Sodium_nitride

Context: Post says "flixbus in Belgium" (flixbus is a bus company). Video is of people running towards a moving flixbus and grabbing luggage from it. Very confusing and context free video. Who are these people? Why are they doing this?

This is the least racist thread on the post. Everything else is literally just "import third world, become third world" and "Africa deserved colonialism" type comments. Europeans really aren't going to beat the "we make the KKK look like hippies in comparison" allegations. I swear to God, recently I was starting to feel a little more hopeful towards Europeans and thinking that the continent isn't destined for a century of humiliation after they decided to turn towards China instead of the US. This single reddit post grabbed every fiber of optimism in my body and beat it to death in a German camp.

Also, do I have to link the post? I don't even want to go back to it ...

Then proceeded to tell me a story about "this chinese guy eating 3 PIZZAS who picked a fight with another guy. Then the other guy showed his ass cheeks in response (the storyteller proceeds to demonstrate). Then the chinese guy says that he has the protection of the DUTCH KING and will not fight back. He then RUNS AWAY BEHIND HIS HO MOM

At this point I awkwardly walk to the other sidewalk. Before I can leave the storyteller shouts at me from the other side of the road:

"HE WAS EATING 3 PIZZAS! 3 PIZZAS INSTEAD OF HIS USUAL 5"

Which is just the perfect twist cliffhanger to end the story on. I did not expect that the Dutch Knight of Chinese ethnicity was known for wielding 5 whole PIZZAS at once! Truly, the roronoa zoro of pizza eating.

From the 1950s onward, lobotomy began to be abandoned,[9] first in the Soviet Union,[10] where the procedure immediately garnered extensive criticism and was not widely employed, before being banned in December 1950,[11]

It us said that the Stalin administration's Ws were so numerous that they couldn't keep track of them all. Many of these Ws were lost in transportation, had to be exported or were left rotting in the fields and there was a huge overcapacity of Ws. The Soviet citizens kept begging the government to reduce W production, but the administration paid them no heed.

Yes, it's here, the sequel to my old simulation on the labor theory of value

Last time, I invited the Hexbears over to Lemmygrad to see the simulation. This time, I'm inviting the Gradfolk to Hexbear.

The link

Also, no, this won't be a weekly thing. I do plan on making a third version in this series, but it will come much latter (I got uni stuff to take care of)

So, recently, I made a matlab simulation/visualization for prices in a 2-sector economy. I did this to see for myself whether labor theory of value prices are the prices at which an economy can reproduce itself exactly. That is, when the unit price of each sector matches the price predicted by the LTV, then the net financial position of both sectors of the economy (and the consumers) neither improves or worsen (so nobody is going into debt to another).

Of course, this was inspired by Marx's famous reproduction scheme method, where he did something similar. However, I have better tech than he did.

I basically randomly generated a 1000 different random economies, and in each economy, I generate 1000 different prices. Then, for each price and economy, I computed the balance of payments between the 2 sectors and the consumers. I also computed the predicted LTV prices for each of the 1000 economies

These 1 million data points are plotted on a density map in the linked image. The brighter the spot on the map, the more data points fell there. And it's exponential. A 7 on the color scale has almost 3 times as many points there as a 6.

The y-axis is the net income of sector 1. If that net income is anything but 0, the economy isn't reproducing itself. The x-axis is the ratio between the actual price ratio of the sectors (randomly generated for each point) and the price ratio predicted by the LTV.

If you look at this graph, you will see 2 black regions. There are sharp black regions both horizontally and vertically emanating from the center point (the situation of reproduction and LTV prices). This means that reproduction implies LTV prices, and LTV prices imply reproduction. So the only way for a perfectly stable economy to exist is for it to employ LTV prices, and vice versa, an economy is stable if it employs LTV prices.

This is pretty much what the theory expects. What might be an interest further avenue to research is that hourglass shape. From pretty much the moment I started coding the simulation (so even during my early attempts when I was doing things wrong), I kept seeing that hourglass shape. I don't know if it is an artefact of how I did my simulation, or if it is something more fundamental.

If I could create a model for the shape of that hourglass, I could use it to predict things like

"How much can the prices in this economy deviate from LTV prices given this much growth in a sector?"

Which would be very cool.

Unfortunately, the ability to code basic shit in MatLab does not give me the ability to do advanced mathematics, so I will really need to think about this.

For anyone interested in my actual simulation approach, I have it written out in a comment (and will also provide the code)

Original link

Many people seem to keep making the mistake of taking Trump's words at face value. This is partly the fault of the media, which hangs onto everything he says because he is their golden goose. Furthermore, there is the desire to keep finding some kind of logic in Trump's actions.

The problem is, we keep projecting our own logic onto the Trump admin. We think, "what would we do if we were American imperialists?" Which leads us, and many analysts (like yanis) to think about the Trump admin as if they were cavalry reinforcements arriving unexpectedly in the darkest hour of western imperialism to save it.

In reality, the Trump admin simply wants to impose unequal trade treaties on his allies and get them to spend more on weapons. His fearmongering and negging is his style of salesmanship.

The fact that the Trump admin keeps flip flopping on tariffs, resumed military aid to Ukraine, tried to pull that stunt with the "30 day ceasefire" (in ukraine) and the ceasefire in Palestine has broken down all show that the Trump administration has as much of a master plan as a shitty SV startup trying to attract VC funding.

What worries me is that the Europeans are falling for this con a second time! Trump literally did the same shit in his first term and got the euros to up their NATO spending! The fact that the Europeans can't even act in self interest or see through the tactics of a used car salesman is horrifying to see in first person. These people have nukes.

I want to place a disclaimer here that I've studied Paul's theories on economics (and the econophysicists in general) quite closely and found them generally compelling, so I'm not a hater. But there is something about this video that really just rubs me in the wrong way. And it's not about the vibes being reactionary (although Paul has often shown himself to be rather reactionary when it comes to trans rights in the past).

My biggest gripe with this video is how much of its conclusions are derived from correlating a few limited data sets and preconcieved notions. Paul correlates the UK fertility rate with unemployment, housing prices (divided by wages) and the existence of birth control. Then, he uses the correlation coefficients to conclude that high housing prices are the biggest factor in lowering fertility, followed by unemployment, then by the introduction of birth control. Also, he mentions that women have been getting more educated, but that this lowers fertility because of student debt, again bringing back fertility to purely economic factors.

I just think that this is really shaky ground that Paul is standing on here. I'm not saying that he's necessarily wrong, but I think Paul really needs to reign in his tendencies of throwing up some data and extracting vast conclusions about the whole of human society from them (cause he will do that later in the video).

Unlike many of the things Paul makes videos about, the falling fertility rates in human society is an extensively studied phenomenon even by liberals. It would be much better for Paul to actually bring in this research into his video instead of making his own conclusions from scratch.

Now from these statistical correlations, he talks about how late-stage rome also faced a demographic crisis which caused a collapse of slavery. Then, he ties this back to the crisis of contemporary capitalism. This part is interesting yes, but again, it's based on the shaky foundation earlier in the video.

He also goes on a strange tangent about how the tories promised the electorate about reducing immigration but actually increased it because they serve the capitalists who want cheap labor. This type of "left-wing" anti-immigration rhetoric has already been shown to be dangerous in the past, because the anti-immigration crowd is always looking for ammo, any ammo to attack and exploit immigrants. They don't care if they have to launder these attacks in socialist language.

He also doesn't even consider the possibility that having fertility rates below replacement could be continued in a communist society as well, since there is no need for a communist society to continually expand its labor pool. He simply considers sub replacement fertility to be a problem to be fixed (the preconceived notion) and suggests that socialist societies will use economic measures to restore the birth rate.

I've tried using deepseek (first time I've ever used an LLM, so maybe I'm being dumb) to help me a little with designing some circuit because my reference book was leaving out a LOT of crucial information.

The results have been ... subpar. The model seems to be making quite elementary mistakes, like leaving floating components with missing connections.

I'm honestly kinda disappointed. Maybe this is a weak area for it. I've probably had to tell deepseek more about designing the circuit in question than it has told me.

Edit: I realised I was just being dumb, since LLMs aren't designed for this task.

So for anyone who has come across my previous posts, you might know that I started taking DIY HRT for feminizing myself after the dutch healthcare system (horrid wait times) failed me. Then, I tried working up the courage to tell my parents about my issues, only to chicken out. Also, I am not actually sure about what my gender identity really is.

So basically, everything about my future is super uncertain.

Now I'll be providing some new information. First, for anyone wondering what I've decided of my identity after much introspection, I think I'll just go with non-binary or gender fluid for now.

Next, I tried probing my mom for her opinion on LGBTQ people as a commenter suggested. Her immediate reaction was to call LGBTQ people "crazy" and "improper" and that I shouldn't associate with them. I told her about how some parents throw out LGBTQ kids on to the streets. She said that's not done anymore. That's incorrect, but at least it seems like she might not abandon me? Finally, when I asked her what if I was queer, she tried backtracking and said that she was just joking about them being crazy.

Whether or not that is true, I can't bring myself to tell my parents anything. Which is funny I guess since they always make a big deal about how I should be fully open with them.

Enough ranting about my parents though.

Finally was the suggestion someone made to find a psychologist specializing in helping LGBTQ individuals. This has turned out to be a disaster in its own way. Navigating Dutch healthcare without speaking Dutch is already difficult, but my GP also has no experience with anything related to LGBTQ people. Supposedly, he has dealt with 1 other case in his entire career, and that case "solved itself" (no idea what that means, kinda ominous though).

The psychologist I was recommended to (and who hasn't sent me a single communication) is rated 1.8 stars on google maps 💀. People keep complaining about how terrible the service is. Every psychologist I look to has people complaining about poor documentation, people being kicked out of programs. Intrusive questioning. Absurd wait times.

At this point, you might as well butter me up and serve me with jam because I'm toast. Absolutely cooked.

Knowing how bad things are in 2025, I have a new found respect for people who had to deal with this in ye olden days.

To conclude, I have no idea what to do with my life at all. I'll still be taking my hormones and playing dress up. Maybe I'll start voice training soon. My current plan to deal with the future is to retreat into a bubble of delusion and isolation until everything comes crashing down.

Thank you for listening to my ramblings.

My friend (hinduvata, somehow still less racist than most of the other white people I have to be acquaintances with for work purposes) keeps bringing up George Soros and how much he hates him.

Apparently, according to him, Soros helped the nazis during WW2 kill 60,000 jews, and also I am being paid by him.

My question of course is, who the hell is George Soros and why do I keep seeing random right wingers bring him up as if he is the final boss of communism?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7075205

Original link