You'd be hard-pressed to find me in favor of just about any of the current administration's policies; but it's worth noting that the big deal with demographic crunches is the extent to which they don't play by the normal rules of what having savings or having debts means

There's already a lot of wiggly behavior with sovereign debt vs. household; since you get into what currency the debt is denominated in and all kinds of hairy macroeconomics rather than a nice, simple, "assume that the economy is more more or less arbitrarily large vs. your net worth and what you'll be buying; your ability to buy stuff varies directly with your assets or available credit"; but a problem with labor supply more directly hoses the supply of goods and services that are actually available.

It's still not unlikely that people who have cash in hand will be ahead in line vs. people who are offering IOUs; but the fundamental problem is that there are now more wrinkly asses to wipe and fewer geriatrics specialists to wipe them; rather than just you not being able to afford a nursing home because you've got debt. With that sort of supply constraint having money is still probably a betters strategy than not having it; but, since there's a genuine supply constraint, having more money mostly makes the price go up; rather than increasing the amount you can buy.

Perhaps the dumbest post on slashdot. +1, entertaining.

Provided they know at least some basics about the thing in question.

As with pretty much all tools: They are most effective in the hands of a professional, and might be dangerous in the hands of a novice.

AI can replace a lot of intro-level workers. Honestly, most of the stuff I get out of AI is intern-level, be it code or text.

BUT - how then, do people move up from intro-level ?

And that's the kicker. For a couple decades now, companies have essentially gone "nah, we don't train people, we hired them once someone else has trained them". Well, good luck with that when the last few places where people can gain experience fall away.

The focus on quarterly results will be the downfall of western civilization. We will be eclipsed by countries like China who have decades-long plans, even when much of the rest of their system is shit. Nobody wants to live in a dictatorship. But even fewer people want to live in a completely ruined economy.

You're literally describing the left.

I will absolutely agree that there are some right wing fucks that are JUST LIKE leftwingers in their 'my team' bullshit. They're repellent, and nowhere near the mainstream of the right, either.

To your last point, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't even know (nor care) where I as a conservative am "supposed" to stand on the Israel thing. I don't have enough interest in others' opinions to waste my time following the meme. I feel absolutely nothing for Gaza, whose people have enabled and celebrated the murderous Hamas who's eaten $20bn in aid that could have (if used for desalination plants, power plants, etc) made Gaza a beautiful place. Give back every hostage, maybe then we can talk about some sympathy.
Israel I think is a jackbooted military state that's probably ideologically and culturally closest to the West but certainly not our friends (nor do they consider the west their 'friends' just useful allies for now). They're like the guy that lives in a shitty neighborhood and has had so many awful experiences with his shitty neighbors that he tedious and too paranoid to be around decent company for very long.
I'm not sure in the current climate if that makes me a Zionist, I guess?

If I'm literally the greatest shitposter, I should get a badge or title or something.

The number of AC's I attract is fantastic. I get a little tingle knowing some choad is wasting his time raging at me through his keyboard....mmmm, sweet, salty tears.

Each generation smaller than the previous?

Welp, the whole Ponzi scheme that is US's Social Security will certainly face a test.

I think this gets to the old debate about language learning vs acquisition. If you learn the gender of the noun âoe MÃdchenâ, that will prevent you from making errors, which is a good thing. But the language acquisition approach doesnâ(TM)t worry about you making mistakes. If youâ(TM)re exposed enough to the word being used correctly, âoedie MÃdchenâ eventually just sounds wrong. You will have acquired the gender of the noun without technically learning it. You donâ(TM)t even have to understand that nouns have gender.

It sounds great, but there is no way youâ(TM)re going to acquire enough German this way playing a game a few minutes a day to have a functional level of German in a short time, say for an upcoming trip. The company isnâ(TM)t as up front about this as they should be, but common sense should tell you that.

Duolingo is a way of putting time youâ(TM)re spending on useless phone activities like playing Candy Crush towards something useful. After say two years spending fifteen minutes a day on Duolingo French, youâ(TM)ll be able to read things like the train schedules in France, get the gist of simple newspaper articles, understand people who speak slowly and distinctly about things like directions to tourist sites. In other words a useful amount of French. Youâ(TM)ll have a leg up (I suppose) on more intensive ways of learning French.

But the idea you will reach B2 proficiency with Duolingo seems far fetched to me, given that Iâ(TM)m working on B1 and doubt I can pass the A2 exam. Youâ(TM)ll have covered the material by the end of the course, sure, but at this point itâ(TM)s pretty clear to me that actually mastering it requires actually communicating with fluent French speakers.

Which is fine. Nobody is stopping you from using more effective ways of learning. Duolingoâ(TM)s job, and its economic incentive, is to keep you engaged. This is why course content quality is important, and building courses out of AI slop is counterproductive. As a game, Duolingo isnâ(TM)t that much fun that youâ(TM)d play it even if the content is bad.

The TDS is flourishing, I see.
The experiment is proceeding within projected parameters.

Low bar response, as if people don't actually know the answer. Leftists love turning everything into a semantic argument so sure, I'll bite.

"Woke (adjective): Used to describe a personal belief system (BS), focused almost completely on the individualâ(TM)s emotions and their requirement for personal emotional safety. The BS is generally dependent on labeling everything and everyone around them according to an ever changing (non-constant) set of opaque variables, rules and classes based primarily around race, sex and gender, but also includes disability, mutable or immutable characteristics and placing these labels within a âoeHierarchy of Worthinessâ (HOW). Arguments, facts, statistics and / or words that they do not like or that they perceive to intentionally âhurtâ(TM) their feelings, argument or standing are instantly discarded as being, racist, misogynist, trans/homo/xeno phobic, white supremacist/nationalist, right-wing or far-right (often used interchangeably), et al. thus in their own mind and group, giving them an assumed higher moral standing.
Some have identified "woke" as being intrinsically fake; that is, it is merely a moralistic camouflage or justification over what are basically old fashioned /Marxist-leftist politics."

... Until you're Dave Chappelle.

One of the rumors about why he vanished during his "crazy time" was that his own heroes (senior members of the black entertainment community) were going after him and criticizing him for making blacks look bad.

And yet when (largely men) want to punish bad actors, it's (largely women) who stop them.

Men generally favor capital and corporal punishment, women and low-testosterone men generally prefer forgiveness, probation, rehabilitation, counseling.

You'd think men would be considered to know the best punishments for men?

But was "without ads" an explicit part of their sales pitch?

Plenty of magazines put out different editions. It would've been possible. Not today anymore, print does not have enough wiggle room left, but before the web took over, I don't see why not.

Yep, you've got to sand down those pipes and slap on a fresh coat of spar urethane at least every three years.

I realize that 'mainframe' is supposed to imply 'old, busted, and overpriced' in this analogy; but it seems perhaps unintentionally honest to describe how your spit, chewing gum, and apparent upfront savings solution will be replacing the Just Works solution that people keep coming back to when reliability and predictability are what counts.