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Cake day: March 10th, 2025

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  • Up until the liberal revolutions of the 18th/19th centuries, permanent global trade war was kinda the norm. People in different countries still bought and sold things to each other, but on an enormously smaller scale than today (even taking into account far smaller population sizes and difficulties in transportation).

    Before capitalism became the dominant economic model for pretty much the entire planet, the standard economic model was some form of mercantilism. This is an economic system by which every country tries to maximize exports and minimize imports. The idea was that each country tried to be as wholly self-sufficient as possible. To this end, countries put all kinds of barriers in place of international trade. In many instances, if a product was produced domestically, it was illegal to import it at all, for any price. In other cases there were extremely high tariffs (like several hundred percent) of imported goods. Countries would even go so far as to try to poach industries from other countries. New technologies which made industry cheaper or more efficient were guarded as state secrets. Everyone was always trying to limit the amount of international trade wherever possible. As European colonial imperialism got rolling, the standard was that each colony could ONLY trade with the metropole (home country in Europe). So, to give an American example, the Virginia colony was not allowed to directly trade with the Massachusetts colony, even though both were owned by England. If someone in Massachusetts wanted to buy a product produced in Virginia, that product would have to first be shipped back to England, then to Massachusetts, paying tariffs and duties each way. And if someone in Virginia wanted to trade with someone in, say, Spanish Florida or French Canada, that was strictly illegal under English, Spanish, and French law.

    Today the dominant model is that each country focuses on the industries that they do exceptionally well at (the larger a country’s economy is, the more industries they tend to focus on), while minimizing or even neglecting industries which they don’t do well at. For example, a lot of poorer countries might focus on low-skilled manufacturing and agriculture while wealthier countries might focus on higher end manufacturing and services (and a lot of this is driven by the national self-interest of wealthy nations through economic imperialist institutions like the IMF and World Bank). The idea being, I do what I’m good at and sell that to the world while I buy what I’m bad at from people who are better at it.

    To this end, the idea of free trade became very important to international politics over the 18th and 19th centuries. This is the idea that there should be a few artificial barriers (read "regulations and taxes/tariffs) on trade as possible in order to facilitate the most efficient economic system as possible. Wealthy European imperialist powers began to recognize that they could get raw resources (food, minerals, etc) from colonized places far cheaper than they could be produced in Europe. Simultaneously, they recognized that if they could see the higher-quality manufactured goods in made in Europe to people living in other countries then they could make a much larger profit than when trade was limited to just the domestic market.

    A big part of the liberal revolutions that swept Europe and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries was aimed at breaking down these trade barriers. This isn’t to say that all tariffs and import restrictions disappeared. They never did. But they were massively reduced and it became the global standard to preference a reduction in duties unless there was some extenuating circumstance why you shouldn’t. Economic hardships like depressions tended to see a rise in economic protectionism as blaming foreign industry for your own economy failing was an easy scapegoat.

    The push away from free trade came in the early 20th century along with the rise in competing world ideologies. It had always been the case that even free-trade focused nations (the US and UK being the biggest historical examples) would limit trade with countries they were at war with or expected to be at war with soon. In the run up to WW1 there was a lot of restrictions in trade between, for example, France and Germany as the two countries fully expected to be at war at some point. Then, with the rise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, communist nations tried to fully block all trade with capitalist nations, and vice versa. This was driven not only by economic concerns, but primarily by ideological concerns. Cold War propaganda (on both sides) preached about how inferior the other side was and how terrible life was for people on the other side. Trade had a huge potential to put the lie to that propaganda, so it was restricted.

    So, to summarize my this long rambling post, for most of “civilized” human history, what we’re calling trade war today was just the standard. International trade existed, but was limited as much as possible wherever possible. After the liberal revolutions made free trade the global standard, trade wars as the discrete events we think of now became possible. They pretty much always looked like what we’re seeing now with the US and Canada. One side slaps a tariff or restriction on trade from the other side. That other side does a similar reciprocal action in return. The first side does another action in retaliation to that retaliation. Etc etc.


  • I mean, if that’s what makes you feel fulfilled in life, you do you.

    I can say that I’ve spoken with a lot of elderly people looking back on their lives and it’s nearly unanimous that they all say they’d wish they’d spent less time at work and more with their family. I’ve never once heard someone say the opposite.

    I’m in my late 30s, so still pretty young, but with a bit more experience than you. I can tell you that your employer will never care about you beyond what financial benefit you bring. They’ll never be there for you when you hit hard times. They’ll never help support you when you need it. They’ll never be your shoulder to cry on or provide you emotional support. That’s what friends and family are for.

    Focus on your career if that’s what you want right now, but be mindful of where you might be in 10, 20, or 30 years or where you want to be. Finding a partner in life doesn’t just happen because you’re successful in your career or expect it should. You need to put effort into making that happen. If you don’t know what you want out of life, now is the time to experiment to figure that out. Do you want to be a career-driven person who spends most of their time selling your labor to someone else? Do you want to build a business you own yourself? Do you want to have kids and a family? Do you want to travel and experience a lot of the world?

    These are questions only you can answer for yourself. You don’t need to have the answers now, but now is the time to start figuring out those answers.






  • If a country doesn’t produce their own fighter jets (which only ~20 countries do) but needs to buy some, they don’t have a lot of options. And while it’s private companies that manufacture and sell the jets, the government of the manufacturing country isn’t going to let a business sell weapons of war to just anyone. The US doesn’t want to sell jets that might later get used against the US. So any weapons sales have to be approved by the US government first. Just like they don’t want to sell to an enemy, they don’t want the weapons they agree to sell to get stolen by an enemy. So they include technology (kill switch) than can prevent that from becoming a problem.



  • Mostly because the only real exposure to electricity the people who came up with the “classical” elements had was lightning. I’m sure they experienced static electricity from time to time, but they probably didn’t associate it with lightning.

    From their perspective, lightning is a very brief moment of extreme light, then maybe a fire if they can actually see the impact site. So it seems a lot more closely related to fire than we would suppose.

    maybe there is a scientific explanation of why it isn’t

    Nothing about the “classical elements” is rooted in what we would understand as science today. It was just people making guesses about how the world around them worked without the rigor of the scientific process. It was little more than wild speculation.



  • After the obvious mistake on the first attempt, I really wouldn’t trust that this is any more accurate or fool-proof.

    I once tried to get ChatGPT to make me a spreadsheet of all 50 states paired with their population, minimum wage, and a couple other pieces of easily searched data. I was mostly just trying to get the AI to do the tedious searching and data entry so that I could then manipulate the data as I wanted.

    It could not give me a list with all 50 states. The first attempt only had like 41 states. When I pointed this out it was all “Oh, I’m so sorry. You’re absolutely correct. Here’s a list with all 50 states.” But it only had like 45. I kept correcting it over and over and it kept giving me a new chart, claiming it had all 50. After like 15 attempts I just gave up. I think the worst it ever gave me was 33 states. It got up to 48 one time, at which point I noted exactly which 2 states were missing. The next list included those 2, but only had 46 total.

    It’s so unbelievably bad at simple things that I have 0 confidence it’s any good at anything more complex.



  • In my experience, a LOT of commercial construction companies prefer to hire inexperienced workers in order to teach workers “their way” of doing things. Residential tends to go for more experienced workers because they don’t have the time or money to train workers.

    If you go union, the union will set you up with apprenticeship school and help you find a company to work for.




  • I don’t agree.

    These fascists are all following the political ideology and strategies laid out by Curtis Yarvin under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug. He’s been in the orbit of people like Peter Thiel for 10+ years and has been very influential among the tech oligarch crowd.

    His vision centers around creating a tech-oriented monarchy for America. At the top would be the president who would operate more like the Chairman of the Board in a corporate structure. Rather than governing on a day-to-day basis, this President/King would appoint a CEO to oversee the actual management of government. That’s the role Musk has taken on.

    Trump appoints Musk to do the actual running of the country to accomplish what Trump wants accomplished while letting Trump seem above the fray (at least that’s the intention, Trump is too incompetent to actually stay above the fray). Musk isn’t a red herring. He’s not diverting from anything. He’s just the guy doing the job so Trump can go golf all day.



  • I agree with the overall point here, but starting it off with “Someone on TikTok said…” (or really, any variation of “Someone said…”) just completely undermines your credibility. Just say “There are more kids with measles…”

    Don’t bother with the wishy-washy “someone said” nonsense. Confidently assert your point rather than attributing it to someone else. If you’re unsure of the facts and don’t want blowback for posting something inaccurate, either verify the facts yourself (it’s not hard or time consuming) or just don’t post it.