Month: April 2024

Go West, young man (or East, or South…)

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

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I’ve seen a discussion repeated several times online.

It goes like this:

Young Wimps: Boo hoo, we never get matches, not allowed to approach any more, can’t buy a house, everything sucks, wanna rope.

Old Farts: Why not go on an adventure? Start a banana farm in the Amazon or something. What have you got to lose?

YW: Boo hoo, we’ll get dengue fever, plus why should we? This is our home; honor, etc.

OF: But weren’t you just saying your future was hopeless and your life wasn’t worth living?

YW: We don’t have any money to travel anyway.

OF: Traveling with heaps of money isn’t an adventure.

YW: Well what about if we have a medical condition or family or something?

Etcetera.

Here are some examples, though I understand that you can’t click to read whole threads now unless you’re on X:

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Word from the Dark Side – slap of authority, do-gooder priority, a model minority and use water fountains orally

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

HPPD, the drug-induced disorder which can be brought on by psychedelic substances

…HPPD results in disturbed vision, where a sufferer may constantly see visual snow, haloes or trails.

Many also experience out-of-body sensations and extreme anxiety.

It’s triggered by the use of psychedelic drugs and has been described as the “trip that never ends”.

With the use of illegal drugs on the rise and the emergence of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disorders, there are calls for greater awareness and more research into the condition.

Sheree said her son’s experience of HPPD was “a living hell”.

Joey developed HPPD after taking a psychedelic drug at the age of 17 when he was in his final year at school, affecting his vision.

“Where school was concerned words were starting the slide off the page so he couldn’t study, he couldn’t read, and reading was something that he was very good at,” she said.

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The best and worst retirement plans

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

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HT

A country’s retirement program was once like fjords or mild weather – a nice thing to have, but not a factor that would determine a nation’s position in the world like infrastructure or GDP.

With populations everywhere aging, this has changed. Those countries financially well-prepared for the coming decades are best positioned to prosper and to maintain their power and influence.

I got to thinking about this because I’m compiling the second edition of Poor Man’s Guide to Financial Freedom. I’ve been expanding the section on national retirement plans in the Anglophone countries.

Australia, New Zealand and Canada seem to have pretty good plans (compared to any others; perhaps not in absolute terms) while the USA and UK trail behind.

Further afield, the oldest country, Japan, and the least fertile, South Korea, both have about the worst retirement programs in the developed world. Even Chile does better.

The top ranked countries are the Netherlands, Denmark and Israel.

Because it will be so important in the future, here are my observations about what makes a good retirement plan in terms of adequacy and fairness.

Adequacy

A retirement program needs to be adequate both at a national level and for each individual. The keys to a sufficient and sustainable retirement program at the national level seem to be making it mandatory, a high retirement age, transparency and sound investment.

Mandatory plans

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Word from the Dark Side – songs getting dumb, a high school scrum, the no-panty bum and elephants to come

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

Song lyrics getting simpler, more repetitive, angry and self-obsessed – study

“Across all genres, lyrics had a tendency to become more simple and more repetitive,” Zangerle summarised.

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

Lyrics have also become much more self-obsessed, with words such as “me” or “mine” becoming much more popular.

The number of repeated lines rose most in rap over the decades, Zangerle said – adding that it obviously had the most lines to begin with.

“Rap music has become more angry than the other genres,” she added.

The researchers also investigated which songs the fans of different genres looked up on the lyric website Genius.

Unlike other genres, rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.

Previous research has also suggested that people tend to listen to music more in the background these days, she added.

Put simply, songs with more choruses that repeat basic lyrics appear to be more popular.

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