Make it possible to survive and afford basic lifestyle and a few luxuries occasionally on a single income. Population problem solved, almost overnight.

Make it necessary to have 2 incomes in a family, and you get population rates dropping like they are today.

Same in any place, any country, not just Japan.

Google better pray Russia loses WW3. In the event that they and their allies do happen to win, I don't know what laws are like over there for indentured servitude, or how many generations of anyone associated with google will be in debt for. I'm sure it won't be pleasant though.

Don't kid yourself, WW3 is already in progress at its early stages, almost all nations are involved already in one way or another, it just hasn't spilled out of Ukraine yet. This type of conflict is a first though. They may or may not lose conventionally, depends on what allies they'll have or how far it will go, but when facing conventional defeat, that's when nukes come out. Then what? No one can tell you for sure, because it never happened before. Best case scenario, agree to disagree and both sides walk away peacefully... but if comments here are any indication, mutual respect and walking away isn't very likely.

I get free AppleTV+ (cheapest plan with commercials) from T-Mobile. Nothing to watch there, as in at all, except maybe Foundation (it's alright). This is one of those things where free, still costs too much (I do have to deal with ads...) for what it is.

Biotech companies (most of which seem to work on cancer treatments/vaccines/cures/detection) go in and out of business in US all the time (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiopharmguy.com%2Flinks%2Fcompany-by-name-defunct.php). Startup>get capital>live large>fail miserably>go bankrupt. Sometimes last 2 steps are: get at least something useful out of your research > get bought by big pharma to cut some of the losses. But result is the same, cancer is still there and killing, but that's incremental progress for ya (maybe someday?). There's an article about some or other trial/breakthrough on slashdot at least a few times a week, this one happens to emphasize trials in Europe, so it's not that special.

Better example of that same song Contra Spem Spero I was talking about (I think it's youtube channel from original author). This one has a video they attached to it, no clue if AI generated the video to soundtrack. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FHNILpRZ0M1o%3Fs...

Suno AI is pretty impressive. My wife got me with "Hey listen to this song" , I listened and I'm like hey it's not bad (PS: It's in Ukrainian). Sounds professional, pretty catchy, modern, overall I liked it. Then she comes back with "You know who sang it? AI". I'm like no effing way, let me hear it again. I listened a few more times, intonation, voice, accent and everything, beat, flawless.... I expected to hear some kind of quirk or something, but found nothing where I could say "Oh yeah it's AI". Turns out it's a poem written by Lesia Ukrainka sometime in 1890, they fed it into this AI, probably did it a few times as it does change styles (there's some piano in beginning and end, that's not in the middle) and some editing post that. Result absolutely professional sounding song. I mean to really appreciate it you'd have to understand Ukrainian, I don't have any examples of good songs in English generated, but damn this is quite impressive. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

In other news, buggy whip manufacturers have been on strike for over a 100 years over unfair practices impacting their businesses after widespread usage of cars began. Surely someday the market will cave in, just like for these actors.

In other news, silicone and plastics also found, in large amounts, in women's breasts.

The whole 10% owns 90% needs a reset... Unfortunately those resets generally come in flavor of French or Russian revolution (beheadings, executions, civil wars, etc..). The modern equivalent being nuclear conflict. We're pretty much on track for that right now. If only there was some peaceful way, but who am I kidding, like those top 10% lottery winners would give anything up peacefully.... And I use the term loosely to describe people that lucked out in something, business, career, inheritance, made the right bet somewhere on something and followed through with it, doesn't exclude putting in a lot of hard work or having grit or persistence (by far not in all cases), but as we know there are plenty of people that worked hard all their life, but didn't make it into the top 10% too. So don't give me that whole must have worked super hard BS, go shovel a hole in the ground super hard and see if you are guaranteed to become a billionaire. There's always that "luck" or "circumstance" factor involved in making it to the top, like in the above "digging" example have to dig in the right place at the right time to actually get that chance to make it, so hard work alone isn't all.

Well, there goes any hope of me leaving SOMETHING to my kids after I'm gone.

Tmobile Go5GNext for 2 lines was 150$ per month, unlimited everything. Now I'm looking on website it's advertised for 180$. 30$ increase per month sucks pretty badly....

I am on Go5GNext Military for 130$ for 2 lines (vet discount, nice of them).

Are they sending the same congressmen/senators that asked guy from TikTok if it has access to their wifi? Same people with average age of 65 that have no clue what a computer does? I can't figure out if it'll be a meeting of 2 sides that have no clue what they are talking about, or just 1... both are bad though.

It's funny how generalizing about one racial group as some kind of "enslavers" is perfectly acceptable and culturally normal, while generalizing another racial group based on criminal statistics is "racist".

This whole Rite Aid thing... on one hand people here scream for freedom, but then when a store wants to exercise their freedom to choose theft protection system they're all for regulation/courts/restrictions all of a sudden. Who cares what Rite Aid does, if it's more profitable for them to accuse people vs getting robbed, why isn't it their choice to use or not to use their crappy system with false positives?

Honestly, in not so distant future I can totally see having to scan your ID (be it card or biometric or something new like a form of payment) at the entrance of a store. Simply because thefts are unsustainable, neither is hiring armies of security guards or coming up with these systems. If you ID yourself at entrance, there are ways to penalize bad behaviors. No ID, no service. Watch, it's coming.

Fun fact, last night US Debt increases by 100 Billion. Overnight. Biden, who pledged 100 Billion support package to Ukraine and Israelis giving speech tonight about Ukraine and Israel. Coincidence? Still not sure why inflation happens?

Most managers (office workers) tend to work from home themselves... and they can actually do that, because if something requires in-person on location attention it's usually THE PERSON UNDER THEM. Maybe I'm in a different environment, which I totally agree environments can differ, but where I am managers are really the only ones justified to work from home majority of the time, I have no clue what it is that their underlings do from home... but I know it's a lot less (aka slacking). (PS: I'm not a manager. Looking at my manager, knowing how many more people he has to deal with, I know he is justified to work from home or another travel location most of the time, and I or those under me are not nearly as much).