Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

[jdm667]

The internet is being filled with trash to rank on Google and YouTube. But long articles and videos fluffed out to get ranked aren't what people want.

Google will have to remedy this or people will stop using their search engine and bye-bye advertiser revenue.

I think this is what's making YouTube shorts and TikTok so refreshing. Creators have to get their point across in under 60s. I just spent 10 minutes watching tips about Linkedin from a guy on TikTok. I feel my time is better spent than watching a 20 minute long video that has the first 5 minutes telling me why I should subscribe.

When Google and YouTube remedy this (and I bet they will) they will reward articles and videos that get to the point. We can already see it happening as YouTube automatically creates chapters in videos.

Good points Andy. I loved it when they added chapters to YouTube videos!

When I write content, I give an easy-to-understand summary answer at the beginning (get to the point!)

Then, people can keep reading to get more detail if they want to. I think they are more likely to stick around for longer content if you help them out right away.

If you play the game of "keep reading/watching to get the answer", then yes - people will get pissed off.

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

View attachment 44919

Pretty crazy to see how leveraged up all these people are.

At first I was outraged like everyone else, but then I thought... Maybe they are all lying, and it's fake, to encourage viewers to go out and BUY BUY BUY!

Would be very typical. And of course, lots of people do.

What is the number one way to get people to spend more money? Let them use a LOAN when doing so!

Like with federal, government-backed, student loans for college... Oops!
That one has certainly already become a hyperreality and ingrained into the minds of the youth as "normal." Who *doesn't* have student loans, right?? Right????

edit: sigh. Some people are really stupid and don't realize this is the exact tone that all of MJ's books are written in.

 

[Antifragile]

At first I was outraged like everyone else, but then I thought...

And now you are even more outraged?

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

And now you are even more outraged?

Not at all, it's called poor portrayal of emotion via text.

But looks like I got you on the hook You are so easy though!!

 

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[Antifragile]

Not at all, it's called poor portrayal of emotion via text.

But looks like I got you on the hook You are so easy though!!

What?

 

[MoneyDoc]

Not sure what the hate on car payments are? I didn't watch that video posted, but I'm assuming that guy is burnt out yet has a huge car payment for the show?

I love cars so if someone tells me why on earth I'm paying say $3k/month for "just a car", I'll tell them to F off. What's the point in living if everything you do is calculated?

Don't get me wrong, there's a big difference between someone working a 9-5, barely meeting ends meet, yet leases a 2022 BMW for $800/month to "show off" to his friends or to "fit in", and someone running a successful business who doesn't want to pay cash and $3k/month is a drop in the bucket for him. I'm just saying, not everything has to be about percentages. You make $60k/year? Your car payment has to be 5% of your after tax salary. Says who? Lol. You can either afford it or you can't. There's no in-betweens. You either somehow make the payments, or you don't...

 

[Antifragile]

Not sure what the hate on car payments are?

I hate unproductive debt in general. But I don’t care what other people do.

Payment on cars typically means you want it before you can afford it and will pay interest for having your desired item sooner. Sometimes there are zero interest incentive loans, which make sense, and I’d still hate making a monthly payment. To each their own. But since you asked …


That said, I am bothered by people promoting car debt as a “oh don’t worry, you can afford it, you have a stable job”. It screams everything wrong with the scripted living.

 

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[MoneyDoc]

I hate unproductive debt in general. But I don’t care what other people do.

Payment on cars typically means you want it before you can afford it and will pay interest for having your desired item sooner. Sometimes there are zero interest incentive loans, which make sense, and I’d still hate making a monthly payment. To each their own. But since you asked …


That said, I am bothered by people promoting car debt as a “oh don’t worry, you can afford it, you have a stable job”. It screams everything wrong with the scripted living.

Again, I totally agree!

My point really was, and you basically said it in your post, I don’t really care if someone has a $2k/month loan while barely meeting ends meet. If they’re making the payments, so be it.

Your last point is something that a typical car salesman preaches on the daily lmao and I agree, annoying as hell. Worst of all, most fine tune the term so the buyer thinks they’re getting “low payments!” yet don’t realize what they’re on the hook for. I totally understand the negative stigma around car salesman after dealing with a few.

 

[Antifragile]

Worst of all, most fine tune the term so the buyer thinks they’re getting “low payments!” yet don’t realize what they’re on the hook for. I totally understand the negative stigma around car salesman after dealing with a few.

Yup.

A few years ago I looked at 911 GT3 “used” (meaning 3,000 kms, practically speaking brand new) and available in the dealership. Sales guy basically “forced” me to his office to chat. He said he has the same car (yeah ok) and lightning fast did the calculations for my payments. I told him I don’t like debt, typically pay in cash. It was like a deer in a headlight moment.

I didn’t buy it because I felt it was too expensive for my after tax dollars. I am an idiot now that values went up like crazy. I could have driven it for a few years for essentially free. Crazy how the world works sometimes.

Edit: I also like cars, and spend way too much on them. But less so now that I’m older. Preferences on what makes us happy change with time.

 

[Kak]

Not sure what the hate on car payments are? I didn't watch that video posted, but I'm assuming that guy is burnt out yet has a huge car payment for the show?

I love cars so if someone tells me why on earth I'm paying say $3k/month for "just a car", I'll tell them to F off. What's the point in living if everything you do is calculated?

Don't get me wrong, there's a big difference between someone working a 9-5, barely meeting ends meet, yet leases a 2022 BMW for $800/month to "show off" to his friends or to "fit in", and someone running a successful business who doesn't want to pay cash and $3k/month is a drop in the bucket for him. I'm just saying, not everything has to be about percentages. You make $60k/year? Your car payment has to be 5% of your after tax salary. Says who? Lol. You can either afford it or you can't. There's no in-betweens. You either somehow make the payments, or you don't...

I totally see your point. And that’s at least not the point I was making.

When you work at a car dealership making, I don’t know, 40-60k a year? Maybe 80k? And you’re spending over a grand a month on a car payment, you are working like a week or more per month just for the car. Most of us can’t imagine being willing to sacrifice such a massive chunk of those wages (and their lives) on the transportation they only really use to drive them to their crappy job.

It’s a F*cked way to live.

I’ve financed cars, I’ve leased cars, I’ve paid cash for cars. I always did what made sense in that moment. Financing cars when we have 8 percent annual inflation means in year 6 you’re going to be paying that loan back with money worth ~60 cents on today’s dollar. I’ll rob the bank like that any day. Every single time I could have paid cash many many times over.

Point is, do things that you can afford. Who cares how?

These people don’t meet our definitions of being able to afford such things and it’s sad that they’ve made it such a high priority that they’re willing to blow literally 4-5 months of their work year on looking cool/rich. Avoiding repossession is not the standard we hold ourselves to.

 

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[biophase]

Wow. They’re all owned by cars both financially and emotionally. That’s just sad.

It looked like they all worked at the car dealership? Don’t understand if the video was supposed to be a flex or a negative.

It would be nice if they mentioned their interest rate and term of the loan.

I mean I would $5k a month for 12 months at 0% interest and the video would make me look like a huge loser.

 

[PureA]

Car payments are wild. F*ck.

They hit a personal pain point as I watched my parents pay double in car payments than the cost of the mortgage payment.
Interest-only mortgage payment, but two brand new Mercedes in the driveway with private plates. As long as the Jones's (who we hate) think we're doing good, right? Insanity. But useful and motivating for me to be exposed to these cognitive distortions early, lol.

I would always think that people spending 500-1000 on car payments when they make 2000 a month... trying to show people how wealthy they are... If they actually picked up a reasonable used car they would actually have a spare 1000 p/m and WOULD have the excess income they are trying to signal that they have... crazy world.

 

[MitchC]

I've never had a car payment in my life.

During covid our govt introduced "instant asset write off" to get businesses to spend money.

Basically anything up to $250k you could write off in the first year instead of depreciating it.

I went to buy a new car.

The sales lady spent ages arguing with me that I was going to save money on my taxes by financing.

This was a while ago but I do remember saying something like "So you want me to pay 7% interest so that I can write that interest payment off to save on my taxes?" "So you want me to write the car off over 5 years instead of writing the whole thing off now?" That was basically the back and forward of the conversation. I still have no idea what she was trying to get me to do other than sign up for a high interest loan I didn't need.

The only way it would make sense was if I could write the entire car purchase off in the first year and then write every payment off after that, but that just doesn't seem right?

If it was 0% interest or very low, and I needed the money to do other things, I can see it making sense to keep the cheap cash, but it was like 7% interest during the money printing covid days when my mortgage was at like 1.99%.

Also that video seems to be using what I call the sheep method of marketing. Basically make it seem like everyone is doing something or has something. Make it seem like it's normal, like everyone is doing it, so if you aren't, you are doing something wrong, or missing out, or aren't cool.

The best example of this is hitting every influencer and micro influencer with a product at the same time to make it seem like everyone has one. Loading your website with social proof making it seem like you have millions of customers and they are the only person without your product.

The news and media do this too with politics and vaccines etc. Poll numbers showing the desired result so people think the majority shown on the poll must be the right choice, celebrities doing things, showing how many people have done something etc.

 

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[Sander]

I just learned that 99% of the world's padel courts are in South America or Europe. I'd bet there is HUGE opportunity for the right entrepreneur in the US to grow this.

The first result on Google tells me it's around 27-33k USD for a padel court. It's probably cheaper if you buy enough of them.

Build a chain nation wide of plug and play courts and swim in cash.

 

[Andy Black]

Go @ZCP & @BigRomeDawg !!

 

[Antifragile]

Also that video seems to be using what I call the sheep method of marketing. Basically make it seem like everyone is doing something or has something. Make it seem like it's normal, like everyone is doing it, so if you aren't, you are doing something wrong, or missing out, or aren't cool.

Some people call it a “scripted living”
I like sheep marketing too!

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

I've never had a car payment in my life.

During covid our govt introduced "instant asset write off" to get businesses to spend money.

Basically anything up to $250k you could write off in the first year instead of depreciating it.

I went to buy a new car.

The sales lady spent ages arguing with me that I was going to save money on my taxes by financing.

This was a while ago but I do remember saying something like "So you want me to pay 7% interest so that I can write that interest payment off to save on my taxes?" "So you want me to write the car off over 5 years instead of writing the whole thing off now?" That was basically the back and forward of the conversation. I still have no idea what she was trying to get me to do other than sign up for a high interest loan I didn't need.

The only way it would make sense was if I could write the entire car purchase off in the first year and then write every payment off after that, but that just doesn't seem right?

If it was 0% interest or very low, and I needed the money to do other things, I can see it making sense to keep the cheap cash, but it was like 7% interest during the money printing covid days when my mortgage was at like 1.99%.

Also that video seems to be using what I call the sheep method of marketing. Basically make it seem like everyone is doing something or has something. Make it seem like it's normal, like everyone is doing it, so if you aren't, you are doing something wrong, or missing out, or aren't cool.

The best example of this is hitting every influencer and micro influencer with a product at the same time to make it seem like everyone has one. Loading your website with social proof making it seem like you have millions of customers and they are the only person without your product.

The news and media do this too with politics and vaccines etc. Poll numbers showing the desired result so people think the majority shown on the poll must be the right choice, celebrities doing things, showing how many people have done something etc.

Yes it's a very common tactic: pretend that "everyone is doing it," as a method to encourage more people to do it.

 

[Antifragile]

Stephen Hawking on the future for us humans… mind blowing, yet seems to be more than just plausible!

"Laws will probably be passed against genetic engineering with humans. But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as size of memory, resistance to disease and length of life. Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be major political problems with the unimproved humans, who won’t be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings, who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate."

(Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions)

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Stephen Hawking on the future for us humans… mind blowing, yet seems to be more than just plausible!

"Laws will probably be passed against genetic engineering with humans. But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as size of memory, resistance to disease and length of life. Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be major political problems with the unimproved humans, who won’t be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings, who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate."

(Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions)

And a totally unimportant conjecture for Hawking, who is dead now.

 

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[Antifragile]

And a totally unimportant conjecture for Hawking, who is dead now.

I am working on a 75 year lease for a land we own. Based on my age and current life expectancy, I won't be around to see it expire. It may be my grandchildren working on it... who knows? It is not unimportant for me just because I'll be dead.

Hearing aids today connect to your phone. You can tap and start talking to someone as if it was "headphones". We download memory of phone numbers, addressed, routes to get to/from cities - all into phones (GPS). The "modification" of humans has long begun and it feels more than a conjecture, which is my point. And again, it does not feel unimportant, quite the opposite - it was important to him while he was alive, or he wouldn't write about it.

I admire him for what Hawking accomplished in life. He had some of the worst challenges (health) life could throw at a human being and he did more than most.

 

[MitchC]

Some people call it a “scripted living”
I like sheep marketing too!

View attachment 44934

Yup, that caption may as well read “wait for me!”

Stephen Hawking on the future for us humans… mind blowing, yet seems to be more than just plausible!

"Laws will probably be passed against genetic engineering with humans. But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as size of memory, resistance to disease and length of life. Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be major political problems with the unimproved humans, who won’t be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings, who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate."

(Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions)

Klaus Schwab and his WEF friends are big on this, they love talking about it. The Crispr documentary on Netflix is cool. Combine that with mRNA, and whatever brain chip nonsense elon is working on and we aren’t as far off as people think.

 

[Matt Sun]

Stephen Hawking on the future for us humans… mind blowing, yet seems to be more than just plausible!

"Laws will probably be passed against genetic engineering with humans. But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as size of memory, resistance to disease and length of life. Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be major political problems with the unimproved humans, who won’t be able to compete. Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings, who are improving themselves at an ever-increasing rate."

(Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions)

Imagine having 20x the current human memory and still forgeting your anniversary . What excuse will you have? You really want to open pandora's box ?!

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

I am working on a 75 year lease for a land we own. Based on my age and current life expectancy, I won't be around to see it expire. It may be my grandchildren working on it... who knows? It is not unimportant for me just because I'll be dead.

Hearing aids today connect to your phone. You can tap and start talking to someone as if it was "headphones". We download memory of phone numbers, addressed, routes to get to/from cities - all into phones (GPS). The "modification" of humans has long begun and it feels more than a conjecture, which is my point. And again, it does not feel unimportant, quite the opposite - it was important to him while he was alive, or he wouldn't write about it.

I admire him for what Hawking accomplished in life. He had some of the worst challenges (health) life could throw at a human being and he did more than most.

Yes, I admire him for overcoming his challenges. No, I don't think it is useless...You are working on something for your kids and grandkids... I do think "guessing" about the state of the world in the future is kind of pointless, though fun. Writing a book full of guesses about the future and calling it science is silly, but it sells well. "Someday we will have gene editing, and this will cause problems." Yes, I suppose.

You're improving your family's lot in life, which is quite real.

 

[Antifragile]

Imagine having 20x the current human memory and still forgeting your anniversary . What excuse will you have? You really want to open pandora's box ?!

It was stored in the wrong calendar, damn Google vs Microsoft Office!

Yup, that caption may as well read “wait for me!”

Klaus Schwab and his WEF friends are big on this, they love talking about it. The Crispr documentary on Netflix is cool. Combine that with mRNA, and whatever brain chip nonsense elon is working on and we aren’t as far off as people think.

I didn't watch the Crispr but sounds interesting. This topic is really quite fascinating. On the one hand, we might build "robot/human" on the other hand - what if genetic tinkering produces unintended opposite results, instead of longer life, creates a new class of illness that wipes out most if not all humans? I am not a scientist, but evolution is slow, very slow, that's why it works. Trying to manually introduce "improvement" changes into our genes can surely backfire.

 

[MitchC]

It was stored in the wrong calendar, damn Google vs Microsoft Office!



I didn't watch the Crispr but sounds interesting. This topic is really quite fascinating. On the one hand, we might build "robot/human" on the other hand - what if genetic tinkering produces unintended opposite results, instead of longer life, creates a new class of illness that wipes out most if not all humans? I am not a scientist, but evolution is slow, very slow, that's why it works. Trying to manually introduce "improvement" changes into our genes can surely backfire.

It’s well worth watching.

A few random things from it that you might find interesting that I remember from it

Creating rats that can’t have babies and adding them to an island that’s meant to be pest free. The idea being their kids won’t be able to have babies, eventually every rat on the island breeds with one of those and they all die out.

Glow in the dark monkeys made using jellyfish dna.

Choosing babies eye colour etc.

A Chinese man made a baby that’s immune to aids.

That’s all I remember.

Plenty of room for massive humanity changing F*ck ups whether accidental or deliberate.

I’m not saying it’s good or bad but you are right it’s inevitable. Combine that with ai and we are in for a pretty wild future.

 

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[Bekit]

Wow.

So apparently, linking to this forum in a Facebook post is considered a capital offense.

Yesterday, I wrote up a post to share in the @Fox Legends Program facebook group. I typed up a few observations and lessons that had arisen from a series of posts in this Random Chats thread. I linked to this thread in my post.

Within 5 minutes, Facebook had classified my post as spam.

In case you can't see the image for whatever reason, it says this:

This post goes against our community standards on Spam.
Only the author of the post and people who manage The Fox Legends Program can see this post.
We have these standards to prevent things like false advertising, fraud and security breaches.
If your content goes against our Community Standards again, your account may be restricted or disabled.
You can disagree with the decision if you think we got it wrong.

Wow. Just wow.

I know for a fact that Fox didn't flag my post.

This was just Facebook's algorithm "detecting" that my post was "spam." The rest of my post was just talking about business lessons. The only thing I can think of that was an "offense" in facebook's eyes was the link.

Oh, and by the way, Facebook FORCES you to hit "Continue," or you can't continue to use the website. You can't even open facebook in a new tab without this popup taking over your screen.

So when you hit "Continue," you're presented with this series of screens:


Yeah... "You can disagree with the decision, but you can't get your post back." LOL.

So apparently, if I make the mistake of linking to FLF again on Facebook, I'm at risk of losing my account. Wonderful. (Not that I would miss it that much!)

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Wow.

So apparently, linking to this forum in a Facebook post is considered a capital offense.

Yesterday, I wrote up a post to share in the @Fox Legends Program facebook group. I typed up a few observations and lessons that had arisen from a series of posts in this Random Chats thread. I linked to this thread in my post.

Within 5 minutes, Facebook had classified my post as spam.
View attachment 44935
In case you can't see the image for whatever reason, it says this:

This post goes against our community standards on Spam.
Only the author of the post and people who manage The Fox Legends Program can see this post.
We have these standards to prevent things like false advertising, fraud and security breaches.
If your content goes against our Community Standards again, your account may be restricted or disabled.
You can disagree with the decision if you think we got it wrong.

Wow. Just wow.

I know for a fact that Fox didn't flag my post.

This was just Facebook's algorithm "detecting" that my post was "spam." The rest of my post was just talking about business lessons. The only thing I can think of that was an "offense" in facebook's eyes was the link.

Oh, and by the way, Facebook FORCES you to hit "Continue," or you can't continue to use the website. You can't even open facebook in a new tab without this popup taking over your screen.

So when you hit "Continue," you're presented with this series of screens:

View attachment 44936
Yeah... "You can disagree with the decision, but you can't get your post back." LOL.

So apparently, if I make the mistake of linking to FLF again on Facebook, I'm at risk of losing my account. Wonderful. (Not that I would miss it that much!)

Yup, this is the way the mega censors control the flow of information. They probably scrape the site, notice some key words in certain posts and comments, and blacklist it.

You are only permitted to say and think certain things.

 

[Fox]

Wow.

So apparently, linking to this forum in a Facebook post is considered a capital offense.

Yesterday, I wrote up a post to share in the @Fox Legends Program facebook group. I typed up a few observations and lessons that had arisen from a series of posts in this Random Chats thread. I linked to this thread in my post.

Within 5 minutes, Facebook had classified my post as spam.
View attachment 44935
In case you can't see the image for whatever reason, it says this:

This post goes against our community standards on Spam.
Only the author of the post and people who manage The Fox Legends Program can see this post.
We have these standards to prevent things like false advertising, fraud and security breaches.
If your content goes against our Community Standards again, your account may be restricted or disabled.
You can disagree with the decision if you think we got it wrong.

Wow. Just wow.

I know for a fact that Fox didn't flag my post.

This was just Facebook's algorithm "detecting" that my post was "spam." The rest of my post was just talking about business lessons. The only thing I can think of that was an "offense" in facebook's eyes was the link.

Oh, and by the way, Facebook FORCES you to hit "Continue," or you can't continue to use the website. You can't even open facebook in a new tab without this popup taking over your screen.

So when you hit "Continue," you're presented with this series of screens:

View attachment 44936
Yeah... "You can disagree with the decision, but you can't get your post back." LOL.

So apparently, if I make the mistake of linking to FLF again on Facebook, I'm at risk of losing my account. Wonderful. (Not that I would miss it that much!)

Ya, 100% I didn't flag this, and students link out to other websites all the time.
I will try to post a link to the forum myself and see if the same thing happens.

I'm not that surprised, though - the current admin very likely has this forum flagged.
Too much free thinking around the place.

 

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[Fox]

This just worked fine, @Bekit - how many links did you have in your original post?

One way (if it is a lot of links) might be to make a google doc with the forum links that you post instead.

 

[Bekit]

View attachment 44937

This just worked fine, @Bekit - how many links did you have in your original post?

One way (if it is a lot of links) might be to make a google doc with the forum links that you post instead.

Just one link. But you're the group admin. So you might escape being viewed as a spammer, compared to me, since I've been relatively inactive in the group.

I'll email you the full post that I tried to submit.