671–680 of 970 posts
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Why not talk about nuclear war? It’s one of several elephants in the room. The full collapse of a nuclear super power is unprecedented. Who gets the weapons?
Well the USSR isn't around anymore and they had quite a few nukes so....
Not sure what it means long term politically but it’s easy to imagine big block politics rearing it’s head again. I am however unsure if the west had the will to stand on principles anymore.
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> Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the mid-twentieth century And it wasn't just journalism. After WWII many veterans took advantage of the free education offered by the GI Bill. That gave us a lot of highly educated people (with no student loan debt to worry about!) who then went on to use that education to improve things. Couple thi…
I always wonder about people that post things so divorced from reality. We have five times as many college grads today as we did in 1960: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attai...
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Or maybe it's not a lie and believers are genuinely happier and less depressed.
Every religion states that the other religions are lies, which means that, at the very least, the majority of religious people believe a lie as a fundamental aspect of their worldview. Thus, you apparently can be genuinely happier if your worldview is based on a lie. Still not worth it.
I don't think I've ever heard of a religion that is so airtight that it blocked any ability to reason on how the others might not be a lie also.
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You would think cold hard data would be lead everyone to the same truth of a situation, but the problem is that in reality, data can be tortured to confess to anything. Data is constantly weaponized by everyone to push the narrative they want to believe, whether the data is about guns, violence, education, covid, racism, drugs, etc, data can be tortured to tell nearly any story by people wanting a specific narrative.…
But data can't encapsulate values. My friend sent me a chart asking why were pushing vaccines for kids when only .001% of kids were dying from COVID. I looked at the chart and saw that 1000 kids had died from COVID and thought 1000 kids have died from COVID!?! There's no objective way to agree on whether a number is high or low. A lot of values transcend the underlying data, even when "the science is on your side". I…
But emotional responses to absolute numbers aren't a good mechanism to inform policy making either. That's why absolute numbers are usually normalized to a "per capita" figure. If 1000 kids die in modern India (pop > 1 billion), that is less cause for concern than 1000 kids dying in a rural town in Pennsylvania (pop < 10000). But just looking at the raw number "1000" can't tell you that, you need to give it context. Yeah, 1000 kids died either way, but in the Pennsylvania case something very bad is clearly happening (poisoning, disease, etc), whereas in India a freak one in a million accident could have happened 1000 times.
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US real estate has gone up significantly in _desirable_ markets. There are plenty of cities in the rust belt where neighborhoods are in decay, you can buy a home for 20k if you wanted. What we’re going to see is either govts incentivize people move back to these places. Or more housing in desirable locations. I think the former will happen more than the later.
Theres a generational rift that will stop a lot of decaying areas from seeing repopulatin from newer generations. My wife and I saving to house shop soonish, but one of the primary requirements of our residency will be transit access. We don't like driving, don't like having to own a car, and definitely do not want to have to drive up and down the east coast to visit friends and family. Amtrak access is thus basicall…
I'm in NYC now, but keep circling back to Philly. We're renting for ~3200 now a one bedroom 650sqft in NYC, both work from home. To get the ideal separation we want, not have our joint offices in the living room, we would need to go to between $5,500 and $6,500. While in Philly we could get a trinity, small town house three floors plus basement, about 900sqft, in downtown for ~2200.
I wouldn't buy in Philly, I just don't trust the city planning at this point. They're trying, but it's an uphill battle. The tax situation as a self-employed was much more complex in Philly. Safety is not something to just shy away. I lived in Old City, two years back, and there were still shootings near my apartment. It's a problem in a lot of cities as we gut social spending and relief programs. Philly did open a safe injection site, and is making head way.
I really like Philly, close to NYC Megabus was 15$ a seat, and about 3 hours. Amtrak is even quicker. Great music and food scene, Reading is great for food / produce.
The biggest issue I've found is the job market. Locally, a lot shifted out to office parks, requiring regional rail, and walking along multi-lane roads. If you're working remote, I got cost of living adjusted like crazy. The quotes I got were 80% pay cut over my NYC rate. While local jobs, were only a 10% cut. The local tech scene is a bit behind, more legacy.
Comcast has a great VC program as well for startups. The city also has tax programs to help get startups in the area.
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>> 40% point drop in 16 year olds getting a license since the 80s as urbanization puts people closer to stuff and ride share appeared. Is it urbanisation? I've noticed this trend in the suburbs in my country too and there seem to be a couple of reasons: 1. Driving tests have gotten progressively more difficult and more complex over the last 10-20 years. 2. The cost of learning to drive is insane and getting more expe…
Hmm, I don't know what country you are in, but this doesn't sound like the US at all. There's a recent spike in the cost of driving due to gas prices and car supply, but afaik driving tests here have always been fairly trivial and still are.
The skyrocketing cost of living all over the country means that parents must work more, sometimes multiple jobs, in order to make ends meet.
Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…
One of the disadvantages to democracy that Thomas Paine actually highlighted in "Common Sense" is that when things are off the rails in a monarchy, the cause (and remedy) are obvious. In a democracy, far less so. When Americans elect bad leadership, they ultimately have nobody to blame but themselves, and that damages the public attitude; I suspect one of the reasons "stolen election" conspiracy theories are so popul…
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> ...and some numbers are wacky. > I guess teaching kids to trust in science and not in imaginary friends is slowly paying off.
OP didn't say kids trust science though. It could be they reject everything. :-(
We need to return to federalism and bring an end to activist politicians. ( Good luck with that , I know...) The reason the American Experiment has worked so well for a few centuries is because we knew how to leave each other alone. If I'm in New York City, it's really none of my business what's happening in Albany, let alone Albuquerque New Mexico, so long as some basic standards of universal liberty are upheld. Tod…