rkbabang

I agree with you 100%. We need an absolute separation of school and state, medicine and state, science and state, etc.... I'm glad you are coming around to my side.

Agreed. I think he was trying to place on emphasis on exploiting welfare, but that isn't really possible without grouping them together and bashing them. That part of the song raised eyebrows for sure, also agree with the food part, when I first came to this country I remember trying to eat healthy, cost me upwards of ~$6/meal minimum and this was peak inflation, eggs were like $20/60eggs, McDonald's Chicken burger was literally 2 for $1.99, guess what, I put on ~60lbs. Slowly losing it now but I get your point. The 2 of you are missing his point completely. No one cares what anyone eats, it is that we shouldn't be taxed to provide it. If you are 300 lbs you don't need my money to eat, whatever it is you are eating. Go to google type in the word "starvation" then hit images. Almost no one collecting food stamps in the US looks like this. Now type "300 lb woman" and hit images. There are plenty of people on the dole who look like this.

We know exactly who he is talking about. There is one major city just north of Richmond.

Bitcoin can be divided into 100,000,000 units (commonly called "satoshis" or sats). I have no doubt if more decimal places were needed that would be a non-controversial fork to make. Yes, this makes BTC forever a deflationary currency and this will change the way things work in the stock, bond, money markets. Money will be more expensive than it is now as the average person can just hold onto their Bitcoin and realize a return on their real spending power rather than invest. Eventually the real value of Bitcoin will grow every year at about the rate of economic growth in the economy.

Added a little to SE, this is the lowest I've paid for it. Lower than my original buys in 2020. And of course BTC (which I add to just about every week).

That belongs in a thread "what do you wish you were buying today"

I have no idea if @Dave86ch can prove you wrong, but I am 100% certain that time will.

Exactly. No one has to bet against China. I haven't bet for nor against China and my portfolio has done just fine. I will continue not to bet for nor against China. There are plenty of ways to make money without owning companies located in communist countries. With recent election results if I wanted to invest in a communist country I'd be far more likely to place bets in Argentina than China.

I agree with you there. Nothing worse than bad drivers. A few days ago this guy in front of me on a 1 lane curvy hilly NH road was doing 30mph in a 55 zone. I was behind him and a whole line of cars behind me. I was just thinking he was the worst jerk in the world when the Porsche behind me tried to pass both of us as another car came around the corner in the opposite direction. I had to go completely off the road so the Mr Porsche didn't get it head on (like he deserved). I really hate people. Luckily I just ended up in some grass and could pull right back on the road with no damage other than the stress.

Yeah. I wasn't always like that, but the older I get the less tolerance I have for other people. Like why can't you shower? You live in a 1st world country, I know you have running water at home. When I was poor, I showered every day and would buy halfway decent clothes at a thrift store. Never did I go out smelling wearing my pajamas.. Oh, well. I'm a wuss.

Yes, people in the car unsupervised will trash them. The seats will be damaged and stained by who knows what. They will be full of graffiti. It will be a regular occurrence to have one of these arrive with puke in it on a Saturday night. people will do all kinds of things they would never do in a taxi or Uber with a driver there. Anything public is gross. I don't know about anyone else (maybe I'm just an elitist asshole) is that I wouldn't use an AV ride service even if it was cheaper, quicker, and more convenient. I get grossed out every time I take a bus, or a subway, or even a plane ride. I don't want to be around these people, even if it means using the car by myself after they do. I don't want to sit on the seats or touch the handles/armrests/handholds/etc. It's the same reason I won't shop at Walmart even if I could save money by doing so. Even if the AV doesn't get to me smelling like B.O., puke, or piss (as many subway cars always do), I'd be imagining that the last people in it were un-showered, greasy haired, drug attics in their un-washed pajama pants heading to Walmart. I'll pay more, even a lot more, to drive myself sitting in my clean private car with heated/ventilated leather seats. I've always said there is only one thing I envy about the ultra-rich. It isn't their mega-mansions, or their yachts. It isn't their supercars or anything else. It's their ability to fly private and avoid, not just the security, but the people at the airport and on the plane. My wife and I will often take the extra time to drive places when it would have been much easier to fly, or most of the time just avoid traveling altogether simply to avoid air-travel. Technology isn't really the problem with AVs, like most things, people are.

The real benefits to come with autonomous vehicles come with autonomous flying drones which pick you up minutes from when you call them and fly you point to point to your destination. No traffic, no roads, no crazy human drivers to worry about. There will never be flying cars with human pilots, but in many ways flying drones are easier than driverless cars that need to be in the ground around humans and other obstacles.

Yes, like I said. Major cities first the rest later as the tech improves. There will always be people who own their own cars, just as there are still people who own their own horses. I doubt I'll ever give up owning my own vehicle. But the next generation that comes after driverless cars have been perfected will never even learn to drive. The only question is how long until this happens? I'm thinking driverless cars being the majority on the road in big cities in 15 years, in rural areas in 30. Those are just wild guesses based on nothing though.

In the short to medium term I'm far more bullish on fission nuclear power. I think the US is going to eventually get off its ass and reduce the regulatory burden and allow advanced reactors to be built and built more quickly. Even if the US doesn't do this other parts of the world will. Nuclear Power Will Grow "Exponentially" In Low-Carbon World – Citigroup White Paper https://www.wealthbriefing.com/html/article.php?id=198695 I'm invested in SRUUF right now and am looking for other ways to take advantage of this trend as well. Fusion is interesting, and will probably eventually be how humanity generates its power, but it's not really actionable yet for an individual investor.

Or the new anthem that dropped a few days ago and is going viral: "... your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

Yes, obviously carless living will happen in the mega-cities (starting with the ones with nice weather and no snow to deal with) way before it happens in the smaller cities, not to mention suburban and rural areas. There are already a large number of carless people in major cities, so this is really just AI replacing Uber or taxis service. AI has a long way to go before it can drive in a whiteout snow storm on a twisty mountain road.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

Could you give us a little more info on the above? I'm not familiar with either Lyn Alden or the Horizon Kinetic Papers. It looks like Lyn Alden has a bunch of YouTube videos, are there any in particular I should start with? And I didn't find anything very interesting in the first few links of a google search for "Horizon Kinetic Papers".

Yep. USD value in 2013-USD

They make RVs and campers too. When my kids were young I had a Forest River “Rockwood Roo” camper for a few years. I bought it used, fixed it up, used it for 3 years then sold it for significantly more than I paid for it.

More FFH & JOE. Funded by selling off my TTD (bought during 2020 crash) and SHOP (held since 2018).

I think we can discount ever meeting anyone from another galaxy. So we are only talking about the Milky Way. Not all 200 Billion stars have habitable planets fit for life. Not all habitable planets have a large moon for protection. It is certainly possible that we are the only intelligent lifeforms at the moment in the Milky Way and even we have no reasonable means to travel between the stars. There is nothing arrogant about it. We just don't know. Anyone who claims to know is lying to you or lying to themselves. I put contactable ETs in the same category as god(s). People want to believe, so they do.

My line of thinking is that a lot of the variables in the Drake Equation are completely unknown. You can easily put in numbers which make the chances much less than 1 in 300M. There are so many potentials for great filters. Life starting to begin with, intelligent life evolving, evolved intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after discovering Fission and Fusion, intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after creating strong AI, on and on and on.... Then you have to factor in the chances not only that they exist and that they are capable of interstellar travel, but that they somehow found us and came here. It would be astounding if the chances of all of that were less than 1 in 10 billion.