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sj_zero | @sj_zero@social.fbxl.net

Author of The Graysonian Ethic (Available on Amazon, pick up a dead tree copy today)

Also Author of Future Sepsis (Also available on Amazon!)

Admin of the FBXL Network including FBXL Search, FBXL Video, FBXL Social, FBXL Lotide, FBXL Translate, and FBXL Maps.

Advocate for freedom and tolerance even if you say things I do not like

Adversary of Fediblock

Accept that I'll probably say something you don't like and I'll give you the same benefit, and maybe we can find some truth about the world.

Ah... Is the Alliteration clever or stupid? Don't answer that, I sort of know the answer already...

Rage on behalf of the machine seems to be more mad that the machine isn't more dehumanizing and evil yet.

It actually isn't a chicken or egg question, legally. The problem is that the code developed by the AI itself isn't copyrightable. Things produced by AI have been confirmed as not copyrightable (at least in the US), and that's held up in court so far.

https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2025/03/23-5233.pdf

The fact that AI code is not copyrightable under current rules is super important. You can sit there and smugly attack a project for taking a hard line on this, but if coders using llms end up making open source projects uncopyrightable, then they end up effectively eliminating the enforceability of the open source license.

It isn't about whether AI is a useful tool or not. It is about whether a single bad actor can effectively steal a project from its original authors. The same concern potentially applies commercial works created using AI as well. In that sense, a lot of people are playing dice with the devil.

50-60% of all Canadian mortgages are set to reset between this year and next.

Most of these mortgages are fixed rate (75%), and most fixed rate mortgages in Canada are 5 year mortgages, meaning that most of them will reset from as little as less than 1-2% to about 5.5%.

The peak average house price in Canada was about $820k around late 2020 to 2022.

The median household income in Canada is about 70k. The top marginal tax rate in most of Canada is nearly 50% between federal and provincial taxes, so people earning 70k will not actually earn anywhere near 70k. Most people don't pay 50% on their last dollar, but taxes in Canada are still significant at that income level.

In past crises, the federal government allowed people to amortize their home over 35 or 40 years, but in a rising rate environment (or in this case a risen rate environment) interest costs, not principal costs, dominate the monthly payment.

This implies a much higher risk moving forward for most mortgages. This has a couple impacts. First, some people won't be able to renew at the new rate, so they will be forced to sell their homes under "power of sale" from the bank, which will cause supply to rise and prices to fall. Second, higher risk means mortgage rates are likely to rise, since the banks need to price in an increased likelihood that the borrower will default.

Non bank lenders (the so-called shadow banking system) face increased risks because they tend to get non-prime borrowers, and so will get more defaults. Some industry watchers allege this is already happening.

Housing makes up more of the Canadian economy than manufacturing at this point and has been a rising amount for 15 years. Much of the remainder is directly reliant on housing sector such as banking.

Many mortgages are insured so the banks won't directly pay the cost of the risks they took. The main insurer is CMHC, which is backstopped by the federal government. there are trillions of dollars of mortgages in Canada. There could be a period of higher taxes or increased borrowing by the federal government if a significant number of defaults occur.

One thing that a lot of analysts end up doing is they focus on the housing industry as if it is buying a gallon of housing. They seem to ignore the processes required to actually get housing into the hands of an individual or an investor. if mortgage payments are approaching 3 to 4,000 per month, then this idea that you can just import more people because absurd because people don't migrate to Canada because they're already super rich, so they aren't going to likely have $4,000 per month to pay, especially if most of that $4,000 per month is just going to interest. There are the stories of entire families who live in one million dollar house, but I suspect that if house prices are dropping and the amount of mortgage payments that are going towards principles are also dropping, that route will become considerably less attractive.

Another issue is the effect of all this on the greater economy. If you could get a place to live for $100 a month, then normal people could easily work a minimum wage job and support having a place to live. If, by contrast, you need three to $4,000 per month for a mortgage or rent, then you need to be demanding significantly more from your employers.

It is an established fact that Canada has been in a productivity depression for several years now, with per capita productivity flatlining and the only reason Canadian GDP is growing is because of overwhelming immigration. In this situation, individuals can't realistically ask for more money, because they aren't producing more stuff.

All of this put together seems to imply that there's going to be a very painful period for Canadians and for Canada as a whole. Some reports are suggesting that immigration is already net negative because people come to Canada expecting to get rich, and they discover that they can't even afford basic necessities. With shelter going up precipitously this year and the next, the as well as knock-on effects from everything that we discussed, it seems very likely that the productivity depression will become an actual depression as mobile individuals such as recent immigrants choose to go somewhere with better opportunities, leaving the country with unacceptably high housing costs that tend to be sticky, a flatlined per capita productivity, and a shrinking population

Every. One.

He got bitched out on Twitter for waiting to take the elevator.

The problem *isn't* her body. It's her mind. Bro was 100% vindicated.

My generation, the Millennials, are already pozzed af.

We had a generational chance to prove we aren't, and we failed cataclysmically.

I still think they should reduce delivery to one day a week. Most people would be just fine with that for standard mail.

Any American girl who moves to the UK has to learn proper English.

Repeat after me: li'il bo'ol'o'wa'ah

I saw a video about the big tsunami off the coast of Japan a few years back (the one where the nuke reactor got flooded). I was very impressed with the level of discipline of the police and the people. I feel like if there were similar tsunamis off the coasts of most US or Canadian regions the outcome would be much worse.

Fwiw I guarantee I'm not on Epstein's list.

Not because I'm more moral than the people on it, but because I'm poor and lack political power.

For similar reasons I'm not on the Panama papers, and I'm also not on the elite college admission scandal. All the scandals I'm not a part of would blow your mind.

I also did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky, and at no time did I act inappropriately with Salma Hayek.

Ke$ha has never ever once insinuated I acted in an inappropriate manner.

None of the kids who accuse Kevin Spacey have accused me.

I have never been implicated in that sex cults for elites that popped up a few years back nor will I be.

In spite of a lengthy trial, my name did not come up regarding Diddy's parties a single time.

I have never been connected to the famous skull and bones club that included individuals such as John Kerry and George W. Bush.

I did not profit a single dime from the collapse of FTX or Silicon Valley Bank.

In the unlikely event that I am connected to any of these scandals, I am hereby officially and totally denying any involvement in the strongest possible terms.

Again, because I'm broke and powerless.

With respect to the western trajectory, I'd agree with respect to the middle east and India, but Japan, China, and South Korea are all ahead of the curve in a number of ways. China is already broken demographically. Japan is 20 years ahead of the curve and represent a surprisingly well managed crisis, but one we don't have the scenario or the discipline to emulate. South Korea is still at a 0.71 birth rate.

One thing with east Asian civilization is that it's been heavily influenced by the west. China being Marxist is a direct cultural export from western Europe. South Korea is a highly Americanized civilization, as is Japan to a lesser but still significant degree.

Keep in mind that birth rates are not like pumping oil out of the ground -- it takes 18 years to raise an 18 year old. The kids who were never born cannot be born now. All that can be born now are the people who will be born after the kids who were never born.

For civilizations that aren't western, the western collapse could end up having major knock-on effects.

Indian civilization is insanely resillient so the worse I'd expect there is a return to Indian norms and a rejection of western norms.

Africa isn't a place civilizations typically exist, so once the subsidies of the west in terms of capital and talented people disappear, I'm not convinced most of what is considered civilization will continue to exist in much of Africa. There are regions of Africa which have historically been capable of suporting civilizations of course, famously Egypt, but also Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. North Africa in general is essentially permanently colonized by Arab muslims, so they're much different than central or southern Africa. It's a huge continent and incredibly diverse so you can't realy make the mistake of assuming it's just one thing. To demonstrate this, you can look at different regions of the world and the stories that have been written down. China has had continuous civilization, and we have works like the Analects from millennia in the past. The middle east has the epic of gilgamesh. Northern Europe has a number of codified legends. America had many writings from the Aztecs before they were destroyed by the Spanish, of which the dresden codexes are some of the few remaining examples. Egypt has hieroglyphics telling stories older than any of them, but much of Africa doesn't have the same.

Arabs are in a countercyclical moment, they're still recovering from the fundamental collapse of the ottoman empire, so I'd tend to agree they're going to look quite different, probably much better off in the coming age.

To illustrate the concept of these knock-on effects, the great depression mostly hit America, but was a direct causal element in World War 2.

One major thing overall is that global trade relies on the west keeping the trade routes safe and clear, and once that guarantee disappears, trade becomes a much different beast.

Civilizational collapse isn't always bad. the collapse of the western roman empire was actually one of the best things to happen in history to the people living under its boot -- according to archeological finds, people got considerably healthier and taller almost immediately after its collapse because people were no longer under its bot. Of course, it isn't always good either -- many bronze age collapse civilizations saw die-offs like 95%.

Population collapse by itself does mean that civilization will be so fundamentally different in the future that it can't be considered the same thing -- much in the same way the world wars ended the modern west and replaced it with the postmodern west we live in today, but with different results this time. It's a mass extinction event, and a lot of memes and political factions will die off because they aren't survivable.

We live in an era of civilisational collapse. It's already baked into the cake, it's already happening, the world 100 years from now is not going to look like the world today. All you need to do is look at birth rates, and how long they've been as low as they have been. Therefore, the highest calling as a parent it's not maximizing their individual happiness, or their market success, is building them into an individual with the strength, adaptability, grit, and emotional stability to carry forward meaning, virtue, and civilization through a collapse even if institutions that we rely on fail. In this way, parenting is not just an act of personal love (though of course it is), but an act of love for all of humanity, helping to carry forward the flame I got everything you feel worth preserving in your family and our culture.

In case you think I'm a doomer or a prepper, there's a few points. First, if you end up making your kid anxious and nihilistic then they aren't mentally emotionally stable, strong, adaptable, and they will lack grit. Civilizations end all the time, that doesn't mean the end of everything and everyone. Arguably the World wars ended Western Civilization as it once existed, and we are living in the aftermath of that right now. Second, preparing a child for collapse looks pretty similar to preparing them for no collapse. You still want to raise a kid who is strong, adaptable, has grit, and has emotional stability.

In an archetypical way, every generation sees a collapse and rebirth as the new generations pick up with their parents left them. In some ways, there was a massive collapse in the 1970s, in the world of the 1980s is nothing like the world of the 1960s. By the way people playing the baby boomers for what the world turned into in the 1980s, but they didn't really have much of a choice with the world collapsing around them.

Another important thing is that people might misunderstand and think you raise your kid hard and mean if you think that a collapse is coming. I don't think that there's any evidence of that being the right way to do things. Your kids grow up seeing the world through the lens that you give them with the way that you treat them in their childhood. If you show them that you are anxious, that you are scared, that you are weak, when they are going to assume that that's the way that the world works and how you have to live. By contrast, if you show them love, and joy, and competence, if you show them how to live in a world without relying on massive institutions and every moment of every day, then that will be the way that they grow up. The sort of child who makes it through the collapse will have a secure attachment to their parents, many wonderful memories playing outdoors, maybe learning to weld, to build things, they will remember going through their life being able to do things and figuring out the struggles along the way. And so when they aren't getting their hand held they will know that they are strong enough to deal with things.

This whole concept was hinted at in the last chapter of my first book, the graysonian ethic, which warns my son that nobody owes you anything, and you have to have a combination of gratitude and skepticism for the things you do get. My next book which I'm releasing in the next month or two once editing is complete is actually about the collapse, looking at a world 100 years in the future. The key is that just because civilization collapses doesn't mean that's the end of everything, or that we go into a mad Max dystopia. It means whoever remains will need to lay a New foundation of meeting, values, and make sense of world that no longer makes sense under the old paradigm.

It's crazy to think that The Matrix, Fight Club, and Office Space all came out almost on top of each other. Culturally talking about horrible it was that there were boring middle class jobs and wishing for an adventure. Well, civilization has lost the middle class jobs, but never gained an adventure.

Realistically, fat chicks get boyfriends and husbands every single day. That OkCupid data from quite a few years back now shows that most women will end up getting a hit from at least some men, unlike most men who don't get a hit from almost any women.

But the thing is what other imperfections are there. For example, a lot of women who are like a six or a four think that they are entitled to a 9.5 from a man.

In a lot of ways that often happens with men, fat broke losers end up getting women all the time, the question becomes what else are they bringing you to the table to stay attractive or stay competitive? The answer isn't always immediately obvious either.

I might rent a Nissan Micra or a Fiat 500, but there's no way I'm going to buy one of them, it's a piece of crap thing to own. Similarly, I might rent a Ferrari or lamborghini, but I'm not going one of them either because I literally can't afford to pay that thing for more than a couple days. The Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic are the two best selling cars on the market for a reason.

Ironically, it might be a better indicator of exactly what's going on here that she is claiming to be a nice girl and saying that guys don't like nice girls on social media. Once you've passed the age of 16, that stops being a legitimate cry for help and starts being a more complex and potentially pathological signal.

One of the things I wrote about a lot in graysonian ethic is that the winning strategy is to be looking for someone who the rest of the market undervalues. Now this can either be because you value something that nobody else does, or it can be because you did more research and you found out about certain attributes that are attractive that aren't immediately apparent, but overall that's always a good way to win in the market -- everything from buying cars to buying stocks to determining who you want to marry, it's about finding something that is valuable that no one realizes is valuable yet.

My usual is xfce.

The only thing people are regretting is the fact that he's not going even further. They want him to do all of the things that he said he was going to do not just some of them.

https://fortune.com/2025/07/12/us-debt-outlook-student-loan-crisis-budget-deficit-interest-payments-gdp/

Economic advisor for one government under one of the two parties responsible for the federal debt says the debt has gone too far.

I was definitely making a joke about greater globohomo rather than the actual individual involved. With what she's saying I certainly don't have anything to complain about.

"the UN special rapporteur on violence against 'uh.... who knows' and 'I guess whoever says I'm the special rapporteur for them?'"

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