massinstall

Yes! Makes me happy to see someone else notice this. :)

I was thinking that this event might have been the inspiration for that part of the book?

Can you share a few more details about your company (e.g. a website)?

From the publication: “The speculation that the hand gesture herein presented is a freemasonry’s conveyed code is fascinating, but it is hard to accept.”

This sentence concluded a very short paragraph that apparently aimed to explore whether the hand sign could have a Masonic meaning. But instead of giving any explanation for their conclusion, the authors merely postulate the above without any given reasoning. I’m surprised to find this in what appears to aim to be a scientific analysis. Even more so would it surprise me if any conscious reader found this conclusion satisfactory.

Any thoughts?

Very cool and creative!

Reality check: 'average' people do not get inheritances of such significance.

Yep, down for me as well since then.

I have no idea, but equally curious.

It appears curious that you consider video evidence of an incident “war propaganda”.

It's buggy on Firefox for me. Can't draw anything.

Why is this saying misogynistic?

Because it’s a statement about men or because of the implied possibility they could be unhappy in their marriage?

Also, why is it horrible?

It appears this world has become manically trigger-happy to label something as -ist or -istic, when it contains even only a hint of something someone could possibly understand the wrong way.

It would be curious to examine in a psychological study if this reinforced behavior has developed more due to a subtle social reward system for the “labelers”, or due to a punishment system for the “non-labelers”.

You may be right about him “deserving” the place, but you appear to be missing the point here: just by pure statistics, there would have been others who also dropped out of college to serve in WW2, but who did not have an influential father like Munger, and who then did not get the admission he did. Also by pure statistics, there is a likelihood that among these others were many who were at least as deserving as he was.

In summary, the argument is to point out the difference between personal effort/discipline/work ethic/character (and everything that’s commonly named as the “reason” of success) and the huge impact of external conditions that are completely outside the realm of influence of the individual in question, such as their parent’s wealth and influence, physical build, natural attractiveness, health, location of birth, etc.

It is very, VERY common that people uphold and believe in the (comforting) myth that mostly oneself is responsible for success and that said external factors are basically negligible. The “self-made” person… You could even throw them on Mars and they’ll somehow become billionaires and own mansions!

There is not much to add, except that such thinking appears outdated (previous economic booms allowed for a bit more control of one’s fate), ignorant, and self-congratulatory - a delusion of a successful person who is neither aware nor grateful for the external circumstances that allowed them to get where they are.

FWIW I like Charlie Munger, a down-to-earth thinker who doesn’t shy away from talking about inconvenient truths. Chances are he would even agree with the above.

Book recommendation: “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell.

I think what you’re describing could be because the pace of life was slower, there was less competition for everything, the consequences of making mistakes less severe, the general economic situation easier, and it was worth a lot more to learn and know something. There was also more quality work to be found in software, relatively speaking.

Disabling a nuisance in Windows 10 sadly doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll stay disabled for longer than when the next update is installed.

Oh, you just made me completely melancholic with that atmospheric description! Makes me miss these times a lot. The abundance of information is truly a blessing, but also a curse.

I’m curious to see it but FYI it doesn’t work on an iPhone with Firefox (you can never get past the first screen).

Same here.

It doesn’t, and nobody in the DEI crowd cares about then. Some will likely even think that it’s great.

Optically maybe, if that’s what you’re aiming for. Just assuming that the “group of white men” are “all the same” is not very deep. The truth is that they’re all individuals with individual stories strangers who judge them by their looks know nothing about. It used to be understood as a good thing to not judge people based on their gender or skin color, including the nowadays declared “evil” white men.

> The point is sound - the reader is not responsible for paying the author, not even if the reader read author's work.

What a convenient way to make oneself feel comfortable living a moral-free life. Like as if this changes anything for the end result that someone stole something, and someone else has to foot the bill for that. You’re arguing off the premise that „the distributor is big anyway, so stealing from them doesn’t hurt anyone”. And the premise that it won’t hurt the author. It appears worthy of consideration that there may be a lack of fantasy here on your part.

> Why shouldn't I? Is it somehow my responsibility to keep the food on your table?

What a crappy comment. Sad that there are people whose only apparent ability is to hurt, destroy, and consume.

Great, so if you never needed to be paid for anything then you either don’t live on earth or we’re obviously simply born to rich parents and inherited most of what you needed, or maybe even everything. Even then you could strive to figure out how skewed and subjective your perspective is.

Exactly this, thanks for highlighting this here! I find it astoundingly upsetting that the people who run this pirated library ask for donations at the bottom of the linked page (of course in Bitcoin), citing they can only keep the library online if they’re getting paid for it… what arrogance!

Like they cannot see that they’re inserting themselves in between the readers and the authors, whom they effectively try to steal the money from. Authors of course can also only continue to write books if they’re getting paid for it. It’s truly parasitic behavior.

I’m sorry this happened to you and I share your pain. :(

I think you might have missed the other commenter’s likely intended sarcasm.

Yes, I love good technical books. I also prefer reading on paper vs. on screen (which I already stare at the entire day otherwise).

Exactly this!

“The future will be completely decentralized and secure with crypto, they said. It’ll be amazing, they said.”

The point is (also mathematically speaking) that a flat tax is less fair to the poor than having a progressive tax with a zero marginal tax for incomes below what’s required for merely surviving (i.e. no tax for people without any excess income that can be saved). So there would be room for improvement but, as well-intended as it might be, a flat tax is not making things better for the poor.

> This would not hurt the poor.

I am always amazed by such statements. Are you sure you have thought this through? What do mean with “asymptotically flat”?

As with the poorly understood correlation/causation relationship in statistics, there are many common misconceptions about how absolute and relative amounts influence the result of mathematical calculations.

The following example may highlight this: Let’s say a person’s minimum financial need to simply stay alive and sane is $X. Now, take two almost identical people that only differ in their income: A’s income is bigger than B’s.

If you tax them both at a flat 15% (or any other rate), the richer will always benefit more from this than the poorer! The reason is because living, eating, and taking part in a society do not come for free.

Surprisingly, this is commonly not well understood and it also seems there are proclivities by some fellow rich and comfortable folk to intentionally avoid understanding this.

Proof by example: Let’s see what their effective tax is after all the cost to stay alive has been deducted.

Excess Income = Income * (1 - 15%) - X

Let’s say A’s income is $150k and B’s is $40k, and the minimum amount X required to simply stay alive (not being homeless and having health insurance included) would be $25k. These figures are obviously simplified but anyone can feel free to use their own numbers and repeat the calculation. The general result will remain similar.

Then, A’s excess income will be $102.5k and B’s $9k. Relatively speaking, A will have made almost 11.5 times the amount of excess income than B, despite making not even four times as much as B (3.75 to be exact).

Excess income will be the only thing both of them can use to save and invest, purchase a house, or use it for all kinds of safety-net building and stress-reducing things.

It’s tragic to see what greed does to people, and how it corrupts their minds.

This.

Seconded.