ZMoney

I use Excel to calculate the ages of the oldest rocks in the Solar System. If I was using it to find accounting loopholes for a private equity firm, I'd probably kill myself.

Ted's problem is that he equates the tools and the processes of post-industrial society with its people. Just because the possibility exists for these surrogate activities to replace meaningful work doesn't mean we all succumb automatically.

So are they like, really into Windows?

Clearly they haven't been to Prague.

Came here for this comment. The image is suspiciously free of smokestacks.

I'm 5 months behind on my podcasts so I'm now listening to all the coverage and analysis of the Maduro kidnapping. Everybody was saying that with how cheap oil is, it doesn't make sense to try to take Venezuelan oil which is heavy and requires a lot of refinement. In that context shutting down the Strait of Hormuz makes perfect sense.

Go get a PhD and an academic position. The pay is shit but nobody will care whether you show up or not.

It was so frustrating seeing the press and attention he got 2016 and onward, when he had been the butt of every joke and a symbol of everything trashy about NYC since the 1980s.

For sure, but the growth rate is rapidly decreasing in the developing world too. If that continues eventually there will be nobody left to run the machines.

Nothing mysterious about this. Melting ice caps produce fresh surface water that doesn't sink.

Highly recommend David Graeber's analysis on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years

Grossly oversimplifying here but ssentially massive empires like Rome were based on gold currencies, their prominence was during what Graeber calls the "Axial Age". They coincided with massive suffering, but when they collapsed people went back to local debt-based systems of exchange. This was relatively much more humane. Then with the rise of colonialism we went back to gold, empires, and massive suffering again.

The irony is that this causes birth rates to plummet, which eliminates the future workforce for the very companies forcing childcare to be untenable. One of the major contradictions of capitalism is that it does not reproduce its own labor force. I guess the resolution is to replace human workers with AI.

I live in Prague. It's full of Americans who come to do IVF becauee they would rather pay $3,000 than $30,000 for it. They get a nice European vacation too.