Easter 2, papal boogaloo

This is honestly the only way to predict what the man will do. Identify even the slightest personal advantage to his move.

Why run for president in 2024? To avoid jail. Why put tariffs on and off? To buy and sell stocks as the market bends to your tweets. Why act like a religious right wing weirdo? To have no personal accountability. Why pull out of nato? Because someone personally offended you. Why host political events at maralago? To make a quick buck renting out rooms. He’s so transparent it’s pitiful.

I love a good neckbeard nest for some reason, something about the complexity of the scene really captures my interest

If interest rates go down prices will come up, there’s no world where house prices go down without massive economic pain for everyone.

A depression would bring house prices down, but then nobody could afford them, especially not those who don’t have the capital already.

I think that’s fair, superstition is directly opposed to evidence based reasoning. Not every superstitious person is a lost cause though. Most belief comes from indoctrination, and with time and critical thinking a lot of people can and do escape.

I think it’s similar to racism, people who do racist things can sometimes change when introduced to people of color, or to the subject of their bigotry. In the same way the victims of racism aren’t morally obligated to “fix” nor trust the people who perform racist acts, victims of the superstitious are not obliged to trust them.

The optimist in me hopes we can just help these people heal from their mental issues, but the realist realizes that in many cases it’s hopeless.

I completely agree prayer is utterly meaningless at best and actually harmful at worst. When somebody prays for an outcome they are getting the benefits of doing something without affecting any change, it’s like asking your imaginary older brother to take care of the bullies at school. “Who wee that job is done, I did my part by asking big bro for help”

That said, I think we ought to tone down the anti-prayer rhetoric because it can push some people who are actually waking up to the issues caused by recent political events away. While centrism in general is a bad political play for politicians, less derisive language among us common people could be good. Let some of the mindless religious fanatics do their praying that trump won’t hurt them, but when he does we should at least try to be sympathetic and let them change their mind.

We often get caught up in the schadenfreude of the self inflicted political wounds and forget these are people who will suffer needlessly.

What other things, specifically?

Imo fascism is a natural consequence of hate and apathy. Introspection by individuals and willingness to change are how you overcome those issues. Governments can’t force people to empathize but perhaps better education and less superstition can help.

Its duty?!

The US has no mandate to meddle in international affairs, any more than a bully in grade school has a duty to stop smaller bullies from picking on their own victims.

The US has never been an international savior, it’s the only country in the world to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilians.

What’s bro gonna do with a drywall knife up front there?

Things do happen in your life, nobody lives in a vacuum. You are alive and are experiencing things every day including the stuff that’s happening to all of us. Recent economic news, political drama, geopolitical events, etc are all fair game

I used to think nothing happened in my life then I started to keep a diary/journal and realized that a ton happens all the time!

Curious how does that stack up historically with the largest drops in history percentage-wise?

I checked out the investopedia article:

• The Dow had its sixth-worst week of the 21st century; it fell 7.9% over the week and 9.3% in the last two days.
• The Dow shed 2,231 points on Friday, its third-largest one-day point decline on record.
• The Nasdaq Composite has dropped 11.4% since Trump’s tariff announcement, also its worst 2-day stretch since March 2020.

Here’s the graph with axis labels:

Nobody knows the future, but we can definitely speculate. Programming is still a good career if you’re talented, but it may no longer be the golden standard of well paying jobs that it has been for the last few decades.

More important than anything, if you want to program, then do it. Don’t wait for university to tell you how, get your hands dirty and start making something cool, a game, a web app, whatever.

Getting a job is hard for junior devs right this second for largely macroeconomic reasons, that may change in the future or it may not. You can sidestep that issue entirely with a solid portfolio.

Learn to use the latest ai tools, but don’t rely on them to do the work and learning for you, “vibe coding” may or may not be a future career but if it is the salary will likely be significantly lower than software engineering.

A degree does not make a programmer, but programming does.

Die hard, “kermit the cop here in the vent”.

Have had a lot of good years with gandi.net

It’s a tragedy that folks like this who need mental help will never get it, making connections between random things is something I’ve seen a lot in the heaviest drug users, my family included.

The brain is a wonderful, fragile, little machine

Logic and love don’t really mix well, life is a bit fuller when you embrace love and let yourself feel vulnerable even if you know it will end in tragedy

These people were treated like slaves, paid virtually nothing and they have to work all day, now they have to fear for their safety even more simply going to their horrible “jobs”? If only empathy was the biggest requirement for hiring people in border management and policing

We don’t, but it also doesn’t matter.

I knew a dude who would burn a cd every week and store it in his house as his version control, his software is still used by hundreds of businesses to this day