The oldest baby boomers are 78. The generation that's older than that is called the silent generation, the ones born during world war 2 who came of age in the post-war period.
Biden, Pelosi, and McConnel are all part of that generation.
Biden, Pelosi, and McConnel are all part of that generation.
I've got most of my powder dry at the moment in money market funds that are basically risk free because they're just keeping the money in reverse repo facilities at the fed for 5%, because I agree and I don't intend to make the mistake I made in 2008 and not be able to pick up any of the bargains.
Problem is things have been so screwed for so long people look like geniuses for doing dumb things. Eventually fortunes will be lost, but until that happens people refuse to think about the idea that lines sometimes change direction.
Happened many times throughout our lives -- 2001, 2007, to an extent 2020, but people think this time is different and more importantly people assume secular cycles will always play in our favor.
That isn't to say that you can't invest in the stock market without it being gambling, but if you're in on the next big thing that's been going up for several years hoping that you're not the last person holding the bag, you are gambling. Absolutely.
Happened many times throughout our lives -- 2001, 2007, to an extent 2020, but people think this time is different and more importantly people assume secular cycles will always play in our favor.
That isn't to say that you can't invest in the stock market without it being gambling, but if you're in on the next big thing that's been going up for several years hoping that you're not the last person holding the bag, you are gambling. Absolutely.
There was an article a couple weeks ago about how he mostly just hangs out playing video games and doesn't really get involved with social life. Gee, I wonder why he might do that at NYU?
Sometimes you see people who read a whole bunch of books or at least claim to, and it's like..... "Do you, though?"
People who follow me have at some point seen me talk about some of the books that I read. I mean I only seem to read books for 14 year olds so there's that, but you can actually tell that I read a thing now and again.
In 2022, I made it through a whopping 111 books. In 2023, I made it through 84, and this year has been a much quieter year with only 27. But anyone who's been following me can tell. I didn't just read the books, I had something to say about them sometimes or I soaked up some set of ideas from them. Meanwhile it really seems like a lot of these people who claim to be reading all these books -- and not books for 14-year-olds like I read but actual book learning books, and yet most of these people haven't had a new idea in their heads in 15 years.
Look, I don't want to make this all about me. Reading 111 manga and light novels in a year isn't that much to brag about. But you've got someone like Barack Obama who claims to have read all of these big important books, and you never see him engage with any of the ideas in any of those books. Like what was he doing? Looking at the pictures?
My little brother did the same thing to me. He said they're talking about how he read a thousand books, and I'm like "bro you barely made rent for the last 6 months. Last time you produced anything creative was the Bush administration. What were these books about?"
People who follow me have at some point seen me talk about some of the books that I read. I mean I only seem to read books for 14 year olds so there's that, but you can actually tell that I read a thing now and again.
In 2022, I made it through a whopping 111 books. In 2023, I made it through 84, and this year has been a much quieter year with only 27. But anyone who's been following me can tell. I didn't just read the books, I had something to say about them sometimes or I soaked up some set of ideas from them. Meanwhile it really seems like a lot of these people who claim to be reading all these books -- and not books for 14-year-olds like I read but actual book learning books, and yet most of these people haven't had a new idea in their heads in 15 years.
Look, I don't want to make this all about me. Reading 111 manga and light novels in a year isn't that much to brag about. But you've got someone like Barack Obama who claims to have read all of these big important books, and you never see him engage with any of the ideas in any of those books. Like what was he doing? Looking at the pictures?
My little brother did the same thing to me. He said they're talking about how he read a thousand books, and I'm like "bro you barely made rent for the last 6 months. Last time you produced anything creative was the Bush administration. What were these books about?"
One big problem with banning people from selling stuff is that you still live on earth.
You can develop explosives using chemicals you can distill from urine. Are we going to ban urination?
Cyanide is really easy, you can get jars of ferrocyanide for cyanotypes.
There was a story about a young man who was able to acquire large amounts of radioactive material through entirely benign means including commonly available fire detectors. One year I picked up a bunch of glow in the dark tubes that use tritium, a poisonous gas that is also radioactive.
You can ban cyanotypes if you want, but you can also get cyanide from almonds, particularly bitter almonds. Cyanide is a naturally occurring substance inside many plants. Are you going to ban most nuts?
And then there are industrial uses as you mentioned. Cyanide is sold the gold mining by the ton, and many industrial plants use radiation from radioactive sources to do various things, whether it is farming which uses radiation to eliminate germs from meat, or something like a paper mill which would use radiation to measure the density of certain chemicals.
Besides the fact that you can make incredibly poisonous hydrogen cyanide with bitter almonds and a bit of vinegar, you can make incredibly poisonous chlorine gas with nothing more than salt and water.
All of this leads to one fundamental thing that I've come to agree with: it is authoritarian to believe that everything can be solved by the state, or even most things. Instead of trying to have the state try to micromanage every substance that exists, we need to build non-governmental institutions, things like strong families, societal institutions, popular ideologies, religious institutions such as churches, and anything else we can think of to help push people towards doing the right thing. It's only because people are worthy of being free that they can be free, and they can't be made worthy through an omnipresent State alone. Using that tool by itself, what ends up happening every time is people end up hyper focused on what they are allowed to do rather than what they ought to do.
Anyone who claims to believe in liberal values must therefore realize that if you want liberty, "what laws should we have" is actually mostly the wrong question. Everything looks like a nail when all you have is a state shaped hammer. The question we should be asking is: "how can we holistically reach outcomes we want?" And the answers actually probably won't make anyone happy in the short term.
You can develop explosives using chemicals you can distill from urine. Are we going to ban urination?
Cyanide is really easy, you can get jars of ferrocyanide for cyanotypes.
There was a story about a young man who was able to acquire large amounts of radioactive material through entirely benign means including commonly available fire detectors. One year I picked up a bunch of glow in the dark tubes that use tritium, a poisonous gas that is also radioactive.
You can ban cyanotypes if you want, but you can also get cyanide from almonds, particularly bitter almonds. Cyanide is a naturally occurring substance inside many plants. Are you going to ban most nuts?
And then there are industrial uses as you mentioned. Cyanide is sold the gold mining by the ton, and many industrial plants use radiation from radioactive sources to do various things, whether it is farming which uses radiation to eliminate germs from meat, or something like a paper mill which would use radiation to measure the density of certain chemicals.
Besides the fact that you can make incredibly poisonous hydrogen cyanide with bitter almonds and a bit of vinegar, you can make incredibly poisonous chlorine gas with nothing more than salt and water.
All of this leads to one fundamental thing that I've come to agree with: it is authoritarian to believe that everything can be solved by the state, or even most things. Instead of trying to have the state try to micromanage every substance that exists, we need to build non-governmental institutions, things like strong families, societal institutions, popular ideologies, religious institutions such as churches, and anything else we can think of to help push people towards doing the right thing. It's only because people are worthy of being free that they can be free, and they can't be made worthy through an omnipresent State alone. Using that tool by itself, what ends up happening every time is people end up hyper focused on what they are allowed to do rather than what they ought to do.
Anyone who claims to believe in liberal values must therefore realize that if you want liberty, "what laws should we have" is actually mostly the wrong question. Everything looks like a nail when all you have is a state shaped hammer. The question we should be asking is: "how can we holistically reach outcomes we want?" And the answers actually probably won't make anyone happy in the short term.
My mom got our little guy a Poe Play-ai story telling bear.
The unit is a bluetooth speaker with a servomotor set up to move based on the volume level to flap the jaw. The left and right ear are a blue and green light with a little contact button inside.
Sound quality is about as good as a bottom tier bluetooth speaker, not great.
The unit uses an AI app to generate a story with characters you pick from a list using chatgpt, then reads it out by playing the sound file on your phone.
The interface is fairly limited, and so you don't have much control over the stories that get generated. You are supposed to be able to pick who the protaganists and antagonists are, but I found the stories were just kind of a gray paste where there wasn't really much coherence in the stories. I don't really like this feature.
One thing that's nice though is you can play anything and it's fine. We played some of the winnie the pooh audio book and it was just fine, then some books read aloud on youtube.
Another thing I'd be cautious about is right now the app is free, but not forever according to the website. It looks like eventually you'll run out of free credits. I suspect this means the toy will eventually become a pay to play device on the AI side, and it'll really need to produce better stories to be worth paying for on that front.
The unit is a bluetooth speaker with a servomotor set up to move based on the volume level to flap the jaw. The left and right ear are a blue and green light with a little contact button inside.
Sound quality is about as good as a bottom tier bluetooth speaker, not great.
The unit uses an AI app to generate a story with characters you pick from a list using chatgpt, then reads it out by playing the sound file on your phone.
The interface is fairly limited, and so you don't have much control over the stories that get generated. You are supposed to be able to pick who the protaganists and antagonists are, but I found the stories were just kind of a gray paste where there wasn't really much coherence in the stories. I don't really like this feature.
One thing that's nice though is you can play anything and it's fine. We played some of the winnie the pooh audio book and it was just fine, then some books read aloud on youtube.
Another thing I'd be cautious about is right now the app is free, but not forever according to the website. It looks like eventually you'll run out of free credits. I suspect this means the toy will eventually become a pay to play device on the AI side, and it'll really need to produce better stories to be worth paying for on that front.
I think he's achieved a monopoly. Nobody wants any other product because the rest are overpriced and not as good.
My favorite is the fact that the media is acting exactly like the caricature of the clueless tv executive.
"We need to have a left-wing Joe Rogan. Maybe he's successful cuz his name is Joe? No, he must be successful cuz he's a podcaster. Wait, maybe he's successful because he's bald! Okay everyone we need to create a podcast with a guy named Joe who's bald!"
Or maybe you could just stop lying all the time.
(The guy who said that was defenestrated)
"We need to have a left-wing Joe Rogan. Maybe he's successful cuz his name is Joe? No, he must be successful cuz he's a podcaster. Wait, maybe he's successful because he's bald! Okay everyone we need to create a podcast with a guy named Joe who's bald!"
Or maybe you could just stop lying all the time.
(The guy who said that was defenestrated)
We use margarine for reasons.
So we got the olive oil margarine.
First ingredient: canola oil.
We like mayonnaise.
So we got the olive oil mayonnaise.
First ingredient: canola oil.
So we got the olive oil margarine.
First ingredient: canola oil.
We like mayonnaise.
So we got the olive oil mayonnaise.
First ingredient: canola oil.
So strange, why aren't we hearing about how world hunger could have been solved this time?
So much that they deify some spoiled rich kid who hurt himself doing spoiled rich kid things then went out and killed someone whose company he wasn't even doing business with.
I feel like someone needs to mention to the congressman and senators who are cheering for this that the US government spends more money on healthcare than countries with single-payer medicine such as Canada with United Kingdom. So if we're cheering for going after healthcare ceos, they *are* next. United health denied something like 30% of claims, universal health Care in the United States doesn't include like 95% of Americans.
I feel like someone needs to mention to the congressman and senators who are cheering for this that the US government spends more money on healthcare than countries with single-payer medicine such as Canada with United Kingdom. So if we're cheering for going after healthcare ceos, they *are* next. United health denied something like 30% of claims, universal health Care in the United States doesn't include like 95% of Americans.
And it sure is a good thing that the numbers on an episode of a podcast can't be gamed in any way. It would be really embarrassing if there was an entire industry over in Bangladesh of clicking on links to make them look more popular than they are.