People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
The real brain melter was the societal culture shift.
I grew up witnessing "the end of history" with my own eyes. People were getting wiser and kinder year after year, decade after decade. It was like a feedback loop of positive changes, the only way was up.
Then 2010s hit and I'm still processing the 180 degrees shift. I read dozens of books about nazis, authoritarianism, societal memory, cults, fucking roman empire. But I still have cognitive dissonance every time I open news feed.
I grew up using the (actual paper) card catalog in the library to find books and yes I predate VHS. However, I even understand crypto, but I think my definition may vary slightly from younger folks "understanding".
Crypto has no intrinsic value like gold, and as fiat currency isn't even backed by any nationstate. This means any appreciation is based upon the "greater fool" model. Its not an investment. Its a series of Ponzi schemes so repeated that the term "rug pull" is right at home in the crypto world. I'm old enough to see other Ponzi schemes and know how they end up.
The only real value that I can see for crypto is bypassing of national monetary controls. As in, you can buy crypto in your home country with your home country's currency, then travel to another country with just your coins (as hex values on paper if you want to go that far) and exchange those coins for fiat currency in the other country. This isn't unique to crypto though. You could do the same with buying rare Pokemon cards and transporting them with a slightly higher risk of seizure at one nation's border. There might even be less volatility in Pokemon cards than many crypto currencies.
So many trends are variations on things we've already seen before. Bernie Madoff would have been right at home with cypto.
elders
1990
Noone is expecting you to understand crypto, but I hear this about modern technology in general all the time and I just don't buy it. It's only brain-melting if you've spent your entire life being deeply incurious. There are 80-90 year olds who understand this shit just fine because they bothered to keep up.
The problem with cryptocurrencies is that you can explain it, without going to technical details, to a person with the intelligence of an average investment banker. (Which isn't much. Many animals make more profitable random investments when prompted.)
Same with generative AI I guess.
Apparently I'm an elder.
The shifts in tech were easy.
It's the repeated economic punishment, school shootings, terrorist attacks, and political dive bomb this country has put us through that's been tough.
I thought this was a Canadian site? You must be usaian
I don’t expect them to understand crypto. No one expects them to understand crypto.
I expect them to understand FUCKING FASCISM.
Yeah.
We can move on to "complicated" things like crypto after we've made sure people understand basic things like FUCKING FASCISM.
Priorities.
I remember being happy to watch whatever came on one of the four channels that your TV could pick up with a rabbit ear antenna.
It's not "brain melting". Even watching the internet go from "this is super neat, and way cool" (For nerds) to "Well, it's ALL going through enshittification now" wasn't "brain melting", it's just what happens under capitalism.
Going from seeing nothing but possibilities when I heard about some new device or software coming out to dreading what they are going to remove or break has been one of the most depressing parts about my life.
Hell, I was looking to replace my 10 year old mouse last weekend and couldn't find one that was equivalent or better. I even asked people who were more into computer shit than me and I felt like I was taking crazy pills reading their responses. I ended up just fixing the problem myself rather than replacing it.
He’ll, I was looking to replace
diff note: Why is autocorrect suddenly changing "hell" to "he'll" all over?
Technology is circling the drain.
I have been looking for just the right mouse for ages and the market for mouses (mice?) is terrible. I've been looking for a 5 button mouse that supports bluetooth (reliability) and I am actually so frustrated with what the options are. They are either massively over engineered, huge, expensive paper weights or cheap, super light, cheap junk I can crush with my weak feminine hands. I have ranged from top of the line hundred dollar gaming one to junky light weight 10 dollar ones and I am still looking. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Mine is a Logitech G602. To replace it I need something with at least 6 extra buttons (I actually use 2 more but I can compromise on those functions), it needed to be wireless, and take regular batteries (I don't want to be stuck replacing it or having to use it wired when the built in one wears out). I wouldn't have thought that would be asking for much but nothing lined up at all. And the shit people were recommending weren't even close. Like, the point is I still want to be able to do what I'm doing now. Not just buy an expensive mouse you swallowed the marketing for...
G602
AH I have that one too, loved it for years but then the click went out and it started double clicking randomly. I took it apart to try and fix it and no luck, its in my dead mouse drawer along with 2 G302s, the MK mouse, a M240, several Microsoft mice, a Naga, Death Adder and 5 cheap no name mice. They aren't all actually dead, just dead to me.
I ended up replacing it with the G502, which is not an upgrade or even a side grade but it works for what I need it to do for now. For my laptop I am using a cheap no name bluetooth mouse for now. It's way too light and disconnects randomly, but it has bluetooth and 5 buttons with is the minimum count I need.
Yeah this is actually my 3rd one. The previous two developed a double clicking problem and were replaced under warranty. The most recent one the middle mouse button stopped working intermittently. When I took it apart I found that the button itself worked fine when I pressed it directly or even with the wheel as long as the screws were loose, I suspect the plastic peg that presses it when you push the wheel was worn down and no longer hitting it right. Fortunately I had the previous one it replaced still and was able to just swap the top halves on them. I'm seriously considering buying some switches to see if I can fix the old one too to have a backup. I'll have to figure out the middle click problem too but I have some ideas for that. All that being said I'd just fucking buy one if a replacement was available.
I'm glad you at least found something that works for you. I've got a no name wireless keyboard and mouse for work that were the only set I could find with both a mechanical keyboard and regular batteries. It's always a gamble but sometimes those no name brands are surprisingly decent.
I really like my Logitech mx master but I like heavy beefy mice
Hmm, I might try the MX Anywhere. I have a M240, I like the size and weight and the Bluetooth connectivity, but it only has 3 buttons, that got old real quick. Look like they don't even sell that one anymore.
Us millennials basically had the internet to ourselves for like 15 years.
The only reason we’re still on it is chasing that high even though it’s gone
What? I’ve been on it since the early 1990s ….
Here's a kicker: You're a millenial, and yeah, us millenias had it all to ourselves, by and large, for about 10-15 years.
Remember when you can to configure Trumpet with the proper IP settings, and that was AFTER you configured your modem's DMAs and IRQ's (Unless it was an external serial modem...)
Nobody is expected to understand crypto. Same with the stock market and generally the economy. If it was simple and see thru you couldn’t run this many scams.
Same with the stock market and generally the economy.
Okay, you can tap the breaks on that one. There's a book from 1949 called "The Intelligent Investor" that's been the benchmark for savvy stock market analysis for generations. Hardly the only one (although a lot of the newer stuff is just variations on the core themes). Understanding price-to-earnings, market share, debt-to-asset ratios, and marginal return gets you a long way towards consistent middle-of-the-road long term safe returns.
Same with The Economy. Get a copy of Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st Century and you will have a firm grasp of macro-economic models and trends by the end of it. You'll get a core understanding of the difference between short-term investment returns and long term value creation. You'll get an idea for the broad reasoning behind different public policies and their impact on the broad growth and development trends seen over the last 500 years.
There's no need to mystify markets or economic systems. In the same way that a modern physician has a generally firm grasp of the human body (without knowing how every single cell is going to behave or every single genetic variant of human is going to respond to a given treatment), a modern business analyst has a generally firm grasp of their industrial or market focus.
Even crypto is something people can broadly understand as a modern iteration of a privatized experiment in currency manipulation. The thing about crypto is akin to understanding how a casino works. Analyzing the system doesn't mean you're going to be able to profit from it. Its like analyzing a grizzly bear with a plan to engage it in a boxing match. The best analysts will tell you "You're going to get horrible mauled if you interact with this thing, stay away."
If it was simple and see thru you couldn’t run this many scams.
The scams aren't a product of (lack of) transparency so much as they are the result of misinformation and market manipulation.
You've got a guy in a big wagon with a bullhorn selling "Better Than Aspirin!" for $10/pill right outside a pharmacy selling aspirin for $3/bottle in a bottom shelf at the back of the store. The moral of this isn't "Nobody will ever understand pharmaceuticals". It is that there's is a great deal of money in capturing people's attention and then lying to them.
In the same way that a modern physician has a generally firm grasp of the human body (without knowing how every single cell is going to behave or every single genetic variant of human is going to respond to a given treatment)
But the cells existed before us and we are simply trying to understand them.
We created the economic system and now we make conflicting theories about how it behaves.
But the cells existed before us and we are simply trying to understand them.
So are the humans who are engaging in commercial activity.
We created the economic system and now we make conflicting theories about how it behaves.
We are participating in an economic system created by our forebearers and trying to create policy with an eye towards preferred outcomes. And there's a lot of disagreement on which policies and which outcomes we should be aiming for. One could say that we are in a state of contradiction that is constantly refining itself in pursuit of new stable states. But this isn't something any single individual - or even elite cartel - has dictatorial control over.
I only get to truly be a capitalist when I'm living in an industrial society. I only get to truly be egalitarian when I've reached a point of (perhaps Kropotkin-ian or perhaps more Roddenberry-ian) post-scarcity. We can create the technology and the social structures that allow for the existence of certain economic states. But we're still constrained by our inputs and outputs. Understanding that is essential in achieving preconceived economic goals. And we can identify what those constraints are, how to mitigate them, and how to focus efforts toward an end by building new capital and new bureaucracy to channel human labor towards certain purposes.
Some individuals have the opportunity to exert exceptionally large forces over the system in pursuit of outcomes, while others are buffeted by the downstream consequences of these choices lacking significant agency. But we're still all in and of the system, constrained by it to some degree. And we can extrapolate certain fundamental rules of order within the system, in the same way you could extrapolate the biological consequences of feeding a thirsty man a glass of water or a diabetic man a chocolate bar.
Now people wait in line for Pokemon cards. 🤔