chooky
15d ago
This math on inflation is super wrong. 1.02^50 is about 2.6. 1.03^50 is 4.4. What inflation rate do you suggest is normal?
chooky
15d ago
I would say that it the eventual abandonment of this "no armor" stance is what made the books (and by extension, show) weaken so dramstically. By book 4, there is no one left to die: Bran, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime, and most of the other good characters could no longer be killed because they were needed for the end game, but the books continued to introduce an unending cast of disposable, boring POVs (e.g., everything to do with pirates, the stupid Lady Stoneheart plot). Even Jon Snow's resurrection was predictable.
chooky
15d ago
Did you ever try the Malazan series? It seems to have the highest reputation for critical value in fantasy.
chooky
17d ago
Thanks. I thought that the length of the blockchain was making transfer costs go up... has this issue been solved?
chooky
19d ago
Why on earth would you need crypto to solve this rather than just a credit card?
chooky
23d ago
I'm referring to the entire twitter saga, but probably mainly the additional value lost under Musk's ownership.
chooky
28d ago
Why must a successful person have explicit strategies? I can think of a lot of works of literature with very coherent meaning that the author does not seem to have explicitly intended. Rather, the author seems to be so in tune with the fictional characters and world that the result cannot help but have depth. Why not also a gifted politician? To me, it seems more likely that the superficially haphazard approach to appointments is driven by Trump's talent for identifying and tapping into the zeitgeist, not a detailed dive into the specifics, though I don't doubt that some of the people close to Trump (eg Musk) do seem to have some sort of master plan.
chooky
29d ago
I understand this - what is not clear to me is if OP would accept this definition of woman being given access to ladies' restrooms. They seem to want only "buologically female", but it is not clear to me if that means "female at birth" or more like "post-op".
chooky
30d ago
This is getting at one of my questions for the OP - what exactly is meant by "biological" and "trans"?
To me, an MtF "woman" lacks a penis and testicles. Does the calculus change if that is what "trans" means? In general, I am pretty much of the opinion that this is not an area in which the government should get involved, thougb I am grateful for an effect of previous bathroom controversies being that most restaurants and bars changed to genderless bathrooms, making it more likely that there won't be a line. However, lacking a penis seems like a reasonable standard for someone being allowed entry into the women's bathroom regardless of sex at birth.
chooky
30d ago
I think its more that they erred horribly by trying to make Messenger standalone instead of keeping Facebook messages effortless and having messages by a draw to keep young people on facebook.
chooky
1mo ago
But this isnt the situation Russia faced! If the missiles are headed for your nukes and will seriously debilitate your retaliation ability, maybe we are talking.
One thing that I think you are making a strong argument for is that countries which have only a mofest amount of nukes may behave dangerously because it is easier for them to believe their retaliation ability is being eliminated.
chooky
1mo ago
I'm not sure the red line argument here is very compelling. Are we supposed to believe that Russia is going to nuke the Ukraine or attempt to nuke other US allies because the US gave Ukraine missiles to strike Russian military targets with?
Were a red line to have been advertised, the game theory error here wouls be Putin's because his threat of escalating all the way to nukes would have been implausible. It is like if a parent tells their kids that they are going to cancel Christmas knowing that they would never actually do so. I terrified my kid one time by not telling them I would cancel Halloween if they misbehaved again, which they knew I would not do, but by telling them I would inmediately confiscate all their candy, which they knew I would be happy to do for dental/health reasons. Your threat has to be one that the other side believes you would follow through on, and nuke escalation except in response to nukes is generally not that.
chooky
1mo ago
I dont think that was supposed to be Rov_scam's voice; rather, they were telling the hypothetical story of how AOC would sell the position shift.
chooky
1mo ago
This data on US wages doesnt really match what the US numbers show. Real wage growth was slower under Biden than Trump, but definitely was positive in 2023 (perhaps not on 2022 but only as an artifact of stimulus). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q#0
chooky
1mo ago
What's the world in which Putin wins the prize for stopping the war that began as an invasion he ordered? Do aggressors usually get the prize along with resistors? (I mean, honestly, it seens weird for people on either side of a war to win a peace prize .)
chooky
1mo ago
Looking at the abortion ballot results at a state level, proposing abortion legislation at the federal level seems like obvious suicide for the Republican party.
chooky
1mo ago
Imo, the port strike would have been the October surprise since the dockworkers seemed pretty crazy, but it got resolved too quickly for people to even run lut of bananas.
chooky
2mo ago
I think that many politicians rarely genuinely hold any position. They research and float various positions, hoping to find ones that resound with voters and then lean into those positions. Previously in her career, Harris did well with some of these more progressive positions, partly because she began in Cali, partly because Obama/Biden were claiming the middle, partly because of her starting diversity hand and partly because progressives were an ascendant influence. Now, she needs to move to the middle and is. Not every Dem national candidate is going to be a southern governor like Clinton, but probably all candidates are going to adapt like Clinton.
chooky
3mo ago
No way. 3BP's dominance of sci fi was total. It would have taken the prize against almost anything.
chooky
4mo ago
The fact that we don't means-test, which seems like such an obviously correct and non-controversial idea, is indicative of just how much of a third rail any meaningful cuts to SS are due to the old people voting bloc. Even though it is kind of crazy to oppose making it so that you don't collect SS if you are fabulously wealthy, the topic is like other third rails (guns, abortion) in that even reasonable changes are vehemently opposed. Unlike guns and abortion, though, you are probably not going to get the SC to intervene here, so the only possible approach is legislative. The "adults" from both parties need to get together and get real about SS, publicly contradicting party leaders who attempt to make the issue partisan, and see if they can't at least manage to means-test for the sake of the grandchildren. The Ponzi scheme doesn't have to go to zero - we just need to start cutting benefits as the current level becomes unsustainable. Perhaps another solution would be to embrace more official, non-citizen immigration so that we can have a bigger cadre of workers who pay into SS but never get to withdraw.
chooky
4mo ago
Something that may give you hope is that while I have an extreme aesthetic aversion to Trump, I will need Harris to run very very far away from her 2016 tax and financial platform to not consider voting with my wallet. I learned during Trump's first term that the sky would not fall, and Biden certainly failed to be the Obama redux I thought I was voting for. I suspect that more of my white collar, blue tribe cohort will be of a similar mind than you fear or Dems appreciate. Given the layoffs in tech and so forth, I also think that Dem efforts to talk up the Biden job market (which overheated and gave way to inflation, so thanks? a sin for both parties on this one thougb) will fall on somewhat deaf ears for the upper middle white collar workers.
chooky
5mo ago
What made you choose Circe over Song of Achilles? I have only read the latter, which was published first (and thus is the true beginning of this genre), and I found it completely amazing.
Fair point on actual inflation, but 1/10th still seems like a major overstatement of what "will" happen (especially because 50 years is also a pretty long assumption for a career). More broadly, inflation is more or less inevitable for a healthy economy; someone keeping their money in cash under a mattress is just very foolish to not put it into an asset like bonds, stocks, gold, real estate, bitcoin, etc.
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