Yeah, indicators are indicating. Things they don’t seem to talk about. Used car lots are empty while new car lots are full. The tourist restaurants no longer have waiting lists. Gaming is a luxury expense, as in we don’t need it to survive, while new game prices are higher than they’ve ever been. I’m willing to bet most if not all luxury spending is down.

Prices are high and companies decided shitty AI is better than good people. So jobs are getting scarcer or paying less.

In the words of my kids: we’re cooked fam.

Heathens by 21 pilots for the Suicide Squad. It’s not even great 21 Pilots, but it’s way better than the movie.

Scams almost always start by fulfilling something the scammed person is lacking. Long cons might start out as a person being friendly with a lonely old person. Quick cons usually prey on immediate financial needs.

But how you identify cons is usually by being skeptical of everyone’s motivations. You test it by twisting what they want and seeing how they react.

Example: I was selling a car that was just a couple years old. I have a buyer basically agree that everything’s good, they’re ready to buy, just need a carfax report. They claim carfax isn’t reliable but this other report company is who they trust. I buy the report and share it with them, and when it’s clean as I know it will be, they’ll be here the next day with cash. I researched the company a bit and it seemed legit, and I figure the report will help me sell to others as well, so I buy it and the person ghosts me. I research a bit more and while technically the company is legit, they pay referrals to people to sell reports. I immediately contacted them and got a refund, luckily.

Next time I’m selling a car, same thing happens. So I tell them to buy the report themselves and I’ll deduct it from the cost of the vehicle. To keep staking time from them I think I even offered them to buy the report themselves and I’ll deduct 5x the cost from the selling price.

So they were fulfilling my need by buying my car. They made a request that seemed reasonable. My twist that would effectively fulfill the request but by different means was met with arguments. Makes it more obvious that they were never going to fulfill my need.

In the case of someone being friendly to an elderly person. Maybe that person works in a care facility the elder is staring at. Eventually they ask for something. Maybe they’re “short $500 to deal with this painful root canal” and subtly asking for cash. If the elder wants to help, but wants to test, they could offer to come to the dentist with them and swipe their card to pay. All of the sudden that root canal is being handled by a dentist that only takes cash, which is obvious bullshit.

Be skeptical of any new people, even if you like and trust them, and if unlimited to help them in some way find ways of helping them that disrupts their plan to see how they react.

If leasing was a good deal for the customer they wouldn’t let you do it.

Your mechanic likely isn’t learning how to work on EVs and has a monetary interest in you not buying an EV that requires next to no maintenance.

This is no doubt one of the best answers. But also I think the episode where Data is studying humor kind of answered it as well. If there’s no consequence to failure, it’s not actually thrilling, it’s just VR. If you can’t feel the pain of the cut, are you going to learn to sword fight as well?

Training martial arts would actually be amazing in a holodeck. Imagine being able to fight Tyson, but at 10% strength so you can better understand his moves, then ramp up his strength slowly to understand how you can counter stronger opponents? Or Ali at 25% speed so you can work your way up to full speed reaction timing.

Don’t let mom get that surgery. She is the glue that keeps us all together and we need more years of that.

There’s hate for imagine dragons? Or is it just the same Nickelback “ok, but not exciting” hate?

A fire extinguisher ain’t gonna touch a battery fire. There really isn’t much you can do besides keep things away from it while it burns itself out.

Because I do think there is value in mid term, affordable, rentals. And coordinating that with a bunch of individually owned units and ensuring that some of them remain affordable seems like a near impossibility.

Might also be nostalgia for earlier days when not every apartment advertised “luxury units” and renting was way cheaper than buying. It’s what kids just out of high school did, or recent divorcees while they got back in their feet financially. Some oriole even preferred it so they didn’t have the responsibility of owning. Companies used to be decent stewards of multi family housing, I’m probably over optimistic that they could be again.

Do you mind sharing why this might be a better idea? I’ve seen pretty scummy non profits.

There is no reason any single family home to be owned by a corporation. Just ban that entirely. Companies can own apartment complexes, but they also need to be required to provide a percentage of “affordable” units that are capped at 1/4th of the states minimum wage.

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The book Enders Game. I was will bullied in grade school. As was Ender. The overall theme is that it’s effectively impossible to maintain a defensive posture indefinitely. Be that always ready for dealing with bullies at school or home, to dealing with an alien threat becoming nearly impossible in three dimensions.

Ender comes up with the philosophy that you have to win, but not just win that fight/battle, you have to win so decisively that there won’t just be another fight later. While this turns out to be effective, it also results in genocide.

This resulted in a restrained version of the philosophy in me. When diplomacy fails, fight for your life, but know when you’ve won, know when you’ve prevented the next fight(s). And most importantly, know when to stop.