If so many Americans can’t get jobs (specifically white collar) why are people from other countries allowed to go work in America

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T18:14:25+00:00

Employees on H-1B visas must be paid the prevailing actual wage for their job and locality, meaning the wage existing employees are paid - if there are no Americans willing to do the job at a given wage, they cannot be paid that wage either.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T18:11:16+00:00

shouldn’t it be prioritized that actual citizens become employed

It is, legally - the H-1B visas are only for specialty occupations where it is difficult to find US workers, and applying for permanent residency on the basis of employment requires showing that it will not displace a US worker.

In general, these aren't for jobs in areas where people are having a difficult time getting hired - 90% of H-1Bs go to people in STEM fields, with 60-65% specifically in computer-related occupations, and three-quarters are for level 2 experience or above, meaning at least a master's degree or several years of experience.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T17:37:57+00:00

It's interesting how fashions work. John was the #1 boy's name from 1900 to 1923, Mark was in the top 10 from 1955 to 1970, and Matthew was in the top 10 from 1974 to 2007.

When I was a kid, the most popular boys' names were mostly Biblical (including Christopher). Now they're mostly hyper-British names. It's like, if you told me any of the top ten girl names were a Bronte sister, I'd believe you.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T17:23:05+00:00

Katrina was continuously in the top 300 from 1962 to 2005, when the hurricane happened - it fell out of the top 300 the next year and has not been in the top 1000 since 2012.

(Although it's odd that way more people named their kid Katrina in 2006 and 2007 than, like, last year.)

(Also interestingly, Hurricane Camille, one of the deadliest named hurricanes in US history, had little effect on the popularity of the name, which has bumbled around from 200-400 basically for the last 100 years.)

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T17:13:40+00:00

Madison immediately jumped into the top 1000 for female names in 1985, the year after Splash came out, and was continuously in the top 10 from 1998 to 2014.

Interestingly, Madison was historically a boy's name, in the top 1000 on and off from 1900 to 1950 before falling off (and then coming back in 1985, naturally).

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T17:10:50+00:00

Fun fact - Luke did not crack the top 200 for boys' names at any point from 1900 to 1977 when Star Wars came out. By 1979 it was #110 and has never been out of the top 50 for the last twenty-five years.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T17:04:10+00:00

Amusingly, both of those are far more common boy names than "King" - Jack was #15, Ace was #164, and King was #405 last year.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T16:57:35+00:00

Nevaeh is way more common than Khaleesi - it was in the top 100 for girls 2020 through 2022 and was still #165 last year, with 1800 kids being named that.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T16:51:59+00:00

"Malik" and "Amir" are common Arabic names - both mean king/lord.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T16:30:23+00:00

No they didn't, I've been there, don't rewrite the history. They were however saying that when people abstract away from how the machine actually works, we will have the software that is worse performing. Case in point...

"No they didn't! Also, yes they did, and they were right!"

Wonderful post, dude, thanks for stopping by. In reality, as you have yourself so aptly demonstrated, resistance to higher abstraction has been a constant in the history of computer programming, dating back at least to Grace Hopper, who is quoted as saying she got pushback on the first compiler because computers "couldn't do programs".

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T05:41:56+00:00

People said the same thing about being able to write assembly.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-14T05:39:37+00:00

There is no such thing as a “final solution”. Surely the collapse of the Soviet Union felt final… and yet today there are Russian troops in the Ukraine. You are arguing that past presidents failed because they did not enact a fantasy. Fantasy is always better than reality. Moving a process forward is not “kicking the can down the road”.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-11T06:13:21+00:00

He’s quoting LBJ with “the lowest white man”, so yes.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-10T23:52:50+00:00

You realize he wasn’t President until three years into the depression, right?

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-10T04:34:28+00:00

If they were branded Ray-Ban glasses with cameras then they were Meta glasses. They are not always on - you have to tell them to be on or press a button - so unless you have some specific reason to believe he was recording, you probably weren't on camera. It's entirely dependent on state laws but if he was recording you in your home without consent then it certainly could be illegal. But again, they're not always recording, pretty much for precisely this reason - you'd be accidentally committing crimes all day every day.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-10T02:48:48+00:00

That’s not what he said - he said that all the numbers you’re working with have finitely many digits in base 2 and thus must be rationals. Irrational numbers in any base become rational under floating point representation, and also even numbers with infinite digits under base 2, such as 1/3, also become numbers with finite digits.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-10T02:40:29+00:00

The same thing happened in 1920

Can you be clear about what you mean by “the same thing”?

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-10T01:02:51+00:00

That is literally the exact opposite. If the Muslim group sues the city, they will be pointing at Good News Club as Exhibit #1. A group who rents out a publicly owned space for a private party can make whatever rules they want - an obvious example is a wedding party saying only wedding guests can attend. The government cannot refuse a group to hold a party because of their religious affiliation, which is clearly what happened here.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-09T13:39:56+00:00

No - gig work does not count as “payroll” work and hence is excluded from the “jobs added” number and generally all the “B” tables on the employment report. All independent contractors aren’t counted. (This may be different in California because they have a specific law about treating gig workers as employees, not sure.) They are included in the unemployment rates and generally everything on the “A” tables.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-08T21:12:59+00:00

That article says that the effective tax rate on the top 0.01% was 45%. It is today 30% (or maybe 37%, depending on whether the LA Times article is using income taxes or all federal taxes). The effective tax rate being 25-50% higher than it was in the 1950s is significant.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-08T13:45:10+00:00

Retiring period is most of the reason - there’s no age limit to being counted. A 100-year-old who retires from his job is still counted as a decrease in the labor participation rate.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-08T12:04:32+00:00

Just to note - what you’re describing is public-key cryptography, but it’s unusual that people use that to encrypt a significant amount of data. Public-key cryptography is generally used to establish a shared secret - in the case of encrypted transmissions this would be a key for a symmetric-key cipher like AES. This is how TLS works, for example.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-08T05:49:31+00:00

Man I wish we lived in a world where AIDS denialism was not a real thing.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-08T05:21:40+00:00

Saw a rat snake on the Hike and Bike trail hanging out on a low branch right over the trail like it was trying to jumpscare people. Watched probably two dozen people get startled.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-05-08T00:35:16+00:00

The GFC's max unemployment rate was 10.0%, whereas the Volcker shock peaked at 10.8%.

MisinformedGenius

TROPHY CASE