$25 a week on groceries in 1997 is around $50 today based on currency inflation, not even accounting for purchasing power. That could easily make the difference between a nutritious diet and one that leads to chronic health conditions for people living paycheck to paycheck. In 1997, the average weekly expenditure on food per person in the US was $34. You could probably have survived off of $15/wk for food back then and maybe find an extra 2-3hr of minimum wage to meet your $25 investment, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

Fun fact, a $25 steak today in the US cost about $8.50 in 1997.

You go back in time to when you’re living paycheck to paycheck and zero financial literacy. You convince yourself to invest $100/month in Amazon no matter what, because it will be worth it. You eat nothing but instant ramen, forego preventative care, get sick from malnutrition. Your quality of life is horrible because you forego basic necessities to invest in Amazon. The dot com bubble wipes out 90% of Amazon’s value but you continue to invest because your past self told you about this, but if you just endure, Amazon will recover and you will be a millionaire.

In this timeline, Amazon never recovers and goes bankrupt. On Twitter, you read a post about George Shaheen’s wedding, and how he’s entitled to his billions, despite predatory and exploitative practices, because his wealth could have been yours. If you had only invested $100/month since 1996 into WebVan, you’d be a millionaire.

Investing is, at the end of the day, a gamble.

The “Ex-colleague with a liver disease” sent a chill through my spine. Was he an Ex-colleague because he was fired for being sick 👀👀👀? Was he healing himself or was he desperate not to die? There’s a difference.

Work can be meaningful, therapeutic, or simply a useful tool for coping. That doesn’t mean it should be the only tool, nor should it be relied on without clinical guidance, nor should it be the expectation.

Talk-therapy might not be for everyone, work therapy certainly isn’t. The complete lack of empathy and humanization in the post is disgusting.

Yes, their energy requirements have also skyrocketed in the last 20 years. However if you look at their energy mix, in 2010 their energy mix was around 70% from coal, and today it’s around 50% of their totally energy mix.

AI bad. But also, video AI started with will Will Smith eating spaghetti just a couple years ago.

We keep talking about AI doing complex tasks right now and it’s limitations, then extrapolating its development linearly. It’s not linear and it’s not in one direction. It’s a exponential and rhizomatic process. Humans always over-estimate (ignoring hard limits) and under-estimate (thinking linearly) how these things go. With rocketships, with internet/social media, and now with AI.

I think people underestimate the frontline deployability piece regarding hormones. Prolonged loss of access to hormone therapy is rough on the person, just as losing access to any medication like ADHD medication or asthma medication would be if you’re cut off from supply while fighting in the bushes.

That being said, not everyone in the military needs the same requirement. For example classes are assistive technology that a lot of people in the military use and fighter pilots have more stringent uncorrected vision requirements compared to infantry. Depending on your role, post-enlistment medication requirements do not automatically get you kicked out, though your role may have to change. In an advanced military, there are lots of non-frontline roles to fill, especially now that non-frontline drone warfare is becoming more and more prevalent. Some militaries around the world are starting to accept certain medicated conditions including mild mental health conditions. When you’re understaffed, you can’t afford to turn away otherwise able and willing recruits.

Militaries absolutely have to conform to the people who serve in them. User-centered design started in the military, equipment has to fit and be usable by the humans that operate them–a single standard vest size does not properly fit most people, hence adjustments. Militaries had to conform to humans when they realized humans get PTSD. Militaries had to adapt to mitigate racism as mixed-race units were ultimately the better option–no shit there was pushback on the grounds of distraction and unitncohesion. Tampons were needed when women joined. You trade-off logistical and social complexity for a bigger force and create opportunities to tap into the best of those new populations you include in your military. The US Marines have it right. Improvise, adapt, overcome, then adapt gain.

The question about trans people being mentally unwell is just misinformed. Trans people go on hormone therapy so they aren’t dysphoric. They’re not mentally unstable.

That’s a pretty bigoted stance though. Same mindset that’s led to the US prison system re: criminals, which is exactly what banning people from society is in function. I’m more on the structural rehabilitative side when it comes to addressing harmful anti-social behaviour.

The fittest psychological profile for the late-capitalist environment is a psychopath who is very good at imitating empathy. Change the environment XP

No, I mean if we’re talking about comparing US and Chinese consumer chips on most phone activities in 2025, you aren’t likely to notice a major difference.

If you want to compare mobile camera systems, that’s a separate comparison. I like Google camera software/processing a lot, but Chinese companies have been innovating tremendously with their mobile camera stacks. I’m way more interested in the Huawei 14/15 ultra offerings for example.

Yeah this view is pretty dated. Like it or not, China has caught up and started leading in several industries over the last 10 years. They have the capacity, skills, and domestic demand for competitive high quality products. Their domestic chip from SIMV is only a few years behind at “5nm” which was the 2021 standard. I’m still playing modern games on a 8 year old i7. Most consumers who use their phones for social media probably wouldn’t notice much difference between a 2021 phone vs 2025 phone besides a better camera and software.

The proposal doesn’t ban the party, it suggests banning extremist individuals convicted of things like inciting hatred from running for office. In effect, it puts a damper on extreme individual members of a party that doesn’t itself reach the threshold for prohibition as a party. So I can see the logic behind it. But I agree it’s a dicey proposal and ripe for political abuse. Still, it would be contingent on court decisions so it could work with a strong (just/uncorrupt) court system.

This is an unhelpful and condescending comment. It dismisses the meaningful activities people engage in online as “not life”: self expression, creating art and community, working, socializing, enjoying entertainment, and learning new things. It proposes a false dichotomy wherein not-online is utopic with universally accessible activities and, especially, an absence of the very same people who make online spaces toxic hellholes. They are present in “real spaces” too. These are not mutually exclusive things. You are likely to find that pro-social activists online are often try to be pro-social activists in person as well.

That being said, I agree that people get terminally online and that balancing digital and physical lives are important. Managing attention and mental health are important, especially when content about important and meaningful topics turn into viral and incessant feeds that are geared to overwhelm human brains that weren’t evolved to handle such constant cognitive/emotional stress.

Take care out there folks.

Now that’s just 尺卂匚丨丂ㄒ😅

The whole point of notepad is that it’s a lightweight minimalist app that makes opening/editing text files as fast as possible while also being robustly reliable because of its simplicity. These are its core features. Adding pop-ups and more advanced features makes it slower to use and more complex, and with more complexity there is more chance for issues. Therefore the key advantages of notepad are shittier–>enshitificstion

Why do I have to care about sports in order to care about trans folks who care about sports?

Do I have to care about every last hobby or fandom before I can weigh in on the justice of whether black people or gay people or poor people should be allowed to participate?

That does not make sense. What does “harm” mean to you? Less good is not “potential harm”. To put it another way, let’s assume you and I are completely independent and I have to moral responsibility to give you money. If I chose to not give you any money, you would not be harmed. If I gifted you $100, you would not be harmed. If I gifted you $20 you would not be harmed because I did not gift you $100.

I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. What is the potential harm in the comic?

Heh it’s a fun “gotcha” kind of modification. Alas, it misunderstands the thought experiment. They’re not changing the emotional valence. They are removing a fundamental aspect of a dilemma: harm. One of the purposes of the trolley problem is to provoke the thinker into questioning what they believe about moral responsibility and (in)action.

Well awktshualy, read the whole definition entry. Pendants are always so eager to ignore lay meanings.

Cute, but no. The definition of shining is not limited to emitting light.