I want to know what's so special about July 19th that it made this list.
Probably not this:
> 2014 – Gunmen in Egypt's western desert province of New Valley Governorate attack a military checkpoint, killing at least 21 soldiers. Egypt reportedly declares a state of emergency on its border with Sudan.
For real though, this is kind of a strange article once it starts comparing 2019 and after.
> A recent gallup poll noticed a slight downturn in satisfaction with Americans’ personal life during the last 20 years.
> [graph showing a tick down in this poll on satisfaction from somewhere around mid-60s to ~50 from 2019 to 2020]
Gee, I wonder what happened from 2019 to 2020 that caused a dramatic shift in Americans' satisfaction with personal life. Hmm. Let me think...
> Notably, the amount of leisure is one area that people say could be be improved upon.
Changed from 42 up to 43 from 2019 to 2023. Personal health went down from 54 to 41, family life from 76 to 66, community as a place to live from 61 to 51.
I don't know why the article presents this data at all because it doesn't support focusing on leisure. The dramatic tick down is quite clearly people pissed off or affected by COVID-19 and government's response to it (both impacted people negatively). Given that data, leisure seems like a non-sequitur. Leisure definitely is important and has been consistently poor regardless of COVID-19, so why present this particular data? Just talk about leisure.
I'll add that one thing I think about leisure in the US is that without longer vacations, our leisure time is used in a worse way as well. A lot of peoples' leisure is filled with consuming television. It's like the junk food of leisure. Heck, if you're watching TV shows where characters are frequently angry and yelling at each other or committing murder, I'm going to guess that might actually have a more negative impact on the viewer's mental health. To each their own of course, but I find that when I listen to sad or angry music, it makes me sad or angry. It's like the Bill Burr bit on his dog's temper (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnjGyOQ7FcU). Not suggesting we need to regulate how people use their leisure, I just think this is probably another piece of the puzzle when discussing Americans and our dissatisfaction with our lives in terms of leisure.
> Certain weekend days, particularly Saturday, July 19 (63%), also ranked among the happiest for Americans in 2014.
Could be a mistake on both ends though. But June 19, 2014 was not a Saturday (it was for July 19 though) nor do I believe many businesses or localities were allowing employees a holiday on Juneteenth in 2014.
I'm going out on a limb here and saying that these SCOTUS opinions are more transparent than, for example, the 5,000+ page bills passed by Congress that you know could have only been written by teams of lobbyists rather than actual representatives.
I agree, but with the noted caveat that pedestrians who are completely oblivious to their surroundings are usually only a danger to themselves, whereas drivers who are even somewhat oblivious to their surroundings can be far more dangerous.
When I lived in SF, I saw this constantly btw. I probably saved on guy's life who saw a walk sign turn on at an intersection, proceeded to look at his phone, and stepped into the intersection. Meanwhile a car was running the red light at a fast speed (it was crossing Market somewhere up near 2nd Street), so I had to tug this guy by the back of his shirt to prevent him from getting creamed. And he actually gave me an annoyed look. This was sometime around 2015 though, so just an anecdote that doesn't have much to do with the data in the article.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
When people talk about Bitcoin's potential demise, they are referring to its price and perceived value, not whether it will cease to exist necessarily.
Madoff also was not ultimately caught and his scheme ended because of the accounting fraud being revealed (i.e. the fraud was not that important). That happened later. He was caught because a market downturn resulted in him being unable to acquire new victims for the Ponzi scheme, which would have otherwise perpetuated it by taking new money in and using that to pay out existing investors.
The longer Bitcoin's network continues to function, more and more people will become aware of its resiliency. Governments may topple; banks may fail; exchanges may go bust; Bitcoin keeps on ticking. As long as the network continues to function, Bitcoin will have a price.
It's possible that more people are aware of Bitcoin than 18 months ago, but I doubt many think it's more resilient.
Since Bitcoin depends on a functioning network it seems more likely than something physical like Beanie Babies or baseball cards to one day become effectively worthless.
The US government has been around for quite some time. The British pound, longer. It will take hundreds of years to compare to that level of resiliency.
The British government has completed repayments on historically held debt which dates back to the 18th century[1] as recently as 2015 (they were related to the South Sea Bubble).
That's a 162 contiguous years of financial records.
Well, I think what you’re talking about is perception of risk. The perception of the risk that it goes to 0 is probably decreasing over time. But the expectation of future gains based on past performance is also decreasing over time. Most of the investors I feel are worth listening to see this and conclude two things: it’s here to stay but probably can’t go much higher without the broad market also going higher.
Power is more complicated. By design, Bitcoin has one block created by one miner every 10 minutes on average. All other work by all other miners is discarded and unused. So no, only a single miner is required to sustain the network. But, there is a economic incentive to add miners to the network when the price goes up, because even though only one miner gets rewarded per block, that reward is worth quite a bit. Currently approximately $1M of bitcoin are mined per hour.
There is no specific value at which all mining is unprofitable because mining difficulty is dynamically adjusted to maintain a 10 minute block generation rate regardless of the number of miners.
I mean, maybe, but if you pick an arbitrary currency, weighted by "market cap", btc has an extremely long way to go before being an unusually long lived one.
Someone with your mindset was probably saying something similar while living in Argentina in the 1920s, when it was among the top 10 wealthiest countries on the planet.
Crying about 'whataboutism' is usually a sign of a mentally-stunted person.
There are so many awful things going on in the world that you must provide a convincing reason for telling me, "Look over here... China is doing X!" If I can say, "USA also does X," or "USA does similar thing Y," then I think it's fairly clear you need a convincing argument to try and make me care about this instance of China doing it.
Same thing applies when Democrats do X or Republicans do X. It applies across the board, but this is with the caveat that I mostly do not care about things that happen in the news, and I require sound reasoning for why I am supposed to care. If I point out [I don't care because] X happens all the time, and your only response is "whataboutism," then all you're doing is attempting to make me look stupid on the internet, another thing I don't care about. I walk away feeling like I still don't care. You walk away feeling like you somehow proved me wrong because (China | USA | Democrats | Republicans) are still bad because whataboutism somehow makes me wrong.
Basically, anyone who sincerely argues "whataboutism" on the internet should probably have their keyboard taken away.
If a party is arguing a position of moral superiority, and respond to any seeming demonstrations of moral failings with 'you do it too', it's not obvious to me why their rhetorical counter-party has any reason not to view their argument as specious at best. Unless one can provide compelling evidence that the regimes held up are unambiguously morally superior, I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider those arguing as degrading the communications channel and thus actively hostile to quality discourse.
Are tankies Marxist? I would assert that they'd have to be - and Marxists aren't making the case for their ideas out of some sense of moral superiority. The good ones aren't anyway. China (and other communist states) aren't morally superior they are simply superior: they have harnessed the power of capital accumulation that capitalism provides while retaining the ability to move to more advanced relations of production once appropriate.
China is "winning" and will continue to win, not because they are more virtuous, but because they can move on to the next thing while we're stuck with end-stage capitalism and all the rentierism that comes with it, apparently forever.
And, furthermore, the finding is akin to a form of survivorship bias. 'We found they stopped talking to each other and promoting hate online.' Okay, and what did they do next? Did they just stop hating people? Did they figure out a way to start meeting in person without Facebook to mediate the conversation? Did some of them become increasingly isolated that they decided to act out? Did some people who weren't members of the hate group happen to see this form of censorship and start to change their own minds? I'm not saying any of these outcomes are what happened or are inevitable, I'm wondering how they can call this real science when they don't even bother looking at the other effects outside of their water-is-wet conclusion.
>Okay, and what did they do next? Did they just stop hating people? Did they figure out a way to start meeting in person without Facebook to mediate the conversation? Did some of them become increasingly isolated that they decided to act out? Did some people who weren't members of the hate group happen to see this form of censorship and start to change their own minds?
Given that the target audience they were studying were users of the platforms, and the effect was the consumption and spread of hate speech within that population and on those platforms, I don't think that including n+ order effects across every other facet of society would have been necessary, or even possible.
It seems fair to discuss because we all know that research like this will be used to justify censoring "hate" groups that are not actually hate groups.
Watch the scientism-believers come out of the woodwork to accuse you of asking this in bad faith. It is, of course, largely the same group of people who will redefine "hate" organization to include people who, for example, didn't want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 [1][2][3].
They know that "hate" can be redefined in any manner as they wish, and if they can correlate hate <=> censorship is beneficial, and they can correlate anything-I-don't-like <=> hate, then they can correlate anthing-I-don't-like <=> censorship is beneficial. But they want to pretend you're the "sea lion" in some moronic comic as an ironic shorthand to disrupt and short-circuit a serious conversation on censorship.
> Destroying the company is not the best idea, but there has to be a line society has to draw and be vigilant about defending it.
Why is it not the best idea? It's a great idea. Fine them more money and let them go bankrupt. Let companies that did not go under for such awful practices pick up the pieces. Why is bankruptcy acceptable for Kmart but not 3M? Be specific, no nonsense about how they are the only company in existence ever capable of creating some mysterious chemical yet also only have a $50B market capitalization (if their chemicals were so rare, impossible to produce, and highly sought after, market cap would be higher).
> The taxpayer CAN NOT be the one to be on the hook for corporate misdeeds time and time again.
I don't understand. You think the taxpayer cannot be on the hook, yet you also think we are obligated to bail out the business by nationalizing it? What do you think nationalizing a business entails? It would literally place the taxpayer on the hook for that business. Nationalizing it would not imply any guarantee the business remains profitable, and future losses would be owned by the public.
I do agree that execs should be punished more severely though. We are absolutely on the same page there. And I don't care if the current execs are not the original execs responsible. As far as I can tell, they've allowed the problem to continue if not get worse.
Thanks for taking my points in good faith - others have not done the same (or to your points either). Upvoted.
>Why is it not the best idea? It's a great idea. Fine them more money and let them go bankrupt.
It's not good politics, unfortunately. The political actors that have the will to do such a thing would get trounced by the next "pro business" candidate, and a lot of Americans would back such a candidate no matter how obvious the problem is. Job losses (albeit temporarily) as well as the temporary supply shock if 3M is the sole producer of any chemical or material that is of strategic importance. Voters who aren't the smartest lot would eat that sort of candidate up, and that candidate would also be backed heavily by other corporate wrong-doers who might also be in the crosshairs down the road. It's a tough situation.
The issue then becomes - if they don't have enough money to pay the fine, who is on the hook for the remaining damages? Think about it - if the company's market cap, assets, C-Suite/board combined net worths, etc.. is worth $N, and the total fine is $X (and N is less than X), who picks up the remainder of the cost to fully help those affected by the toxic chemicals? It's a tough question.
On a personal level, I fully agree with you - burn the company down and punish their board and C-Suite. Those who play by the rules get to participate in the free market, and those who don't need to suffer (and have their golden parachutes shot down). Skirting the rules is hubris at the end of the day, and hubris is not good.
>I don't understand. You think the taxpayer cannot be on the hook, yet you also think we are obligated to bail out the business by nationalizing it? What do you think nationalizing a business entails? It would literally place the taxpayer on the hook for that business. Nationalizing it would not imply any guarantee the business remains profitable, and future losses would be owned by the public.
Fair point. This is where things become difficult - because as I said above, who ultimately bears the responsibility if the company cannot afford to pay the full cost of damages? My solution would essentially be placing the company into a trust owned by the government - and the trust would be responsible for conducting a sale of the company's assets in a timely fashion.
The problem is that the taxpayer eventually foots the bill in one way or another. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
>I do agree that execs should be punished more severely though. We are absolutely on the same page there. And I don't care if the current execs are not the original execs responsible. As far as I can tell, they've allowed the problem to continue if not get worse.
> if they don't have enough money to pay the fine, who is on the hook for the remaining damages?
No one. The remaining damages go uncollected as there is no one to collect them from. Shareholders, bondholders, and junior creditors are wiped out of their ownership stake in 3M and the 3M company would cease to exist.
And see - that's my issue. The fact that real people will still be fucked and unable to pay real medical costs associated with 3M's actions, yet the company and its shareholders can just say "oh, no more money, sorry" and wipe their hands.
I get the legal concept of Limited Liability, and appreciate why it's a thing, but I also get a really bad taste in my mouth if a corporation willingly and knowingly causes mass harm and doesn't face the full consequences for its actions.
Probably not this:
> 2014 – Gunmen in Egypt's western desert province of New Valley Governorate attack a military checkpoint, killing at least 21 soldiers. Egypt reportedly declares a state of emergency on its border with Sudan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_19#1901%E2%80%93present
Edit:
For real though, this is kind of a strange article once it starts comparing 2019 and after.
> A recent gallup poll noticed a slight downturn in satisfaction with Americans’ personal life during the last 20 years.
> [graph showing a tick down in this poll on satisfaction from somewhere around mid-60s to ~50 from 2019 to 2020]
Gee, I wonder what happened from 2019 to 2020 that caused a dramatic shift in Americans' satisfaction with personal life. Hmm. Let me think...
> Notably, the amount of leisure is one area that people say could be be improved upon.
Changed from 42 up to 43 from 2019 to 2023. Personal health went down from 54 to 41, family life from 76 to 66, community as a place to live from 61 to 51.
I don't know why the article presents this data at all because it doesn't support focusing on leisure. The dramatic tick down is quite clearly people pissed off or affected by COVID-19 and government's response to it (both impacted people negatively). Given that data, leisure seems like a non-sequitur. Leisure definitely is important and has been consistently poor regardless of COVID-19, so why present this particular data? Just talk about leisure.
I'll add that one thing I think about leisure in the US is that without longer vacations, our leisure time is used in a worse way as well. A lot of peoples' leisure is filled with consuming television. It's like the junk food of leisure. Heck, if you're watching TV shows where characters are frequently angry and yelling at each other or committing murder, I'm going to guess that might actually have a more negative impact on the viewer's mental health. To each their own of course, but I find that when I listen to sad or angry music, it makes me sad or angry. It's like the Bill Burr bit on his dog's temper (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnjGyOQ7FcU). Not suggesting we need to regulate how people use their leisure, I just think this is probably another piece of the puzzle when discussing Americans and our dissatisfaction with our lives in terms of leisure.