Creatine is one of the few if not the only supplements we actually know work. But with that said, my experience is that the bump is there but not world changing. Although it could be placebo, I don't think so because the first time I started taking it I noticed something but didn't make the connection because I noticed it playing basketball and not as much lifting. I could just sprint a lot easier. I recently started taking it again and again I noticed I can sprint easier and not be as spent. Of course you can improve by simply working out regularly, but IMHO the bump you get is obvious.
Unfortunately while people are going wild as if someone found a never-before-seen cat, this is actually more “after genetic analysis we now know that the tiger cats that everyone already knew about in Bolivia are actually a different species to the ones in Brazil”.
But that’s not very exciting so people and news outlets seem to be running with the story as if nobody had ever seen one before.
There are some things to like. Despite being so wealthy, he advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy. I think that in itself is worthy of praise and worthy of ignoring anything else. The fact he distanced himself from Gates because of the Epstein connection. In addition I get the general feeling amassing wealth was more of a game to him. Obviously he did not use it that much or even abuse it. Still, I do think the way he made money was investing in a lot of basically monopolies where it's questionable if that's really doing a service to society. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I don't think that it's very beneficial to really anyone except himself. If you are a big believer in the free market economy and investment (which I am not), you might also disagree with his views. For instance, he was always very openly critical about investments like cars etc. because you can't pick the winner out of the thousands of entrants into this invention. This makes a lot of sense if you want to grow your wealth. But if you think about it, if everyone did that, there would be no car and ultimately nothing else, and so even his returns would be much smaller because the economy would be much smaller. That people rush in to create a booming market where a lot of wealth is ultimately squandered is a prerequisite to progress. In a capitalist world at least.
For a billionaire, it's probably the most we can except from anyone really.
What about all the people that Berkshire provides with gainful employment? What about all the goods and services its businesses provide to communities? What about all the tax it pays? What about the wealth he created for his investors? What about the high standards of corporate governance he upheld in the companies he controlled? You don’t hear about corporate sleaze and kleptocratic management at Berkshire companies. What about the fact that rather than consuming his personal wealth he’s left it mostly to a charitable foundation?
I literally said in my first sentence that the fact he's a billionaire advocating for paying taxes makes him praise worthy and more important than any criticism you might think of. I do think there is a lot to admire and I've used some good advice he's given (not to me personally).
I just think it's interesting that the people who should be criticizing him are actually other capitalists. Because real meaningful economic progress comes from investing in new groundbreaking things, not getting a good return on insurance float or See's Candies. That is all. He says he won't invest in cars, but also that it was obvious it was a machine that would change the world. Coca Cola is another big home run of his, yet a company who's contribution to society is probably overall negative. Etc. That I admire some things or a lot of things even does not mean I idolize anyone.
Well I think you need both. You need stable, well run businesses like insurance or confectioners, and you need high risk moonshots. I
want the people with most business acumen running the former and the people with the most creative energy running the latter. Businesses like SpaceX wouldn’t be possible without a highly developed financial sector.
I can agree with that, but even with this perspective you should be critical of parts of Buffett's position since he basically advocates never investing into such companies because you can't predict the winner.
It makes sense because anyone with experience, ability, and noble goals will give up before they start because it is too difficult. Linus Torvalds said he wouldn't have started Linux if he'd know how difficult it would be (paraphrasing here). So we are left with either people with noble goals, but either no experience or ability, or people with ability and experience, but without noble goals (what we have currently in the US).
But let's not despair. We are better off than centuries ago. The consciousness that people are not there to be ruled does not happen over night. Our civilization is just getting started. A republic if you can keep it.
I can understand your sentiment, but you're wrong. You don't vote against someone, you vote for someone. Nothing else works. I also disagree with the vibes characterization. Looked at the extreme, almost noone in the western world should complain about anything -- the standard of living is so much higher. But that's not how it feels like because you compare yourself to your environment. The voters in the US had a lot to complain about.
Sure, when voting for Kamala, people would be voting for keeping the status quo, which is 100x better alternative than whatever the fuck is going on now.
And not voting is basically saying that you rate either candidate equivalent to each other, and in the context of Trump vs Kamala, thats insane.
The direct to consumer pivot is often mentioned, but this is probably something that just accelerated their demise. The bigger problem right now for the turnaround is the competition. A lot of Chinese brands even dominate some spaces like basketball in the last years, and they are still difficult to get in Europe where I live, but they are making a push. Once that happens, I am not sure what Nike is going to do. Quality wise pretty much every review puts shoes from Li-Ning and 361 as the best of the best. And they're not cheap either.
In a lot of ways they remind me of Intel, and I'm not sure there will be a shoe center buildout bubble around to save them.
Difficult to have it be the same factor considering the majority of Nike production is in Vietnam, and the majority of the Chinese manufacturing is in China. But even if yes those are still not the same shoes.
Next up, designing an even higher level language which will be used by LLMs to compile to high level languages like kotlin or swift. Just store instructions for LLMs in repos.
Burden of the unification, where the eastern states are still lagging in many areas, got the ball rolling. Pent up dissatisfaction. Eventually it rolled over to the rest of the country with COVID, stagnant economy, social media FUD etc. A lot of the same forces that drove Trump's election. People are afraid and dissatisfied, but they cannot really say why. I know, I try to listen to them. "Our educational system is falling apart". I have two kids in school, the opportunities they get are awesome compared to what I had.
It's difficult to convince people in an idea if your goals are noble. If they are not, it's a lot simpler. The basic fear is that they will lose what they have right now and are easily manipulated into magnifying those fears.
Probably not, right? I mean, unless they're criticism is that they totally would love to teach their kid all these things much better than they do in school, but the kid won't accept homeschooling in the afternoon when it already went to school in the morning, but I kinda doubt that's their issue.
Anyways, thanks and kudos for talking to and listening to them. I think our society really fucked up in that regard. I have to think of things as old as "Deine Gewalt ist nur ein stummer Schrei nach Liebe.... ARSCHLOCH!", if you know what I mean... then we rested on being better than the poor conspiracy theorists and "Covidioten" and whatever. Rarely do we try to work with people we find "too disagreeable". And now we have the salad :(
I mean when I say I talk to them, I don't mean I go to AfD gatherings, you cannot discuss with these people. But I do go to e.g. play sports with some older guys in their 50s and hear what they have to say. And the way I know a lot of them vote AfD is because they never talk about AfD, which is the polar opposite of everyone else around me. Plus the complaining about the Green Party. And btw I am not German and we have zero issues with each other. So I think the reason for a large part of the people voting like this is more nuanced than a simple Nazis and Xenophobes label. Sure a lot of them yes, but I think the regular people that got duped have their reasons. Everyone has certain tendencies and why you get pulled in one direction is an interesting thing to figure out. The problem of why needs to be understood before it can be solved. My opinion I can repeat: it's fear magnified and manipulated by social media, as well as especially in the east a lack of identity and pride. A lot of good people left for somewhere else because the money was better. There are less populated areas where I've been to hike and you ask the locals on the street about a place to eat and they say just "there hasn't been anything here in a long time". And there's some genuine resent in those words. Those places are like 50+ percent AfD.
>There are less populated areas where I've been to hike and you ask the locals on the street about a place to eat and they say just "there hasn't been anything here in a long time". And there's some genuine resent in those words.
I don't get how they make the jump that this is the fault of immigrants, LGBT or the Green.
My conclusion after seeing trumpism is not that they are suffering because of external factors (left behind, abandonned by the state, et .) and thus turn to grifters selling them the Moon: their poverty has the same origin as them getting suckered by grifters: an internal inability to assume failure, learn from mistakes and improve, instead blaming everyone else but themselves, and thus being stuck at the bottom of society as it should be. Grievance from losers who will never, ever admit any wrongdoing.
I fully agree, but I think you forgot social media as a catalyst. People being trapped in echo chambers. AfD (and all the associated conspiracy theorists) are classical con men.
The thing with bubbles is that this is a near permanent state. I heard as far as 2017 that there is a bubble and, well if the bubble popped now the economy would tank to a level a lot higher than it was 2017.
The more interesting thing is the needle and if the bubble will run into one.
The economy exist for the people, not the other way around. If too many people can't get something as fundamental as a family that will guarantee long term survival of mankind, the economy needs to adapt, not the people.
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