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Random Thoughts Thread. (Clean version)

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#28,181 ·
North Korea launched a missile near the coast of Japan. Damn it, I need to buy the house I lived in as a young child, which coincidentally is for sale - it had a neat cold war era bomb shelter in the back yard. As a kid I didn't really understand it's function as I'm a post cold war era child. I'm beginning to understand it now, though.

Then again, if I was going to be near a nuclear explosion, put me right in the middle of the fireball. I'd take a quick death over slowly dying from radiation poisoning any day. You just have to read the accounts of those involved in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, or even those near the Chernobyl disaster to understand my viewpoint.

I'm not so sure being concerned about a nuclear bombing is that crazy as I once would have. Dan Carlin did a very interesting podcast about this, even at nearly 6 hours I listened to every minute. It mostly covers the history of the nuclear bomb, but it also brings up an interesting comparison. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's something like "If a gun has been pointed at your head since you were an infant, would you even notice its there?" not unlike the thread of nuclear weapons. It's human nature to use the most powerful weapons we can come up with. How we've gone seventy years without using it is some sort of miracle.

This is the podcast I'm talking about, if anyone is interested: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of-worlds/

Pretty much all of Dan's Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts at fantastic to listen to. The hardcore history podcasts are absurdly long, great to listen to while working or something. The World War 1 series for example totals in at something like 20 hours, but it's worth it.
 
#28,184 · (Edited)
ElijahTW said:
North Korea launched a missile near the coast of Japan. Damn it, I need to buy the house I lived in as a young child, which coincidentally is for sale - it had a neat cold war era bomb shelter in the back yard. As a kid I didn't really understand it's function as I'm a post cold war era child. I'm beginning to understand it now, though.
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North Korea isn't that dangerous on its own. Keep in mind that they have artillery pointed at South Korea since the Cold War and they dread using it. They hate South Korea more than they hate the US. If they don't attack their #1 enemy, are they really gonna go after the US?

NK's motivation is simple: they want to stay in power. They want to stay a dictatorship. They know they're treating their citizens like shit and other countries would like to intervene. They use their artillery to keep South Korea hostage, and now that they're worried this might not be enough, they use the possibility of nuclear weapons to keep the US away. They don't actually want to attack the US, they gain nothing from doing so. The most NK does is hit small SK targets to remain relevant, that's about it.

They want something and they're not gonna get it if they attack anyone first. Just remember they're not suicidal. Their best move is to create a stalemate, because they know they can't win. It's dangerous, but not as dangerous as it seems.
 
#28,186 ·
Silenus said:
Yeah Eli not worthy.

Let's just get our bunkers. :p
And good luck with the fight against the FCC and the new tax code. Hope you get some big tax cuts.
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Personally, I agree that the US is a greater threat to its own future than NK is.
With that said, you're being guilty of whataboutism :p. Don't you dare!
 
#28,187 ·
What I find strange is that I don't get a "yeah shit is fucked up but I don't want to talk about it" just a I don't want to get dragged into that discussion.
Like if he was dragged he would COUNTER which means defends the position of the USA in that matter.

There doesn't need to be a discussion about this if we agree that the USA is not handling things correctly internally and internationally.
 
#28,188 · (Edited)
Silenus said:
And good luck with the fight against the FCC and the new tax code. Hope you get some big tax cuts.
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Meh, if they fuck up the internet too much I'll just stop using it, or perhaps switch back to my crappy local ISP. I know how to do things on paper and via the mail so I could live without the internet. I'm a fan of voting with your wallets - perhaps the only form of voting that has ever made a difference. If Comcast loses a few million customers I bet the tone will change real quick. Sadly, I don't think people could manage without facebook and pornhub long enough to prove the point.

As far as tax code goes, if you run a small business in the US you just assume that any changes to the tax code are always going to somehow make things worse for you.

Silenus said:
There doesn't need to be a discussion about this if we agree that the USA is not handling things correctly internally and internationally.
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I'm not sure if there is much of anything the US is doing that I think is being handled correctly. So I think we agree.




In an unrelated note, my brain is fried. It took me several times to get this post to make any sense when I proof read it. I don't know whats been going on, but being able to think clearly hasn't been my strong point over the past several months. :|



Further thought:
My post wasn't so much about being nervous about North Korea itself, but rather it just made me put some thought into inevitability that some country, at some point, is going to start using nuclear weapons again. Besides, even if NK was going to nuke the US, I doubt they would be aiming that to my area of Ohio where the largest city within a half hour drive has a population of 30,000.

Shit, couldn't even make that statement without fucking it up a few times.
 
#28,190 ·
You're probably right. I rarely sleep over five or six hours a night which certainly isn't ideal. It's my stupid mode of thinking. "You'll get more done if you have 19 hours to do it" when in reality I'd probably be more productive if I slept a few more hours even with less time to work on stuff.

The worst part is I'm aware of that, I just can't get myself out of that cycle. I can't go to sleep until I'm literally passing out. I've been like that since I was a kid, really. I should probably see a doctor about that, but you know... no health insurance.
 
#28,195 ·
Bitcoin price is getting ultra ridiculous recently. It is now USD 14K per bitcoin.

I watched a presentation from a China Economy professor, he is highly against bitcoin (he thinks bitcoin will burst and it would hurt the economy badly), and he mentioned the value of bitcoin is surging is mainly due to it was controlling by certain players (he said there are bots who auto do buy / sell to make fake successful transactions. When bitcoin was around USD 1k+, he said those players used around 60mil to make fake transactions to push up bitcoin price to 2k+)
 
#28,196 · (Edited)
I'm no professor but I don't like to gamble on things like that.

In the 17th century the Netherlands experienced the "Tulpenmanie" where tulip bulbs (seriously!) became a hugely popular medium of exchange rising to prices where you could buy a fancy house with one, until it all came crashing down.

Of course more recently was the bubble economy in Japan, I happen to currently play a certain game that makes a mockery of it ;-)

Around the area where I live in the 90's there was a company that became super popular to buy stock from as it was seen as very profitable and trustworthy. When it became known revenue might not be as ideal as presented people started selling stock amass and everything came crashing down - the company never recovered and a lot of people had lost all their money.

In the early 2k's the first "internet bubble" popped too and gone where the companies that would offer everything for free and would somehow make money later. Amazon is one of the few companies of that era that survived that (and how). IT jobs weren't so popular around the time here so I started studying IT, expecting things to turn around, and it did - ok, you can call that a gamble if you want but I prefer "mid-term plan" and at least it paid off. ;)

And of course even the banks can't be trusted as we are still recovering from a worldwide economic crisis...

...so, yeah, sure, I'm putting money on bitcoins (not).
There will be a few people earning a lot of money with it before it crashes, good for them, but I'm not risking it.
 
#28,197 ·
Samor said:
I'm no professor but I don't like to gamble on things like that.
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Same here. One of my reasons is, as a person who somehow believe in Chinese astrology (i believe it 50-50, only certain things i believe tho), i have accepted that i have no luck in earning money via gambling or via illegal approaches. I have to work hard to earn money.

Samor said:
In the early 2k's the first "internet bubble" popped too and gone where the companies that would offer everything for free and would somehow make money later. Amazon is one of the few companies of that era that survived that (and how). IT jobs weren't so popular around the time here so I started studying IT, expecting things to turn around, and it did - ok, you can call that a gamble if you want but I prefer "mid-term plan" and at least it paid off. ;)
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It was the global trend when IT started getting popular. I was also one of the guys who joined the hot trend :p Love programming a lot and could do coding > 12 hours a day, it was fun but i didn't become a programmer :(

It isn't really a gamble as learning IT will definitely equip you with useful skills.

Talking about IT, lots of people here started studying IT around 1998-2000, so many of them had chosen programmers as their jobs, but, most of them were super sucky in coding. The market / companies were full of incapable programmers that time. The programming market was somehow dying due to too many incapable programmers + the pays were pretty low, many of these programmers had switched jobs due to salary issue or getting fired, and the market slowly recovered back and nowadays programmers are pretty hard to hire and require to pay pretty high salary to hire one due to many companies are looking for capable programmers.
 
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