I don't think foreign currency reserves of a country that are being actively used are an adequate metric for comparison. The cash tech sits on would be more appropriate. Or even GDP of a country. But foreign exchange reserves of a country can be influenced by a number of factors that are not relevant to this article. Specially since you didn't even mention the country name or it's gdp, it doesn't give us an idea of the scale of the foreign currency reserves. For all I know, the us might as well have that amount of foreign currency because it's mostly using usd anyways. Maybe you could elaborate a little bit, why the scale of foreign currency reserves of a given country can be relevant?
I am one of the people looking for a full-time job for 6+ months. I have a side project that keeps me afloat and the job search hasn't been my "main" goal, but I am now becoming increasingly concerned about the relatively long period that I am technically "unemployed". I usually don't advertise myself as much and I don't have a linkedin or any socials. Do you think it makes sense to make a linkedin to improve my chances? I usually just monitor platforms and apply to positions that fit me. I do realize that there is a subset of potential employers not really advertising positions anywhere but instead using linkedin to find potential candidates.
Also, how long do you think this situation will persist? Some of the comments mentioned a "rebound", so is it likely to slowly start recovering, or is it accurate to say that it will persist for another year or so?
I would strongly assume that a big chunk is made using generative AI with the purpose of spreading one particular religion, or just making the population more spiritual and therefore less opposed to certain changes. With all due respect, we don't know everything, but know enough about our brain to be fairly certain that there is nothing even close to any afterlife, with all respect to people's own beliefs that they are entitled to. It is wishful thinking, it makes humans feel good, gives them hope and is a pretty significant psychological relief, especially given the current mental health situation on earth, but what happens after life is fairly certain - nothing. I suspect the letters were written with the exact goal I have listed above - to give hope, to make happy and to give psychological relief. After all, you want people you interact with to be happy. If you will tell them the truth in cold blood, well, that won't be a very pleasant moment and it will lead to sadness. I do the same to be honest. Small lies that make people that I care about happy. It makes me happy in return. Is it bad? What even is bad? Everyone defines bad for themselves. Making other people happy is definitely not bad in a system of values where bad is on the opposite side of happy. But what do I know.
You very clearly haven't seen a single one, much less a bunch of them as I have. There's no generative AI going on with people on video telling their stories going back years ago. I'm a skeptic and I am pretty convinced at this point that something real is going on, here. They also actually are mostly ANTI-religion (in fact, the ones that seem very religion-slanted also seem false or fail to maintain internal consistency, so I've easily dismissed the vast majority of those). The testimonies in the playlist I put together almost entirely push the notion that most if not all religions are false in small or large part.
> but know enough about our brain to be fairly certain that there is nothing even close to any afterlife
You can't say that for sure. The brain might be a consciousness conduit and not a consciousness generator (which is pretty much what these testimonies are saying). If I step on a garden hose (assuming I can't see beyond it) and the water stops, and I stop stepping on it and the water resumes, you're basically saying the garden hose must be the source of the water, when we know that isn't true (but only because we can see beyond the garden hose). A naïve individual from, say, 10,000 years ago who has never seen seemingly unlimited pressurized water on tap who encounters a garden hose might initially conclude that the hose produces the water...
> it makes humans feel good
There's a large set of things that are broadly agreed to be true which do not make people feel good and a large set of things that are broadly agreed to be true that do. "Feeling good" is therefore orthogonal to veracity so this is a non-argument.
I'm disappointed that you're responding as a person who literally hasn't watched a single one of the videos (because the very things you said prove that). You're just yet another human who prefers to bury their head in the sand than confront evidence against their pre-existing worldviews, like most people. And "with all due respect," that's not rational at all.
FUTO makes sense in terms of it comes from "FUTurO", in the context of Future, but I see the organization changing its name if it is going to become a large player - just having "FU" as the first letters is a bit unuserfriendly (although I realize that they probably want to signal that they are saying FU to the other companies they are competing with), and I won't even mention that it is oddly similar to "FUPA", maybe the founder(s) wanted to use this as a joke of some sort? Similar to Elon combining his model letters into "S3XY".
Officially it's just 4 letters that sound nice together... but the name is up for interpretation :D
My personal favorite is "Fight to Upend the Tech Oligopoly" but there are many others.
Your nickname is lit.
We live in a world where we are not the only superpower. If we will stop developing capable tools for dealing with adversaries, adversaries will use that to their benefit and take advantage of our inferior toolings. Please try to understand what I am trying to say: no-one wants to have blood on their hands, but the reality is that we are not the ones who decide, whether it will be spilled, all we can do is make sure it is not going to be ours. And on a sidenote, the companies you mentioned have achieved some astonishing from the engineering point of view achievements, which I personally admire just because it is state of the art in so many ways.
I have been getting more and more episodes of "not remembering the obvious", I forget words and even big events like the mode of transport (plane, train) I used on a trip. I started to forget things more and more while I used to have a very precise memory, but lately it's been failing on some things. It worries me. I don't use any substances but I used to do a little bit of alcohol abuse in college. The main factors that I suspect might be - diet rich in sugars, absence of any physical activity, a few years of semi-depression that is getting better now and an insane amount of stress that makes me rather numb. But yes, this is a new thing for me.
I can relate to what you’re saying. My memory was never stellar, but it took a hit during the pandemic, I suspect. Some of the reasons you’ve mentioned (more sedentarism, a certain level of depression) has certainly affected many of us.
There is a YouTube channel that sometimes talks about various technical aspects of diving too. I have been watching it for almost a year, it is sometimes interesting, I discovered many things about diving that I didn't know before;
https://youtube.com/c/DIVETALK
Thousands of lifes and millions if not billions affected to various degree in order to slightly cool down our planet (I think the point of reducing emissions is not to prevent global warming but to rather keep the air we breathe not too contaminated?)? Jokes aside, maybe the nuclear tests in the 30s,40s and 60s were the reason why the globe has become slightly colder to begin with, and what is being observed now is just out planet recovering from a reasonably rough century of forceful cooling down inflicted by nuclear events?
Nuclear weapons don't magically cool the planet, and "a little nuke" doesn't cool it "less than a big nuke". Nuclear winter is caused by smoke, dust and ash blocking out sunlight.
I understand your distrust towards "Big Corporations" aimed at maximizing profit.. But I wouldn't trust individuals with many things govmnts regulate. We may be talking in different contexts, but as it was mentioned above, almost all aspects need a governing body that has the overview of the general state of things in order to properly "reduce damage". Same thing with speed limits - some people claim there should be no speed limits at night. If assigned to individuals to decide on this, well, there will be no speed limits.
I understand your frustration with dysfunctional govmnts, but it is important to remember that we live in a non-perfect world and most "individuals" are not trustworthy either. And if we have to chose between two evils - the govmnts and "individuals" - it is reasonable to chose the least evil, which is the govmnt. At least in present times, what will be in the future - I don't know.
However I am in no way a politician or sociologist so I have no actual knowledge in this, I am just writing my opinion here and it is not my intention to change your mind.
> And if we have to chose between two evils - the govmnts and "individuals" - it is reasonable to chose the least evil, which is the govmnt.
Although that may appear to be the choice it isn't in reality. If you believe that government is a real thing the answer is always more government. However, the reality is that you are an individual. Government is an idea we can believe, a means whereby the individual can pretend to hand over their personal authority, as a child does with its parents. In fact, as an adult, you are autonomous. You don't have to do what other entities tell you to do, unless you agree. Well, you might have to do it on account of the use of force (actual or implied), but if you think it is wrong it cannot become right. Implied use of force is what government does!
So, if some group writes a bunch or laws, and calls them 'the Law' and says it is 'good', and even appears to be subject themselves to it, if you think the law is wrong you do not have to follow it. You are in fact an individual, and only have to answer to yourself and your conscience.
'Government' has no interest in helping you become a fully fledged individual, hence we are all indoctrinated from day 0. They have us believing that the infrastructure they provide is good, the best we can do, etc - even if they couch it as 'government is a terrible system except for all the others'. Anarchy has such a bad name - why? Because it actively holds 'no leaders' as its central tenet.
Ultimately, we are individuals living in a moral world. We have been miseducated and misled into authorising others to do things on our behalf - this is government acting in a self-serving way, that ensures it gains ever increasing amount of power at individual's expense. And then I say the 'government acting in a self-serving way' I really mean those individuals that manage and benefit from the parasitic governance system.
Morality itself, comes down to the golden rule, which I think is best stated as:
Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.
This basically says, everything you want to do is fine - as long as you are not harming others. And it is fine to protect others who are being harmed.
For fun, here is a story that attempts to imagine an alternative reality:
