scientismer's comments

So your wife has to work because your house was so expensive? I wonder about the place where you live. When your boss bought his home, was it cheap everywhere, or did he pick an affordable location that now has become expensive?

It's not a must that woman work in this day and age.

"I would love to write a book or get involved in other projects, but these things all take time"

Might be worth mentioning that actually, few people will care about you having written a book or other projects. It highlights the danger of comparing oneself to an arbitrarily chosen peer group.

That's the most ridiculous reason for having kids I have ever heard. If that's your issue, maybe just invent some fake children and say you sent them to boarding school or they died in a car crash. Or less dramatic, say they live with their other parent.

This doesn't take care of the aspect of parents wanting to spend time with their kids. It's just "we need more daycare options so that mothers can focus more on their careers".

You have the exact same challenges. He just was able to overcome them better than you, by having/picking/convincing a wife who takes care of the home. You all made your choices.

Personally, I would consider gold as an insurance. The current price does not matter that much. What matters that in case of a catastrophe (financial crash, system crash, socialist takeover, whatever), it would be valuable. I would assume that in case of a system crash, gold would be more likely to retain some value than most other assets. Like think socialist takeover - all other assets (real estate, company stock) would be devaluated over night.

I have to read up on Musk, didn't get any of those references :-) Anyway, just because he does some investment, doesn't mean it is a good one. It just shows that people do use BTC as a hedge.

I think you are right, the "small fish" are buying Bitcoin hoping for speculative gains, but also big fish are buying it to hedge against inflation. I don't think Tesla bought Bitcoin speculating on big price rises, for example.

It also seems true that hedging against inflation (and socialism and so on) would also be expected to rise the price of gold - but a peak in August 2020 seems consistent with the hedging theory. Also, Bitcoin is easier to smuggle across borders than gold. Maybe it really is taking over. Or maybe the big fish already have so much gold that they want to diversify a bit.

AAPL actually produces stuff, but it probably isn't completely risk free, either? People could become too poor to afford their asking prices, and while it may not crash to zero, it could crash enough to hurt (given that it probably is also quite expensive atm).

Ok I forgot about the money printing, which may or may not stop after Covid. But I think people buy BTC as an alternativ to gold, not because of some banking narrative. The question is still what would be actually good investments. Maybe everything will crash when the money printing stops, but then some things will crash harder than others. Gold will probably remain gold.

Oil, coal and gas are actually produced from biological sources, plants that lived millions of years ago.

It's even a bit ironic - there was a time when nature hadn't yet learnt how to break down trees, so a lot of trees accumulated (simplified, I think it is more a then new trick of plant cells that had no "natural enemies"). That organic material is what oil, coal and gas are made from. The irony is that from oil we now make plastic, and nature has not yet found a way to break down plastic. Since microbes can now digest trees, no new oil will be created. But maybe if large enough plastic deposits are accumulated, it could happen again?

(Details may be wrong, as I was too lazy to google, but the gist is, fossil fuels are actually made from organic sources).

Actually the costs to mine a block on the blockchain are the same, no matter if somebody buys a Bitcoin or not. At most you could argue that driving up the price gives miners an incentive to mine more.

It's probably all bullshit. There are papers by professors of music studies claiming listening to streaming services wastes a gigazillion of CO2. It's all just back of the napkin estimates.

Why would Covid drive up the price of Bitcoin? Sure, the pandemic is being used for attempted government power grasps, but those won't go away with Covid.

So now it is "jokes lead to genocide, AND to all sorts of other bad stuff"? Sorry I don't see a way out of that being a political battle. It's absolutely just a belief system. It seems just as likely that displaying a sense of humour could prevent bad things from happening. The difference is that with the ADL pyramid, people feel entitled to control other people's thoughts and actions, and humour does not bring such entitlement.

Personally I would loath having to have such discussions at work. It's OK to consider some jokes to be in bad taste. Point it out and move on. That should be the extent of it. But not calling on some abstract higher moral framework that let's you control your colleagues.

And I am not saying it should be a general rule for companies, either. I just want companies to be allowed to set their own rules.

For all I care, there could be companies with "no jokes" policies, and people who prefer could go to work there. I would prefer the "jokes allowed" companies. I just want there to be choice. Basecamp is a little ray of hope for me, but if people prefer to have political discussions at work, I don't begrudge them for working at companies that allow them.

That doesn't make sense. By bringing forth the ADL pyramid, they made the claim that the joke list would be a step towards genocide. They absolutely say that. They did not randomly share that ADL pyramid, they wanted to make the point that the list would lead to genocide.

Otherwise, by your logic, why not just say, "OK, we have the list, let's just all agree not to escalate it to genocide, and we can all carry on with our lives" (which would be ridiculous, because it goes without saying that jokes shouldn't be escalated to genocide)? So it won't lead to genocide, and there is no point in bringing it up.

Is it going to cause genocide or not? If it is not going to cause genocide, then to comment on it with respect to genocide doesn't make sense. I'm sorry, I really can not follow your logic.

Somebody said it shouldn't be done, because the end result might be genocide. That's a pretty heavy gun to bring out for a list of funny names.

Well it presumably can't occur at Basecamp, because it could get you fired. People can still discuss it elsewhere, or secretly at Basecamp.

I also didn't take sides for Basecamp, I merely pointed out that the decision was in fact about politics.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Your last sentence seems to indicate that you believe the funny names list was a step towards genocide. Yet at the same time you say DHH's interpretation was uncharitable? You literally say exactly what DHH claims was said.

I don't know what the ADL is, but your belief in their theory is actually a political stance. It's not physics, it is a convoluted complex theory that can not be verified. Believing in it is "being on a side".

Then maybe I was just unlucky, broke one GPU mining Bitcoin.

I wouldn't count on the cheap hardware, it may be pretty much broken after endless full power use for mining.