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52 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 21h \ on: I took a week off from my life the_stacker_muse
Nicely written summary.
Death takes time to process. One of the things of life you don't know (or technically just don't emotionally realize) is there is a progressive isolating nature to it. As you get older, your world gets smaller and smaller.
People (and places) disappear and it seems to force a strange otherworldly feeling upon you. You still have an internal map of a world that you navigate by, but the external world is now missing pieces.
The only answer we have is to accept it. There is no other option.
About 10 years ago I did a trip to southern rhone area and did a few wine tours. Didn't go specifically to an CdP wineries, but I did like the general wine style in the region. Beautiful area, personally would probably rather do "country france" rather than Paris.
40 to 70 bucks.
Thats probably right. The one I most recently had was that price range (65). Was the Vieux de Telegramme....It has the more expensive older brother Vieux de Telegraphe (I guess telephones cost more than telegrams) that goes for over 100. Only had it once with dinner at a place in Vegas but was really good.
Not an "everyday" wine, but interesting to try on occasion.
Maybe charity should not scale
Agree. Its likely impossible to make it scale.
BUT the rich will keep dumping their money into "United Way" and other mega-sized charities and the malinvestment will continue. Why will the rich do that?
Its the same problem Warren Buffet has....if you are trying to donate $200M, trying to find enough small charities at $50K each is impossible....so you wind up giving $25M at a time to the mega-charities. Much like Buffet trying to invest $30B of funds, he can only do that with bluechip stocks, there aren't enough quality small companies to absorb it.
For a few years I did IT consulting to a non-profit. The question of "effective charity" is a very complex one that is fraught with difficulty. Every rich donor will say "earning the money was much easier than giving it way...."
You're right to question it and there are lots of different arrangements (like your relatives) that don't need to be traditional "give money" arrangements. However they are one-offs and don't scale well....
The issue we face as a society is that those that have an overabundance of wealth want to dedicate some of their wealth into giving back. The result winds up "flooding the zone", that is the sheer amount of money pouring into some programs starts to create perverse incentives.....at a certain point Food Bank programs become drug-addict-subsidy organizations.
There is no clean way to solve this problem....its actually an economic problem of sorts. Much like the flood of capital into the stock markets winds up creating malinvestment, so to it happens in non-profit space. Too many funds pouring into a too concentrated bucket.
I think the Catholic Catechism has a helpful approach to it. In summation, it basically says that "charity should be done at the smallest possible level". That is, its better for you to help the needy family down the street rather than the parish church. Its better the parish church help than the city, better the city help than the state, etc....
This honestly goes back to your elderly relatives example. That solution was a "small scale" of charity. But we are back to the original problem....how do you scale it?
Perhaps they eventually understand bitcoin, but it doesn't look like that will be happening soon.
The single best benefit Gold has over Bitcoin is that its analog and works when the grid is down.
This is a great selling point for nation-states since purchasing more gold is often a "war hedge".
That was hugely bad timing for Synology to do that. There have been a whole host of "nas box makers" (UGreen, etc) that have appeared over the last 2 years that meet and exceed hardware specs of synology boxes.
They chose to piss off their customers just at the exact moment that viable options were appearing.
Is this new $1200 smartphone really worth it? Or would I rather keep that $1200 in Bitcoin, an asset with the potential to appreciate significantly over 5, 10, or 20 years?
I've often said that the most profound changes hyperbitcoinization will bring will be social, more than just economics.
Consumerist culture will be killed off in such a world. People will willingly live more austere lives, since the promise it offers is permanent 'retirement'.
If actual hyperbitcoinization becomes a thing (at the global level), there will no doubt be new business models to try to adapt to these new attitudes.
Lets suppose the smartphone seller has a 35% net profit as part of the sale. In 5 years, that 35% profit may turn into a 300% profit by holding in bitcoin. The hard part for the smartphone seller will be to get you to part with your bitcoin in the first place.
Thus, maybe totally new sales models are born: "Buy a smartphone today and trade in for new version in 5 years" - essentially some sort of way to indirectly share the upside back with the consumer. To lessen the friction in the consumers mind which keeps him performing the same calculation in his head: "Why spend $1200 now when that may be $12,000 in 10 years, etc"
Its hard for me to judge if things are getting worse or getting better.
I actually tend to feel that the internet has made things better since you can see so many online debates now... and many times you realize the differences, while real, are not the massive gulfs that you might assumed existed.
Most of the time its semantics -- specific definitions involving isolated phrases.
I was thinking more of people that profess to be Catholic and yet support abortion. Or have violated the churches teaching on marriage for example. Or speak openly against teachings in the Catechism.
That is very true. A far far more common example is the Catechism mandates that to receive the Eucharist, you must be in "a state of Grace and anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive communion without having received absolution"
The number of Catholics who line up every Sunday to receive Communion while not in a state of grace....well lets just say the lines would be half as long if that was actually followed.
To be clear, this is something I've been guilty of many times in my life. But as I've gotten older I try to be much more honest with myself before I stand up to get in line.
I have found that most non-Catholics think you all believe the Pope is infallible and not that the Pope can speak ex cathedra.
Correct, the easiest way to understand the reality of the Popes "infallibility" is "the buck stops here" - that is he exist as the final decision maker on formal questions of doctrine and morals. It does not mean he is inerrant. If the Pope says "the sky is green" it doesn't magically make it so, only that he is the final decision maker on dogmatic issues.
I will say this. I think we are all better served by understanding each other vs. making bad faith arguments to win a debate.
Agree 100%. I think that >95% of all Protestants and Catholics agree on almost everything. It really all comes down to how the argument is framed. I think the classic case is the "Sola Fide" question. I think in actual practice Prots and Caths believe the same from a day to day living perspective (you need to accept Christ and accepting Christ means being a good person). However, the framing of the argument can ignite needless disagreement over semantic issues.
that many Catholics act as their own Pope as well by cherry-picking the teachings of the church for cultural and personal reasons.
Its a nuanced issue. A local priest, bishop, or even the Pope can opine on any subject. For instance, they may say "We have a duty to welcome all illegal aliens".
Its fine that they say that, it can be a call for reflection. It can even be true that it exhorts Christian virtue. However, a Catholic is not bound to follow every utterance of clergy / popes / etc.
Catholics are only bound by the Catechism (whats officially defined via the Church's Magisterium). Regular public statements, calls to action, etc don't apply.
So in your example if a person is choosing not to follow the Catechism, then he is by definition not Catholic. If he is choosing not to agree with his local Bishop who made a statement against the death penalty, well because thats not a doctrinal statement, he is free to disagree.
NOTE: To clarify something in case its not clear, the Catechism is an actual written document you can reference, kinda like a "constitution". (https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM)
I'm a Catholic and frankly the "you follow a pope who claims infallibility" is the worst of all the Protestant arguments.
I say that not triggered, just honestly assessing the argument on its merits. A much better argument (maybe the best Protestant argument) is that the Catholic Church has just re-created the Jewish legalism that Jesus ended via his ministry. There is some level of truth to that argument. I honestly say its hard to square things like the Church's requirements that "new catholics" jump thru the legalistic hoops it does (OCIA classes, etc) with how Jesus's ministry was actually portrayed in the Bible.
The problem with the "pope argument" is that it begs the question of "what is the alternative?"
ChatGPT tells me:
The most accepted recent academic tallies place the number of explicitly Protestant denominations (excluding Anglican, Independent, and other ambiguous groups) at approximately 8,000 to 9,000, but the number can climb if including fringe groups, marginal Protestant sects, and rapidly appearing independent congregations, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Is 1 Pope better or worse than 8000-9000 Popes (each possibly conflicting with the other)? What worse is there is literally no upper limit on the possible number of "Protestant Popes"....it becomes every single mans interpretation is as valid as the next -- a create your own religion scenario.
Everytime I see a "bombshell" that uncovers "spying" I'm always extremely underwhelmed.
Every person is being spied on 100% of the time by an entire nexus of IA and Corp partners. These limited hangouts that expose some minor isolated case seem like its just gaslighting the public into thinking its not happening all the time.
I'm pretty much an ossificationist so, I want no changes - only critical bug fixes.
The idea that things must be constantly changed, just because they can be, is an unfortunate trap that developers often fall into.
Lets take an analogy:
We have a nice little town. One of the "town laws" we had was no strip clubs. The actual manner the specific law banning them was pretty basic and easily circumvented.
The town lawyers said, its pointless playing a cat-and-mouse game of crafting new language since that will simply be bypassed also in time. So, they took a different approach, lets just rigorously enforce our "business license fee" scheme and these businesses will either succeed and pay taxes or die away.
Now its true that the towns lawyers are not "pro strip clubs", but they are "pro economically viable strip clubs"
This is not a great analogy, but I think it gets at the heart of it. The Core developers are not "pro-data storage" but well they are "pro-economically viable data storage".
I think it is stupid and inherently risky but I do see the use case
element of truth there, but its less stupid than the DTCC - which is itself just a rudimentary "tokenization" scheme (ie real shares are deposited into DTCC and you get a 'claim token' against them deposited into your brokerage account).
The simple fact of having no visibility into the DTCC makes me think there must be massive fraud going on....how many shares have they re-hypothecated?
From where I am sitting, the relevant use of the "question" is to debunk predatory CEOs.
Yes, there are also the quasi-religious aspects: Namely those same CEOs want to subtly denigrate humans (and by extension God), and simultaneously bolster their own creation.
I too can create consciousness, and well...to be honest...my creation is so dangerous it might just kill all of you