Left to my own devices, I am a messy person. My wife is very tidy. A clean sanctuary is respite for her.
I don’t know how we ended up staying together after those first few dates, but I do know our twice a month housekeeper is acting as our marriage counselor.
They’ve made their decision, now let’s see them enforce it.
Utilitarian - Row houses and small single family starter homes.
Detached single family housing is suffocating this country and the environment. I’d rather leave the woods to nature and nature walks, not streets and houses.
In addition to that, utopian architecture, like arcologies.
I’m much more a fan of the PBS/NPR underwriting model. Tell me who deliberately funds the show or video.
When the advertisement is so divorced from the show, is not relevant to the conversation or is not relevant to me, then the andvertisers are wasting their money.
If you show me the same ad over and over again, I am actually more likely to NOT buy that branded product or service because I’ve become so annoyed and numb from the ad taking what little time I have on this planet that I will actively boycott it.
However, I do have a nice space mug from PBS, a plot of land on Mars, the moon and Scotland, and a t-shirt for the Truth podcast to prove that I will spend money when the advertising is relevant to the content I’m consuming. So if you want the ad to work, invest your dollars directly into the content and providers I care about.
But for the love of everything, do not think for a moment that your contribution gives you license to control their messaging or content.
Mostly vendors. Often on-prem versions customized for their sensitive work and the versions are 30+ years now.
They very much go by the mantra “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If you’re lucky enough to get one of those contracts, you’re on a gravy train, but brace yourself because you can expect to get a lot of complaints about how outdated and crap your system is. That and a whole lot of time dedicated to training and documentation.
You’ll also get the occasional person’s personal monument to themselves. “Joe’s been doing that GIS stuff for 30 years.” Whew those can doozies.
I am not an AI hater, it helps me automate many of the more mundane tasks of my job or the things I don’t ever have time for.
I also feel that change management is a big factor with any paradigm shifting technology, as is with LLMs. I recall when some people said that both the PC and the internet were going to be just a fad.
Nonetheless, all the reasons you’ve mentioned are the same ones that give me concern about AI.
Oh look, 8.4 billion in more made up money.
In other news, I think I just learned why Elon got more weird all of a sudden about 6 years ago. P. Thiel funding his brain chips? New conspiracy theory just dropped.
Going with the OG - Super Mario Kart. 64 is close though.
Monster Party - if you haven’t played it, it’s a trip.
S tier
A tier
B tier
Most billionaires nowadays are not the type that have the bulk of their wealth in assets. The lot of them got wealthy because the company they founded or initially employed with became very successful and the stock they accumulated became more valuable over time.
In a way, it’s wealth up there in the ether. It’s the investors who give it value. Somebody says “hey $100 for a share of company x sounds like a good deal” founder has 10M shares of company x, and voila, they’re a billionaire.
In a way, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
A strange thing is happening nowadays with the market though. Markets are supposed to go down from time to time, but due to low barriers to entry so many people are in the market now, investing in ETFs, setting up automated monthly purchases, DRIPs, etc, that markets consistently go up. Even after a major economic shock like the tariffs, the market continues to go up.
And so those billionaires keep getting wealthier.
At some point this carousel will end. Healthy markets do have to go down, it’s one of the mechanisms of how capital gets redistributed from the slovenly to the savvy. There has to be some kind of adjustment or we end up where we are, a new Gilded Age.
China is on the edge of one such adjustment in real estate, but the state is pulling out all of the stops right now to prevent its collapse. What happens there likely is to be a harbinger of what’s to come.
In the US, I’m not so sure. If we keep letting our average population age slip towards middle age and beyond, then we’ll likely see the correction when we have no one left to keep the economic engine running. If we don’t mitigate that we probably have 15 to 20 years left. Unchecked political unrest may be the catalyst for its arrival sooner.
Back to billionaires. The best way to put this back in check in my mind is to tax unrealized gains. Think of it like real estate tax. Every year, you pay a nominal bit of your home’s value to fund the fire department, city planners, etc. if you don’t pay, then they can put a lien on your house. Same should apply with stock. The noninvesting public helped build the infrastructure that made the company thrive, thus, the public should be entitled to a bit of its success. The tax has the nifty little gimmick of distributing a bit of the power too - precisely why the billionaire class hates it.
There’s three ways to get rid of cancer:
Eating granola and berries or sitting there with hopes and praying for change is option 3. I’m on team option 1. Time to get active.
Being a US citizen permanently living in a foreign country, paying taxes to that country and not paying US taxes.
I’ve been interviewing folks for an internship position lately. These have been remote interviews. Six things that have made candidates stand out to me.
Some don’ts
A quorum of forums.
Get on my bike and see how far it could take me. And when I was done with that I would go build bike trails for my community.
This guy, I bet he even reclines in his airplane seat.
Pork BBQ and Collards. Finish it down with some Cheerwine.