Last week, dozens of piracy sites went down that had shows that weren't on Crunchyroll. This week, those shows are on Crunchyroll.
I'm not making any arguments about why that happened, but it's strange af.
I'm not making any arguments about why that happened, but it's strange af.
There's some amazingly good stuff out there. Our cups runneth over.
The key with any sort of news or economic stuff boils down to one question: "Is this information good enough to help me run my life better?"
Overly optimistic news is obviously a problem because it might have you taking unnecessary risks because everything is fine. On the other hand, doomerism is just as bad because things aren't always all bad, and every cloud has a silver lining.
In the past I listened to a lot of APM or NPR, and I made decisions based on the news I got from them, and my predictions were often wildly wrong -- Predict one thing and the opposite would happen, pretty often. Much of the establishment media is like this -- if you listen to them, you'll be led astray because they report the official narrative, and it only shifts significantly after news has already started to happen and you can't do anything about it.
I often go back to my decision in 2020 to refinance my mortgage. (In Canada there's essentially no such thing as a 30 year fixed mortgage since banks take all the risk on such a thing and so while a 5 year fixed could be gotten at 1.9%, a 25 year was closer to 10%). 92% of people go with mortgages of 5 years or less, and they need to renew every 5 years or less at a new rate) -- the financial doomers I watched ended up helping me understand I should break my mortgage and refinance in 2020 for 10 years at a slightly higher rate because government policies at the time were almost custom-made to produce stagflation and thus Interest rates would inevitably rise. They did rise, and if I had taken no action I would be refinancing closer to 6% right about now as many people are.
In another case, I saw news stories about potential food shortages, and potential fuel shortages, and so I grabbed some gas cans with some stabilizer, a generator and some electric space heaters and filled the cans up with gas, and grabbed some staple foods that would last in storage for 20 years. It turns out there were food and fuel shortages shortly afterwards -- just not in my region. Europe got hit hard, and there were many stories of massive consequences to a lack of energy, and there have been revolutions in part over lack of food such as in Sri Lanka. I didn't end up needing the stuff I bought, but it was a measured response so I have fuel for years to come (I just use it in the lawnmower and snowblower), and occasionally we have some rice from one of the 80lb bags I've got tucked away. Not really the end of the world having food and fuel on-hand. It's important not to let total doomerism take over your psyche because even with good news sources you can get things wrong because you read the signs wrong.
The day Trump was shot, I had spent most of the day outside at the park with my son. And after I found out about Trump getting shot, I went back outside and we continued to play. What was actually important to me that day was the time I got to spend with him, not time I'd later spend looking into the details of a bit of political violence.
I used to host OpenStreetMap on fbxl (used the server for something else later), and I had an interesting moment I'll never forget. You start off looking at a world map. You see every piece of land on earth and go "This is what's here". As you slowly zoom in, the country lines show up, and you go "this is what's here". As you keep zooming in, you see provincial or state lines, and you go "this is what's here", and as you keep going you start to see cities, and then you see the streets in a certain city. Keep zooming in and you see the individual buildings, and that's where the map stops. But that's where the map stops but that isn't where complexity stops. Inside those buildings are many individual details -- what furniture there is and where, the relationships between the people there, other things strewn about. If someone has a handful of money, that's a tiny thing but it can be really important to the people inside. In the dirt in the back yard or even in the drain under the sink there can be entire microbiomes living, breeding, and dying and to the microorganisms living there, the drain under your sink is their entire world, it looks to them like the map of the world I started with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekt7VujAWNE
The world is infinitely complex, and it all matters, but we often ignore the small for the very big as if the very big is more important, but it isn't necessarily. As the western roman empire fell, that was a huge event, but most of the planet didn't care. There were tribes in the Americas that didn't realize the western roman empire ever existed. Asia mostly went unaffected. Australia didn't care. North Africa was affected, but Africa is a huge continent and most of it didn't care at all that something called Rome went away. Northern Europe lost its biggest customer for bog iron but otherwise wasn't directly impacted. For many of the people within the western Roman empire, life actually got a lot better. According to evidence from people's bones, the average person's health improved more than at any point in history when the western Roman empire fell. Despite that, many people think this empire falling was one of the worst things to happen in history.
Given that fact, it's probably important to pay a little bit to the outside world to make sure you're prepared for the future, but it's more important to make sure the world around you right now is good. I've always considered my relationship with my wife important, but I've really spent time cultivating it in the past 5 years and I'm happy I have because we're closer than ever. The time I spend with my son is surprisingly beneficial for my own mental health, but more importantly he's going to grow up and the decision to spend time with him is going to splay out in consequence that will pan out for generations -- the world around him will be different based on whether I spend quality time with him or not, and what specifically I decide that quality time looks like, not just in this moment potentially when he chooses who to marry, how he treats his kids, and how their kids decide to live their lives as well. Unlike many things where there isn't much evidence to support the idea that you can make a change, we know the overwhelming difference you can make in the life of your child, and the lives of people around you.
And in the same way the microbes under your sink could potentially get you sick and you can get your whole household sick and if you've got a kid in school they could send those germs to the school affecting a chunk of the school and thereby the city, I think part of the problems we're seeing today in the world are caused by people making the wrong decisions about their micro lives. At the end of the day politics matters but equally doesn't matter. It has effects on your personal life, but it isn't all that affects it or even the most potent thing -- you can't really talk about how your life is going based on who is president as much as what's actually going on in your life.
And that's where I think the media is dangerous but also can be beneficial. If you're able to take what you see and use it to make your micro life better, then it's useful, and if it only stresses you out over things you can't change or it misleads you into making poor decisions, then it's harmful.
The key with any sort of news or economic stuff boils down to one question: "Is this information good enough to help me run my life better?"
Overly optimistic news is obviously a problem because it might have you taking unnecessary risks because everything is fine. On the other hand, doomerism is just as bad because things aren't always all bad, and every cloud has a silver lining.
In the past I listened to a lot of APM or NPR, and I made decisions based on the news I got from them, and my predictions were often wildly wrong -- Predict one thing and the opposite would happen, pretty often. Much of the establishment media is like this -- if you listen to them, you'll be led astray because they report the official narrative, and it only shifts significantly after news has already started to happen and you can't do anything about it.
I often go back to my decision in 2020 to refinance my mortgage. (In Canada there's essentially no such thing as a 30 year fixed mortgage since banks take all the risk on such a thing and so while a 5 year fixed could be gotten at 1.9%, a 25 year was closer to 10%). 92% of people go with mortgages of 5 years or less, and they need to renew every 5 years or less at a new rate) -- the financial doomers I watched ended up helping me understand I should break my mortgage and refinance in 2020 for 10 years at a slightly higher rate because government policies at the time were almost custom-made to produce stagflation and thus Interest rates would inevitably rise. They did rise, and if I had taken no action I would be refinancing closer to 6% right about now as many people are.
In another case, I saw news stories about potential food shortages, and potential fuel shortages, and so I grabbed some gas cans with some stabilizer, a generator and some electric space heaters and filled the cans up with gas, and grabbed some staple foods that would last in storage for 20 years. It turns out there were food and fuel shortages shortly afterwards -- just not in my region. Europe got hit hard, and there were many stories of massive consequences to a lack of energy, and there have been revolutions in part over lack of food such as in Sri Lanka. I didn't end up needing the stuff I bought, but it was a measured response so I have fuel for years to come (I just use it in the lawnmower and snowblower), and occasionally we have some rice from one of the 80lb bags I've got tucked away. Not really the end of the world having food and fuel on-hand. It's important not to let total doomerism take over your psyche because even with good news sources you can get things wrong because you read the signs wrong.
The day Trump was shot, I had spent most of the day outside at the park with my son. And after I found out about Trump getting shot, I went back outside and we continued to play. What was actually important to me that day was the time I got to spend with him, not time I'd later spend looking into the details of a bit of political violence.
I used to host OpenStreetMap on fbxl (used the server for something else later), and I had an interesting moment I'll never forget. You start off looking at a world map. You see every piece of land on earth and go "This is what's here". As you slowly zoom in, the country lines show up, and you go "this is what's here". As you keep zooming in, you see provincial or state lines, and you go "this is what's here", and as you keep going you start to see cities, and then you see the streets in a certain city. Keep zooming in and you see the individual buildings, and that's where the map stops. But that's where the map stops but that isn't where complexity stops. Inside those buildings are many individual details -- what furniture there is and where, the relationships between the people there, other things strewn about. If someone has a handful of money, that's a tiny thing but it can be really important to the people inside. In the dirt in the back yard or even in the drain under the sink there can be entire microbiomes living, breeding, and dying and to the microorganisms living there, the drain under your sink is their entire world, it looks to them like the map of the world I started with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekt7VujAWNE
The world is infinitely complex, and it all matters, but we often ignore the small for the very big as if the very big is more important, but it isn't necessarily. As the western roman empire fell, that was a huge event, but most of the planet didn't care. There were tribes in the Americas that didn't realize the western roman empire ever existed. Asia mostly went unaffected. Australia didn't care. North Africa was affected, but Africa is a huge continent and most of it didn't care at all that something called Rome went away. Northern Europe lost its biggest customer for bog iron but otherwise wasn't directly impacted. For many of the people within the western Roman empire, life actually got a lot better. According to evidence from people's bones, the average person's health improved more than at any point in history when the western Roman empire fell. Despite that, many people think this empire falling was one of the worst things to happen in history.
Given that fact, it's probably important to pay a little bit to the outside world to make sure you're prepared for the future, but it's more important to make sure the world around you right now is good. I've always considered my relationship with my wife important, but I've really spent time cultivating it in the past 5 years and I'm happy I have because we're closer than ever. The time I spend with my son is surprisingly beneficial for my own mental health, but more importantly he's going to grow up and the decision to spend time with him is going to splay out in consequence that will pan out for generations -- the world around him will be different based on whether I spend quality time with him or not, and what specifically I decide that quality time looks like, not just in this moment potentially when he chooses who to marry, how he treats his kids, and how their kids decide to live their lives as well. Unlike many things where there isn't much evidence to support the idea that you can make a change, we know the overwhelming difference you can make in the life of your child, and the lives of people around you.
And in the same way the microbes under your sink could potentially get you sick and you can get your whole household sick and if you've got a kid in school they could send those germs to the school affecting a chunk of the school and thereby the city, I think part of the problems we're seeing today in the world are caused by people making the wrong decisions about their micro lives. At the end of the day politics matters but equally doesn't matter. It has effects on your personal life, but it isn't all that affects it or even the most potent thing -- you can't really talk about how your life is going based on who is president as much as what's actually going on in your life.
And that's where I think the media is dangerous but also can be beneficial. If you're able to take what you see and use it to make your micro life better, then it's useful, and if it only stresses you out over things you can't change or it misleads you into making poor decisions, then it's harmful.
People cheering for anything like what happened are idiots because even if you're perfectly compliant with today's rules, the people in charge can change and suddenly the precedent you were happy to set against your enemies will be used against you.
I was listening to a video about the new Star Wars stuff that came out, and it brought back up something I keep on tripping over every time the discussions come up: Blazing Saddles.
Blazing Saddles is a comedy Movie produced by Mel Brooks in 1974. The main character is a black man in 1874 who is working on the railroad. He gets himself in trouble, and eventually finds himself the sheriff of a town who hates him because he's black. He goes through a typical western plot of the scheming senator trying to destroy the town to make himself rich, but the twist is that part of the way he was going to do that was by making a black guy the sheriff. Instead, the new sheriff comes up with a plan to save the town by building a fake town nearby and slowing down the bandits by building a toll booth. The fake town is booby-trapped with explosives. The rest of the movie descends into a fourth wall breaking gong show. All throughout, the movie constantly made jokes dragging the racism of 1874 into the limelight as an object of ridicule.
I saw it for the first time a few years ago, and it was absolutely hilarious. It was massively successful at the box office, making 119 million dollars on a 2.6 million dollar budget.
What does Blazing Saddles have to do with the new Star Wars?
Two things:
First, the movie was as I understand it pretty cutting edge for the day, but it was a decade where many cutting edge movies were being put out. It had a black lead, it directly addressed racism as a core plot point, and as I recall it had more n-bombs than the freeside of the fediverse.
Second, 1974 was (sorry, my Gen-X mutuals) 50 years ago. A child born the day that movie came out (sorry! sorry!) are starting to look at retirement, and anyone who saw it in theatres is likely already well past retirement age (sorry Boomers!). The key point here is that it's a movie that's been around for a long time.
Really, there are things we can criticize the boomers as a bloc for, but it's historical revisionism to look at this movie and say "they didn't have black people in movies, they didn't discuss racism, and if they had black people in those movies white people wouldn't watch them" -- obviously all of that is wrong.
Star Wars was released in 1977, and it did a lot of things too -- Everyone knows Princess Leia was one of the early girlboss characters, but besides that the assault on the death star had a lady named Mon Mothra in charge, and in the movie it wasn't a big deal, everyone was focused on the mission.
The Empire Strikes back introduced a black character, Lando Calrissian (If I get the Star Wars names wrong here, I'm not even sorry) who was the black leader of an entire city and a really cool character to boot. Everyone remembers Lando.
In Return of the Jedi in 1983, it explicitly reveals Leia was Luke's sister and also strong in the Force, so if Luke fails, she would be the galaxy's last hope, not directly showing a female jedi because that's not what the story was about, but making it clear girls could be jedis.
The Prequel trilogy introduced Motherfuckin Samuel L. Jackson playing a Motherfuckin black motherfuckin jedi. Everyone was made of planks of wood in that movie, but apparently other media helped flesh out his character as incredibly interesting.
I'm enumerating all these things to show that Star Wars already hit all these notes before many of the actresses rambling on about diversity were even born. They're acting like they're doing something really amazing that will change the world, but the world already changed, and it was the Baby Boomers that changed it. These people are walking into the middle of Washington DC and pretending they founded America.
In short, it's literally not progress. Considering how poorly done these diversity roles are done and how poorly the media is taken because they focus first on pretending to be groundbreaking and then maybe sometime after with making something people actually want to see, it's worse than nothing because we already have had competent people make good works people look back on fondly. When a bad piece of media carries your message, it hurts the cause as much as a good piece of media carrying your message helps your cause.
The marketing juggernaut has taken stuff that just kind of "Was" and changed it into a bullet point for the marketing blurb. "Star wars 4: we no longer murder women and minorities, and we're also no asbestos free!"
I also feel like it lets people who aren't nearly as competent as their parents generation pretend they're doing something important when in reality they're just failing to live up to the standards of those who came before. "Well even if our movie sucks you need to watch it because we have black people!" -- Nobody cares. If you take Star Wars as a whole continuity, there isn't really any sort of real minority that isn't somehow represented. What they're doing isn't important, which is a deathblow because it also isn't competently produced or entertaining.
Some might call the problem tokenism, I think that's wrong -- the problem isn't necessarily tokenism, it's worse: With tokenism, you include a black character to meet a quota. That can mean the black character is a token addition but otherwise inoffensive (and in fact can end up as a great character in their own right under a good writer). This is an active, religious thespiannic diversity. It's shouting from the streetcorner so everyone can see you being ever so pious. And as part of the performative aspect it stops being inoffensive and starts actively trying to be offensive. You see it in the interviews around the modern movies -- nobody's seen the movie yet, but they're railing against fans who hate the movie, especially "STRAIGHT WHITE MEN" because they hope that muckraking will cause controversy and attacking the core demographic of the film was a good way of doing that. Thankfully, people are getting wise to the grift, and so instead of getting outraged when these people say stupid things, they just ignore them, and now that the money is running out we're seeing the trickling of a sea change. It goes beyond merely performative, and into the thespiannic -- like a stage actor screaming their lines so everyone in the back row can hear.
"Oh, this movie [that was just announced and nobody knows about yet] there's so many people attacking me, I got death threats!" uh huh? On the Internet, even? Sounds scary. And they were just lurking, waiting to jump on you, they didn't even wait for the film to be announced! Horrifying.
If you're actually breaking barriers, you don't get full backing of the Hollywood hype machine. The suits aren't going to want to support you because you're trying something new and dangerous. In that sense, Gina Carano's actions are more cutting edge than any of the management approved controversy being drummed up, and they fired her and blacklisted her.
This concept of "Safe edgy" is interesting to think about, but it isn't new. TV in the 90s was filled with TV shows or advertisements pretending they were pushing the edge when in reality they were doing exactly what the execs wanted them to be doing. Once you know what you're looking at (Don't you DARE spell "Extreme" with an E at the beginning because we're XTREME here! "No way!" WAAAAAYYYY!) the verisimilitude (appearance of being real) breaks down and you realize you're looking at a square pretending to be edgy and cool. And to be clear on something, there was a lot of fake edgy back then, but there was also a lot of real edgy and those guys were constantly one quip from having their show canceled by the networks. A lot of them didn't make it, but they left behind great works.
The veneer of fake edgy hid milquetoast products back in the day, and often you'd get your XTREME LEMONADE and find that it was competent lemonade, not great but not horrible, just boring. I think part of the problem today is that fake edgy often is a mask over a mask; You're obviously being fake and so under that mask is something, but the boring underneath the fake edgy mask is the actual mask over what is often the absolutely horrible people inhabiting Hollywood and other media industries.
But we found that in the following decades that a lot of our heroes in Media were terrible. You'd have some actress up on the big stage and she would make a point to heartfeltedly thank Harvey Weinstein who that actress probably needed to do something unspeakable to in order to get the part, right before they paid lip service to whatever social cause is trendy this week. We didn't know, but they did and they were complicit. And anyone who thinks that that was an isolated incident and that everything is fine now is in denial. For all the "we just love women and minorities!", it's a paper thin facade intended to cover up the window through which you can see Jeffrey Epsteins private island.
I know, that's a lot to think about from just a bunch of idiotic hollywood actors pretending they're saving the world by selling you a shitty movie, but it isn't like I'm interested in the movies themselves anymore.
Blazing Saddles is a comedy Movie produced by Mel Brooks in 1974. The main character is a black man in 1874 who is working on the railroad. He gets himself in trouble, and eventually finds himself the sheriff of a town who hates him because he's black. He goes through a typical western plot of the scheming senator trying to destroy the town to make himself rich, but the twist is that part of the way he was going to do that was by making a black guy the sheriff. Instead, the new sheriff comes up with a plan to save the town by building a fake town nearby and slowing down the bandits by building a toll booth. The fake town is booby-trapped with explosives. The rest of the movie descends into a fourth wall breaking gong show. All throughout, the movie constantly made jokes dragging the racism of 1874 into the limelight as an object of ridicule.
I saw it for the first time a few years ago, and it was absolutely hilarious. It was massively successful at the box office, making 119 million dollars on a 2.6 million dollar budget.
What does Blazing Saddles have to do with the new Star Wars?
Two things:
First, the movie was as I understand it pretty cutting edge for the day, but it was a decade where many cutting edge movies were being put out. It had a black lead, it directly addressed racism as a core plot point, and as I recall it had more n-bombs than the freeside of the fediverse.
Second, 1974 was (sorry, my Gen-X mutuals) 50 years ago. A child born the day that movie came out (sorry! sorry!) are starting to look at retirement, and anyone who saw it in theatres is likely already well past retirement age (sorry Boomers!). The key point here is that it's a movie that's been around for a long time.
Really, there are things we can criticize the boomers as a bloc for, but it's historical revisionism to look at this movie and say "they didn't have black people in movies, they didn't discuss racism, and if they had black people in those movies white people wouldn't watch them" -- obviously all of that is wrong.
Star Wars was released in 1977, and it did a lot of things too -- Everyone knows Princess Leia was one of the early girlboss characters, but besides that the assault on the death star had a lady named Mon Mothra in charge, and in the movie it wasn't a big deal, everyone was focused on the mission.
The Empire Strikes back introduced a black character, Lando Calrissian (If I get the Star Wars names wrong here, I'm not even sorry) who was the black leader of an entire city and a really cool character to boot. Everyone remembers Lando.
In Return of the Jedi in 1983, it explicitly reveals Leia was Luke's sister and also strong in the Force, so if Luke fails, she would be the galaxy's last hope, not directly showing a female jedi because that's not what the story was about, but making it clear girls could be jedis.
The Prequel trilogy introduced Motherfuckin Samuel L. Jackson playing a Motherfuckin black motherfuckin jedi. Everyone was made of planks of wood in that movie, but apparently other media helped flesh out his character as incredibly interesting.
I'm enumerating all these things to show that Star Wars already hit all these notes before many of the actresses rambling on about diversity were even born. They're acting like they're doing something really amazing that will change the world, but the world already changed, and it was the Baby Boomers that changed it. These people are walking into the middle of Washington DC and pretending they founded America.
In short, it's literally not progress. Considering how poorly done these diversity roles are done and how poorly the media is taken because they focus first on pretending to be groundbreaking and then maybe sometime after with making something people actually want to see, it's worse than nothing because we already have had competent people make good works people look back on fondly. When a bad piece of media carries your message, it hurts the cause as much as a good piece of media carrying your message helps your cause.
The marketing juggernaut has taken stuff that just kind of "Was" and changed it into a bullet point for the marketing blurb. "Star wars 4: we no longer murder women and minorities, and we're also no asbestos free!"
I also feel like it lets people who aren't nearly as competent as their parents generation pretend they're doing something important when in reality they're just failing to live up to the standards of those who came before. "Well even if our movie sucks you need to watch it because we have black people!" -- Nobody cares. If you take Star Wars as a whole continuity, there isn't really any sort of real minority that isn't somehow represented. What they're doing isn't important, which is a deathblow because it also isn't competently produced or entertaining.
Some might call the problem tokenism, I think that's wrong -- the problem isn't necessarily tokenism, it's worse: With tokenism, you include a black character to meet a quota. That can mean the black character is a token addition but otherwise inoffensive (and in fact can end up as a great character in their own right under a good writer). This is an active, religious thespiannic diversity. It's shouting from the streetcorner so everyone can see you being ever so pious. And as part of the performative aspect it stops being inoffensive and starts actively trying to be offensive. You see it in the interviews around the modern movies -- nobody's seen the movie yet, but they're railing against fans who hate the movie, especially "STRAIGHT WHITE MEN" because they hope that muckraking will cause controversy and attacking the core demographic of the film was a good way of doing that. Thankfully, people are getting wise to the grift, and so instead of getting outraged when these people say stupid things, they just ignore them, and now that the money is running out we're seeing the trickling of a sea change. It goes beyond merely performative, and into the thespiannic -- like a stage actor screaming their lines so everyone in the back row can hear.
"Oh, this movie [that was just announced and nobody knows about yet] there's so many people attacking me, I got death threats!" uh huh? On the Internet, even? Sounds scary. And they were just lurking, waiting to jump on you, they didn't even wait for the film to be announced! Horrifying.
If you're actually breaking barriers, you don't get full backing of the Hollywood hype machine. The suits aren't going to want to support you because you're trying something new and dangerous. In that sense, Gina Carano's actions are more cutting edge than any of the management approved controversy being drummed up, and they fired her and blacklisted her.
This concept of "Safe edgy" is interesting to think about, but it isn't new. TV in the 90s was filled with TV shows or advertisements pretending they were pushing the edge when in reality they were doing exactly what the execs wanted them to be doing. Once you know what you're looking at (Don't you DARE spell "Extreme" with an E at the beginning because we're XTREME here! "No way!" WAAAAAYYYY!) the verisimilitude (appearance of being real) breaks down and you realize you're looking at a square pretending to be edgy and cool. And to be clear on something, there was a lot of fake edgy back then, but there was also a lot of real edgy and those guys were constantly one quip from having their show canceled by the networks. A lot of them didn't make it, but they left behind great works.
The veneer of fake edgy hid milquetoast products back in the day, and often you'd get your XTREME LEMONADE and find that it was competent lemonade, not great but not horrible, just boring. I think part of the problem today is that fake edgy often is a mask over a mask; You're obviously being fake and so under that mask is something, but the boring underneath the fake edgy mask is the actual mask over what is often the absolutely horrible people inhabiting Hollywood and other media industries.
But we found that in the following decades that a lot of our heroes in Media were terrible. You'd have some actress up on the big stage and she would make a point to heartfeltedly thank Harvey Weinstein who that actress probably needed to do something unspeakable to in order to get the part, right before they paid lip service to whatever social cause is trendy this week. We didn't know, but they did and they were complicit. And anyone who thinks that that was an isolated incident and that everything is fine now is in denial. For all the "we just love women and minorities!", it's a paper thin facade intended to cover up the window through which you can see Jeffrey Epsteins private island.
I know, that's a lot to think about from just a bunch of idiotic hollywood actors pretending they're saving the world by selling you a shitty movie, but it isn't like I'm interested in the movies themselves anymore.
I've seen the occasional post from Robert fourth Reich here on the fediverse. I bite my tongue every time because I have a policy against arguing with braindead morons.
People living outside of places like the rust belt might disagree, but I definitely agree. The manufacturing base was getting hollowed out after that, and most of the people in today's rich areas don't realize how cataclysmic it has been for many places. A lot of cities are like ghost towns, filled with houses you can buy for less than $1,000 because the plants shut down and moved to China and the cities were left to rot. And they go "so? Who cares?" But the reality is something was lost when that heartland that was once the core of western power and it's all been globalized away.
Globalization isn't going to last forever. The world is becoming more dangerous because there isn't a superpower to keep it in check anymore, and given how much has been destroyed (including generations of workers), it's not going to be a nice process getting it back.
Globalization isn't going to last forever. The world is becoming more dangerous because there isn't a superpower to keep it in check anymore, and given how much has been destroyed (including generations of workers), it's not going to be a nice process getting it back.
I posted a more permanent link on lotide about a year ago: https://lotide.fbxl.net/posts/32322
There's a site called shadowstats that simply takes the inflation calculation they did in 1990, and it consistently shows the inflation rate as being incredibly high. It's well-recorded that many changes were made to CPI calculations in ways that reduce CPI, such as hedonic adjustment or substitution.
https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
There's a site called shadowstats that simply takes the inflation calculation they did in 1990, and it consistently shows the inflation rate as being incredibly high. It's well-recorded that many changes were made to CPI calculations in ways that reduce CPI, such as hedonic adjustment or substitution.
https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
Yesterday I posted a big thing talking about why nobody wants to win the next US election, but I want to make a slight correction: I wrote that "Most alarm lights that haven't had masking tape put over them by the government are screaming imminent stagflationary depression, maybe one of the worst in American History", but I think we're already in that depression and have been for a while.
If they're lying about the inflation rate (which I've written at length that they are), and it's actually been 15-20% per year and not 20% over 3 years, how would that change the way we look at the current economy? Well for one thing, it would mean that every developed country is in double digit recession and has been for years. So some might say "but employment is at record levels!" -- well, if we assume arguendo that they aren't fudging those numbers, it makes perfect sense from a market economics standpoint -- If you are a business and your labor costs are going down 15-20% per year, why not keep that labor? With the labor getting cheaper every year for the same or greater output, it's just rational decisionmaking to keep everyone working. It's the same as what libertarians have said for years about the minimum wage -- if there was no minimum wage there might be 100% employment because you'll even hire the most useless worker if it's for a dollar a year.
I think we can look at the tent cities that never existed in many communities before as evidence that things are not as rosy as the government claims. I've never seen that before in my life, and now they're everywhere.
Instead of looking at my post as talking about the economy from the viewpoint of actors who are in bed with the government. For them, the actual economy doesn't matter as much as the numbers since that's what they'll look at to discuss reality. We saw that recently when the press was attacking individuals for saying things are bad when the numbers claim otherwise -- "The numbers say you're not doing so badly!" oh well then I guess I don't live in a tent this year! Great! I'll tell the bank!
If they're lying about the inflation rate (which I've written at length that they are), and it's actually been 15-20% per year and not 20% over 3 years, how would that change the way we look at the current economy? Well for one thing, it would mean that every developed country is in double digit recession and has been for years. So some might say "but employment is at record levels!" -- well, if we assume arguendo that they aren't fudging those numbers, it makes perfect sense from a market economics standpoint -- If you are a business and your labor costs are going down 15-20% per year, why not keep that labor? With the labor getting cheaper every year for the same or greater output, it's just rational decisionmaking to keep everyone working. It's the same as what libertarians have said for years about the minimum wage -- if there was no minimum wage there might be 100% employment because you'll even hire the most useless worker if it's for a dollar a year.
I think we can look at the tent cities that never existed in many communities before as evidence that things are not as rosy as the government claims. I've never seen that before in my life, and now they're everywhere.
Instead of looking at my post as talking about the economy from the viewpoint of actors who are in bed with the government. For them, the actual economy doesn't matter as much as the numbers since that's what they'll look at to discuss reality. We saw that recently when the press was attacking individuals for saying things are bad when the numbers claim otherwise -- "The numbers say you're not doing so badly!" oh well then I guess I don't live in a tent this year! Great! I'll tell the bank!
In a Japanese accent, the word "earth" in eglish sounds a lot like "ass" and you can't ignore it afterwards.
Watching one mage in an anime this season casting "ass wave" or watching the new anime "goodbye ass" makes the world a little more amusing.
https://youtu.be/mQTEgWRi7FU
Watching one mage in an anime this season casting "ass wave" or watching the new anime "goodbye ass" makes the world a little more amusing.
https://youtu.be/mQTEgWRi7FU
In private, some Republicans are saying it would be better if Trump loses the next election.
From a non-partisan standpoint, we're cutting it really close. Most alarm lights that haven't had masking tape put over them by the government are screaming imminent stagflationary depression, maybe one of the worst in American History, and everyone with eyes and basic math skills can see the looming sovereign debt crisis. Nobody wants to be holding this hot potato because whoever is in power at that time is almost certainly going to preside over a disaster and there's nothing to be done about it.
From a totally non-partisan standpoint, Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate for President. She speaks to the American Public like they're 4 year olds, her record as Vice President is basically free real estate for the Republicans, she was the least liked vice president in US history, her only primary campaign was the weakest of all the Democrats on stage with her dropping out first, There are better people within the Democratic party to run, but they didn't and they aren't -- instead they installed Kamala more or less by fiat. I think part of the reason for that is they're not stupid and they know full well winning the next election is a phyrric victory, and whoever is president during that term is effectively ending their political career so might as well let the weakest candidate either lose and end her career or win and end her career. In so doing, they keep their powder dry for the next viable election cycle.
Notwithstanding concerns that Trump will try to crown himself dictator (concerns that I think the conservative response to January 6th prove unfounded -- conservatives want to conserve the constitution and violating that would not go over well), he's only got one term left as president, and he's getting quite old so this is probably his last kick at the can so regardless of whether the party wants to win or not, he clearly does. He seems to be going all-in on a big tent strategy this time, which is why he's brought former democrats like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard into the fold and adopted compromise positions on wedge issues such as abortion. Personally, as long as he retains his core identity and brand, I think it's a winning strategy, insofar as such a thing can exist.
From a non-partisan standpoint, we're cutting it really close. Most alarm lights that haven't had masking tape put over them by the government are screaming imminent stagflationary depression, maybe one of the worst in American History, and everyone with eyes and basic math skills can see the looming sovereign debt crisis. Nobody wants to be holding this hot potato because whoever is in power at that time is almost certainly going to preside over a disaster and there's nothing to be done about it.
From a totally non-partisan standpoint, Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate for President. She speaks to the American Public like they're 4 year olds, her record as Vice President is basically free real estate for the Republicans, she was the least liked vice president in US history, her only primary campaign was the weakest of all the Democrats on stage with her dropping out first, There are better people within the Democratic party to run, but they didn't and they aren't -- instead they installed Kamala more or less by fiat. I think part of the reason for that is they're not stupid and they know full well winning the next election is a phyrric victory, and whoever is president during that term is effectively ending their political career so might as well let the weakest candidate either lose and end her career or win and end her career. In so doing, they keep their powder dry for the next viable election cycle.
Notwithstanding concerns that Trump will try to crown himself dictator (concerns that I think the conservative response to January 6th prove unfounded -- conservatives want to conserve the constitution and violating that would not go over well), he's only got one term left as president, and he's getting quite old so this is probably his last kick at the can so regardless of whether the party wants to win or not, he clearly does. He seems to be going all-in on a big tent strategy this time, which is why he's brought former democrats like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard into the fold and adopted compromise positions on wedge issues such as abortion. Personally, as long as he retains his core identity and brand, I think it's a winning strategy, insofar as such a thing can exist.
I've been playing solitaire lately and one thing I find fascinating is that the game has many iterations that are unwinnable, for example if you've got too many reds or too many blacks or non-consecutive cards. And you can screw up your game and make it unwinnable as well. So many times, part of the game is knowing when it's time to hit the reset button because the game can no longer be won. It sounds simple, but sometimes just as you're about to reset you see the next move. So there's an element of uncertainty as to whether it's really time to reset, and there's an element of having faith in yourself if you think a run can be salvaged.
I just saw data that 99% of employee contributions from Fox News and Wall Street journal parent company news corp go to Democrats.
Controlled opposition much?
Controlled opposition much?
Huh, no but after looking into it that's really something else. The nih published study showing it does make people have a lower heart rate was interesting in particular.
In the US for works created after January 1 1978, it's life of the author plus 70 years. For works for hire, it's 95 years.
I was thinking in the shower about the idea of a "fidelity floor".
Ever listened to music from the 1940s? It doesn't quite sound right. On the other hand, starting around the late 1950s, sound recordings got increasingly high fidelity to the point that you could slap an old audio recording on a new MP3 and the audio might be out of date but it sounds just fine.
Same with film. Early early film looks like crap, but very quickly it became good enough, and today a remastered version of Snow White can be sold on the market. If you think about it, that movie is old enough to be a great grandfather, but the masters can create media that's just fine.
Even the Internet has something like this. Early early video was really poor since it had to be playable or downloadable on a 56k modem or less, but I pretty routinely watch videos from 10 years ago, and if they're a decently recorded 480p, that's good enough for my eyes.
This even occurs with video games. The Atari 2600 might not really be something a kid would play today, but SNES games are at a level that kids may be fully OK playing a final fantasy or a Super Mario World. GOG has an entire business model on selling games that are decades old because they're just fine.
The reason to think about this idea is copyright law. Early books did degrade over time, and early recordings did too. But as forms of media hit a fidelity floor, they become timeless. That timelessness is beneficial in a work of media, but if you give a company a virtually unlimited monopoly on that work, then some conglomerate can own an increasing amount of our cultural history, and I think there's something important in that fact we need to think about. If your great great grandmother sang a song from Snow White and you integrated that song over generations, doesn't it seem odd that you might die of old age before the public owns that song?
To an extent I think it's a great argument for creative commons or for dedicating works to the public domain (something I've written into the legal page of The Graysonian Ethic, releasing it to the public domain or licensing it as Creative Commons Zero 15 years after first publication), letting someone own that much of our culture isn't healthy from a societal standpoint.
Ever listened to music from the 1940s? It doesn't quite sound right. On the other hand, starting around the late 1950s, sound recordings got increasingly high fidelity to the point that you could slap an old audio recording on a new MP3 and the audio might be out of date but it sounds just fine.
Same with film. Early early film looks like crap, but very quickly it became good enough, and today a remastered version of Snow White can be sold on the market. If you think about it, that movie is old enough to be a great grandfather, but the masters can create media that's just fine.
Even the Internet has something like this. Early early video was really poor since it had to be playable or downloadable on a 56k modem or less, but I pretty routinely watch videos from 10 years ago, and if they're a decently recorded 480p, that's good enough for my eyes.
This even occurs with video games. The Atari 2600 might not really be something a kid would play today, but SNES games are at a level that kids may be fully OK playing a final fantasy or a Super Mario World. GOG has an entire business model on selling games that are decades old because they're just fine.
The reason to think about this idea is copyright law. Early books did degrade over time, and early recordings did too. But as forms of media hit a fidelity floor, they become timeless. That timelessness is beneficial in a work of media, but if you give a company a virtually unlimited monopoly on that work, then some conglomerate can own an increasing amount of our cultural history, and I think there's something important in that fact we need to think about. If your great great grandmother sang a song from Snow White and you integrated that song over generations, doesn't it seem odd that you might die of old age before the public owns that song?
To an extent I think it's a great argument for creative commons or for dedicating works to the public domain (something I've written into the legal page of The Graysonian Ethic, releasing it to the public domain or licensing it as Creative Commons Zero 15 years after first publication), letting someone own that much of our culture isn't healthy from a societal standpoint.
If you were to ask me where someone could put their money to best retain its value in the near future, I think it'd be gold. I'm not talking about growth, there's still an outsized role for other financial implements in that regard, I'm just talking about wealth preservation.
Lots of people chose real estate, but I have a feeling that's a supercycle that's almost over.
Basic economics still exist, and with the upcoming population collapse, and the boomers all getting to that age where they start dying en masse, and many people suggesting we've already seen the lowest mortgage rates of our lifetimes in 2020, you're going to have a lot fewer people chasing a lot more supply with a lot less buying power and so eventually those prices are going to collapse on their own. By contrast, if you have a Spanish gold coin from 500 years ago, it is still highly valuable and is likely to continue to be.
Gold only needs to exist and will remain in its current form effectively forever. A house requires maintenance, annual tax payments, insurance, in many parts of the world you absolutely must pay for heating or your house will be destroyed. It takes a lot of money to own a home. Yes, you can rent them out, but if the same supercycle applies, it's possible rents will go sideways for a long while or even substantially down, meaning you have an asset you expected to profit from that could not just be losing value but actively costing you money every month.
Some people would then point out that net immigration will help recover the lost population, but to that I have 2 counter-points. First, the west is quickly fading as the "land of opportunity" so even at this moment many migrants make it to the west and realize it's expensive to live and taxes are insanely high so they return home and I don't see that getting better. Right now, there are houses in the Greater Toronto Area which have 25 migrants living in an unfinished basement. I've heard people say "Oh, that's just their culture" but the fact is it isn't -- India for example may have large families, but they don't have 25 strangers living in the same room and paying 1000 a month for the privilege. Second, many of the places we're net importing people from have their own issues. Many of the countries we presently net migrate people from are facing shrinking populations themselves, so it isn't like they have unlimited people to pick from. In a world that isn't like today, it's likely that other examples such as Africa which are facing some of the highest growth rates will actually have big problems maintaining those because a lot of that money is coming from western investment and so if the west has fewer people investing less money there won't be as much money to fund growth as there is right now.
Now some people might go "use stocks or bonds", but reality is that over history, 99.9% of stocks went bust. Huge names from the past such as E. F. Hutton, Eatons, AMC, and many more simply disappeared after being unable to keep up in a changing world market. For growth you need to go to the market, but for long term wealth preservation, you need something you can be sure will continue to exist. As for bonds, they have an expiration date as a matter of their function, and in addition many entities that issue bonds no longer exist. If you buy corporate bonds from the above companies you won't be getting your money back for example, and many countries have had big changes that mean you can't always rely on them -- 100 years ago many south american countries looked like they would be rivals to the US for example, but eventually defaulted on their debts. The US may therefore be considered a safe jurisdiction, but with a massively growing debt it's highly likely a sovereign debt crisis is just around the corner. That doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in these things, but rather that you need to be cognizant that for wealth preservation, both stock and bond markets mean taking on substantial risk.
Lots of people chose real estate, but I have a feeling that's a supercycle that's almost over.
Basic economics still exist, and with the upcoming population collapse, and the boomers all getting to that age where they start dying en masse, and many people suggesting we've already seen the lowest mortgage rates of our lifetimes in 2020, you're going to have a lot fewer people chasing a lot more supply with a lot less buying power and so eventually those prices are going to collapse on their own. By contrast, if you have a Spanish gold coin from 500 years ago, it is still highly valuable and is likely to continue to be.
Gold only needs to exist and will remain in its current form effectively forever. A house requires maintenance, annual tax payments, insurance, in many parts of the world you absolutely must pay for heating or your house will be destroyed. It takes a lot of money to own a home. Yes, you can rent them out, but if the same supercycle applies, it's possible rents will go sideways for a long while or even substantially down, meaning you have an asset you expected to profit from that could not just be losing value but actively costing you money every month.
Some people would then point out that net immigration will help recover the lost population, but to that I have 2 counter-points. First, the west is quickly fading as the "land of opportunity" so even at this moment many migrants make it to the west and realize it's expensive to live and taxes are insanely high so they return home and I don't see that getting better. Right now, there are houses in the Greater Toronto Area which have 25 migrants living in an unfinished basement. I've heard people say "Oh, that's just their culture" but the fact is it isn't -- India for example may have large families, but they don't have 25 strangers living in the same room and paying 1000 a month for the privilege. Second, many of the places we're net importing people from have their own issues. Many of the countries we presently net migrate people from are facing shrinking populations themselves, so it isn't like they have unlimited people to pick from. In a world that isn't like today, it's likely that other examples such as Africa which are facing some of the highest growth rates will actually have big problems maintaining those because a lot of that money is coming from western investment and so if the west has fewer people investing less money there won't be as much money to fund growth as there is right now.
Now some people might go "use stocks or bonds", but reality is that over history, 99.9% of stocks went bust. Huge names from the past such as E. F. Hutton, Eatons, AMC, and many more simply disappeared after being unable to keep up in a changing world market. For growth you need to go to the market, but for long term wealth preservation, you need something you can be sure will continue to exist. As for bonds, they have an expiration date as a matter of their function, and in addition many entities that issue bonds no longer exist. If you buy corporate bonds from the above companies you won't be getting your money back for example, and many countries have had big changes that mean you can't always rely on them -- 100 years ago many south american countries looked like they would be rivals to the US for example, but eventually defaulted on their debts. The US may therefore be considered a safe jurisdiction, but with a massively growing debt it's highly likely a sovereign debt crisis is just around the corner. That doesn't mean you shouldn't invest in these things, but rather that you need to be cognizant that for wealth preservation, both stock and bond markets mean taking on substantial risk.
Absolutely true. It's been really strange seeing the massive shifts just in the past 5 years. It's like.... major parts of ideologies just suddenly change completely.
Thinking about it, I wonder if part of the reason we're not having kids is that we're often stuck in an extended childhood, and the reason for that is western society took our collective wisdom and threw it away.
We used to know marriage was something worth striving for, but then we threw it away because marriage is bad since you can get hurt in a divorce.
We used to know having kids was something worth striving for, but we threw it away because they're expensive and the world is going to end in a million years and life is suffering.
We used to know community was something worth striving for, but we threw it away because you might not like the people in your community and they might judge you.
In order to destroy this wisdom, and some of it is self-evident wisdom, you have to throw up hard barriers. You can't just forget it, you need to reject it. Postmodern western civilization did reject all these things and much more. It's no wonder that the whole of our lives exist in the pop culture era, and future generations are having to re-learn the wisdom that was self-evident only a few generations ago.
Our bodies and minds are evolved solely to help us survive and replicate, and we have rejected many of the instincts because we're supposedly enlightened and far past that, but in its place many people have left essentially nothing, and the truth has always been that if you're a nihilist, there's no reason not to just lay flat and let the world reclaim you into dust, and many people are doing exactly that with their lives.
I've learned that this rejection is wrong in my life. I didn't think I'd ever have any of the things that matter. I didn't think I'd find a wife. I didn't think I'd own a home. I didn't think I'd have a child. And I thought when I was young that I wouldn't want any of those things anyway. But I was wrong and learning I was wrong has been delightful.
Being married filled a hole in my heart I never knew I had, and people will scoff and go "Oh what a loser he needs a woman to feel complete", but I do and I'm unashamed of that. My wife is my partner and thank God for her coming into my life. Having a son has filled my life with meaning and purpose in a way I simply didn't have just a few years ago -- I looked around and thought "Oh, I'll be paid off on my house, and then I can retire, and then I can die" and what a sad thing that was. Again, some people will scoff and go "Oh what a loser he needs a child to feel complete", but I do and I'm unashamed of that. In my growing son I see myself, and I see my wife, and I see someone else who is neither of us but has grown in the culture we've created for him into a smart, hilarious, clever, interesting little guy. I won't say owning a home has filled a hole in my heart, but there's something primal about having a spot that isn't the place you stay, it's yours. I rented for a long time, and you are always aware of the fact that you are in a place that belongs to someone else that you are borrowing (for money), and it does change the way you act. What else has been lost in the postmodern generations? What might we never recover fully?
And rejecting these things as things that might make you happy in life is I think part of the reason we're unhappier than ever despite being richer in many ways, and also why we're looking at such low birth rates.
We used to know marriage was something worth striving for, but then we threw it away because marriage is bad since you can get hurt in a divorce.
We used to know having kids was something worth striving for, but we threw it away because they're expensive and the world is going to end in a million years and life is suffering.
We used to know community was something worth striving for, but we threw it away because you might not like the people in your community and they might judge you.
In order to destroy this wisdom, and some of it is self-evident wisdom, you have to throw up hard barriers. You can't just forget it, you need to reject it. Postmodern western civilization did reject all these things and much more. It's no wonder that the whole of our lives exist in the pop culture era, and future generations are having to re-learn the wisdom that was self-evident only a few generations ago.
Our bodies and minds are evolved solely to help us survive and replicate, and we have rejected many of the instincts because we're supposedly enlightened and far past that, but in its place many people have left essentially nothing, and the truth has always been that if you're a nihilist, there's no reason not to just lay flat and let the world reclaim you into dust, and many people are doing exactly that with their lives.
I've learned that this rejection is wrong in my life. I didn't think I'd ever have any of the things that matter. I didn't think I'd find a wife. I didn't think I'd own a home. I didn't think I'd have a child. And I thought when I was young that I wouldn't want any of those things anyway. But I was wrong and learning I was wrong has been delightful.
Being married filled a hole in my heart I never knew I had, and people will scoff and go "Oh what a loser he needs a woman to feel complete", but I do and I'm unashamed of that. My wife is my partner and thank God for her coming into my life. Having a son has filled my life with meaning and purpose in a way I simply didn't have just a few years ago -- I looked around and thought "Oh, I'll be paid off on my house, and then I can retire, and then I can die" and what a sad thing that was. Again, some people will scoff and go "Oh what a loser he needs a child to feel complete", but I do and I'm unashamed of that. In my growing son I see myself, and I see my wife, and I see someone else who is neither of us but has grown in the culture we've created for him into a smart, hilarious, clever, interesting little guy. I won't say owning a home has filled a hole in my heart, but there's something primal about having a spot that isn't the place you stay, it's yours. I rented for a long time, and you are always aware of the fact that you are in a place that belongs to someone else that you are borrowing (for money), and it does change the way you act. What else has been lost in the postmodern generations? What might we never recover fully?
And rejecting these things as things that might make you happy in life is I think part of the reason we're unhappier than ever despite being richer in many ways, and also why we're looking at such low birth rates.