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What were you right about?
You were ahead of the curve, or most people thought otherwise, or somebody vehemently opposed you, etc.
But it turns out you were right.
This is your chance to share your vindication.
As always, the question is open to all answers: simple or complex; funny or serious; tiny or significant.
My previous employer, one of the major private prison companies, only offered us PTO, not vacation/sick. In hindsight this was because they didn't want to pay out staff that left. I was leaving and wanted to be paid out.
Unfortunately for them, Illinois changed the law to explicitly include PTO in the required payout category and that it doesn't matter that the handbook says they don't pay out. So I called HR to ask when I'd be getting my check. They said for all the reasons - PTO, and the handbook - that they don't payout. My boss suggested I take the time off, but I wanted to leave the job, not take time and come back, and they had trained me (if only slightly) on employment law as I was our employment coordinator.
I asked on Reddit who told me I was an idiot and wouldn't get paid out. So I went through the ILCS and the IL Dept of Labor website and called the DoL and talked through what happened if they didn't pay me on the last day.
HR ghosted me and I called them daily.
That check arrived on my last work day via FedEx. Because I was right.
I've also won a Fair Housing Act complaint (can't talk about that one further but it was very obvious) and was prepped for a fight with the agency providing my partner's Personal Assistant.
Because I really like fighting but I'm only allowed to do it with words. And I love fighting with words when I know I'm right.
Reminds of a situation I was in once. Early in my career, when I thought I was just working a job, I was part time. Every year, the organization I worked for hosted a large conference in the summer. And we staff, at the time like six of us back then, ran these 600-800 attendees events. Looking back, I don't know how we did it.
Anyway, after the first conference, I was hooked. Because I made a shitload of money. In the 2-3wks before conference, as we prepared, I was essentially fulltime, 40hrs a week, plus the overtime during prep. Which is paid as time-and-a half. And since the conference straddled a weekend, I was making bank at conference, too, because of the OT. My normal rate was like $15/hr (in 2006). So getting paid $22.50/hr was amazing! Great spending money for a young guy in college for the rest of the summer.
So the second year, at my second conference, I was gearing up for another fat, full of OT, paycheck. Except it didn't come. I mean the paycheck hit my bank, but it was definitely smaller than I expected it to be.
When I asked, the HR/Accountant/Office Manager -- nonprofits, many hats -- she got the Executive Director and they told me they changed the OT policy. That since we were a 9-5, M-F office, only hours worked beyond the 40hrs M-F would be considered OT. Work over the weekend would be paid as straight time.
Oh.
Well that wasn't communicated to the staff beforehand. And the previous pay period, I worked weekends to do prep, and I still got paid OT. But I'm 19yo, I don't know shit from shit. So I really wasn't sure what to do. I asked my mom that evening and she was like, "That doesn't sound right. I don't think that's legal." But what am I doing to do? Have my mom call my boss and yell at them? Hell, no.
So I called the state DoL. The gruff employee that I explained my situation to would only say, "Sir, any hourly, non-exempt employee who works more than 40hrs in any 7-day period is entitled to overtime pay." OK, but what if we're only open M-F normally? "Again, sir, any hourly, non-exempt employee who works more than 40hrs in any 7-day period is entitled to overtime pay." They wouldn't give me their name, which I wanted, so I could be more "official," but I also know how I could play this.
Went back to work the next day, got my Exec Director and Office Manager and told them what I did. That I called the DoL. I told them exactly what the rep said to me, and I even told them I have the name and phone number of who I spoke with, and that I'd be glad to give them the contact info if they'd like to confirm directly with the DoL themselves. I'm pretty sure this is just embellishment, but I feel like I looked my Exec Director, the cheapskate, dead in his eyes while I said that.
And wouldn't you know it? The ExecDir was like, "No no, that's fine. If that's what they said, we'll get you paid out. Next paycheck OK?"
Ohhh, interesting how that works. But I think all I said was, "Sure! No problem, thanks guys!" and left.
Later on, I'd learn from other coworkers over the years that that ExecDir would sometimes try to pull this stuff on others. And sometimes he'd get away with it. I don't actually know if they adjusted everyone's paycheck or if it was just mine. Or if I was the only one they tried it on since I was young, dumb, and all that. I didn't tell other coworkers about that until like 3-5yrs after that happened. At the time, I felt like I said what I needed to say, got what I wanted, and just took the W gracefully. Didn't feel the need to "rub it in" or try to spread discontent. But in retrospect, I should've told the others. Because I eventually learned that one of them had been screwed over by that ExecDir at least once before.
Either way, he never tried that shit with me again during the next 7-8yrs I worked for him.
I did make sure everyone else at that job knew their rights when I left, but with the turn over, who knows.
I love a "we changed the policy and that policy is now more illegal" being thwarted though.
Good for you! Young Chocobean worked 12+ hours 7 days a week and was paid only for 40/week "because salary". When I talked to my parents they said "you're lucky to have a job make sure you work hard".
Yikes. Sorry to hear that!
I'll give it to my parents: They may be Boomers, but they've always been good about teaching their two sons to not be exploited by our employers. That yeah, it's important to work hard, gotta make that money, but work isn't everything. No sense in killing ourselves for a job. And if a job sucks, move on (though ideally, with something lined up). No one is "lucky" to have a job.
After all, they've been pretty successful without having to have licked the boots of their various employers over the years.
I sold everything right before the dot com crash (I was actually afraid of a Y2k crash.)
I perfectly timed buying a house right after the housing bubble (luck again, e.g. I am convinced we are in another housing bubble.)
I bought bitcoin over ten years back (and left it on one of the first exchanges that got hacked, but don't sweat it, I would have sold it well before becoming a millionaire.)
I started hyping up Gen AI before it was cool (I know most of you think it still isn't cool.)
Gen AI is really cool but it is also very dehumanizing. It can be both of these things at the same time.
Machines can now produce higher-quality output at much cheaper cost than the average specialist human with few artifacts that plagued early models. The reasons to choose a human over a machine grow smaller and smaller every day.
Ignoring the societal and economic impacts--if that is all sorted and the human race can learn to live on in some capacity... there is still a great blow to quality of life.
If different machines can do about as good as you in all sorts of specialized tasks--what should you focus on? How do you know that your time investment will be worth it? What meaning can there be of having a median skill set when a robot can perfectly replace your life?
What meaning can there be in learning to be a surgeon once the robot can do a far better job at working for extended periods of time? Before the robo-doc existed you were needed and now you are not. Knowledge and skills atrophy because they aren't being regularly used or developed. Now society can only access average surgeries and no one has developed the muscle dexterity to perform advanced surgery. Maybe nano-bots will eventually be feasible enough to close the gaps but it's also possible that nanobots cannot compete effectively within the physical constraints that exist.
Rich people might be satisfied with AI ghostwriters in place of human ghostwriters. Will their readers be the wiser? Maybe, maybe not. But people who genuinely want to feel that they've created something, that they've earned their place in the world, will be up against enormous competition.
Writing this out... maybe it's not so bad... it's not so different from globalization. The entrenchment and monopolization of distribution is the worst part. Controlling Gen AI is a similar consolidation of power.
It might help to remember that most of us don't make a living as an artist or musician, just as most of us don't play sports or chess or go professionally.
Amateurs can continue on regardless and there will still be human celebrities who are very good at what they do. It's difficult and precarious to make a living that way, but this is true of many jobs.
Gen AI can also be seen as empowering in the sense that previously only the rich could hire a ghostwriter, and now anyone can, for better or worse. Not that I personally have any need for such a thing, but for someone who isn't good at writing and needs to look more professional, it will help.
I know its the hip new thing to think we’re in a housing bubble since the last one, and I also know it wont crash the same way, but theres just no way what we’re doing with housing is a sustainable economic model.
I have a friend who knows nothing about housing besides a few months of studying for a realtor exam and not taking it who pulled money out of their 401k to buy land, build a house on it, and then sell it to someone else for them to live in. On what planet is that a reliable income?
Theres massive suburban neighborhoods going up everywhere, all built with thin plywood and cheap siding. Its like fast food, but houses. Someone is buying them, but I think its just massive corps who are buying them to rent out.
All of the empty lots on the side of the two lane country highways by my house are being sold and they’re clearing the old trees and building ugly white or black with white or black trim houses all along every road. Last time people started doing that it was 2007.
I convinced my parents to sell the condo I lived in, ~ 2006. I was right about prices being unsustainable and a massive bubble. I've been calling bubble for 20 years now, and prices have tripled if not more. I'm convinced the current government would move heaven and hell to keep prices from crashing.
But sometimes it doesn't matter if you're right, if decision makers (govt + voters) all want to be wrong.
Well, if it does crash I’m in a good position to buy up some properties. That happening is basically the only real chance I have at retiring so.
the downside to a crash is, assuming it does crash, the banks will make getting a mortgage harder, and it will be harder to sell off as an asset for retirement downsizing. It still benefits the rich to swoop them up at bottom level pricing while most of us can't borrow enough to afford a windfall. the clear solution to housing unaffordability isn't even supply or price, but eat the rich
But this is different, because it's not risky loans backing this growth. Tons of these purchases and builds are funded by international investors paying for it in cash.
We've already experienced some ups and downs, they just haven't been a dramatic bubble pop. Homes in some markets approached nearly 2x value from 2018 to 2021. Since then, there's been a gradual decrease. But we're still above 2018 values.
Tons are international and paid for sure, but that doesn't make things sustainable.
The amount of savings families have keep dwindling, most have no retirement plans, financial security all time low, birth rates lower still. Mortgage and rent eat up bigger and bigger shares. How could that possibly be sustainable.
I shudder at the mortgages of other people that I've paid. I agree that it's got to be unsustainable - I get there are structural forces that are holding this system in place, but our incomes can only be stretched so far, surely.
We are in a housing bubble, but honestly it could last for decades. The structural forces contributing to it span from widespread political buy-in (not just NIMBYism but people whose retirement plan requires the price of their house goes up, not down), ideology (some people literally can't imagine a city that isn't car-centric), corporate support (see: car companies, rubber, oil).
That is exactly my point. I got lucky with timing. It's like that joke.
Whats the secret of comedy?
Timing.
There are two other trends I've heard about:
Households are smaller, so there are fewer people per house. More houses are needed for the same number of people.
Inequality is not just billionaires. There are also a lot of well-off tech workers and people who inherit money from their parents.
This is only sort-of true - if the households are smaller, then the houses can also be smaller. Especially in the context of apartments, decreasing the size of the house will dramatically reduce the cost of construction per apartment.
However, for standalone SFH, there are both 1) minimum lot sizes that prevent smaller homes from being built, and 2) large fixed-costs per house that makes e.g. tiny houses not that much cheaper than a normal house.
I didn't really bother to be complete with listing the trends, tbh; a big one I missed is (in my country) the self-certification system that has essentially ended building requirements. People are much less willing to invest in apartments if the apartment is only built to last til their paycheck clears. This disproportionately hurts dense housing, as a house collapsing is less important if the cost of the house is mainly the land.
More broadly though, I think the problem is that there are only two options: car-centric stuff, or public transport-centric stuff, and the latter requires a ton of both upfront money and political support - converting an existing city/town is political hell, while building a walkable town from scratch would require building an entire not seen as conventional by the banks town from scratch, which would require a ton of money. And then you would probably need a railway connection (buses might work, unless the highway clogs up) and a railway connection means convincing everyone to permit the building of a railway into the city.
Fundamentally, I think cleanly breaking away from car-centrism just always requires a political fight.
We are in a housing bubble and an AI bubble. The future is not bright for retirement accounts. All of the mutual funds are going to get cut by a third at least. I hope this is one of those times I am wrong. When one of these bubbles burst, the other will blow up too.
Everything is booming, with the exception of short term government bonds, and possibly long term government bonds.
I was honestly amazed when things didn't go sideways after 2020.
Wow! That's quite the luck. What are your future predictions?
I am a perma bear, perma bears are always right about crashes.
Oh. My predictions are here.
https://tildes.net/~talk/1kpq/what_are_your_predictions_for_2025#comment-edev
I predicted my art teacher and one of the middle school teachers were in a relationship. Art was our last class of the day, and the room had a door leading to a parking area used by some staff. The middle school got out ten minutes before the high school to make dismissal smoother so teachers would sometimes pass through, and some days she'd hang around to chat with him for a little bit rather than leave ASAP.
While all the teachers had a good rapport (joys of a tiny school), I had a feeling there was something more than just friendship and teased them about it a couple times. Later when they announced their engagement, they told my mom I was the only student to figure it out.
The sole disappointment we had is that he did not take on her name and become Mr. Pancake.
Now you've got me thinking of Clueless.
I inherited some stocks a little over a year ago. This was my first real foray into the stock market, and I didn't really know what I was doing nor particularly care to learn, so I just left them alone.
However, Trump's election made me pretty jumpy about my inheritance. Eventually I got so fed up stressing about it that I impulsively sold all of my US-based stocks. I knew I'd likely lose money panic-selling like that, but I was tired of losing sleep over it and I just wanted to get it over with.
This was in February, just a few days shy of the US stock market peak. I reinvested the proceeds in non-US ETFs, particularly weighted toward gold and European defense since they seemed reasonably stable and ignorable at the time.
Let's just say that my sleep has improved an awful lot.
If it helps you sleep better, it was a worthwhile trade off. But my investments are up 9% ytd, and they are almost entirely US stock market index funds. As much as I hate the current president, I don’t think there is much risk to an index fund investment as long as you can wait until after his presidency to take money out.
Edit: breaking out just the US stock market, it is only 7% YTD, but the point still stands.
Oh, that's quite good!
Unfortunately, the bulk of the stocks I inherited were in individual tech companies that haven't performed so well — there wasn't a single market index amongst them — so I really needed to sell them regardless of where I reinvested. I'm grateful Trump's election prompted me to sell them when I did and to reinvest where I did. My portfolio is at 15.58% YTD, although I do expect a tax hit.
Here's one that I bet won't resonate much on Tildes but I have a ton of vindication about: hockey. In particular, a ton of bad decisions made by management of my team, the Oilers.
Back when I had more time (and neurotic obsession), I posted a ton on the turbo hockey nerd site Hfboards. There's a lot of takes there I left up which stand the test of time but my favourite is probably my ranting that the Oilers absolutely should not pick Jesse Puljujarvi with the 4th overall pick in 2016. He was widely viewed as a slam dunk win at the time but I knew given his playstyle and technique it'd be a disaster for the terrible at development Oilers. And he was.
In general I strongly believe that my favourite sport is rife with incompetence and nepotism. It's one of the few places I see "experts" and think I genuinely could destroy them at their jobs.
It's wild because it really is. All that matters is if you can make money and in Canada that's basically a guarantee aside from Winnipeg.
As a Detroit Fan, my condolences. Ken Holland in Detroit at the end of his tenure was terrible, and I'm sorry you got stuck with him. I think there will be some growing pains with the management change, but the Oilers are already contenders, they just need that last push.
The sad part is Ken Holland was the best GM Edmonton has had since Kevin Lowe's one amazing year in 2006. Bowman so far is looking to be maaaaaaybe the same quality? Good thing we passed on options like Bill Zito and Jim Nill in past years...
It's a goddamn crime the Oilers don't have multiple cups when they field the best 2 forwards in the league. McDrai have put up Gretzky-Lemieux numbers in the playoffs and...somehow still no cup. PATHETIC.
What would it have taken for them to have been Champions this year?
Sabotage
First, my petty/tin foil rage response: The NHL not to be friggin pathetically corrupt.
Colin Campbell is the Executive VP and Director of Hockey Ops of the NHL (this includes management of reffing). His son, Gregory Campbell is the Assistant GM of the Panthers. Colin Campbell has already been shown in emails to manipulate safety and discipline matters in favour of Gregory and somehow kept his job. The Panthers since Gregory has joined their front office have increasingly flouted the rules on safety and penalties. This playoff run was especially egregious: their whole team, especially Bennett and Ekblad, got away with bloody murder and countless elbows to Goalies heads (including taking out BOTH LEAFS GOALIES IN THAT SERIES AND ONE OF EDMONTON'S) while their opposition (every team, not just the Oilers), would quickly get called for even a cross check to the back of a goalie. If the Panthers actually weren't being pampered as the NHL's pets, they'd never have made it to the finals and certainly would not have beaten the Oilers either year IMO.
Whiny (but IMO justified) answer aside, here's what I would've preferred to see the Oilers do: not panic sell on their youth to double down on old men who couldn't last the whole playoff run. The Oilers went from a younger-ish roster to having the oldest roster in the playoffs this year, and it showed by the finals. Half our forwards simply couldn't keep up. Losing Broberg and Holloway in order to sign Arvidsson and ESPECIALLY Jeff Skinner was a massive, painful, unforced error. If we had kept both I also think we could've had the cup this year. Alternatively, spending more picks at the trade deadline for a goaltending upgrade could've helped a lot, but the market there was admittedly thin and we had no cap space. Thank god the Oilers finally fired their goaltending coach this summer too - he's a had a FULL DECADE of ruining promising goaltenders. Every. Single. One. Dustin Schwartz trained got worse - and most improved as soon as they got competent coaching in a new organization. Hopefully Skinner can revive his career with proper training.
The Oilers management has truly made some baffling decisions since 2010... but I guess, as a Stars fan, y'all have still made it further more recently (twice) 🙃
If we hadn't lucked into McDrai it'd never happen. Jim Nill is a really impressive manager. But...fair enough - I shouldn't complain about two finals in a row even if it makes me SO MAD still.
I shouldn't have started a video project with my friend.
I have a good sense of things I should not be a part of. I often go against my own intuition because everyone needs a chance, right? I mean, the idea sucks, but maybe I can persuade him to change into something else.
What was the thing? Well, a friend of mine with no experience with video whatsoever wanted to make a Twitch react channel with me. It was supposed to be one of those lazy copyright-breaking channels where someone watches entire movies without adding much. These channels only exist because the MPAA decided to ignore them for the time being. They're a terribly fragile way to make a living.
I suggested just us talking about movies, and to start small and copyright safe: an audio podcast. Eventually, a YouTube channel. That was too small for him. It had to be video. It had to have four cameras with material that I was supposed to edit into YouTube, YouTube shorts, TikTok videos, Instagram, etc, etc. It had to have a set, and a good one. In meantime, he purchased an abolute beast of a smartphone with money he could not spend, without consulting me, with the intention of using it as a camera.
Fuck.
When I mentioned that it is very hard to light a full-blown set, he suggested using a tactical flashlight. I majored in film, so my head was spinning with all the complexities he was too stubborn to consider, trying to communicate to him just how absurd that project was becoming, trying desperately to find ways to say he was wrong without hurting his ego or exposing just how ignorant he was.
There was also the fact that most popular channels start very small. Definitely not with a set, four cameras, and enough output to cover every video hosting website in the world.
Of course, it did not work. I knew it wasn't going to work. Against all my instincts, I tried to convince myself otherwise. I knew he (a lawyer) was the kind of person that would, literally (and I'm being actually literal, I've seen that happen), teach a civil engineer how to build a bridge in their first five minutes of conversation. The idea that someone may be more knowledgeable and experienced than him about something never crossed his mind.
Every difficulty I anticipated was just negative thinking for him. I should have listened to myself, but I tried to be super nice about the whole thing, and that only made things worse. I was trying to be positive and go against my natural tendency towards negativity. Perhaps I should be more hopeful about stuff, and that is why I fail so much. I was wrong. So fuck it: next time I'm not going to be nice. If someone is out of their mind, I will tell them right away and jump ship immediately. Fuck this.
I did not major in film nor produced any sort of visual content with cameras, but that still blew me away. Flashlights, to light a whole set....
Did your friendship survive the fallout?
We are no longer in touch, but not because of the project.
What sits in the back of my mind as you tell this story is how, the way you describe him your friend is what many consider to be ideal CEO material.
COVID being a serious thing.
Had friends ask me since I was living in the Seattle area and that's where cases first happened in the US and I'd just been in Asia where cases were popping up.
I told them I thought it was going to be a big thing, wasn't sure how bad but since I recommend everyone in general follow the US government's recommendations to have at least 2 weeks supplies in their house that they should do that and then double it just to be safe.
I also got made fun of at my work because I'd wear a mask at the time when the US government was telling the blatant lie that wearing masks wouldn't help.
Thankfully COVID wasn't a world ending plague, but I hope it showed the world over that we're not in a post pandemic world and another one that is far worse could happen again at anytime.
P. S. Don't read Station Eleven right as a pandemic is breaking out and you're following the news about it.
I was working hybrid (3 days in office a week) in Seattle when the first US case was confirmed. Half of my family unit is immunocompromised, so I emailed my work and told them that I was going full time WFH until things were more clear. That was a very good decision in hindsight. Thankfully my work was more kind and didn't deride me for it.
I’m still grateful to @skybrian for his coverage of pre-pandemic COVID topics here on Tildes (back in the days when it was only being called a “novel coronavirus”).
He had a pulse on it well before it fully escalated, and in sharing that here, he helped me (and doubtless many others) take it seriously and prepare for it.
It wasn't the first article I read, but I think it was this post that got me to take COVID-19 seriously.
I've got a picture of my then-girlfriend at work, looking very dour, wearing a face mask with the words "It's not Covid" hand-scrawled across it.
Because she got sick, cough-y cold-like thing, and worked in a local alcohol/tobacco shop, and no one cared about people coughing all over the job, because Covid hadn't happened yet.
Except, she did have Covid (I mean ... probably; no one had any way of testing it yet) ... this was, like, a couple of weeks before it "officially" arrived in Europe, and this was all still just a joke then.
Except, after the fact, they have moved the "official" date it arrived in Europe back, by months, and most likely, it was already spreading in our area while we were still thinking it was China's problem.
Ha funny you mention Station Eleven. I was on a major post apocalyptic reading kick right before the pandemic and that was one of the last books of that type that I read before it all started to seem too realistic and I had to stop.
I also thought COVID would be a serious problem by early January. There was medical news but most people weren't following it.
I didn't know what to do with the information but I was right
Having had our family go through SARS and following Chinese language news, I knew. All I could do was quitely buy a couple more boxes of masks than I needed, and have a few things on hand to share.
These days, I'm the only person wearing a mask on a full flight, even with news of measles running rampant. But that's okay.
Right there with you. Pretty sure I'll be the last person in the world still wearing a mask--but also might be the last person in the world to not get Covid, so I'm good with that.
I was actually flying to Oregon and back to southern California when the first cases were hitting int he LA area, the second week of January. I remember reading the headlines and sort of thinking "Oh shit, Sars 2? hopefully it's limited to Asia" (in the sense that I hope it doesn't get much spread). I don't know if I was huffing hopium or what, but the worst thoughts I wrote off as catastrophic thinking started playing out around late March, right when we "sheltered for two weeks to flatten the curve."
I remember having a vague feeling that COVID would end up being bigger than it was initially introduced to us on the news. I was in university at the time at Arizona State University and I believe ASU has the honor for having the first case of COVID in a US college campus. What really freaked me out was that the student who had COVID had allegedly spent a lot of time in the same buildings I had classes in for that semester, so I was extra careful when I went into those buildings.
I also remember ASU admin being very reactionary to COVID and waiting until the last minute to really shut down the campus. I remember going on spring break for the Spring 2020 semester and while other universities were announcing closures left and right, ASU waited until the Saturday before classes were supposed to resume to announce that the campus was being closed out.
I wrote this on Tildes in May, 2020, and stand by every word of it in retrospect. This version of being right doesn't feel good.
I wish I was this optimistic. I feel like it just showed us how many science deniers are out there (and how many figureheads will encourage them).
The Berenstain Bears.
For people who don't know, this is/was a series of children's books written by husband and wife Stan and Jan Berenstain.
In the late 90s I had been learning cursive and attempted to decipher the name on the book. The "e" in "Berenstein Bears" had loops that looked like an "a" to my newly trained eye.
I was soundly corrected back to it being "Berensteinein" until years later when I saw people talking about it online.
People talk about the Mandela Effect like it's some weird conspiracy, mass manipulation, or magical phenomenon. Really, it's just a weird, logic-induced collective hallucination.
I think anyone with an often-misheard name can 100% understand what causes the Mandela effect. Does everyone misunderstand your name in a completely novel and unique way? No, there's one or two misunderstandings that make up like 85%+ of cases, even though each person is making the mistake independently. If they all got together they might decide that your name got Mandela effected from another dimension, but you saw each of them make the mistake at the time.
I'm still convinced the matrix rolled back an update and those of us who remember are being tracked differently.
This is noise but... interesting to read some of these reddit comments:
...
Beginning a claim with "a lot of people think" is a near-universal synonym for "I'mma 'bout to spout some bullshit."
That particular sliver of the Mandela Effect nonsense has always especially bothered me. Even as a joke it's pretty dumb, because it boils down to "I don't understand particle accelerators, therefore they are magic." It just feels lazy.
Not to call out the user, I feel the joke is just a little cheeky, but the issue I have is it distracts from the larger conversation to be had, which is that of large-scale delusion.
I saw David Corenswet in the show The Politician in 2020 and told my husband "wow he looks like a young Superman!"
And now he is.
I want to say most things regarding my family, but the most indisputable one is solar power. It just happened again yesterday.
Seriously, since 2012 I've tried to sell my dad on panels. Mostly because I worked at a government contractor around then and heard repeatedly that the national power grid would not make it to 2020, even with immediate intervention. (Something about international billionaire business interests cozying up to the president and stripping the government for scrap. A very third-world problem). So I got a reputable installer and quotes on relatively inexpensive equipment and gave my dad a plan to cycle out the old power hungry appliances. But they wouldn't have it.
Then in 2015 when the rolling blackouts started and I had a cheap battery solution geared to keep him going through the 4 hour shut offs, he dumped a second hand 12kVA generator on the garage roof and was happy putting up with the noise and exhaust.
Then again in 2019 it became obvious shit was hitting the fan and blackouts were getting worse. 2020 was a bit of relief but by the end of 2021 my wife and I put in a big chunk of money into a slightly over-speced inverter/batteries and have been slowly adding panels. My dad saw it and got me a little diesel generator "just in case".
Through to today there was probably about 10000 hours of nation power cuts and we didn't feel it in our house. I had extension cords to some neighbors and I probably pay the equivalent of $500 in power a year. My dad burnt diesel to power a few light bulbs and freezers.
2023 my dad and uncle bit the bullet and actually got inverters and panels. But my ideas are too complicated and expensive so they figured one of the many fly-by-night guys that popped up was a better deal. And they are now paying more for power (20% rates increase) and their batteries drain in a matter of hours.
Yesterday they asked if I can take my installer down to have a look and what they got and it's not pretty. Severely under sized and a lot of stupid mistakes like putting panels flush against the roof, under treeshade and next to the chimney. So the same installer who came through over a decade ago is giving them the same advice to slowly phase out the now older appliances and gradually add panels and battery.
And they still want a second optinion.
Anyway, made the last payment on my setup a few weeks ago and its never had issues other than moving it to my new place. The city just started the power buyback credits and found out about about a carbon credit program. With panels being stupid cheap I'll probably max out what I can since my roof existing is literal passive income.
'85-ish, long-running argument with my college roommate.
I insisted the US was headed for something like a 2nd Civil War, probably over abortion rights, probably within the next 40 or 50 years.
My roommate said nah, never happen. Maybe in 500 years, but not within our lifetimes.
We're still sporadically in touch. He lives in MN now, I got out after Trump was elected the first time, now living in Germany, no plans on going back.
It's not so much "vindicated" as "of all the crazy stuff I thought the Future would bring, why did I have to be right about this one?"
I mean, do you think the US is in an actual civil war or close? Or has been recently?
Slightly spicy take: the US is headed into a civil war.
One big hallmark of a civil war is that nobody expects a civil war is going to break out, right before the civil war breaks out. Just mentioning that pre-emptively, to squelch peoples' initial skeptical reaction. And when it does break out, the govt has every incentive to deny it's a civil war, because that legitimises the opposite side as a "side", rather than just a bunch of terrorists. A civil war tends to look like a series of unexpected escalations in conflict, and not necessarily starting at violence.
The US govt (Trump) has already triggered multiple constitutional crises that should have catalyzed a serious reform and healing process, but didn't. In other words, things have been getting less stable without getting more stable.
The executive have stacked the supreme court with hacks who've made absurdly partisan rulings like "the president can't be sued for official acts, even after the presidency" (with 'official acts' being defined so broadly you could drive a truck through it, and is assumed to be the case until proven otherwise) which puts the president above the law.
The govt has blatantly acted against the law, been sued, lost, blatantly ignored the court and been held in contempt of court, blatantly ignored being held in contempt of court, and has now cut all funding for the court to hold the govt in contempt of court (i.e. the court is now not legally allowed to spend any money on enforcing the law when the govt blatantly ignores the law).
Congress has handed over half of their ability to set the budget, to the executive - the executive can now choose where they spend the money they're budgeted, so if congress says "here's your budget of $Y, you must spend $X of that on trains" then the executive can say "lol no, we're not spending a cent on trains". To be fair, this might not be a constitutional crisis or even illegal (although it might be, IDK) but it follows a trend of destroying checks and balances and consolidating power under the executive.
The executive have set up ICE to go around in disguise and without providing any badge or police ID number, conducting illegal raids to kidnap people and then shove them in camps without due process. Note that anyone who says "they're only doing that to illegals", establishing whether someone is a citizen is due process - maybe they just didn't have their govt ID papers on them at the time of kidnapping. Or maybe, as has been recorded as happening, the ICE goon didn't recognise the ID (because it was from a different state, and he didn't know what IDs from that state look like so he didn't know whether it was real or not) so he ignored the ID and just assumed it didn't count.
Trump has, IIRC, three times, denied the validity of the election if he lost. He's pre-emptively said "if I lose the election then it's fake and a democrat coup".
Trump has attempted a coup after he lost the election in 2020. Because Jan 6 was a coup.
So, with all that in mind:
The executive has consistently tried to expand their power over the last 6 months, only stopping when they get not just disapproval but major meaningful pushback that could limit future power expansion. They have been successful repeatedly. Any political catalysts that could avert this situation have, so far, failed. Most of the checks and balances that would stop them have been burnt through in Trump's first term, and Trump is rapidly burning through the remainder now. And the general public is mostly clueless about just how far in deep shit the US is.
These events are already in motion, it's not hard to extrapolate, and frankly nothing is going to stop them. I could be wrong and it could all fizzle out if all of the MAGA base sort of just trickle away once Trump finally dies of old age (he's 79 and doesn't believe in exercise or eating enough vegies, it's amazing he lasted this long), but unless that happens there will be blood.
I understand that terrible things are happening in the United States, many of which you summarized. But it seems to me that you are describing a scenario where only one side has enough power and initiative to fight. So, if I were to make a fatalistic prediction (and I don't usually do that), I would say that a civil war is unlikely because there doesn't seem to exist an organized opposing faction to Trump that would be capable and willing to sustain war against him.
Because war requires at least two opposing factions, the US is, in my view, headed into dictatorship. Not civil war.
Realistically, I would say that the US is headed toward becoming one the weakest democracies in the developed world, and the most powerful as well. But I engaged above with the kind of speculation that is at play in your comment just so I could engage with it in your terms.
About 15 years ago, I was dicking around my university library and thumbing through random history books when I came across Generations. It's a grandiose and pseudoscientific theory of American history - think Guns, Germs, & Steel meets astrology - but I always thought it was fun and interesting. The wiki I linked to has a good synopsis, but essentially they argue that we go through cycles that are defined by crises and the ideals and systems that emerge from them. New system pops up -> good times -> unraveling -> crisis.
One thing that they seem to have nailed in their 1991 book is their prediction of a "crisis of 2020." I went back and read through that chapter during the first Trump administration, and the accuracy in their description of politics and the unraveling of systems was unsettling. Perhaps more unsettling is the fact that Steve Banon is a huge fan.
While I know that anything can happen and nothing is predetermined, it's hard to shake the feeling that we're already there. It feels like our chances to avoid a fascist oligarchy were in '08, '16, and 2020, and we're just now strapping in for a long, horrible ride.
I'm sorry I am not very knowledgeable about that stuff. But last time I looked, the counter argument to that theory is that history is complex and concepts like "crisis" are less objective than they seem. It is not difficult to frame something as "crisis" in order to fit a prediction.
Oh, absolutely. I tried to make it clear in my comment, but I don't subscribe to that belief. It just kind of hangs out in the back of my mind with superstitions, big foot, the man on the grassy knoll, etc. Its one of those things where you know it's not true, but every now and then something pops up that makes you go, "hey, that's weird."
Having said that, I still think it's a convenient way to illustrate where we're at, even if it's coincidental, not a 1-1 comparison, and the theory is flawed.
Not that any of this is crazy, but my personal belief is that Trump is the culmination of a decades long project to dismantle regulations, safety nets, and checks & balances. His brashness and wide-open corruption makes it feel like it's something new, but his policies are a continuation of what we've seen from Republicans for roughly 50 years. Reversing course at this stage is a tall order that neither the Democrats or our institutions are equipped to handle. Our best chance to make fast, sweeping changes is on the heels of a significant crisis. Unfortunately, we missed our shots in 08 and 2020, so it seems entirely possible, if not likely, that this will be our new baseline for the next few decades. Nevertheless, nothing is set in stone, crazy shit happens all the time, and while Republicans/oligarchs hold a ton of power, the foundation isn't that sturdy. <insert fake Lenin quote here>
I think "something like" is an accurate assessment.
No clean lines to draw this time, no formal declaration, but the US is unquestionably dying and/or disintegrating.
Ooooh, another one.
When I was 10-ish, I had a bit of money in the bank, $300-ish.
IDK where I got the idea, but I read something, and I decided I simply must invest all my money in gold. I was gonna get rich.
My mom flat-out refused to let me. I was so pissed, I tried to run away from home.
A year later, the price of gold had more than tripled.
IDK if I was prescient or (more likely) just coincidentally lucky, but this was a result of the OPEC oil embargo, so it's conceivable I actually read something significant and managed to put 2+2 together in my head.
Regardless, to this day, I insist that my mom owes me $1000.
Ahem
I dabbled in the Metaculus prediction market in late 2023/early 2024.
I'm ashamed to say that I was the person who predicted Palestinian casualties exceeding 50,000 people after the January 7 attacks. Based on exposure to the attitudes of Israeli settler relatives, review of the region's history and politics, and understanding of Binyamin Netayahu's jail-avoidance strategy, I believed the Israeli response would involve razing Gaza and genocide. I'm ashamed that I turned my understanding loose in a gambling market with people's lives at stake.
October 7 I guess?
What kind of bets were these? Like betting on a number of deaths or something?
I'm a dummy - I meant October 7 - it seems like the war has been going on forever.
I fooled around with both Metaculus and Manifold Market. Basically, they're discussion boards where prediction questions are posted with rewards for accurate forecasts. When these prediction markets started, the rewards were notional dollars with no cash out; the dollar totals were just means of keeping score. Everyone got a starter purse and could stake reward amounts on questions they posted. Eventually, you could use actual money to buy market dollars for questions. There are leaderboards with overall most accurate predictors. Now, I guess there are "pro" accounts where people are earning for their predictions.
After the October 7 attacks, there was a flurry of questions about how long the conflict would last, whether Palestine would achieve recognition, when hostages would be released, etc. I was posting what I thought were likely outcomes almost automatically, feeding on the sick reward of recognition for being right. When the death count question was posted, I spent hours reviewing my priors, posted a number, and then deleted my account the next day.
Got some crypto when it was cheap. I always regarded it as toy money -- and a bit later on, a way to fund a minor drug habit -- so I never really sold them even when they became relatively expensive. Except these last few years. Hindsight is always perfect but now it seems a bit sad that on a couple of occasions, I spent the current equivalent of ten thousand euros on ~10ish g of weed.
I guess I was somehow pro-NATO, anti-Putin before the war they started, but it's hard to remember after that happening. The switch was just so radical that it now feels like "obviously I was".
I started by political life as somewhat leftist and very liberal, and in my mid 20s switched to somewhat right and quite liberal. That seemed to have been the correct choice in many ways, but I'm sure that's subjective and somewhat debatable. And yet to be decided fully.
I got into Linux very early on, in mid 90s. That was obviously a great choice and one that not many people did back then. I also got into Rust pretty early, but didn't manage to cash that in as well so to speak. Never have gotten a chance to really use it yet, just to play with it.
I remember sitting at lunch with my siblings and their partners in late February 2020 as Covid was starting to hit the news. We’re Australian and were talking about whether it would be a big deal, how it would transpire, and how long until it would impact things. A few months earlier (well before the retroactively declared first cases) we had booked flights to an event in New York City for around October/November 2020, and at lunch were discussing our plans around that trip.
International travel was already starting to be limited by some countries, and I was the only one at the table suggesting that things wouldn’t blow over before our trips, and we should get in touch with our booking agency to get refunds. I distinctly remember, when they pushed back on the idea that it would be that long, I said “it will be three years or more before international travel is back to where it was” and I think at least from the Australian perspective, I was just about right on the money for that timeline.
I wasn’t expecting the way lockdowns or stay-at-home orders would impact things, but my mental timeline of a year or two before we would get vaccines, and a year or two further before enough people were vaccinated for international travel to really open up again to 2019 levels seemed to be pretty accurate.