Basement Whatever
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Category: Post
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The American middle class as we know it didn’t emerge from the free market. It was constructed — deliberately, through policy, in response to specific political and economic conditions. And: Today, you can earn what used to be a solidly middle-class income and find that it purchases a fundamentally different life than it did a…
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— Someone in the government just registered aliens.gov — A video game soundtrack that’s so good it’s absurd — Free SVG backgrounds (super helpful) — What makes a truly great basketball player?
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The community should be rooting for you to outshine the high-status people. Regardless of what the community values—artistic achievement, real-world success, morality, fame, positive impact on the lives of others—it should be clear that it is good, cool, and desirable for you to do better than the people who are currently high-status. A healthy high-demand…
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The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell is an adventure for 2nd-3rd level characters that is incredibly descriptive – with language that reminds me of the movie Annihilation. It’s set in an eerie, isolated village and is a total sandbox for players to explore. It is an absolute blast to play and to run. The problem…
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Social media, by allowing people to post ideas that are unmediated by any editorial planning process, brings forth whole modes of engagement with political ideas that I think simply could not exist in a world of rigorous journalistic feedback. Ways to fix this problem are: Political parties kicking out toxic members, using AI to reword…
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One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of real novelty and stimulation. On the…
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Average grades continue to rise in the United States, raising the question of how grade inflation impacts students. And: The cumulative impact is economically significant: a teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of lifetime earnings of their students by $213,872 per year. Concerning. And absolutely happening, based…
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The GameStop era started when some people discovered a crack in Wall Street’s armor that could be exploited through Internet coordination. Ultimately, the system won, and most people lost. Yet the era revealed a lot of truths, educated people about stocks, and produced a lot of memes. Of all the GameStop memes, this one still…
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What I remember – people with drug problems reading Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire. High schoolers reading Shogun, the Stand. Books went to road trips, books went to sporting events. Lots of people reading Nietzsche or pretending to. Everyone reading Dragonlance, the Lord of the Rings, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Visiting book sales…
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“The painting invites the viewer to wonder what has just happened, why it happened, and why the participants are dressed in such costumes. It encourages the viewer to reconstruct the preceding events through imagination.” — Read on apaintingstory.com/en/posts/the-duel-after-the-masquerade/
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No one told me the Vatican is a storage closet. Beautiful beyond imagination, yet overflowing with statues and paintings, like they ran out of room for the collections. People told me I would be “angry” at the Vatican for “stealing treasures.” I did not feel that way. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. The Vatican saved…
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A recent executive order issued by the White House directs NASA to establish the initial elements of a permanent moon base by 2030. — Read on singularityhub.com/2026/03/12/nasa-is-planning-to-build-a-permanent-moon-base-by-2030-heres-what-it-will-take/
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Historically, population decline has been driven by external and involuntary shocks like famine, disease, or war. Notable examples include: The Black Death in the 14th century The collapse of the Roman Empire China’s Great Famine. Unlike past population declines, today’s is voluntary and structural. — Read on chamath.substack.com/p/population-collapse We’re long past the point where this can…
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Based on the 2024 presidential election, 54% of Illinois voters are Democrats, yet Democrats hold 82% of Illinois’ U.S. House seats. With one fewer seat to work with, Illinois Democrats would have a difficult time drawing maps that would eliminate another Republican district. Keeping their current 14 seats would give Democrats over 87% of Illinois’…
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Europeans get lower salaries than Americans, but they receive better benefits. So who makes more? The average American pay is still one of the highest. But not by an enormous amount. I asked AI to help me understand the explanation. From Perplexity: the speaker argues you should use median, equivalized, disposable, PPP‑adjusted income from sources like OECD…
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Broadcast during just 23 weeks of 1982, and reaching no more than WCIU’s Chicagoland perimeter, The Chicago Party conformed only to those codes that suited it….treating Chicago audiences to dynamic performances by unjustly local artists trafficking in sweet soul, disco, and emerging electronic R&B, the pop forms then wrestling for urban chart dominance — Read…
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Curation – such as record collecting – has a beginning and an end. Curation does not continue infinitely; a record stops when it reaches its end. Curation is a choice among infinite options. A record costs money and takes up space, defining its limit. Your limited choices have meaning and therefore define you. Curation creates…
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Somewhere in the bowels of X, Sam Altman suggested asking an AI to provide the hardest question it could reasonably answer. Perplexity provides 1/ difficult questions it can answer reasonably well (given the availability of public information), and 2/ questions that are hard to answer. These are the questions it can reasonably answer based on…
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