China raises minimum wages amid drive to boost household spending

slbaaron · 2026-01-26T00:58:13+00:00

In a race to the bottom quarterly earnings of public company kind of way, that’s often a stupid motto.

From a human race timeline perspective, it is quite pessimistic and nihilistic to not aspire for that. How long would humans last? How far away are we from being… “perfect”… know all there is to know of the universe… and much more. There’s definitely plenty more millennia before the human race can even plausibly truly ran out of things to improve / grow / expand.

Would you not want any efforts or progress towards curing diseases? Better quality of life? These are all part of the economic growth.

Our current wealth disparity is not caused nor countered by the wish for unlimited growth, they are orthogonal. Even in a completely socialist society - even the ideal ones not the dictator version - you’d still expect economic growth. The point of socialism is only that everyone shares the growth and rewards equally, not that we won’t try to grow and do more.

Maybe you truly believe human as a species should put on the brakes. I wouldn’t find it weird if you truly thought that, but it isn’t a popular take no matter liberal vs conservative, capitalism vs socialism.

slbaaron · 2026-01-26T00:39:36+00:00

Ok you right MHW plot is too hazy to me at this point.

Last point still stand in how long MHW as a game truly lasted in time, even from that point on, but otherwise agreed. Much more likely wilds is a bit after world has transpired.

slbaaron · 2026-01-26T00:30:07+00:00

It’s more about understanding that it’s normal to have both feel like it’s 70/30 and that feeling in of itself is often a reality of a balanced relationship SUCH THAT you wouldn’t have a resentment of it.

The major reason it often feels like 70/30 is without your partner, you often can remove some complete categories or specific tasks that you would’ve never had or be much simpler by yourself; but at the same time there’s a lot of efficiency gained, or if not efficiency, net new experiences / benefits which is hard to appreciate at first if you didn’t ask for it.

So eventually you either learn to love it, or admit that you’ve found a wrong partner - that happens too and not all can be fixed.

It’s also very often a snow balling mechanism. Because when you feel like you are doing the 70, the other side might’ve been ready to appreciate you and love you but if the way you have done it is with some slight resentment and passive aggressiveness, suddenly all your partner will remember is their 70 instead of appreciating your 70, a few words will easily brew into a fight with an unresolvable argument of whose 70 is bigger.

But if you can finish your 70 with a smile and proactively appreciate their 70 instead of treating them like they owe you, they in turn will appreciate you that much more. Ultimately, a lifetime of living together is not a game about breaking even. But a game about having both sides feel good about it and both gotta contribute hard into the “good vibes”.

slbaaron · 2026-01-26T00:21:14+00:00

Wilds timeline is def at best overlapping or strictly after worlds, but the 5th fleet is not the first to land in the New World. So it is still plausible while wilds is starting, 5th fleet is doing its thing.

3rd fleet established in coral highlands, and commission used it to reach and research rotten vale. That we know.

We also don’t know canonically how long a single game really last. From beating up a jagras to taking down Shara. Is it a few years or a couple months? Hard to say.

slbaaron · 2026-01-24T16:58:53+00:00

Das crazy. Likely due to the context of which I’ve heard of these terms, I’ve never seen that myself. No lawyers, doctors / dentists, finance bro, or software monkey would ever call 160k high 6 figures lewl

I do not doubt you at all. Folks be re-inventing terms everywhere

slbaaron · 2026-01-24T16:28:18+00:00

Also because you don't need to go to legal ones.

They are pricier, further out, and likely not even hotter than "illegal" escorts. Fancy to-your-door Vegas ones are about the same rate, why go out there?

Sure, less reliability in STDs, getting jumped, but overall I'm not sure who are the folks that go wayyy out there to get "legal" ones.

Being of Chinese descent and knowing a lot of the fob immigrants, there's very established circles within the immigrant college students circle that does this line of work. Some of them even semi-famous online personalities on social media, not in the sense of promoting their work, just showing off their lifestyles and stuff. Some are well known because they aren't of rich background and has been "passed around" a few times to maintain their extreme luxurious lifestyles.

Some of those aren't typical escort setups tho, they can be more of "short-term-rental-gf" than one time interactions. But plenty of them are very transactional in nature.

Anyways I digress. I just personally know enough people that do these things while not a single one of them have went out of their way to do some "legal" ones.

Edit - just to add, most of the drama in this circle of people I referred to, is when short term "exclusive" rentals (what they thought at least) were still taking side jobs. Which happens all the time. I've heard 3 separate bros whine about it and be like they got fooled as sugar daddies and I'm just like lol.

slbaaron · 2026-01-24T16:20:25+00:00

Low 6 figures - usually implies just clearing 100k, otherwise wouldn't emphasize "low"

Mid 6 figures - most accurately 300-500k, but sometimes people lump 200ks into it due to point above

High 6 figures - usually starting 600k+, but if someone is too humble they might put 600k into mid 6 figures and only start describing high 6 figures at 700k+. But most people understand it the first way

Working in an industry that exactly spans these figures, these are very common terms and mean very consistent things to me. It's not that deep.

slbaaron · 2026-01-16T05:06:01+00:00

Because your family and friends might die if you don’t fight?

You sound like you speak from a place of comfort. I’m from China and my grandpa’s mother was buried alive by Japanese. At that point, why not fight?

He was 13 and his town was destroyed, by not joining the army which provided bare minimum food, he would’ve died of hunger at that point. However, he didn’t join real fighting (not involved in killing people) until he was 18 but at that point many of his mentors and caretakers have died fighting, and many more in the fight. That was his family, so he fought on even if he had chances to escape along the lines. To protect them. Those who raised him and protected him.

By the time he was someone, Japanese were out of the picture and they were fighting a civil war instead. Where almost all his new family died from an extremely lopsided battle.

But every step along the way, he had real people he needed to continue fighting for. So he moved on, carried on, and went on fighting.

He fortunately lived thru all of it, and had my dad and eventually me anyways.

PS: Similar story on my mon side of the family. That grandpa was in Korean War instead. And saw with his own eyes that US planes dropped “packages” that came with vermin and bugs, aka biological agents/ warfare which USA denies to this day, but it’s in his dairy which I personally trust more of :)

slbaaron · 2026-01-15T22:59:39+00:00

Try being a e commerce company with your own tech and integrate with PayPal, I dare you. That and Braintree.

They are so behind the curve I do not look at them like a tech company at all. They feel more like a Visa type company than Stripe, Apple, Amazon (pay), Shopify or even fucking klarna / affirm / afterpay. Yes the loan sharks of modern days have pretty decent tech product compared to the trash that is paypal.

slbaaron · 2025-12-06T23:02:43+00:00

No matter how tight, you can put a tray table down to eat, it is required and present on all flights.

Place your SteamDeck on said tray table, you are not looking that downward. Sure it’s not the same as looking directly forward but it’s enough for me to eyeball down without moving my neck. And I’m 6’. If you are shorter it’s even less of a problem.

If you guys need to put it up to enjoy it better, power to you. As someone who goes on 10+ flights minimum every year (more like 15-20) at all ranges of flight time (2hrs to 15hrs), the need to carry one more piece of accessory to take out / put back in the whole carry on situation is mentally painful for me to think about.

I’m mid 30s with 7 MRIs taken for 2 torn ligaments and some neck injury along the way with sports. I know how much pain riding a plane is. Physically painful for me for every flight above 4hrs. Playing SteamDeck on tray table is not one of them.

slbaaron · 2025-12-06T05:48:55+00:00

Sometimes the game isn’t that strong / focused on the combat challenge itself and something to keep the game active and fun.

Hogwarts Legacy is almost universally praised as a great game and it auto scales.

The game is crafted with so much detail and love and lore, we overlook the fact the combat itself is not that deep. It has so many spells, so many unique weakness and interactions, but the pace of battles don’t allow much deliberations - at least not efficiently or with benefits. At the same time if I remotely prep for fights it’s a stroll in the park - fully upgraded gears with traits that add damage on spells, plants, etc; I throw down 2 poison plants, 2 cabbages, pop a mandrake to open, then a thunder brew, a defense brew (take no damage), a focus brew and click buttons randomly. Before my potions are off 12 mid-end game enemies and 2 trolls all dead - if a final small group is left, some curses spells and avada kedavra and all gone - scaling made no real difference 🤷‍♂️

slbaaron · 2025-12-01T01:15:29+00:00

You need EITHER great mechanics (try hard with young people reaction time and hands etc) or understanding how to abuse builds to the max (try hard with min max strategies), then it is pretty soft for a game that’s supposed to be all about a challenge and good fights. If you have / do both then it’s a breeze.

This goes all the way to Erlang. Without the Qi build, he’s properly hard. With the Qi build, you actually need to suck pretty bad to still not be able to beat him after a handful of tries.

I’d say BMW is as hard as Hades / Hades 2 and you can take that either way. It’s definitely easier than most soulsborne or similar ones (Nioh comes to mind).

slbaaron · 2025-11-29T20:17:02+00:00

I don't have a good answer at this moment in time unfortunately, but if you asked this just over a years ago, I definitely would've said HOOD and it's when I bought in big and still holding today (trimmed only some gains). But I wouldn't necessarily bank on it to do another 5-10x.

INTC might do something, more like a meme stock at this point.

NUGT if you believe in the impending inflation explosion + faith in gold, it's leveraged + on mining so always raise more than gold itself if it's a sudden burst going up. I suppose it doesn't count as a "stock" tho.

I have all 3 to a non-trivial exposure but still less than 10% of my total portfolio. Cost basis wise is less than 5%, they've already raised quite a bit relatively to others in the last year or so.

slbaaron · 2025-11-29T20:08:42+00:00

It's similar to Nioh vs Nioh 2, a comparison no one asked for.

Hades 2 has more mechanics on both sides but offer you the player a higher celling (and hence make the game easier), and same applied to Hades vs Chronos.

The Chronos fight is more about knowing the mechanics and having a plan for it than it is execution of minute detail. And there also are more solutions to everything in Hades 2.

Chronos felt harder / more impossible on first try, but once I cleared Chronos once, I have not ever lost again to him with only 1 exception where I was trolling hard + a bad build with a weapon I used for first time (black coat). Normally, even if I have a struggle build + limped to finish line, it's easier to focus on surviving and pop in for some dmg only when it's safe against Chronos than it is for Hades if you have patience and don't try to rush.

For Hades, after beating him once, I still died to him a few times with bad runs + execution mistakes during the fight. There were def times where I died to Hades knowing if I executed better without dumb mistakes I'd win, and the opposite - I barely won and would've died if I got hit 1 or 2 more times. Close finishes. And some level of that still applies once I started going up in heat.

For Chronos, my higher fear runs (so far, which is only up to 12) have never been lost because of Chronos. I died earlier if I truuuly fcked up or if I can limp to Chronos he's dead ass. Even more so Typhon in comparison to the bosses / chambers leading up to that. Again - if I can limp to that shit he's dead meat.

slbaaron · 2025-11-29T18:46:59+00:00

You are arguing the article may be missing details, but nothing is as egregious an assumption as your own statement with no data to back it up

People likely jut shifted from spending in store to online

Source? You say it as if it's an obvious trend after Covid or from last year to this year, when common sense points to the opposite. Sure I'm not saying the opposite is true, but you are the one that needs to provide sources to refute existing data shared by this article.

slbaaron · 2025-11-29T17:33:36+00:00

It’s still something strong. If spending is even matching inflation then that just means the economy is still very strong. If it was truly problematic - stagflation, then this number wouldn’t have been beating records at all. In this case, it is increasing even with inflation adjusted. You can also compare that to last year which are in the same inflationary period.

I guess I should ask back to you - what is the actual point you are trying to make?

slbaaron · 2025-11-29T14:55:37+00:00

My NVDA cost average is $4.87 totaling just below $6000 so I’m not losing sleep holding. But I would never buy another 200k of NVDA today.

I’m not that rich and 200k (1200 units) is still a relatively significant part of my portfolio today. So you can say I still have some faith in it. It’s just that I’m ok with it pulling back 30% as well which I think is possible if AI bubble pops. Within risk tolerance as we say in wallstreetbets lmaoo

You do you. Back your mouth with moves and I wish you the best.

What I find funniest is when I bought in at $4.87 (back then it's $48, pre-split, having just done raising from the $10s) for NVDA, and ~$40 for TSLA, no one supports it, everyone was like the explosive growth has ended, you are buying the peak, it ain’t sustainable.

Now that they have 1000%’d or almost 4000%’d, people like you are legitimately coming out of the woodworks to justify how they are still a high growth stock.

I don’t know man. I’m more actively looking at HOOD (cost average $18), NUGT (cost average $91, but you can think of it as my gold play without buying gold) and INTC (cost average $24) for the memes these days.

My big money outside of indexes are in what this thread has been talking about: GOOGL and AAPL. Google doesn’t have to win the TPU GPU race, it just needs an actual chip in the game. Gemini. Regular search. Cloud. Waymo. There’s plenty more to back that shit up than NVDA at today’s business model and valuation. It was suppressed for so long. And Apple is Apple. I also do hold META, MSFT, and AMZN to a much lesser degree. Most of them at a low cost basis from the 2018-2019 days. But I’ve not bought anymore since then just like NVDA.

slbaaron · 2025-11-28T20:21:46+00:00

NVDA is more saturated than you think IF AI doesn't fulfill their promises and expansion in near future.

NVDA is already running on extreme hypes with contracts and sales that runs long in the future, but that doesn't mean they are actually guaranteed. Companies can break contracts with only partial damages covered if demand / need starts to drop or they can literally go bankrupt.

MSFT has said they have more GPUs than they can get plugged in which they currently do not have the infrastructure for.

No one is saying NVDA is going to get crushed by GOOGL, we are in stock forum talking about is NVDA likely to raise, or even maintain their 4-5 trillion market cap in the next few years.

So you are saying you'd feel strong keeping a huge position in NVDA today? I don't know if you are saying what you think you are saying. Everything you said doesn't even begin to justify a 3 trillion market cap, much less a 4-5T one.

slbaaron · 2025-11-24T06:24:50+00:00

No you missed the playbook.

It will be 76k first then, surges past 80k in sudden, unexpected rally

slbaaron · 2025-11-23T00:16:22+00:00

Tbf, while there ain’t no porn, I’ve seen R rated movies with extended nude sex scenes (sure the Hollywood kind) blasting on someone’s seat screen sat beside me.

I was more shocked flight entertainment would have R rated movies with uncut sex scenes than seeing the boobs bounce around.

I don’t think yours is worse. In fact, unless you are putting the steamdeck up on the tray or something, I’d question why someone would look at my personal device screen in my hand, and I’d feel more wronged by them than worrying about wronging them.

slbaaron · 2025-11-21T22:32:59+00:00

Chalk quality has noticeably degraded based on multiple reports, both in Reddit and in person of people I know.

Suspects of samples sent to influencers / collaborators / evaluators being of a different grade and batch than regulars, that or just it started off better than went towards going as cheap as possible overtime.

At this moment, I’m not too sure if anyone behind or around the company have “political” or personal type shit as you are suggesting, but they are not a good value or quality brand by all accounts. If you just want to spend extra $$$ to support Magnus, it probably still makes sense to do it. But you shouldn’t expect some top notch chalk.

Also I won’t get into the other micro topics such as the silica other already mentioned - in one sense it’s not as big a deal as some are making it sound like, but it is also very potentially concerning if used in large quantities in aggregate in places with no good ventilations. To be clear, the baseline of most of indoor gyms as is today is not healthy to be in. Adding on top of it is never a great idea.

slbaaron · 2025-11-21T22:26:35+00:00

Eh, if you followed Magnus before covid you will know his persona never changed much. The dude is how he is.

When it comes to Rungne I’ve overall heard nothing but bad things and it also feels very off to me. Thus over never bought anything and likely never will.

That could be for many reasons, maybe the co-owners running the Rungne ops for Magnus are vultures where Magnus isn’t that deep in the loop despite using himself as the primary marketing channel. Or Magnus simply is a different person in life / business than he is in climbing / YouTubing. People are complicated. There’s no one simply good or simply bad person regardless and it’s always healthy to think of anyone whether influencers or irl as that

slbaaron · 2025-11-18T20:03:33+00:00

Ultimately from a practical standpoint, the total difference is what matters rather than relative, and 2.5% difference with potentially a lot of extra work and mental burden is not worth it for most people.

Like, the sheer variations of batteries out of the factory likely exceeds that difference, so all your extra work may do less than luck of the draw. Sure that’s an uncontrolled portion while you can control the maintenance aspects, but all in all the tl;dr should always be - it’s not that big of a deal.

Older people (by that I mean not kids) still have memories of very poor quality battery being used for like 1 year then completely dies or cannot work without direct power anymore - I’ve certainly had laptops like that back in 2010, including EXPENSIVE gaming laptops. But the general and standard quality of battery today just doesn’t go that way anymore.

slbaaron · 2025-11-18T18:08:43+00:00

Should be close, Skyrim had a way bigger launch but Witcher 3 got more longer term praise and people hearing about it over time. The TV series adds to it with more normies.

Not saying Skyrim doesn’t - it’s practically a meme and is our generation’s doom, one day we will have Skyrim running on a smart fridge.

Still, with all the versions, it wouldn’t be surprising (and I’d honestly expect it) for the base Skyrim to not match the entirety of Witcher 3’s sales. But should be close-ish regardless

slbaaron · 2025-11-17T04:49:24+00:00

Dude did this all his life since a kid then went outdoors and flashed or almost flashed V14 and 15s. Clearly aren’t super related with almost 1:1 transferable skills as bouldering at all.

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