FrontierPsych

Yeah, but it all depends.

I live, work, and shop all within a few blocks, so traffic for me is the exact same as any other mid-sized city suburbs.

Oh, sure, occasionally I get caught in traffic on the freeway because I have to go somewhere farther away. But even then, I only travel between 10 am - 2 pm to reduce chances of freeway traffic jams. Or after 8 pm, too. But, of course, jams can happen at any time. So for when it happens, I just turn on some tunes, and chill out. I think about 150 years ago when I'd have to travel by horse or carriage over rough and dusty roads. So, I get a sweet climate-controlled vehicle, comfortable, with great roads. Traffic jams in my car are still faster than horse and buggy. That's how I look at it.

Absolutely.

Takes all types.

It's the best thing I've ever done and I'll never move from here.

How much can they make from selling this type of information?? Hundreds of billions?

It would seem to me that the amounts would be pitifully small as compared to making their customers angry. Even if it was $20 million, or $40 million, or $100 million - that's small potatoes compared to their annual revenue of $42 billion.

Nah. How would any civilization be able to distinguish it from any other tiny piece of material moving through space.

As far as radio waves go, no way.

Anything that we have sent out from Earth is indistinguishable from background noise of the universe.This propagation follows the inverse square law, which states that the intensity of the wave decreases as the square of the distance from the source increases. If you double the distance from the source, the intensity of the radio wave decreases by a factor of four. This means that the wave disperses and weakens as it travels away from its source. Its intensity diminishes according to the square of the distance.

>First, more people means more outliers—more super-intelligent, super-creative, or super-talented people, to produce great art, architecture, music, philosophy, science, and inventions.

There might be 1,000 certified geniuses per billion, but we are still slaves to probability. That genius might be born in the slums of Calcutta or in the middle of the Amazon rainforest or in the vastness of the Mongolian steppes. I guess the hope would be that 3 or 4 might have the luck to be born to a middle class or higher family in the first world.

Also, whatever this dude wants, the world is in major decline. For example, because of China's one child policy, their population will be halved in 50 or 70 years and nothing can stop that. Japan has a high over 40 population, Italy, Germany, Spain, and especially South Korea. Russia has been declining in population and with the war, the best and brightest have left Russia, never to return (they are devoloping lives, wives, children wherever they are now), and the meat grinder of the war. Same with Ukraine.

The same thing happened in ancient Rome as well. It got so expensive to raise a child in Rome (yes, inflation existed back then as well), because of money pouring into the administrative city of Rome - for the same reason now in the first world, that people stopped having children. Even back then they had rudimentary birth control. The Roman Emperors gave all kinds of incentives for families to have children - grants and tax reductions, but it was not enough.

Workers, yes, but mainly consumers. A million dollar fine, if you sell 500,000,000 cartridges (just a guess, but in 2012 I searched and saw they sold 315 million worldwide) means they would have to charge .2 cents per cartridge to pay for the fine. ''

I hardly think that issuing any fine would make them care. Why would the CEO give one little tiny shit about a million dollar fine, or a ten million dollar fine for that matter. They just pass it on to the consumer. And that is only passing on the cost of the fine only to the ink division. They could easily pass on the costs to all departments.

Fines are silly and useless. I guess if they were to have a $500 million fine, that would get the company's attention, but I don't see that ever happening, honestly.

But I think if they put the C-suite and board of directors into jail for 8 years, that would have a major effect on all boards and executives.

And right now, corporations are claiming supply chains and inflation for raising their prices, yet they have the largest profits ever. This can only mean that they are raising their prices but their costs are staying the same or rising very little. All of them should be put in prison - robbing the poor and middle class to put that wealth in the hands of the rich. More siphoning money from the poor and middle class. Put them in prison, I say. Make some example. This is not about price controls, but against holding the US population hostage. Is there collusion? Because that is against the law. That is not controlling prices. Collusion is collusion.

You are bringing up the exceptions.

If everyone you know played Russian roulette, well, that is a stupid game to play, even if nobody you know landed on the chamber with the bullet in it.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" as the saying goes.

Personal responsibility plays probably 80% of it, and that really points to the company one chooses to keep.

When one keeps drug addicts or drug-friendly people as friends, that is the worst possible decision that one can make, of all decisions in life. It is all of our personal responsibility to to associate with "good" people - and cut out people that must be avoided. If one avoids the drug-friendly, then the odds go way down that one will take drugs. If drugs are not easily available, then the tempation goes way down if they are never around you. As an example, I personally have no idea as to where to get drugs. Who has them? Where would I go? Why would I make some special trip driving around everywhere trying to find drugs - spend hours and hours, maybe never finding them? And one might hang out with friends, and not take drugs as they pass them around, BUT, all it takes is one moment of weakness, and boom, there goes another life flushed down the toilet - notwithstanding the whole "exception argument" drug users give: "Yes, but I am functional" argument - that one works and takes drugs. Heard that one a million times and good for you, but that doesn't apply to most, which is what the point is.

I've known a couple of people who told me that they tried drugs, and I immediately cut them out of my life. I wasn't a dick when I happened to see them around town, but I certainy was not hanging out - just polite, then said that "I had to be somewhere else."

How many times have I heard someone say, "These are my friends, I'm not that shallow that I am going to turn my back on them." Foolish thing to say.

The reality is, if you hang out with successful businesspeople, odds are you will become successful in business. If you hang out with artists, you'll have a greater chance of being an artist. If you hang out with scientists, you'll have a greater chance of being a scientist. If you hang out with drug users, odds are exceptionally great that you will become a drug user.

The company one keeps. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Personal responsibility is to chose one's friends wisely.

whatever you say, dude.

whatever you say, dude.

oh, wow, ok. 19...

I went to university and didn't get out until mid-1980s. We're the same age.

About 5 years ago, I did work in a tech company startup with 21 and 22 years old. On my side it was just fine. Don't know what they thought, but it worked out ok for me.

ChatGPT is the bomb. I use it to create content, to help me find weird words, to help me find films that I totally don't remember the name of but just describe one scene that I remember, just the other day, I needed to find out how to pound nails into my office walls, but my fingers were too big to hold the nail so I asked for a solution using common business items and it listed 10 of them and one of the solutions was to use a rubber band to hold onto the nail which I did and it worked like a charm. I was trying to jury-rig something, but couldn't think of anything. It thought up 10 solutions in 10 seconds. So I didn't have to fiddle fuck with it for 45 minutes, only to give up and have wasted all that time.

I'll ask what kind of electronic equipment to buy. So many things.

I have found a lot of bugs with it, too, though, so I'm getting educated. For example, at least for me, I will ask for a citation of something, and it just gives me urls that to to 404. Never once have I got an actual real citation. So I'm careful about that.

There have also been many funny things, to me, that I have asked and got weird responses that amused me.