FredPret

16 ms·

241.
by FredPret 1y ago
Shooting down a satellite is a major step that creates a mess of space junk, angering everybody. Plus you can just have a couple of politicians from each major power park their money on that satellite.
242.
by FredPret 1y ago
No it isn’t. One of the biggest ones, GEO, only made $30m last year with a margin of 1.1%. Another one, CXW, made $84m. SSTI is losing money. Microsoft makes $284m… per day .
243.
by FredPret 1y ago
Thanks! I'm intrigued by the idea of being able to do serious multi-monitor computing under a tree, armed with only a small mobile device and smart glasses. Maybe in a few years!
244.
by FredPret 1y ago
Money is just a token. The valuable thing is the actual output of products and services. Companies are great at this, and taking resources away from them means they have to crank out less of it. The best and simplest thing is to tax the sal
245.
by FredPret 1y ago
More money is strictly better; if you think rich countries are "unpleasant or unpractical" to live in, try living in a poor one. You're right that GDP is far from the only thing that matters. But sacrificing growth for intang
246.
by FredPret 1y ago
Or overseas investors are sending capital to America, where it enlarges existing businesses and creates new ones, leading to more jobs, more competition for the consumer's dollar, and more tax for the US government when money is paid o
247.
by FredPret 1y ago
> "...Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. now (sic) your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine
248.
by FredPret 1y ago
- How is reading text for long periods? - Does your neck get tired? - Do you ever have to be on video calls? I can't talk to clients looking like a spaceman
249.
by FredPret 1y ago
Numbers to back that up? The annual Global Wealth Report from UBS [0] usually shows a very wide base of millionaires in the rich countries (there are 23 million millionaires in the US) and a rapidly rising crop of new rich people all over
250.
by FredPret 1y ago
There are no virtual things! Every computer / imaginary apple is represented by real electrons on a drive / chemicals in a brain. Even if we are a simulation, we also have to ultimately be represented by something real.
251.
by FredPret 1y ago
You're right and I don't like it one bit, but there was also a long list of true things that we weren't allowed to say aloud under the previous lot.
252.
by FredPret 1y ago
I think the idea is that corporations are the most efficient entities in the economy in terms of allocating capital. They have to be, or they go under. And when they have extra cash, investors tend to demand that it be deployed or paid back
253.
by FredPret 1y ago
Here's some interesting thinking about different kinds of tax: https://economicsobservatory.com/which-taxes-are-best-and-wo... > "Raising the income tax rate has by far the least negative effect on GDP. In the
254.
by FredPret 1y ago
There is now an absolute fountain of criticism of the current administration, the USA itself, and the entire West coming from every demographic in the USA. This isn't a new thing or restricted to Trump. I don't see any mass arrest
255.
by FredPret 1y ago
That's a fair point, I hadn't considered it. But it's a tough analysis to make regardless, because every widget I buy here in the West that comes from China (and that's pretty much 100% of the widgets) spits out CO2 in C
256.
by FredPret 1y ago
Despite the headline on this article you still have way more freedom and specifically freedom of speech in the US than the rest of us. The law works differently at the border, especially for non-citizens. Tourists don't have any legal
257.
by FredPret 1y ago
Personally, I suffer from whatever it is that drives a person to think about what numbers mean. The numbers themselves aren't a problem, I'm just pointing out that our cognition involves many overlapping layers of abstraction, and
258.
by FredPret 1y ago
Amazing feat by the Chinese government to boost the whole planet like that. Do you have numbers for that, or are you just a committed tankie? Also, ~100% of China's growth started when they embraced market economics in 1990. Read US bu
259.
by FredPret 1y ago
Greenpeace is not known exactly for their even-handed, logical approach to solving real problems
260.
by FredPret 1y ago
They pollute because they've turned into the West's industrial zone. They only make a bunch of stuff because we buy it
261.
by FredPret 1y ago
Everything you say is valid, but you left out the part where, in addition to new tech making a few "obscenely" rich, it also makes a layer of very many people under them extremely rich, and almost everyone else a lot better off in
262.
by FredPret 1y ago
> If I handed you 1 apple, At this point I hold one object that we agree to label "apple". Note that even seeing it as a single object is a layer of abstraction. In reality it's a clump of fundamental particles temporarily
263.
by FredPret 1y ago
And I'm telling you that 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 are the ones that are active right now. > "Taking steps to undo the damage ... it's necessary" What a bullshit argument. How does any of that help "undo" the damage don
264.
by FredPret 1y ago
You need to make your way through 1-5 to get to 6, but I specifically excluded 5 (organization of militias). There are rumours of this but if it's true, these militias must be very secret indeed. One problem is that violent criminals r
265.
by FredPret 1y ago
> Thank you. This is all that needs to be said on this subject. No? There are tons of completely insane things happening in SA, and much that needs to be said and done. If you're saying the minimum threshold for caring about what ha
266.
by FredPret 1y ago
Here's Genocide Watch's take: https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages Stages currently active in SA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. Some people claim that the high murder rate among white SA'ns means they're also in sta
267.
by FredPret 1y ago
> you can relax your grip on your pearls. Not the most polite way to discuss a genocide, or at the very least an absolutely dire situation.
268.
by FredPret 1y ago
If they invest in nuclear stations, they may get AI slop "too cheap to meter"
269.
by FredPret 1y ago
Only if you can observe the dark dollars bending the trajectories of the bright dollars
270.
by FredPret 1y ago
Some "plumbing" company websites are really just referral farms that are supposed to send your data to plumbers in your area. The idea even makes sense - if this worked, plumbers could focus on plumbing and SEO hackers could focus

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