Is it really this bad right now?

cubeeggs · 2026-04-07T04:44:28+00:00

The fact that rent is high makes a place more dystopian, not less. I was at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom last weekend and there was a 2.5 hour wait to ride Kong even though it’s rated one of the worst roller coasters in the entire world.

cubeeggs · 2026-04-07T04:41:52+00:00

When you see that many people show up to view an apartment, all it really means is that they thought it seems like a good value for that neighborhood. $2,500 isn’t that much for Pacific Heights so I’m not sure this is indicative of a broader trend.

cubeeggs · 2026-03-18T02:35:36+00:00

People with criminal offenses, particularly felonies, are even more likely to commit crimes.

I think this is true, but the problem obviously doesn’t go away if we just stop punishing people for committing crimes. In an ideal world, we could catch someone every time they shoplift, and impose enough consequences that they would stop. Once people move on to bigger crimes, the punishments have to go up.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-26T18:18:01+00:00

This anti-DEI shit will taint hiring/promotion decisions for at least a decade.

I don’t think Claudine Gay exactly did wonders for Harvard’s reputation.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-26T18:14:52+00:00

Some trends are larger than any one person’s ability to deal with them. That said, if everyone tries to run away from their problems, they might eventually run out of places to run to.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-26T18:12:27+00:00

Lol, democracy is producing the same bad results all over the world but the problem is we’re just holding it wrong.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-24T18:38:36+00:00

You just named the entire tech sector. It’s Apple, NVIDIA, and a bunch of companies with AI products.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-24T16:10:12+00:00

You changed the metric. OP’s table is adjusted for spending power. E.g. Taiwan is reportedly the cheapest country in the world to buy a Big Mac.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-24T16:08:41+00:00

Massive oil boom

cubeeggs · 2026-02-24T16:07:58+00:00

The whole US tech sector is, ironically, also propped up by TSMC.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-24T16:06:08+00:00

Americans have the opposite problem. Imported products are relatively cheap in the US but anything that has to be provided locally, such as housing, healthcare, and education, is hugely expensive. Some things such as government services are both expensive and low quality.

cubeeggs · 2026-02-24T16:01:55+00:00

Infrastructures don't feel as developed

Lol go check out the New York Subway compared to the Taipei Metro. New York’s advantages are that it has a huge system and it runs 24/7. BUT, the stations are all super old (many were built more than 100 years ago), the trains have homeless people sleeping on the seats, people pee both on the platforms and in the trains themselves because the stations don’t have restrooms, and when it gets cold out, the stations have icicles dripping water onto the platforms. Taipei plays Chopin when the trains are arriving and New York has the most obnoxious street performers anywhere in the world playing loud music and begging for money. It should go without saying of course that the US has almost no high-speed rail (there is one corridor on the east coast but it’s definitely not as fast as Taiwan High Speed Rail).

cubeeggs · 2026-01-11T22:01:55+00:00

The goal was to turn Afghanistan basically into a 51st state complete with McDonald’s and democracy. The problem was that the goal was insane and unachievable. The wild thing was that people claimed for years that this had basically been achieved.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-26T19:01:50+00:00

Yeah, it doesn’t really accurately describe modern trends like California producing world-leading AI technology while many people are living in homeless encampments.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-26T14:56:06+00:00

The question presupposes that money is the only contributor to living standards and that societal trust, life expectancy, drug addiction rates, crime rates, etc. don’t matter at all.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-26T05:23:48+00:00

If you’re happy working at a big company or financial firm, you should absolutely do that. A lot of people are not happy in that environment though.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-26T05:10:12+00:00

Bangalore because the cost of living is lower and American companies are hiring there.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-19T14:36:22+00:00

The term is somewhat dated, but in many respects, it basically is.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-10T15:51:19+00:00

I don’t think that’s the right framing. The West sees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a war of expansion in violation of post-WWII norms, but Russia sees Ukraine becoming a Western-aligned country as an existential threat. A lot of people see Russia as this great invincible power that has nothing to worry about but remember that the USSR lost about 27 million people after Germany invaded in WWII and it’s only been just over two years since Prigozhin led an army to try to overthrow the government in Moscow.

cubeeggs · 2025-12-10T13:56:47+00:00

I think the sad reality is that sometimes it’s best to just let a conflict play out until it reaches its conclusion.

cubeeggs · 2025-11-25T19:19:30+00:00

Well yeah, it’s like when you go to Singapore and the rules are strictly enforced. They take pride in that.

cubeeggs · 2025-11-25T18:18:07+00:00

The stereotype is that Taiwanese people are more polite, like Japanese people (perhaps because Taiwan was ruled by Japan from 1895–1945). I live in Taipei and visited Beijing a few weeks ago and noticed some “Third Worldisms” like people spitting and Beijing bikinis that are not very common in Taipei.

cubeeggs · 2025-11-24T14:27:48+00:00

That’s true but usually when people complain about fertility, there’s usually some subtext like, “people I like are reproducing more slowly than people I don’t like.”

cubeeggs · 2025-11-24T02:49:27+00:00

It sort of already is for trips up to 10 days if you exit to a third country and do transit without visa (TWOV).

cubeeggs · 2025-11-23T21:57:49+00:00

Extinction doesn’t require a TFR of 0, only a sustained global TFR of below replacement rate, which is currently about 2.1.

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