Hapankaali
@Hapankaali@lemmy.world
- Comment on We are not the same 1 day ago:
It did in fact happen with regularity that incapable, insane or otherwise unsuitable rulers would end up ruling.
A famous example is Charles II of Habsburg (ruled the Kingdom of Spain from 1665-1700). Suffering from several though not precisely documented disabilities due to extensive inbreeding, he died in his late thirties.
- Comment on We are not the same 1 day ago:
I grant you, it would be hilarious to see footage of Trump on the front lines in Iran (Benny Hill music in the background).
- Comment on We are not the same 1 day ago:
You might think this would help prevent wars, but it was standard in the past for politicians to fight battles, and they were dying all the time back then in wars that were also much more common.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
What is the role of “capitalism” here? There were plenty of people who justified the position of slaves, serfs or peasants with similar lines of thinking in tribal and feudal times, long before capitalism existed. In fact, while many societies do not take full (or even much) advantage of modern administrative means permitting extensive income redistribution, it is still true that some modern capitalist systems are the most egalitarian in human history since hunter-gatherer bands.
- Comment on Suck my 5 days ago:
The package also mentions a “creamy filling” and emphasizes it is “organically produced.”
- Comment on Why are AAA games a rip off in US, UK & EU? 1 week ago:
The price elasticity varies by market. The publisher makes an assessment of what price maximizes their profits. In addition to that, fluctuations in currency markets can lead to (temporary) distortions of the relative price measured in the same currency. After all, a seller in Kazakhstan isn’t going to update prices daily just because the USD or EUR exchange rate has changed.
- Comment on Guess the game (#004) 1 week ago:
Anglophones and diacritics: not even önçe.
- Comment on Guess the game (#004) 1 week ago:
Actually, no one guessed it correctly. This is in fact from the game Brütal Legend.
- Comment on Another one! 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, they used to be far more common before the advent of modern central banking policy in the 1970s and 1980s, even though you’d actually expect the opposite to happen, all else being equal, because of the way recessions are defined. By only looking at GDP growth, it ignores population growth.
On the other hand, GDP, even on a per capita basis, has become increasingly less useful for defining recessions since productive capacity isn’t really what is lacking in any modern developed economy.
- Comment on 👴☝️I did that 1 month ago:
Norway exports far more than they use, and petrol prices there are among the highest in the world.
- Comment on Time for a bit of medical education 1 month ago:
Really? Seems I can’t step a millimetre in a doctor’s office without them asking if I’m allergic to anything (turns out that being allergic to stupidity isn’t an issue when it comes to medical treatment).
- Comment on Time for a bit of medical education 1 month ago:
Life hack: use the one your doctor prescribes.
- Comment on Real 2 months ago:
Omelette du fromage is actually wrong, it does mean “cheese omelet” but it’s not how you say it. You say “omelette au fromage.” (Funny: the Wikipedia article has a chapter containing an analysis of the various viewpoints on what to drink alongside a cheese omelet.)
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
It was the style at the time.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
“Nice to meet you”?
- Comment on Wife changing money 2 months ago:
Yes, for various reasons it would be beneficial to have a global government responsible for global issues. However, until such time as we have one, local currencies are going to be the best bet.
- Comment on Wife changing money 2 months ago:
First of all, hyperinflation hasn’t been an issue in any modern economy for decades. We understand more about monetary policy than we did in the 1930s.
Secondly, economic crises did happen prior to Bretton Woods. In fact, they tended to be more common, and more severe.
Finally, it is not obvious at all that “universal currencys (sic) not run by local governments” could do better, especially given our experience with cryptocurrencies, all of which are extremely volatile and not suitable as a currency for that and various other reasons.
- Comment on Wife changing money 2 months ago:
We need better alternatives
Why? Modern fiat currencies do exactly what a currency needs to do.
- Comment on Always funny to hear the young try to figure out stuff from the past. 2 months ago:
The kid’s name? Albert Einstein.
- Comment on Iran's shitposts were obliterated, too! 2 months ago:
Einstein might be good at physics, but he is the last person you would ask on ecology.
Einstein was no expert on ecology, but he was well-informed about general matters. Trump is profoundly ignorant when it comes to basic knowledge you’d expect the average 12-year old to know. Like, who doesn’t know what health insurance is?
That’s fair enough. But Trump’s Project 2025 buddies have the intention to undermine Europe. Unfortunately, when America sneezes, everyone catches the cold.
Yeah, they’ve been at it even today, with JD Vance cheerleading for Orbán Viktor.
- Comment on Iran's shitposts were obliterated, too! 2 months ago:
If Trump and Musk are stupid, they would be poor
This type of thinking is known as the just-world fallacy. It’s very tempting, because people prefer to believe that things happen “for a reason” and not just randomly. Yet there is no basis in reality for this type of thinking. Trump is stupid, and many of his comments can’t be explained by mere showmanship and playing to his base. The only reasonable explanation for forest raking, or negative GDP, or look, having nuclear etc. etc. is that he is a clueless idiot, and he is.
Musk is evil, and certainly no genius, but also not stupid. He has an undergraduate degree in physics, whereas Trump merely has an MBA of negligible academic standard, which certifies basic literacy at best.
The existence of markets naturally leads to an upward flow of capital from the have-nots to the haves. One of the interesting things researchers have found is that simulations with identical agents (i.e. all equally smart) and simple market mechanics lead to the emergence of extreme inequality. You can find the details in the economic literature if you’re interested.
Plenty of famous intergenerational wealthy families eventually lose their status because their descendants squander the fortunes handed to them.
As it happens, Trump did squander his inheritance, but managed to claw back his fortune, first by money laundering for Russian mobsters, then by using his political office for personal gain. Fake it until you make it very much applies here.
You may not be politically active, but they know already that you’re possibly anti-Trump because they took your social security details and other public records, and fed it into their surveillance system.
Well, call me naïve, but they are pretty cautious around this kind of stuff in Germany, I doubt the US government has access to these kinds of records.
- Comment on Iran's shitposts were obliterated, too! 2 months ago:
Putin wasn’t the only KGB colonel before he became the president of Russia. He had peers and were given equal footing as him. But he had proven to be more cunning and ruthless than them so he gained power.
Putin isn’t in the category I mentioned. Even so, Putin rapidly rose up the political ranks and in the chaos of the later Yeltsin presidency ended up prime minister largely by chance.
Those low level conning salesmen you mentioned, they probably weren’t savvy enough.
The numbers don’t add up. Suppose there are a million savvy conmen. How can they all become major players on the international business and political scene? There just aren’t enough of those positions.
However, if they had been as savvy as the most successful con salesman, Elon Musk, then their fates would have been different otherwise.
Elon Musk started with a heap of money (as did Trump), in an oligarchic system heavily favouring those with money.
And well, who lived until the ripe old age of 70, while the other was murdered in cold blood with an icepick?
Not Lenin, who died of an unknown illness. I think you mean Trotsky.
Never underestimate the opposition.
My opposition, personally? That would be practically all politicians, ideologically, to some degree or other. I am not a member of any political organization.
One should also not overestimate them.
- Comment on Iran's shitposts were obliterated, too! 3 months ago:
On the one hand, I think it is true that a certain kind of skill is required to read and manipulate people - the same kind of skill a conman or used car salesman needs to do their work, and that kind of skill obviously doesn’t need knowledge of quantum physics or even a rudimentary understanding of how the world in general works.
On the other hand, one shouldn’t give people like Trump, Berlusconi and Idi Amin too much credit. They ended up where they did largely due to historical happenstance, and millions of other conmen and used car salespeople stayed small-time.
- Comment on The difference is real 3 months ago:
The logic is a bit weird though. Like picking up smoking out of solidarity because your buddy died of lung cancer.
- Comment on They cannot imagine that you actually have a life when you leave your place of work 4 months ago:
Funny, I have to ask permission to work on weekends since they have to pay me more for it.
(Not USA obviously.)
- Comment on It is 2003, I am playing a new expansion for Diablo 2 as the US starts a war in the Middle East. It is 2026, I am playing a new expansion for Diablo 2 (!) as the US starts a war in the Middle East. 4 months ago:
First as tragedy, then as farce.
- Comment on The meaning of life? 4 months ago:
Life expectancy globally is around 71 years. Only a handful of countries (Afghanistan and a few sub-Saharan countries) have a life expectancy below 60.
- Comment on What's "email"? 4 months ago:
The amount (usually much less - unless there was some marauding army nearby) aside, it was more complicated than that. Taxation was delegated across a hierarchy of various stages; at each stage a mixture of negotiation, deception and coercion would be used to determine the taxation amount. The lowest-level tax collectors typically worked akin to a mob protection racket, and their own livelihood depended on extracting a surplus above what their employer (typically some noble) demanded.
Certainly substantially less transparent and simple than clicking through an online form in a few minutes.
- Comment on What's "email"? 4 months ago:
Pretty sure filing taxes (taking all of 5 minutes) is a heck of a lot simpler for me than for any medieval peasant or minor nobility.
- Comment on Is £70 becoming harder to justify? The rise of cheaper blockbuster games 4 months ago:
$100 today is about $40 in 1990. In those days games were made by a handful of people or even a single individual in one of two years of development. Chris Sawyer started work on the 1994 classic Transport Tycoon in 1992 and wrote the entire codebase in x86 Assembly. The price isn’t really that crazy considering the comparatively massive undertaking that is GTA6 development.
Having said that, it’s rare nowadays for any AAA game to release anywhere near its best state, so it tends to be worth it to wait even if money isn’t the concern.