What you're talking about is American programmer's salaries. Not everyone lives in America and not everyone's a programmer
362 karma · joined June 10, 2017
You can live on so much less than minimal wage - it is because people go along with societal expectations do they consider it not enough. You pay the rent to live in an apartment, in a city, and work an official, recognised job. Why do you necessarily need to live in an apartment? Why in a city? And why do you need to work that menial job to pay off all of it barely having anything left at the end of the month?
Look up dirtbagging, a movement rock climbers came up with to dedicate their lives to climbing instead of the 9-5. You can get by fine with living in a tent and eating from expired cans and free McDonalds ketchup packets if that gives you the freedom to pursue what you find meaningful.
I think most people set themselves goals such as working at FAANG, having millions in their accounts, driving expensive cars, not because it'd bring them happiness but because that's the societal expectations that they have unknowingly adopted and never noticed the switcheroo. It makes sense why society as a whole would value this "work to the bone at the cost of everything else" behaviour - it creates good workers whose work benefits the society. It is not clear how it benefits the worker.
At the end of the day, what's the point of having those millions in your bank account when your 75, have bad knees, arthritis and crippling back pain. Decide what you want to do with your life, and work your hardest to achieve that. Don't dance at the tune of someone else's fiddle just so that maybe at the end of that long ride you can get a handshake and a pat on the shoulder.
Absolutely true. I still don't think the hypothesis should be rejected just on the grounds of it sounding Islamophobic, it should be rejected on the grounds of it being incorrect.
I too categorically don't agree with blaming it on Muslims, I do however reserve judgement about blaming it on Islam - it could have had an effect or it could not.
Too often I have found HN to downvote a comment that goes against the grain until it's dead - can we not have a civilised discussion around difficult topics?
For example, Elon Musk's being born in an affluent family. How many others were born just as affluent if not a lot more, and yet failed to achieve anything of note? How many have squandered their opportunities?
The message that is pushed now is that what you have achieve is through no virtue of your own, but simply a cause-and-effect relationship of being born affluent. Hard work doesn't matter because you were born rich. If you weren't born rich but worked hard to achieve great success - still doesn't matter because obviously you were lucky. To me this seems like a very depressing, deterministic view of the world.
The message we should be teaching ourselves and future generations is despite your circumstances you should and could achieve more. Yes, if you were born in a poor African village without schooling and without money it's very unlikely you'll achieve as much as someone who went to Cambridge and had a very powerful network of family friends and an unlimited bankroll to attempt startups. Does that mean you should resign yourself to wallowing in self-pity because of 'woe is me, why hasn't God made me rich and beautiful?'. No.
You're absolutely correct that the Zaporozhians were somewhat of their own people, much like the Don and other groups of Cossacks - which can be seen in them uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian rulers and the Czar respectively and trying to form their own states. I wouldn't go so for as to say that they aren't part of Russian-Ukrainian history either, just that claiming for them to be the same as modern Ukrainians or modern Russians makes as much sense as modern Greeks claiming to be direct descendants of Alexander the Great.
Russia did not commit a full blown invasion, it annexed a part of the country that had a crucial naval port to use which they had an agreement with the previous government and where the population of that area of the country is predominantly ethnic Russians who self-identify as Russian and didn't support the new anti-Russian government. The only reason that historically Russian land was given to Ukraine in the 1954 transfer of Crimea was due to Khrushev's blunder.
Don't try to pull wool over anyone's eyes here with claims that it was just an innocent change of power. In world politics you can't do things willy-nilly. Ukraine has threatened Russia by going against it, cutting off previous agreements and trying to ally itself with Russia's enemies and Russia did what it had to do stop it in its tracks.
And for your information, Ukrainian citizens are worse off than they were before, whilst the new anti-Russian elite of Ukraine is busy getting rich and robbing the country. But hey, at least they're no longer associated with Russia, right? Because EU and the US cared so much about them in the first place and totally not trying to destabilise Russia's southern border.
Russia has the right to defend its national security within its means.
> This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.
It's not about who Russia likes or dislikes - if a government acts in a way that could harm Russia why shouldn't they do something about it.
Finland did very well in the Winter War, but it did not "beat the crap out of Russia" because that would be assuming that they have won. Instead they have lost, but Russia has achieved what's called a Pyrrhic victory and Finland has received favourable terms.
> Russia's strategy in Eastern Europe and more recently in Crimea was not to fight, but send in little green men with rifles and organise elections. That's how the USSR has installed regimes of their choice in its vassal states which later formed the Warsaw Pact.
Are you then claiming that Eastern Ukraine is not dominantly ethnic Russians?
> NATO and thd US has a new bogeyman called China now. Russua has its own version of NATO called the CSTO and is part of the SCO or Shanghai Pact along with China and their satellite states.
No, China is not the bogeyman because China doesn't go for hard-power like USSR did or in fact the USA does. Instead they go for soft-power by investing into countries and getting influence through financial means - look at Australia, Greece, and now increasingly the USA itself. Note how the USA didn't even squeak about the Wuhan lab leak theory until recently - would it be the same if a virus has appeared near a virology lab in Vladivostok?
If a neighbour turns anti-Russian, joins a group whose sole reason is to be against Russia, and installs military bases right at your doorstep - yes, I'd say Russia has a right to intervene, and that doesn't take into account how Eastern Ukraine is very much pro-Russia and populace seems to identify as ethnically Russian and be okay with being part of Russia.
US does much worse things for much less - look at CIA getting rid of democratic governments as soon as they decide not to play in US's favour and installing a more favourable regime to their interests.
Now with the coming of ICBMs, jets, and especially nuclear weapons it is no longer as vital for Russia to have these buffer zones. America on the other hand keeps purporting this outdated myth of scary Russia despite Russia barely even being a threat anymore so that it can keep members of NATO as effectively vassal states. This way it can control them - "you do as I say, or scary Russia will come and take you".
Having American military bases and American influence around its border will only increase tensions between Russia and their neighbouring countries. That is precisely the reason Finland hasn't joined NATO and they and Russia have been getting along fine. Russian troops haven't rolled into Helsinki as of yet.
It should also be noted that Russia's claim to join NATO was rejected in 1954, and Putin has stated that he has suggested Russia joining NATO to Clinton and was again rejected. Now I can see how USSR during Cold War would be rejected, but why was post-USSR crumbling and then Western-friendly Russia rejected? I'll suggest that it was because US would then lose its favourite boogeyman.
And by "improve" the balance of power in the Black Sea I'm sure you mean move it in US's favour?
Or should Russia just bend the knee to the US overlords and be a good lapdog?
"Crimean Russians are not exists" - lol.
"Oh, you think you could adequately program a neural interface using Scratch? How quaint"
Some people have reached a point where not even disagreeing with them, but simply mentioning someone they don't like in a positive light or mentioning someone they do like in a negative light, no matter how factual the statement is, will get you downvoted.
They can't even articulate it, hence why you didn't get any responses - they just got used to being in their echo chamber where their opinions are always echoed and fervently applauded. After a while, whatever the echo chamber promulgates becomes that person's ground reality. As soon as they see something that disagrees with this reality - it is an offense to them and their whole worldivew, but they can't argue for their beholden view or against the offending view, so they have an emotional outburst.
I've met a few people who proclaimed themselves to be very politically educated individuals, but as soon as it came to a debate they'd get frustrated by failing to answer basic questions about their opinions and excuse themselves. No wonder, who wants their whole paradigm to be crashed in one evening?