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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The point is we don’t need more MBAs, we need people educated in useful skills. Should every MBA program be closed? No probably not, but we definitely have way more than we need. Cutting funding for things like MBA scholarships and closing down the majority of those programs will go a long way towards moving the majority of potential future MBA students into useful programs. We need less managers and more engineers, fewer CEOs and more chemists, hell fewer analysts and more plumbers.

    There are many problems with modern capitalism and even if we never handed out another MBA degree again that would not even remotely solve everything, but the MBAs are making the problem worse. It’s a minor thing but it’s an easy thing to do and it would make a difference small as it is.


  • Pretty sure it would be legal. The number of representatives is defined, but each state is free to decide however they like who they’re sending. The only real sticking point would be the absolute hissy fit the two main political parties would throw. It would be somewhat hilarious though to see the kinds of knots the lobbyists would tie themselves into if they suddenly had to handle a mob of random citizens instead of the professional leaches they normally work with.



  • China is pushing hard to make their domestic brands the new standard world wide so they’re not worried about whether the bubble pops or not. They want to drive prices down even if that means selling at a loss because they know that’s what it’s going to take to dislodge the entrenched players. For better or worse it’s likely a winning strategy because the existing players are more concerned with maximizing their quarterly profits rather than meeting any kind of consumer demand or indeed even selling to consumers at all.


  • I doubt it will take a couple years. They’re burning through so much cash right now that they’ll be bankrupt in a couple years and despite sunk cost fallacy they won’t let it get that bad. At some point they’ll cut their losses and pivot to some other new fad. The small handful of uses that make sense will stick around and a few companies will be in just the right place to make it turn a profit but the vast majority won’t. Some will go bankrupt (if we’re lucky Meta and/or X will be one of them) and some will just write it off as a failed experiment. Either way just as hard as prices spiked we’ll see them cratering before they rebound back to normal. Six months would be highly optimistic, but a year probably isn’t out of the question.

    Of course all of this might be moot if Shitler manages to start WW3 by attacking Greenland. If that happens RAM prices will be the least of everyone’s worries.







  • In the late 90s I saw a piece demonstrating an optical 3d storage system that had a capacity about an order of magnitude greater than the at the time brand new HD DVD and Bluray discs. I assumed this clearly superior format that already had a working demo would obviously kill other optical media. Turns out nobody could figure out how to manufacture one at a price anybody was willing to spend.





  • The problem is it doesn’t have anything to do with how strong or weak the federal government is right now. Trump literally does not care what he’s “allowed” to do as part of the federal government, he just does what he wants and then dares anybody to stop him and so far everyone else has blinked. Half the things he’s done he’s not actually legally allowed to, so removing even more powers from the federal government won’t stop him and it will just further empower the bad actors at the state level.

    The primary argument for state vs. federal isn’t about someone having “too much power”, it’s about having the option to experiment with different ideas. If there’s no clear consensus about something and a bunch of different ways you can go about handling it that all seem equally valid that’s a pretty good argument for leaving it up to the states to hammer out. If it’s something basic that everyone should be on board with like basic human rights, that’s a good argument for federal control.


  • I guess the flip side of that though is that you could feasibly have one hell of a guerilla war since a decent chunk of the population would help you. It would really come down to how willing the US military would be to bomb their own citizens. This would be one of the few situations where the lack of clear sides in the US would actually be somewhat beneficial (unlike the previous civil war where there was a fairly stark North/South divide, the split this time tends to fall along rural/urban with suburbs being fairly evenly mixed).


  • Pretty much just embarrassment, although it could also be to prevent having to testify. He of course knew the kinds of things he and his goons (many of whom coincidentally also work or worked for Trump) got up to and in an impeachment a lot of that would potentially become public. He was likely done either way and at least this way nobody would ever know exactly how bad it really was.

    There have been three distinct turning points for the Republican party. The first was Nixon which marked the point at which Republicans stopped trying to compete on good policy and started trying to weaponize hate and fear as well as went all in on dirty tricks. The second turning point was Reagan which was when they cemented their messaging around trickle down economics (formerly known as horse and sparrow theory) and really began pushing hard for late stage capitalism. The third was the election of Trump which is when the party abandoned all pretense of decorum and went full mask off on their greed and corruption.