snakeboy

Sorry, I don't see how that responded to my initial question.

> War, genocide, mass murder, bureaucracy etc... These are only enabled because people are being compensated on something they need to acquire goods and services in a region,

So in a world where all fiat currency is replaced by bitcoin, aren't people still going to be compensated and then acquire goods and services? So how does bitcoin avoid that problem? If arms manufacturers are paid in bitcoin, they are still going to lobby the US government to get involved in wars to increase demand.

If your main critique is capitalism, then I at least understand the specific philosophy you're criticizing. But if that's the case, then I don't see why bitcoin is a necessary part of that solution.

I'm really not understanding how "fiat" is the root evil here. Currency has value because people have trust in it preserving that value and being recognized by others for that value, no?

> It's one thing to say you don't understand it...

Okay, I'll bite. Why is 'fiat' the root of all the world's problems rather than corrupt institutions and human nature? I don't even know what that means blame fiat. Something about moving off the gold standard? Didn't we have wars and corruption before that too?

Isn't this also how a lot of friendships start? People finding themselves in a similar place/situation/habit/interests. So to me it seems a bit natural that workplace friendships would naturally develop. It's healthier to make an effort to have friendships outside of work as well, of course.

Maybe I'm being naïve, but I don't see how "toxic atmosphere and disruption of team dynamics" would result from these casual friendships. If anything, I'm more likely to hold myself accountable to my team members when I know them better personally.

See also:

> [Critiques of Israeli government]

> "It's really sad to see ... plagued by anti-semitism".

It's not appealing to any kind of gendered stereotyping though. It's a quote from the founder of "The Boy Scouts Association".

To be fair, I was responding in the context of "traditional" American news outlets failing to actually provide what you're defining as "News/Journalism".

I agree with your definitions. But if I'm choosing between Editorial "news" from WaPo/NYT vs. someone independently covering the same events on their Substack, I'd be more interested in the individual on Substack if I trust them from previous experience as an intelligent, informed, good-faith writer.

WaPo/NYT I don't know the individual writers very well, and I don't really have much faith in the intentions of the editorial board...

I'm not sure exactly where the line between "news" and "editorial" is being drawn. If you have journalists from WaPo in DC writing articles on something happening in Israel, what is the difference between them and a respected journalist writing on Substack? If it's someone with a good reputation, I'd probably attribute a bit more weight to the Substack author's analysis on the situation.

Obviously there's space for investigative journalism like what, e.g. ProPublica is doing, but if it's just "news", I'd rather get it from an individual backed by a strong reputation than an institution backed by a strong reputation, unless the journalist has a useful on-the-ground insight.

Substack is essentially blogging, isn't it? So I don't understand your saying "usually" here. It's 100% dependent on the person writing it.

I don't think anyone making less than the median US income has even heard of the main/master debate :)

But sure, I agree with the larger point. Culture wars are great for keeping the weak divided. The $GME fiasco - albeit a bit silly - was the first glimmer of hope I saw in a long time towards that unification. Hopefully there's more to come.

Is 50 hours that crazy? Does anyone else feel like these days they put in well above 40 hours a week doing WFH? Granted, during the day I can't stay 100% focused in my apartment, so I waste maybe an hour throughout the day online. Then I feel guilty and stay online well into the evening/weekends. I can't meet my deadlines otherwise.

I would disagree. I think the "woke" stuff is a more active movement to solve all of the 1% of the issue, while ignoring the 99% that actually effects peoples' lives (how universities perpetuate classism, living wages for people doing 'un-skilled' work, revitalizing disadvantaged communities that perpetuate historical racial injustices, etc.).

Displays of misplaced white guilt like this - while bizarre psychologically - don't really harm or help anything.

At least in Europe (can't speak from personal experience elsewhere) you can easily find "Language Exchange" type meetups. Depending on the city, it will be a healthy mix of locals, immigrants, and tourists. If you speak English fluently, you'll typically have a lot of locals eager to talk with you to practice their English, and in turn you can learn/practice the local language in an open environment.

This is lower stress than trying to go to a random bar and strike up a conversation when I don't know the local language very well, and if you're staying long-term, it's a natural way to develop friendships with locals.

I can't even imagine what this comment means/how it's used. There is really not enough context here. "expected?" Like the first time they met them?

It seems like Google HR's initial response of "assume good intent"[0] seems reasonable, absent additional details:

> Cruz, who is Mexican American and prefers to be identified by the pronouns they/them, reported the incident to human resources in 2019 where personnel told them they should “assume good intent,” Cruz recalled in an interview. Unsatisfied, Cruz asked human resources to look deeper into the incident, and an HR official said an investigation into the matter had been closed, Cruz said.

I feel like the journalist failed to actually convince us that this was something newsworthy.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-advised-mental...

To be fair, in an American high school it's unheard of that you would continue on to 10th grade if you failed any of the core classes in 9th grade, let alone 12th grade... I literally would not have believed it possible. Maybe there are other cases like this, but I wouldn't have believed it yesterday.

So they're hit with an utterly unprecedented level of incompetence by the school, and she's a (single?) mother working 3 jobs. In that situation it's perhaps not surprising that the oldest has the least supervision among the three.

I guess I'd just disagree that "staggering level of entitlement" is the correct description. I only see a depressing result and a family that's in a very complicated situation, and is rightfully angry at what just took place.

Sure, teenagers should take some degree of personal responsibility, and parents for their children, but in a situation as complicated as this one, I personally wouldn't try to make that judgement from the outside.

> For example, European cities banning diesel vehicles.

At least in Paris, poor people are not often the ones driving into Paris for work, they're mostly taking the metro in from the suburbs.

Paris has some moderate air pollution problems, often among the worst European or American cities (of course, globally there's much worse), and that effects everyone's quality of life and long-term health in a myriad of ways that we don't fully understand yet, as well as in some obvious ways that we already understand.

Of course there's always a bit of political show-boating with these things, and so the French left-wing do this with their pet issues, namely environmental issues. But that show-boating doesn't diminish the tangible positive effects of the policy...

That reminded me of an interview [1] with Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men:

> "A lot of the most important things in my life have happened to me over the phone," he said, remember that before texting and voicemails, "It's a dramatic situation almost every time when you answer the phone ­— if you answer the phone."

[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mad-men-series-finale... (spoiler alert: interview is about the series finale)

In France, I've slowly started returning to nighttime walks and runs, and I haven't been hassled by any police yet. I guess I'll gladly take the fine if some cop is on a power-trip one night. Some désobéissance civile is healthy :)

Though you're right grocery shopping is a pain.

That would suggest that you perhaps don't completely understand that people are different. :)

I don't really know much about bitcoin and how mining scales with the number of trades, but there are only a few million Bitcoin users, meanwhile there are billions of USD holders/users each of whom have (I'd guess) significantly more average daily transactions.

That's something like 5 orders of magnitude more activity with USD vs BTC.

So for something that is used upwards of 100,000x more and only takes 5x more energy, that'd be a win for USD, no?

This of course is all disregarding my strong skepticism that the excesses of the US Military is a reasonable proxy for the strength of the US dollar.

Derek Lowe has a nice short article explaining how the mRNA vaccines require very specialized manufacturing processes that are a bit of a bottleneck.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...

It sounds like you disagree with their argument, which is fine, but then you go on to harshly criticize an interpretation that you've imposed on it. There are plausible alternative interpretations which are both reasonable and likely, so why not assume best intentions? That's the bedrock of productive debate.

I'm not sure I understand how that would be implicitly or explicitly supporting racism. You think the end goal of that proposal is a more racist society? Donating money to the Against Malaria Foundation?

"Supporting Black Lives Matter" is not equivalent to "not being racist".

I think water is key. I drink easily 10-20 cups of coffee every day, but I add a cup of water for each cup of coffee.

Yeah i end up in the bathroom every 20 minutes, but at least this habit stops me from eating all day while working from home.

Unfortunately this was Trump's impact on a few issues. Immigration immediately comes to mind.

Ethics aside, I think the parent comment was referring to weird additives and oils in things like the Impossible Burger.

That being said, I think it's only fair to compare that to all the antibiotics, hormones, and fertilizers that your average low-grade ground beef has been exposed to or fed.

Drug legalization, Snowden/Assange pardon, de-classifying stuff, congressional term limits...

For Trump, being anti-establishment was always about catchy slogans "drain the swamp" and irrelevant "own the media" stunts like skipping the White House Correspondents' dinner.

I think my phrasing was poor. I meant specifically about labor issues, not the general impact on society/the world. Everyone in the country jokes about how Amazon employees have to run, skip bathroom breaks, etc. to meet warehouse quotas. Whether this is entirely true anymore, I don't know, but that's the reputation.

To be fair, Amazon has probably the worst corporate reputation among public-facing companies, up with Walmart when it comes to labor issues. So I find it hard to believe that anyone is being convinced that Amazon is a net positive here.

And at a certain point it's consumerism that's driving all of this. I don't know if it's fair to blame Amazon for this any more than it is to blame McDonalds for obesity. We live in a society where people are free to make their own choices, and as long as these "hidden costs" aren't well regulated, a lot of people will take a cheeseburger at the cost of a few extra pounds, and some 2-day shipped plastic junk at the expense of some poor over-worked employee's vacation.

Meanwhile, these consumers are putting additional strain on the healthcare system, and encouraging companies like Amazon to get away with all of its labor abuses.

Very cool sensation of literally walking through all these places! I have never been to India, but was mesmerized taking an HD tour through an open street market.

The map/guessing UI is a bit clunky, since the map always starts centered on USA, so if you're in a country-specific mode, you always have to click and drag a bunch, and then after you click the city, you have to click again the "Guess" button.

> Saying that there's wealth deficit for millennials/genx because boomers have accumulated more wealth later in life is a little handy-wavy.

That's not what the chart I linked is claiming. The Boomer line goes back to when they were 35. Not sure what the data limitations were preventing it from going back further. Meanwhile all age data is shown for Gen X.

I'm not sure what you mean about the future chart? I guess we'll have to wait and see :-)

But anyway, this chart appears to answer the question: "which generation had more relative wealth in its early 30s?"