awkwardtortoise's comments

Whenever syria comes out, the propagandists come out. These people try to label people in order to marginalize their views.

You can spot them easily because they use labels like "trolls", "conspiracist", "tin foil hat", etc to label their enemies.

Don't forget 6) agenda driven propagandists like you...

Jesus the salaries are so low.

> Doing a Numbeo cost of living conversion suggests at least the base salary is roughly comparable to what you'd be making in the US.

Where in the US? Maybe in the boondocks, but those salaries are shit compared to major city salaries in the US. I made more than that working as an intern before graduating nearly 10 years ago during great recession.

They write the same shit every year, every generation.

People said the same thing about newspapers. The same thing about radio. The same thing about rock 'n roll. The same thing about rap/hip-hop. The same thing about TV ( IDIOT BOX ). They said the same thing about myspace 10 years ago. They said the same thing about porn.

I'm sure in 10 years, they'll say the same thing about VR because people need to sell ads and justify their paychecks.

English language version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-HL5nppBnM

Nope. We get maine lobsters in the NY area and the price has increased in the last few years. Haven't had lobsters because I refuse to pay extortion prices.

At the beginning and end of every business cycle, the media ( sellers of ads not news ) run the "peak oil" and "peak oil demand" stories.

8+ years ago, "Peak Oil".

https://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/04/peak-o...

Now it's "peak oil demand".

It's so silly. These people write the same thing over and over and over again because they are in the business of selling ads and propaganda.

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed." - Twain

If you find the topic of consciousness interesting, here is an interesting neuroscientist's talk on consciousness. The idea that we can measure levels of consciousness as brain scanning tools become available and how consciousness may just be a "prediction process/function/tool".

It's not "I think therefore I am", but "I predict, therefore I am".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI

> I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith in him.

Same here. A fan of musk. But SCTY's demise should serve as a canary in the mine. TSLA had to buy SCTY to prevent it from going bankrupt.

Not going to bet against Musk since he is a great salesman and he seems to have a lot of powerful friends who have and are willing to bail him out, but TSLA is a company that might not be around in 5 to 10 years if the business/economic environment shifts against him.

He better hope his TSLA self-driving software is the best in class.

People forget that Musk and TSLA was pretty much bankrupt 10 years ago before he got bailed out.

> Had he kept it in XOM, his $3 million would have been worth $22 million today, with a dividend that would have covered his expenses and that kept pace with inflation.

His house value probably rose at a higher rate than XOM's did.

Also, what's your point? His shares would be worth $22 million today and he'd still be dead.

I always watch Alien and Aliens back to back. From time to time, if I have more time to kill, I watch Alien 3 ( the extended director's cut ). I watched Alien: Resurrection once and have never watched it again and have no desire to. Terrible movie.

I will never be able to forgive Alien 3 for killing off hicks and newt so unceremoniously ( off screen ). That was so lazy and cowardly, it ruins what is a fun movie to watch.

> It's just that, in each franchise, the other two movies are so much better

Alien 3 is a fun/exciting movie. But it never lived up to Ridley's Alien nor Cameron's Aliens standard.

It is not a terrible movie by a long shot. But when you compare it to the two masterpieces that preceded it, it disappoints.

> I think these kinds of stories play well to governments, the press, and some groups of people as ideas or as cool photo opportunities, but they don't translate into meaningful agricultural production.

As with almost all of these type of stories, it's "filler" material for journalists who need to write something to justify their paychecks and it's free advertisement for the companies. Nothing more, nothing less. Companies contact WSJ|NYTimes|etc to do pieces on them all the time. It's free publicity and journalists need to write something and of course the media has to sell ads. It's a form of busybody work.

At least this is a break from the relentless "solar savior elon musk" craze on social and traditional media.

The problem is that india gets most of its electricity from coal (59.1%).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India

> The "China vs America" narrative is unnecessary.

It's central to the current world event. The major theme of the 21st century is going to be china's growth in power vs the US.

Power is a zero sum game after all. If china's power increases, it's going to come at the expense of the lone superpower.

> If China wants to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure to develop their region that's a great thing for America too.

A china-centered economic order isn't a "great thing for America".

> Eventually the demand for low-margin, subsidized, Chinese steel will flatten, while the demand for high-margin American technology and cultural products will grow.

What makes you think that china isn't going to take over the high-end steel market too?

Unless you think chinese are intellectually incapable of developing high-end steel...

No. Most of the TPP members aren't involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

China has 1.1 billion more people than the US. They have bet big on megalopolis ( the bejing centered, shanghai centered and the chonging centered ). Combined, these 3 megalopolis will have a population larger than the US. China has 110 cities with 1 million people. The US has 10. And china is at 55% urbanization while the US is 80%+ urban so china still has hundreds of millions of people to urbanize.

Also, some economists say that data is the new "resource" of wealth ( the next oil ). If that is true, then china is the saudi arabia of data. Given their smartphone penetration and the size of the population and the continued urbanization.

Also, china is now building a hundred colleges every year. This is reminiscent of the US in the 1850-1900 when we went on a college building spree ( stanford, MIT, stevens, purdue, michigan state, cornell, UC, UT, endless list ) as a result of our economic growth. And it wasn't too long before we outstripped the british empire as the largest economy in the world and kept growing.

There are tons of reasons to expect that china will continue to grow and outstrip the US in the near future. But there are stark differences as well. China's growth isn't in a "asian-centric" world like the US growth was in a "western-centric" world. US overtaking britain wasn't as traumatic and/nor resisted event. The US has the most farmland, diverse territories stretching from the arctic to the caribbean to the western pacific. We had allies/etc that china lacks. We had the resources/oil/etc that china doesn't. So there are a lot of headwinds for china.

It should be interesting how things pan out. Considering our position in the western pacific ( a bazillion bases surrounding china ), I don't see how eventually, there won't be a war between china and the US. I don't see how china doesn't push us out of their 'backyard' sooner or later.

Hell the icon of "free trade and capitalism" developed under protectionism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...

Every nation needs protectionism to help its industries. It's only when you have strong stable industries/companies that you become anti-protectionism because you want your native companies to have access to foreign markets.

Every "strong" country today became strong via theft, protectionism and mercantilism. And once a country became strong, they expanded/colonized/etc and then supported "free" trade.

There isn't a greater example of this than the US. We stole all kinds of tech from the british/europe and then protected our industries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...

It's how our nascent industries developed in the US. Without protectionism, all our industries would have been dominated by european companies.

> Poor people taking more risks to come out of poverty is very natural

Poor people don't take more risks to come out of poverty... Poor people take risks because they have no choice and they remain in poverty.

> Why do you think I left my homeland, left my parents, friends and Gods to come to Silicon Valley ?

That's not the type of risk we are talking about. We are talking about things like coal miners.