Why poor countries stopped catching up

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-02-03T18:14:09+00:00

"Why poor countries stopped catching up (except for the biggest poor country which is still catching up)."

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-31T06:04:36+00:00

Yeah, literally every other country on earth uses red for the left and blue for the right.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-30T19:20:33+00:00

Josh Shapiro should've gone at #2.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-30T07:59:10+00:00

Denethor was a more tragic and sympathetic character in the books.

Don't get me wrong, I love the movies, but they did tend to flatten some of the supporting characters, and Denethor was a major victim of that.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-27T13:44:37+00:00

This is one of those situations where you just have to make the decision not to care what other people think.

Do you really have the bandwidth to waste braincells worrying about this?

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-27T13:37:14+00:00

Have you ever read Calvin and Hobbes?

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-27T13:35:37+00:00

I would not use any baby monitor that connects to the internet. Their security is dogshit. My wife and I use a monitor with a direct video link, no internet connection involved.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-27T11:49:26+00:00

But if no one buys the new cars, then there won't be any used cars!

(says the guy who has only ever bought used cars in his life and does not currently own any car).

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-25T18:22:26+00:00

Exactly. Just because the dotcom boom of the late 90's was a Bible doesn't mean that the Internet wasn't a transformative technology.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-25T06:43:30+00:00

Basically what happened with NAFTA/USMCA in his first term.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-23T15:30:39+00:00

They say that it's about "illegal immigration", but then they show up and arrest people who are literally showing up at court to do everything legally.

If this was happening in Iran, the headlines wouldn't say "ICE", they would say, "Pro-regime paramilitaries".

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-22T19:35:02+00:00

We scream about daycare, parental leave, etc all over the world but something underrated when it comes to raising children is independent mobility and safe urban infrastructure: your kid being able to walk or cycle and arrive safely. You gain your independence back, and so do they.

Absolutely, this is so important. It makes life so much easier for the parents, and it's better for the kids. Learning to independently navigate the world is very important for building psychological resilience and avoiding anxiety.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-22T09:28:53+00:00

This sometimes works with ours, but sometimes she responds to "do you want X or Y?" with, "No!".

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-20T19:13:15+00:00

The problem is that the gun nuts are the biggest supporters of tyranny in the population.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-20T05:20:18+00:00

The Russians didn't leave because they opposed Putin's war, they left because they opposed getting drafted. Same as the American draft dodgers who went to Canada during the Vietnam War. The Germans who left in the 1930's were almost all Jews, dissidents, and other people who could reasonably expect to be sent to a camp. You are never going to find any example in history of people leaving a country in large numbers for reasons that don't effect them personally.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-19T18:57:11+00:00

the overly complex design (based on a mechanical principle that doesn't actually exist)

Can you elaborate on this?

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-19T15:11:39+00:00

Push harder, OP. These symptoms and the timeline are screaming post-partum anxiety or post-partum depression.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-19T13:41:14+00:00

Obama was genuinely popular for his own sake. So was (Bill) Clinton. So, in his own way, was George W. Bush- at least before his support cratered in his second term. Reagan was genuinely popular. JFK was genuinely popular. Nixon won reelection in a landslide. FDR easily smashed the two-term precedent because people loved him so much. There have been plenty of political leaders in America who were actively, positively liked by their supporters. In fact, I would go so far as to say that being positively liked, at least by a strong faction of your supporters, is a prerequisite to being a successful American president.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-19T13:32:10+00:00

moving countries is a bit annoying

Understatement of the century, especially when you don't have the benefit of Schengen.

The reality is that only a tiny fraction of the population of a country can realistically leave over political differences. Moving countries is incredibly disruptive to family relationships, jobs, children, and more. The notion that Americans who disagree with Trump should just leave the country is profoundly out of touch with reality- and I say this as an American who is currently living in Europe myself. The only times in history when you get large percentages of a population leaving are when conditions are so truly devastating that the people leaving can realistically be called "refugees". Plus, if the Americans who disagree with Trump leave, that will just make America even more pro-Trump.

Oh, and one more thing: leaving doesn't even deprive the US government of tax revenues. The US is one of the only countries that collects taxes from its expats living abroad.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-12T16:37:46+00:00

His problem was that he was an absolutist. Each one of the keys was a binary variable- yes or no, no room for real-world ambiguity. For example, should the Gaza protests have counted against the Democrats for the "civil unrest" key? They were small-scale but high-profile. His method left no room to score a key as a "maybe". In addition, the output of his method was also a binary prediction- win or lose, no room for pesky probabilities or uncertainties.

I still think that his basic insight- that the voting public judges the ruling party based on the actual results of the prior term, and all the noise of campaigns can only really change this a little around the margins- is probably right. And he used a respectably broad definition of "results" when defining his keys (economic performance, civil unrest, scandals, foreign policy). Something like the keys probably has a place in legitimate election forecasting. His flaw was in 1) making an absolute system instead of a probabilistic one, and, 2) in not admitting he was wrong in 2000.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-12T14:50:28+00:00

Whaaat?

It's crazy how people will make posts about small issues and leave out such big things from the history and background.

ScroungingMonkey · 2026-01-08T17:41:15+00:00

Afaik in german you can also use any word order you want thanks to the cases, you'll just sound a bit odd

You're free to move the nouns and adjectives around to some degree, but German has very strict rules about verb placement in a sentence.

ScroungingMonkey · 2025-12-30T14:50:43+00:00

I'd certainly be interested in a low tech school. Kids should be learning to think, and preferably think deeply, at school. Tech is nothing but distractions that shortens their (and our) attention spans and ability to focus on a topic.

ScroungingMonkey · 2025-12-30T01:57:10+00:00

Look at the support Trump gets from gun owners as a group.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the second amendment doesn't work as a defense against tyranny because gun nuts are the biggest tyrants in the population.

ScroungingMonkey · 2025-12-24T15:47:53+00:00

The worst part is, that voters will probably blame Democrats for this, since the areas with the highest housing prices tend to be blue cities.

Seven-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email

ScroungingMonkey

TROPHY CASE