress our people's rejection of the presence of any non-Palestinian actors on our land." [https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2024/04/02/hamas-says-no-to-i...]. They only accept aid organizations.