If you start the carnivore diet you'll shred through those like a young Shrodinger.

Just kidding of course but I did get some improvement in mental power since I started ditching carbs many years a go and a little more on top of that when trying carnivore.

Shrodinger was on my mind since I started reading the classic by him "What is Life". Great little book so far.

I remember listening to Kevin Kelly on the Tim Ferriss Show it's got to have been around 10 years ago. Interesting dude with lots of interesting toughts.

Went looking and found it: https://tim.blog/2014/08/29/kevin-kelly/ Great stuff.

I'd recommend checking out some long form source material where you hear the people being described (smeared or slandered maybe?) talk about their policy ideas and the viewpoints inspiring them in their own words.

Alice Weidel, the party leader, has been on many a podcast speaking English I believe. There's the conversation with Elon Musk but there's more interviews in english out there in teh podcast world. Also there's some speeches that she gave in the bundestag available on to view on X with subtitles. Perhaps other places as well.

Haven't spent a ton of time looking into it but I did listen to the Elon interview as well as one other appearance on a podcast IIRC. I also listened to one or two complete speechs of hers at the bundestag. I think one of them was about 20 minutes long.

Based on that it seems to me AFD is a center right common sense party. Stop illegal immigration, deal with crime problems, focus on reliable energy, roll back censorship laws, cut back on government spending, try diplomacy with Russia etc.

Really not that extreme at all.

Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics". Don't think you can go wrong with that one.

A short piece by Mises, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth", helped me better understand the following ideas and how they relate to eachother: free markets, economic calculation and price formation.

I also remember reading "Bureaucracy" by Mises and it helping me understand free markets, how they work, what incentives are present, what kinds of results they tend to produce etc by contrasting it to a very different way of allocating resources namely bureaucracy. That piece is not quite as short as the first I mentioned but still not that long.

Increased regulation makes it more difficult, expensive and in some cases impossible to build new houses. Of course the money printing causes assets like land and buildings to increase in price in terms of the devalued money.

Between these two I'd say you've covered most of the reason for this graph.

Another graph which would be relevant to show here would be median income / median house price.

I happened to come across some info recently about house prices in the past in my region.

In the 1920s house was bought for 27k of the monetary units of the country I'm in today. At the turn of the millenium when the euro was introduced the exchange rate between the euro and that monetary unit was 1:40. So 27k of these monetary units, had they been saved, would have been exchangeable for about 700 euros at the turn of the millenium 70 to 80 years later.

Luckily the median wage at the time was also mentioned. That was about 5000 of the monetary units per year. So at that time the cost of a house for most people was between 5 and 6 times yearly wages.

Now let's compare to current day situation where I'm at. If the median net income is about 30k (that may be a little high actually) euros per year, houses would have to cost around 180k euros to have the same ratio. These prices can be found in some regions of the country but not near where that house was sold in the 1920s. Today you wouldn't find anything for much lower than 600k. So that's about 20 years worth of pay.

The factors I mentioned in the beginning would be most responsible in my view. Inflation taking away the purchasing power of your money Regulation increasing the cost of housing and reducing the supply of houses

Interesting stats.

What bothers me when this topic comes up sometimes is the double standards some people use.

Some people bend over backward to exclude any possibility of any of this being done for any other reason than the public welfare. Even in that best case where we're dealing with the noblest of intentions every step of the chain of command / decision-making about policy there's still the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" problem where ideas can arise from good intentions while at the same time being deeply misguided and counterproductive to stated goals.

Then anyone criticizing the slide into dystopian pseudo-technocratic tyranny (e.g. Alex Jones) or offering some resistance is often assumed to have malicious or cynically self-interested ulterior motives or dismissed as a dumb person / "deplorable" in need of re-education.

Somewhat related in that double standards are also in prominent display there: talk about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I see many people apply double standards there.

Anything the "western" "leaders" say when it's about noble intentions they take at face value (even when it's in contradiciton with what they've said at another time) while anything Russian leaders say that may sound reasonable must be pretext and lies.

False flags are a possibility when Russia or some other opponent did it but never when it's "our" "leaders".

When one sees this kind of double-standarding one know one isn't dealing with a rational discussion partner but instead with some kind of cultist or weird religious dogmatist.

You consider the act of voting to entail an implicit consent to the system? I'm not sure if I do.

The argument I'd bring up would be about risk, What he is doing is a fundamentally more risky strategy. If you keep the bitcoin you know you'll have that amount of bitcoin as long as you don't lose the keys , get hacked etc. What you're not exposed to is price risk. What he is doing may get him more bitcoin in the end, or less. We don't know. He does not know. If he is okay with that, fine. But that's the argument: the lack of certainty.

If you don't trade your bitcoin and just hodl it you know you'll have it. There's always the risk if you're not holding any bitcoin that the price will spike and not come down again. If he's willing to take that risk then fine but I'd advise him to keep at least a portion of his capital in assets like bitcoin and gold. That way he can be sure he will always have that portion. How big that part is depends on risk tolerance and one's confidence in one's ability to predict price movements.

edited to add: Another factor would be how much you mind actively managing your portfolio and keeping up with trends, news etc. Some people enjoy doing that. He seems like he might fit in that category. It may not feel like a chore to him.

I'd rather keep open the option to be able to use that time and attention for other things. Sure I may miss out on some gains (then again I may miss out on some losses too...) but I gain free time and attention. I also gain certainty and with that a sense of tranquility. I don't have to worry about my speculation bets checking out. To each his own.

Here's another comment of mine which may be relevant to this comment. #692683 Also the one 2 steps above that one. I give some thoughts of mine about conspiracies in general and what I see as misguided reactions to "conspiracy theorists". I often see an attitude of dismissal, ridicule and straw-manning rather than an inquiring attitude expressing curiosity and good-will.

One can pauze audiobooks but I would guess that audiobook listeners do not pauze the book as often as readers pauze to ponder a point, think about how it relates to the rest of their knowledge and experience, try and find an example or a counter-example etc. I often pauze when reading when something I read does not sit right with me. I try to think about why I'm having this reaction. Similarly when something resonates much in a positive sense. I probably interrupt the process of reading a little too much with this kind of meta analysis, and getting side-tracked or going off on tangents (i write these up sometimes. can take a while to finish a book if there's many of these) but a little of this seems to me to be a good thing. And it seems to me that with audiobooks this kind of thing perhaps does not happen as much as would be desirable because the default is for it to keep playing. It seems to me that listening to books is a more passive process that conditions the consumer more towards being in the passenger seat. Could be off on this.

There's probably benefits as well as downsides when comparing listening to books versus reading them. I'm unclear as to the "net effects" And now that I think about it one could listen to books in a way that one could easily pauze and have a similar process of following up on occurring thoughts and feelings

One podcast I've discovered in the past few years: Geopolitics and Empire. Some very high profile and extremely credentialed guests but also more obscure people. Many of the episodes offer dissident points of view very critical of "the globalists" / NWO / emerging (pseudo-)technocracy

I used to not pay much attention to this kind of talk but since covid I've been looking into it a little bit Seems like some of these conspiracy guys were on to something after all Or at least there is a legitimate discussion to be had about potentially non-democratic influences on national governments. (E.g. what's the role of organizations like Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, WEF, CFR, bohemian grove, Skull and Bones etc? What have organizations like UN, WHO, IMF, World Bank, BIS etc been up to? What's their history? Who makes the decisions in these organizations and how are they selected? Who funds them? What's the relationship with our democratic institutions and tax systems?)

The podcast I mentioned features these kinds of people who actually know what they're talking about. People who've read a couple dozen books, a few hundred papers etc on the topics they're speaking on and in some cases been part of the actual organizations and bureaucracies involved.

I've found that I'd underestimated the amount of conspiracy going on. It's also not that clear if it should be called a conspiracy or not since much of the stuff appeared in publications available to the public such as articles, papers, books etc. It's just that nobody was reading these things except guys like Alex Jones.

And when guys like Alex Jones told people what they read "from the horses's mouth" they were called conspiracy theorists for decades or completely ignored / blacked out from coverage.

Then a weird shift happened where instead of continuing to say "it's not happening, that's a conspiracy theory and therefore somehow untrue by definition" to "yes it's happening, of course, nobody said it wasn't. Besides, it's benign or if anything it is good or even necessary"

Any examples that come to mind where this peculiar switch in PR occurred from "it's not happening you crazy conspiracy theorist" to "it's happening and here's why that's a good thing"?

I've got some candidates myself but I'd like to hear from others first.

Any good pieces of journalism on why this mass immigration has been happening?

Is it an organic process? Or Are there various NGO's or government programs or UN programs trying to suck in immigrants / encourage and enable people to move to "the west"? (who would not have considered emigrating without the intervention of these organizations)

Basically is the bulk of this immigration happening out of the own free will and self-determined decision-making of the immigrants or are there third parties doing their best and succeeding in making the immigration to happen?

I used to not really think about it and I guess I assumed it was a natural / organic / not-artificially-induced phenomenon but now I'm not so sure.

Would it make a difference in your view which of these scenarios, or in what proportions, were reality?

Also is it known what percentage of the immigration that Europe is dealing with is a result from USA's ( or NATO's) war activities and USA's efforts of "spreading democracy" (and the ripple effects of these / effects downstream of these)?

Wouldn't these be averages calculated from a collection of answers?

I live in Western Europe and in some of the biggest cities, judging from the people I see out and about on the streets the native population seems to be a minority in large sections of the larger cities.

On the country-side it is rarer to see non-native people.

I can imagine that if some of these polls occurred in cities and that may be why the guesses are off when correcting for the lower percentages of immigrants outside the cities. The guesses may be accurate for the local region these folks live in but not accurate for the country as whole.

There's also the interesting point someone made here that in these numbers only foreign born people are counted as immigrants and not their children. The children of these people may be confused with immigrants by some of the native population. I guess it also depends on one's definition of "immigrant".

Is rational discussion already possible on this issue, or not yet? For decades anyone trying to talk about the issue of immigration was met with non-arguments intended to shut down discussion.

There even seem to have been cases of stochastic terrorism in some european countries. Seems like that sort of thing was bound to happen given how the corporate media / mockingbird media in "the west" has long demonized voices trying to bring nuance to this discussion about immigration.

Some of the folks trying to raise this issue may have been racists, but surely some of them weren't. And in any case it seems to me we should engage in civil discussion, not name-calling or lying about one's opponents no matter how strongly we may disagree. I can't help but recommend John Stuart Mill's On Liberty; the part about freedom of speech, in this context. Especially for those tempted to shut down discussion. Mill makes some arguments about censorship and how it can backfire relative to the professed goals of the censors. I think these arguments are worth taking into consideration by those tempted to shut down or prevent discussion.

I don't have strong opinions on this topic but the long-time taboo around raising any concerns or nuance around this issue does raise some red flags.

Holy crap these reality percentages are large percentages

I remember listening to an episode of the Geopolitics and Empire podcast where James Bovard (author of the article linked to) was the guest. I remember it being an entertaining and edifying conversation. Jolly fellow this Bovard. Also knowledgeablea and experienced.

Familiar with these doctors? They've found heir way to these ideas as well. Shawn Baker (ex pro rugby player, record-holding athlete (rowing) and orthopedic surgeon though these days he is focused more on prevention through his telemedicine company Revero), Ken Berry (family doctor), Anthony Chaffee (ex pro rugby polayer and brain surgeon), Philip Ovadia (heart surgeon) , Robert Kiltz (fertility surgeon and doctor)

These are inquisitive scientifically-minded doctors that appear to have taken seriously their profession and the oath they've taken. They don't practice "medicine by guideline". They don't function like mindless robots or bureaucrats. They function like scientists. That's how doctors ought to practice in my view. There's probably many many many more doctors like this but the ones I've mentioned have a pretty big digitalk footprint. They've got podcasts and or big youtube channels.

I am reminded of the quote from some prestiguous college commencement speech or something like that where it is said that half of what you willl learn here or have learned here will turn out to be wrong and that it is your job to figure out which half.

Also worth mewntioning: youtube channels (though perhaps they'd better move elsewhere....): Low Carb Down Under AncestryFoudnation

It's hard to control. Healthy user bias is always a possibility in studies of this kind.

Chocolate will likely have some positive effects and some toxic effects. A mechanism for potentially beneficial effect is explored but we don't know the net effect.

Most plants are toxic to most animals. Chocolate can kill a dog. Is it doing some damage to humans as well?

If you enjoy chocolate then go for it. It's probably not that bad for humans. I wouldn't put too much stock in speculated health benefits of it.