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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • No that never happens /S

    I used to work with a supplier that hired a former Monsanto executive as their CEO. When his first agenda came out I told their sales team he was an idiot and to have fun looking for a new job a few months.

    The CEO bailed after 2 years to start his own “consulting business.”

    1 year later the company lost 75% of their market share and was laying off people left and right. They are still afloat barely.

    After a couple years “consulting”, the CEO went to another company in 2023. He didn’t bounce fast enough and got caught on this one. He was fired 2 weeks ago and the company shut their doors except for a handful of staff to facilitate the firesale of the companies assets.






  • Taxes can go either way. It depends on how they were written.

    The tax code after the Great Depression allowed for massive expansion of public projects in the U.S. It was 63% for the top earners. During WW2 the top tax bracket was at 94%.

    When the boomers were all born the tax bracket was above 70% for the top earners. This high tax bracket is what fueled the creation of a large middle class, public infrastructure, schools, research, space exploration, and the massive military buildup and wars. It also acted as an effective anti-minopoly/oligarchy system because the tax system discouraged it.

    Then in the 80’s Reagan slashed the taxes for the top earners down to 28%. its never gotten above 40% since then. Most high earning companies have so many exeptions today that the real tax rate is often 0%.

    Because of it the infrastructure built during the 50’s-70’s is degrading and falling apart. Public services are declining and the middle class is shrinking as people become more impoverished.





  • I drove over 7K miles last month. I would much rather see traffic enforcement cameras than police cars sitting on the side of the road.

    Traffic cameras attempt to document actual behavior with real evidence in an impartial manner.

    Most cops are dumb, undertrained, and overpayed parasites on society who have violent and agressive behaviors. Then they sit on the side of the road being bored out of their minds all day. When an accident does occur they mostly stand around directing traffic while the paramedics, firefighters, and wreckers do all the work. Hell the most useful thing I have seen them do is remove debris from the road with a broom and dustpan.

    City I lived in had a serious issue with people running red lights at a few intersections. Many fatal accidents and pedestrian injuries happened because of it. They put in a red light light cameras on the worst intersection. The first month it generated over $350K in fines at $125 each. Around 2,800 drivers ran that intersection. Within 3 months the number of tickets dropped to under 20 per month. The number of accidents dropped respectively as well.


  • Ehh… As somebody who is old enough to remember before the standardization and consolidation of software, I disagree with you.

    A workforce that are trained in more software options makes them more valuable to the company. It pushes for constant innovation. It’s not efficient, but innovative processes almost never are. It also increases the difficulty to replacing experienced employees.

    The widespread adoption of Photoshop as the standard has depressed wages and increased job insecurity. I also suspect that the trend of simplification in designs is the direct result of this. Mediocre talented designers are selling boring easy to create designs to artistically blind CEO’s.



  • I got my license in the U.S. when I was 16. Then in my early 20’s I lived in England for few years. I was able to drive on my U.S. license for a year. During that year I had to go through the process to get an english license to drive in the country after that. I did the whole learners permit, driving lessons, etc that first year.

    Let’s just say it was much, much, harder to get a driving license in England. I had driven over 100K miles in the U.S and 10K miles in the U.K by the time I took the test and I still barely passed it.


  • Tech tends to goes through stages:

    A need or idea is created. Usually by a small independent entity.

    A proof of concept is developed and starts to gain ground.

    Investors pour money into the concept to an extreme degree. Tech grows in functionality, matures and develops into a useful tool.

    The the investors demand a return on the investment and the money dries up.

    Company either goes bankrupt or their product goes to shit.


  • The place was a toxic cesspool at the time. An investment group had purchased 7 different companies and forced merged them in the space of 3 years and went on a massive hiring spree. The company I started with was 350 people. The company I left was over 4,000 people

    It was an illegal layoff that I could taken them to court over. However the in-house lawyer knew what was going on and made them give me one hell of a severance package to stop me from suing them. I basically got everything I reasonably would have gotten if I sued.

    That ended up being the most profitable year of my life.

    My boss ended up CEO for a few years. It didn’t go well. They have 1/2 the number of employees now and 50% less market share.


  • I am on my 3rd layoff in 10 years.

    First one I had all sort of dirt on my boss who was kissing ass to climb the corporate ladder. I was a massive liability as I knew what a waste of space he was. They laid me off with some really week excuses and a years wage/benefits to keep me quiet.

    Second one we got a new CEO who decided to make massive changes to the company “to make it more profitable”. It hasn’t shown a profit since and the layoffs are a yearly tradition now.

    The last one was this past fall. Smaller company over-invested when times where good. Then the market turned around and they are in trouble. One of those small “family” businesses, me and 20 others got kicked out of the family.

    So as of now I have my own business. I am on track to make 100% more than I ever have before working for someone else.

    Just for shits and giggles I also have an interview tomorrow for a C-suite position in a tropical country. It’s too fucking cold here.




  • People require different amounts of repetition to remember something in long term memory. The average is 8-10 repetitions if I recall correctly. What we define as gifted is really a lower required number of repetitions. Photographic memory is very rare but it only requires 1 repetition. Most “gifted students” require 2-4 repetitions to recall it. Students that struggle can require 30+ repetitions to recall the information. Some of the learning impaired can have 1000+ repetitions and never learn it.

    What’s fascinating to me is that somebody can be a low repetition in some areas but high repetition in others. For example, a person can have a high ability to remember imagery but struggle with names and language.

    To add in more complexity, short term memory varies as well. Some people have an exceptionally strong short term memory. These people excel at the study and forget it method. Give them a long sequence to remember for a short while like the old Simon game and they win everytime. Other people struggle to recall a sequence longer than 3 or 4.

    Now what your friend is describing is the ability to process information. This is referred to sometimes as critical thinking. Just like memory this varies greatly by individual it also varies by age. Most people don’t start to develop the skill until their mid-20’s if they ever do. A large percentage of the population never develops this ability. Unfortunately this skill also commonly degrades as you get older.

    FYI microeconomics is basically a little bit of vocabulary and critical thinking. Most of the text books could really be a pamphlet if they got rid of all the fluff.