chonglibloodsport
@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
- Comment on Suit Accuses Georgetown, Penn and M.I.T. of Admissions Based on Wealth | The schools were accused of giving special treatment to wealthy students who might not otherwise have been admitted. 1 day ago:
Here’s the dirty secret of the Ivy League (and similar top tier schools): the education doesn’t matter. The whole advantage of going to these schools is networking. Who do you network with? Rich kids whose parents own big companies! That’s how you get a high paying job after busting your butt to get into an Ivy League school!
If somehow we force these schools only admit the top students and not the underachieving legacies (rich kids) then that whole networking advantage disappears.
- Comment on oh man 6 days ago:
We disagree on what these words mean. There’s no further progress to be had here while that impasse remains.
- Comment on I washed my black underwear and now one of my black socks looks brownish on one side. How do I return the sock to its original black? 6 days ago:
Some kinds of black dyes are actually just really dark brown. When they start to fade they turn lighter which reveals the brown colour. There’s no way a poop stain transferred to your sock in the laundry. The enzymes in laundry detergent break that stuff down and keep it suspended in the water.
- Comment on oh man 6 days ago:
I didn’t say they were irrelevant, I said they’re tools of survival. They’re obviously useful. People without any emotions at all just sit there with what looks like a catatonic state.
But being a slave to your emotions is nothing to aspire to. Far better to pick the emotional states you want to have. For me it’s enjoying deep focus on a task, having a lively conversation, sharing a great meal, laughing at a great joke, or cheering on a great play in sports.
Being a slave to your emotions is like being a ship tossed about on stormy seas. Emotional regulation is a skill that must be learned like any other. We’re supposed to teach it to young children, though increasingly I find myself meeting adults who don’t even have the basics down. People screaming at each other like angry birds!
The tougher one of course is learning how to overcome depression. That may need different strategies for different people. Mindfulness works for me but maybe not for everyone.
- Comment on how badly could a pelican fuck me up in a fight? 6 days ago:
Just be glad your brother isn’t a pigeon or other similar sized bird. A pelican can and will swallow smaller birds whole!
- Comment on oh man 6 days ago:
Survival. The emotions are ultimately just crude tools the brain and body have for promoting the survival of the person.
Their crudeness is probably best illustrated with phobias.
- Comment on Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops? 1 week ago:
Even something very simple like a coffee shop is difficult to run as a co-op.
Yes, if you have a few friends who are all passionate about coffee it’s possible for you all to get loans / mortgages to pool together enough money to buy/lease a small commercial property and open a coffee shop together. The only really significant pieces of equipment are the espresso machine and coffee grinder, both of which can be bought used for a few thousand dollars.
But here comes the issue: suppose it’s you and 4 friends who started the coffee co-op with $200k each (total $1 million) to buy the real estate and all of the furniture and machinery. Now the 5 of you work in the coffee shop and it starts growing more successful so that you need to hire more baristas (or pastry chefs or sandwich artists) to work there. How many baristas can you find who can afford to put up $200k to buy into a share of the co-op?
Or even more fundamentally: what if 2 out of the starting 5 decide that working in a coffee shop is too exhausting and they don’t want to do it anymore so they quit? Now the other 3 need to put together a total of $400k to buy them out? Or do you have a clause in the contract which says they forfeit their investment if they quit? Now I dunno about you, but as much as I love using my espresso machine I would never want to enter a contract like that! I’d much rather keep my $200k in the bank and work as a regular employee barista knowing I could quit any time I want.
- Comment on Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops? 1 week ago:
They don’t have access to capital (means of production). Consider the following scenario:
All of the employees at a car manufacturing plant are sick of being paid a fraction of the total sale price of the cars they make. They decide, in solidarity, to quit en masse and start a worker co-op car plant instead so that they can all enjoy sharing 100% of the profits themselves.
So they quit. Now what? Well, knowledge isn’t an issue because they already knew how to operate all the machines in a car plant. The problem is that they don’t have the money (or the land) to build a new car plant. We’re talking billions of dollars and a huge piece of land which ideally should be located on a railroad line so that parts (which are very large and heavy) can be delivered affordably by rail.
So where are they gonna get the money? Not from private investors, of course, since that nixes the worker only profit sharing arrangement. Not from banks either because these workers, while highly knowledgeable and motivated, don’t have any collateral to put up for the bank loans. The banks do not want to be in the position of repossessing a bunch of specialized manufacturing equipment and trying to resell it at a loss.
The common response to this is: the government. But think about that. Do you want your government giving billions of dollars to a few hundred people so they can start a car plant and then keep all the profits?
- Comment on Charities of Employees from "non-profit" I was going to donate too 1 week ago:
You earn less than 20k? Save your money, volunteer your time! Much more productive and rewarding!
- Comment on TURKEY POWER 3 weeks ago:
Time zones probably help with that!
- Comment on 'My personal failure was being stumped': Gabe Newell says finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been 'copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers' 4 weeks ago:
That’s an interesting take! I’m getting to be an aging gamer myself and I no longer really play story-focused games. I play Roguelikes which I can pick up and drop any time, 5-10 minutes at a time, here and there. These games are designed to have maximum replay value. So even though I don’t have a lot of time I spend it on replaying rather than playing new games!
It’s an interesting difference and I think it depends on what we both look to get out of games.
- Comment on 'My personal failure was being stumped': Gabe Newell says finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been 'copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers' 4 weeks ago:
I think it was inevitable. Before HL2 we had Deus Ex. It was glorious. Fans loved it. Game devs looked at it and went “F*%@ that! We’re not making 3 games worth of content when you’re only going to see 1 on a given play through!”
So that defines the basic tension. Gamers love replay value and multiple paths and different character builds and tons of secrets to explore. Game devs on the other hand want players to see every little blade of grass and tree they worked so hard at placing in the game. I think they also have a lot of data from achievements that show most gamers barely finish the game once, let alone discover all the secrets and alternate endings etc.
- Comment on Warcraft 1 and 2 Remastered and the long-awaited 2.0 patch update for Warcraft 3: Reforged have just launched on PC for Warcraft's 30th anniversary 5 weeks ago:
Yeah that’s how the Total War series does it. A single unit could be up to 200 people. It tends to make the unit far less maneuverable though. This means it leans pretty far away from what the WarCraft/StarCraft fan is looking for with highly microable units.
- Comment on Warcraft 1 and 2 Remastered and the long-awaited 2.0 patch update for Warcraft 3: Reforged have just launched on PC for Warcraft's 30th anniversary 5 weeks ago:
I read a piece not too long ago by one of the developers of WC1. He originally had it so you could select all your units at the same time and just order them to attack. The lead designer said that was too boring and easy, so he had him limit the unit selection to groups of 4.
After trying it both ways, they agreed the smaller group limit made the game more skilful and interesting to play. Ever since then RTS games have gone towards increasing the selection cap more and more! I think it’s a mistake.
- Comment on Warcraft 1 and 2 Remastered and the long-awaited 2.0 patch update for Warcraft 3: Reforged have just launched on PC for Warcraft's 30th anniversary 5 weeks ago:
I loved the first one so much. I’ve been hearing the remaster for WC1 won’t have online multiplayer. That’s a huge disappointment for me. Hardly anyone ever got to experience that game multiplayer. I played it with my friend exactly once, when I brought my computer over to his house. It worked over LAN and I think also modem, but not the internet.
- Comment on Optimisation is a Slow Process 5 weeks ago:
Silent? No no no. The gaping hole makes loud chewing noises while the nostrils merily chat away in a sing-songy, whistly voice!
- Comment on Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new 1 month ago:
It’s a terrible design. If they removed that dumb always on feature and used a proper physical power button the battery would last basically forever.
- Comment on Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new 1 month ago:
Right. If your design requires 3.3V minimum then putting in a 3.3V battery and no boost converter is just dumb (or extremely user-hostile).
- Comment on Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new 1 month ago:
That’s definitely true. But I would definitely pay more for a scale with ultra long battery life.
I made the mistake of buying an off brand digital calliper and now like an idiot I find myself removing the battery when it’s not in use just to avoid damn thing running flat in one month thanks to its atrocious standby current which enables the display to turn on instantly when I move the slide (rendering the on/off entirely moot).
- Comment on Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new 1 month ago:
You can order 3000 3.3V low drop out (LDO) voltage regulators on LCSC for $25.50. That’s less than a penny each.
- Comment on Houses in my area increases 82% in just 4 years 1 month ago:
Right but OP is talking about a house in Waleska, Georgia, which has a population of 921 (as of 2020 census). Not really on the same level as Toronto or Vancouver!
- Comment on I bought a freeze dryer so you don't have to [1:00:14] 1 month ago:
This video is very long and entertaining and there’s a lot of evidence of the effort he put into it. The one real criticism I have is that it seems like he didn’t do a lot of research on what foods work well with freeze drying, preferring to do his own experiments and getting gnarly results on basically everything that isn’t already a well-known freeze dried product.
Personally I think one of the most useful things to freeze dry would be fresh, home grown herbs. Another big one is homemade soups and stocks.
As for the usefulness of freeze dried food? The big one he missed is camping and hiking. Frozen foods just aren’t going to cut it when you’re away from electricity for a week or more. You need lightweight non perishable food and for that nothing beats freeze dried. Just need to get some water from a lake or river!
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 1 month ago:
Don’t mistake my argument for a defence of billionaires. I don’t care for them any more than anyone else here. I just want to make sure that any changes we make to the law actually work and accomplish their intended goal. Poorly-thought-out laws are worse than doing nothing: they can backfire.
To give an example, the government of Canada passed a law called the Online News Act. This law targeted Google and Facebook with a special tax, called a link tax, that would force them to pay every time they or one of their users linked to a Canadian news site. The money collected by these link taxes would then go to pay to support Canadian news agencies in general.
The law backfired. Google struck a deal with the largest Canadian newspapers to pay them a flat fee but Facebook went ahead and blocked every single link to a news site for all users in Canada. This left thousands of small, local, Canadian newspapers high and dry (they were getting most of their traffic from Facebook posts linking to them). A law intended to benefit Canadian news publishers ended up putting most of them out of business.
The point of my previous example is to show that if a company is privately held (not traded on the stock market) then how much it is actually worth is not clear or obvious at all. This makes imposition of the $1B maximum wealth limit extremely difficult to properly implement.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 1 month ago:
I think what we would see in response to that is people hiding their wealth offshore, through private companies, through family members, trust funds, non-profit foundations etc.
So the billionaire has 10 relatives and hires each of them at his company, giving them all stock options as a bonus, which come from his own personal accounts. Then when it comes to tax time he’s managed to limbo his way under the $1B bar.
Take all your wealth and use it to set up a bunch of non-profit organizations for preserving national parks or saving the rainforest or running homeless shelters. Then have those foundations hire your family members to the boards of directors and pay each one millions of dollars in salaries.
There are countless ways to do this. Not just for individuals but for companies. Apple is pretty infamous for its use of Ireland as a tax haven that allows it to avoid paying corporate (profit) taxes on all its sales in the EU.
The other issue I foresee with the maximum wealth limit is how much chaos it could cause for companies. Let’s say you found a furniture company and run it really well and hire tons of employees. Then over time it grows above the billion dollar limit, so in order to pay your taxes you sell off the company to private equity who proceed to liquidate all its assets and fire all the employees. Without the limit in place you may have been happy to keep running the company and maintaining a great workplace for all your employees but the giant tax bill forced your hand. In the end, the company is largely destroyed, everyone has lost their jobs, and you retire with your billion dollars in cash.
I think the above scenarios are problematic no matter what you set the limit to. It also doesn’t address the issue of private companies (not traded on the public stock exchange) which don’t have a nominal market value. Sure, they have a book value for all their hard assets, but that can be far lower than the true value of the company.
Think of something like Snapchat which went from maybe a dozen employees and a bunch of laptops to rejecting a $3 billion buyout offer from Mark Zuckerberg just 3 years later. Anyway, also how to deal with that? Let’s say you have a small company making calculator apps for iOS and Android. You earn $10,000 a year in profits from sales. Then some group of investors come together and offer you $10 billion for your company. Is your company now worth $10B just because of the offer? You’re not on the stock market. You barely make enough money to pay rent, yet come tax time you owe $9B.
You could say “well you rejected the offer so you don’t owe the government anything because you actually aren’t worth $10B.” But who decides what you’re worth? Snapchat rejected the $3B offer but most investors would’ve agreed they were worth it. But all they had was a few employees, some laptops and servers, and the app they made. They’re really not much different from the hypothetical calculator app company.
- Comment on There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage? 1 month ago:
How does that work though? Let’s say the maximum wealth limit is one billion dollars and you own $750M of stock in the company you founded. Your wealth could go above and below that $1B limit multiple times in a day. What happens then?
- Comment on Ragrets 1 month ago:
Absolutely nailed the look. I’ve seen so many PhD students with that exact look!
- Comment on Row as Starmer suggests landlords and shareholders are not ‘working people’ 1 month ago:
Right, but I hope we’re able to see the difference between a working person who has investments and someone who earns the bulk of their income from investments. Similarly for real estate.
Because calling someone who works and has investment savings for retirement (such as a pension) “not a working person” is not just plain wrong, it’s extremely offensive, especially coming from a career politician like Starmer.
- Comment on Row as Starmer suggests landlords and shareholders are not ‘working people’ 1 month ago:
Are you a landlord if you let a room to help you pay bills at the end of a month? Are you a shareholder if you have a pension?
Judging by the answers here, the answer is no. But then we’re talking about millions of people who work everyday factory jobs, retail jobs, or low level office jobs.
- Comment on Nihilism spectrum 1 month ago:
It’s extremely common for different fields of inquiry (scientific, mathematical, philosophical, etc) to reuse common words. If we had to come up with brand new words for everything in every field then we’d all be speaking gibberish, like they do in medicine!
- Comment on ... 1 month ago:
Wow thanks! I’ve seen other instances of this fallacy but never knew its name (nor recognized that it is a common fallacy form).