There’s been a recession start during every Republican presidency of my lifetime (I’m in my 40s). I predict that will continue and am planning my finances accordingly.

Leading economic indicators are slightly down: https://www.conference-board.org/topics/us-leading-indicators/

Economic sentiment (one example https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/ ) is sharply down.

Predicting the economy is difficult, many different people bet real money both ways.

The best summarization I recommend considering is the discussion of the “K” shaped economy. Standards seem to be shifting, those with wealth seem to be doing well if not growing. Those at the margin or poorer seem to be getting worse. So you can have two true statements that the stock market is soaring and GDP is growing, AND most people are facing declining economic prospects.

I’m a stranger on the Internet, so don’t put too much weight on my analysis. Check historically reputable resources and even then take their predictions with a grain of salt.

The positive signs: Beto got within a 3 point margin against Cruz. Latino support for Republicans has tanked (after swinging more R than historically in 2024). There’s a net immigration to urban areas that skews more Liberal. The national sentiment is strongly against Republicans given inflation and the Iran war.

These make me hopeful.

The Negative signs: Texas has averaged 8-10 points R outside of Cruz v Beto. Texas is gerrymandered (as another user points out). Voter suppression and misinformation are significant (Texas turnout is sub-par: about 5 points below the national avg). The Texas Democratic party has repeatedly flubbed things over the past few decades.

These things keep me pessimistic.

I’ll still donate some time and money this election season, but the 2024 results really knocked down my enthusiasm for Texas turning purple.

Yum said the technologies developed in partnership with Nvidia will focus on three areas: drive-thru and call-center voice AI, computer vision to analyze operations and AI analytics at the restaurant level.

That second one is disturbing.

Duncan is asking Democratic voters to consider what the off-ramp for Republican leaders should look like in the waning days of the Trump era.

I certainly don’t trust them in any form of leadership. They need to find ways to make amends for the harm they caused before they should expect any level of power or responsibility given to them.

I hope GA can flip blue this cycle & stay there for 2028… But I’ve lost so much faith in the electorate I’ll not hold my breath.

If I was taking an emergency long trip… I’d probably buy a plane ticket?

I’ve only had my EV about 2 months; but for all the driving I’ve done (even thinking back over the past few years) it’s more than sufficient. With 2 kids and a house; long trips in the car are pretty rare. And the ones I’ve taken we need 30+ min stops every 2-3 hours anyway: for food, bathrooms, and just keeping the kids happy.

Shout out to Buccee’s for putting in a ton of chargers! They realized people will spend money inside if they have to stop for 20-30 min anyway. The gas customers are stopped that long and spending that money as well anyway it seems!

I’m super happy with it and kind of wish I bought one sooner (but, part of what made me buy now was a great deal on a used one). No regrets!

Good read. I’ve not heard of this site before, so now I’ll check out some of their older stuff! Looks like a few years of content history to browse 🙂.

Thanks for sharing!

More detailed background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticity_(economics)

Price is rarely 1% for 1%. Some things people will still use in similar quantities even if there are high price increases (e.g. life saving medication). Others people will stop using even if there are small price changes.

Agree on most of this.

I’d emphasize that while “we” (the USA) didn’t diversify, many others have. China keeps looking like it’s coming away a winner from all of trump’s missteps. They’re already a leader in battery and solar; benefiting from having ramped up renewables so much; and while the US is distracted in the Middle East can probably get away some shenanigans in their part of the world with far less blowback than would have happened a year or two ago.

Republican policies would be comically self-defeating… except it’s hard to laugh when they make so many people worse off :(

And somehow their own failures don’t lead to their defeat at the polls, I still struggle coming to terms with that.

… COVID wasn’t even that long ago? Is everyone’s memory really that bad?!?

Edit: guess they’re talking about the oil markets in isolation. But I still would want numbers, COVID was probably a larger shock, just in the other direction.

Don’t put a quote mark in your password! I learned the hard way with password’drop table users;’

/S

It’s a valid sentiment, but hard for me to support when there’s a tremendous amount of human suffering and wasted resources as the cost.

I’d rather have no war powers granted by Congress because we know trump will ignore it anyway… One more crime to add to his pile 😓. Of course, Republicans will probably end up passing something for him no matter what Dems propose or do, so kind of pointless to pontificate.

It probably does give him the name recognition that will win the primary. I also think his chances are better in the general election than Crockett.

Sign up window is already open! Need to wrap these discussions up so you’re not wasting more money trying to figure out refunds… Or having to change enrollment systems to accept requests after the current window so people can react to the decision on subsidies…

I hope I didn’t come across as joking. Bluey models probably the most wholesome parent-child relationships on television. Yes it’s acted out by cartoon dogs; but the scenarios hit home.

I’m a father of two; watching (and often emulating) Bluey has absolutely made me a better parent. It’s not all “go 100% with your kids all the time”; sometimes it’s “we have to stop playing so I can go to work” or “mom and dad are tired, let’s play a game where we don’t have to leave the couch” or “it seems we’re spending too much time watching TV or screens, how do we reconnect to the real world”. Yes, the irony of a TV show covering that last topic isn’t lost on me :P

Watch Bluey! It’s a kids show, but everyone should watch it.

Did he get $250 million for being investigated? That’s the precedent now, right?

The better to smell you with my dear.

After watching, I think this largely lines up with the impact of porn addiction being real and impactful, which I certainly don’t deny.

Likely the different emphasis is on the prevalence of internet porn addiction. He claims it’s more likely than gambling or other internet-related addictions; I wonder if that is consensus or if it’s maybe changed over time? From a societal level, I’m sure there’s more porn addiction than in the past (as he notes the availability, quality, and variety are significantly different than before the internet). But his talk implies a much larger scale than I would accept without validating the sources. From what I’m familiar with porn addiction isn’t much more or less prevalent than other internet related ones. Here’s one data point putting “cybersex” close to game addiction, but well below social media and smartphone: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35150965/ similar numbers here: https://virtual-addiction.com/technology-addiction-statistics-2024/ “Between 7 and 10% of people who watch online porn are addicted to it.”

Considering the data I’m familiar with: majority of people (in western societies) aren’t suffering the side effects of internet porn addiction and are still able to pursue typical life goals (finding a partner, marriage, children, etc). While we have seen some of these figures declining (marriage and having children). Or, these trends have been in place since before high speed internet (declining birthrates stem from the 60s in the US: https://datacommons.org/explore#q=birth+rate ). Marriage rates similarly declined well before the internet (and have stabilized in the past decade or so): https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/loo-marriage-rate-US-geographic-variation-2022-fp-23-23.html

Specifically he mentions ED as a kind of “ultimate” symptom… unfortunately I don’t see a good timeseries for ED prevalence; even across studies the estimates vary quite a bit, so I’m not sure there’s a standard measurement with a long enough history to use… that’d be an interesting metric to consider if it were available though!

I’d have to go back and check what other studies on porn use used for control groups; as this talk states “there is no control group”… I think that is inaccurate. Even if control groups aren’t available, we can still measure impacts without a control group if we can reliably track quantity in some manner. It need not be just abstinence versus usage to conduct a valid study; we can compare high, medium, and low volumes of usage. We know the volumes at which over consumption of water is harmful even though there are no people who abstain from it!

Thanks again for linking; it had a few other references & citations I’ll continue to pursue. I appreciate the different perspective on the topic!

I’ve not seen it before, I’ll check it out. Thanks!