chocobean's recent activity
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Comment on I'm going on vacation in ~tildes
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Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life
chocobean Link ParentOr Sports balls. How much money does this blogger think Americans spend on sport balls every year. Even lil ol' Canada just spend $1B (conservative estimate, and no we can't see the math) on FIFA....Or Sports balls. How much money does this blogger think Americans spend on sport balls every year. Even lil ol' Canada just spend $1B (conservative estimate, and no we can't see the math) on FIFA. (Edit: and IOC FIFA money goes straight out of the country. NHL money and NBA and NFL money is also extracted into private wealth not local DJ or the Cake Aunty)
Ridiculous sermonizing (blogger I mean)
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Comment on I'm going on vacation in ~tildes
chocobean Link ParentYou're back! How was it did you have a great time? :)You're back! How was it did you have a great time? :)
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Comment on How funerals keep Africa poor in ~life
chocobean Link ParentWell said Not only that, but this piece also demonstrates a view point that economic worth is a key indicator, if not the very definition, of a worthy person and a worthy culture.Well said
The author seems in-line with modern western-style individualism, and writes with the conviction that its' principles are inherent and synonymous with positive economic growth,
Not only that, but this piece also demonstrates a view point that economic worth is a key indicator, if not the very definition, of a worthy person and a worthy culture.
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Comment on What are some seemingly silly things in your life that have practical purposes? in ~life
chocobean Link ParentI feel this comment, I can't tell if the groaning was inwardly from my sedentary soul or audibly from my bones.I feel this comment, I can't tell if the groaning was inwardly from my sedentary soul or audibly from my bones.
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Comment on What are some seemingly silly things in your life that have practical purposes? in ~life
chocobean Link ParentBluetooth keychain saved my butt yet again yesterday. There's an app to call my keys, and the tag has a button so my keys can ring my phone. I wanted to do the lanyard solution too but this is...Bluetooth keychain saved my butt yet again yesterday. There's an app to call my keys, and the tag has a button so my keys can ring my phone.
I wanted to do the lanyard solution too but this is still on my mind:
New York Times article reported a world-wide GM recall (pdf) of 778 000 or so 2007-model-year Pontiac G5 and the 2005-7 Chevrolet Cobalt (619 000 in the U.S.) because a “jarring event” such as a crash, bumping the ignition, or a heavy key chain could inadvertently cause the cars’ ignition switches to move from the run position to the accessory position. Switching into that mode would disable the cars’ engines and prevent their air bags from deploying. IEEE Spectrum
I tried detachable keys too but end up losing the now detached car key frequently. Or the entire dang lanyard.
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Comment on Canada's population drops in first quarter of 2026 in ~society
chocobean LinkThe bigger take home is that this is the third consecutive quarter drop, meaning this is not just a blip but a result of firm hand at the wheel, the intended effect from an intended decision. Two...The bigger take home is that this is the third consecutive quarter drop, meaning this is not just a blip but a result of firm hand at the wheel, the intended effect from an intended decision.
Skuterud, a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, says that as population has decreased in Canada, the share per person of the gross domestic product (GDP) has gone up.
"As a result of the Liberal government's U-turn on immigration policy, GDP per-capita growth rates have turned from negative ... and now it's flat or slightly positive," he said.
Two years ago, I spoke at length to a new immigrant family with two young kids. They were struggling, hard: like many Canadians, they weren't making ends meets at all, despite full time work exceeding 40 hrs a week. Their rent was more than the landlord's mortgage payments, and the young father worked construction building homes they'd never be able to purchase. Childcare would have bankrupted them and not to mention they can't afford a second car + insurance just for young mom to get to a non-living minimum wage job.
When I use rideshare in Vancouver, many drivers share similar stories.
One put it succinctly: Canada was running a scam where we lure in immigrants and their meagre initial capital, squeeze them dry to enrich the already rich, then when they can no longer survive they go back home more impoverished.
On that front, I'll also point out the especially evil foreign temporary worker scheme and the slightly less evil foreign student scheme.
Edit: in case this needs to be said, I'm not anti immigration I'm anti corporate greed and anti unsustainable housing price gains greed and anti post secondary education greed. I'm anti landlords: make money doing something else rather than passive income off of the poor. We can't keep luring people in to hurt them.
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Comment on What’s something that didn’t work for you? in ~talk
chocobean Link ParentI'll never forget the new baby forums where frantic new mothers post asking for help about how bad is bad enough to take baby to doctor. How high fever for how long, how much throwing up, how many...I'll never forget the new baby forums where frantic new mothers post asking for help about how bad is bad enough to take baby to doctor.
How high fever for how long, how much throwing up, how many days of bad poops.... And illegally sending each other left over life saving medication. -
Comment on AI is bringing my friend out of retirement in ~comp
chocobean Link ParentMeanwhile in Brazil (Gizmodo) Tech can definitely save lives and have wonderful applications, but in the wrong hands, like triage that ignores science based professional input or hypochondriacs...Meanwhile in Brazil (Gizmodo)
Last month, Minas Gerais changed over to a new management system—called Core-MG—in its state hospitals, which incorporates AI. And the family claims this system wrongly downgraded the severity of Molina’s health problems, delaying the care she needed. At one point, they even went to court to try compelling a speedier transfer. Due to this downgrade, the family argues, she had to wait five days until she was transferred to a hospital ICU in another municipality 186 miles (300 kilometers) away, where she soon died.
Tech can definitely save lives and have wonderful applications, but in the wrong hands, like triage that ignores science based professional input or hypochondriacs that ignore science based professional input, we speed run medical care back to the dark ages before science based professional input.
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Comment on AI is bringing my friend out of retirement in ~comp
chocobean Link ParentI'm also very curious what sort of business can be created when the tools are now widely available One that helps others use AI to make things they sell, ie, shovel and jeans selling? Your friend...I'm also very curious what sort of business can be created when the tools are now widely available
One that helps others use AI to make things they sell, ie, shovel and jeans selling? Your friend does has a very persuasive profile that others with Claud Opus does not
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Comment on So I fell for a phishing in ~comp
chocobean Link ParentAnd I want to thank you for making this thread as well. Truly, confession is good for the soul and beneficial to everyone around us. Your post might have saved a lot of us. Couple months ago I...And I want to thank you for making this thread as well. Truly, confession is good for the soul and beneficial to everyone around us. Your post might have saved a lot of us.
Couple months ago I failed one of my company's internal phish test and was made to re-take Phishy the Phishing Awareness Fish course with a literal cartoon fish. It was humiliating. Work had recently switched extended health providers, I was working through a crazy expensive orthodontics braces claim with the new provider and they were being boogers, and without thinking I clicked on an email titled something like "IMPORTANT: Health Plan Changes For Salaried Employees".
Hopefully your attacker was actually a bored call center peon whose job it was to collect accounts to pass up to someone else, and so nothing else was done to it yet.
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Comment on What is your eleventh favorite video game? in ~games
chocobean Link ParentI wished so much to be able to enjoy Witness and The Looker. But the motion sickness is way worse than even playing Minecraft (sans active combat) . Truly missing out on an experience. As for...I wished so much to be able to enjoy Witness and The Looker. But the motion sickness is way worse than even playing Minecraft (sans active combat) . Truly missing out on an experience.
As for separating the art from the artists, as long as he hasn't done a lot of evil, I'm okay if the dude is kooky and holds views different from my own, especially for media that is completed and not awaiting further episodes from.
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
chocobean Link ParentI'm very touchy on the subject, I do apologize. But yeah they're also staring down a rust belt problem, multipled by many more highways and super rails projects they've built.bI'm very touchy on the subject, I do apologize.
But yeah they're also staring down a rust belt problem, multipled by many more highways and super rails projects they've built.b
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
chocobean Link ParentHave they? I would say the population of extremely hard working people have supported themselves through the worst. If they continue to do well, it's in spite of their policies and in spite of the...But they've built a country to support their current pop of over 1billion.
Have they? I would say the population of extremely hard working people have supported themselves through the worst. If they continue to do well, it's in spite of their policies and in spite of the massive inequality. Their billion people have eyes to see how the Party lives and how they live. BBC 2021
However, this success in bringing people out of abject poverty is not simply down to the government, [economist David Rennie] says.
"Chinese people, by working extremely hard, lifted themselves out of poverty - in part because some of the stupidest economic policies ever created, by Chairman Mao, were abandoned in favour of versions of capitalism."
Mao Zedong, who founded the People's Republic of China in 1949, oversaw attempts to industrialise the country's peasant economy in the 1950s. His disastrous Great Leap Forward, which began in 1958, forced farmers into communes, leading to mass starvation in the countryside.
While China has made substantial work of tackling the deepest poverty first, should it be holding itself to a higher standard?
For example, the World Bank draws a higher poverty line for upper-middle-income countries, which tries to reflect economic conditions. It sets this at $5.50 a day. China is now an upper-middle-income country, says the bank.
About a quarter of China's population is in poverty, according to this metric. For comparison, this is slightly higher than Brazil.
And there is widespread income inequality. Last year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said China still had 600 million people whose monthly income was barely 1,000 yuan ($154). He said that was not enough to rent a room in a city.
And then very soon after, Li died at a young (for his rank) age of 68, and a journalist looking into it was jailed(RFA)
Using his status as a Communist Party member, Gu called for the cremation of Li’s remains to be halted pending an investigation, as well as an autopsy to clarify the cause of death.
Gu also took issue with the reason for Li’s arrival at the Pudong Dongjiao Hotel, where he was staying at the time of his death, calling for clarity about the circumstances surrounding his sudden death.
But soon after that he was arrested and handed a one-year jail term by a Shanghai court last November for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”
Anyway, here's World Bank Group Report 2025 Oct
Income inequality remains high, with an official income-based Gini index for 2022 at 46.7, 0.2 points higher than in 2019 and 11 points higher than the World Bank's consumption-based Gini for 2021.
And they're in deep, deep, deep trouble over their plummeting fertility rates as well. They're not poster boy for anything, they're a cautionary tale.
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
chocobean Link ParentSenicide, or any sort of economically motivated destruction of human beings, is not a good social policySenicide, or any sort of economically motivated destruction of human beings, is not a good social policy
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Comment on Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause. in ~health
chocobean Link ParentAnecdotal as well, but as people live healthier longer and things get more expensive and folks have dreams unfulfilled or whatever, many boomer home owners reverse mortgage their homes to keep...Anecdotal as well, but as people live healthier longer and things get more expensive and folks have dreams unfulfilled or whatever, many boomer home owners reverse mortgage their homes to keep living the way they have. Many of those homes will never pass to the children
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Comment on Elon Musk net worth estimated at $1.1 trillion in ~finance
chocobean Link ParentSame. But first, I want to play Hungry Hungry HipposSame. But first, I want to play Hungry Hungry Hippos
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Comment on Our workplace LLM mass delusion in ~tech
chocobean Link ParentRhymes with "challenging financial headwinds this year, budget tightened, no new hires to backfill people leaving, but we also spent several hundred million dollars on stock buyback."Rhymes with "challenging financial headwinds this year, budget tightened, no new hires to backfill people leaving, but we also spent several hundred million dollars on stock buyback."
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Comment on Four things to know about the newly approved US sunscreen ingredient in ~health
chocobean Link ParentFDA is so wild of a concept to me, being in the same country where one can sell gas station heroine (NPR) beverages openly by simply calling it a supplement, and yet it costs millions to approve a...FDA is so wild of a concept to me, being in the same country where one can sell gas station heroine (NPR) beverages openly by simply calling it a supplement, and yet it costs millions to approve a lotion.
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Comment on Elon Musk net worth estimated at $1.1 trillion in ~finance
chocobean Link ParentThat's because Monopoly lacks the rules that make other players get into unlimited debt and be reduced to slaves. Now imagine players must keep playing indefinitely and when they run out of all...That's because Monopoly lacks the rules that make other players get into unlimited debt and be reduced to slaves. Now imagine players must keep playing indefinitely and when they run out of all money they just go into debt and start paying with human dignity.
Wooo wow a total proper Eurotrip!! This was with a long cruise with many ports and excursions at each? Did she book officially with the cruise or do her own? Exhausting but yes so memorable and who knows what the world will be like or when family can get together for big trips in a few years, good job cfabsis