Trump likes anyone or anything that shamelessly fans his ego.

It’s insane how transparent and exploitable that aspect of his personality is.

The book also revealed that in the 1980s Karlson would “indulge his Nazi fetish”, and that on at least one occasion he threw a party at his home to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.

😬

The P.Eng society is working on this, so that only actual engineers can use the title engineer.

Which is why I specified I was talking about the US. Also, fair. If the term ever actually has a clear set of requirements, then of course it would be incorrect to claim the title without meeting those requirements.

Software “engineers” should just be called code monkeys.

I hope you realize how elitist this comes across. I’ve worked with a lot of contractors, web developers, etc. that have a strong understanding of software development and are able to author software really well. I would be so embarrassed if they knew I referred to them as “code monkeys”. Something tells me that you’re the kind of person I’m very grateful to have never had the misfortune of working with.

we should deregulate hospitals, too

You do realize that the term “software engineer” isn’t regulated, right? There’s no test, no license, no bar/board. Unlike doctors, who are required by law to have a medical license.

I really don’t get the point of gatekeeping a job title.

There’s no official license or certification for software engineering in the US, so anyone claiming you have to meet some requirement to call yourself a software engineer is factually wrong. Now, pretty much every tech company calls anyone who writes code some form of engineer, so much so that SDE/SWE is a pretty universal acronym.

I really don’t care personally, and I don’t go around grouping myself in with other engineering fields. But for the past 7 or so years, my actual job title has had the word “engineer” in it despite the fact that I don’t have a Bachelor’s degree. I feel like jumping through hoops to say, “well, my official title is Software Engineer, but technically I’m a programmer” is just pedantic and probably more confusing for most people.

I could see an argument for differentiating between those who participate heavily in the design and evolution of an entire codebase (as opposed to those who just pull tickets and write code), but even that has kind of just evolved into the junior/mid/senior/etc terminology.

But the broad inflation that drove up prices across the economy won’t reverse, even though the rate of increase has eased greatly since peaking at 9.1 percent in mid-2022.

The most recent consumer price index showed annual inflation at 3 percent. Still, prices overall are 25 percent higher than they were at the start of the pandemic.

Ironically, falling prices can both signal a recession and trigger one.

“Think about what would happen if the price of all goods would drop to the pre-pandemic level,” said Francesco Bianchi, who chairs the economics department at Johns Hopkins University. The inflation of recent years also has driven up workers’ wages. If wages stay high but the price of goods fall, companies won’t make enough profit to pay their employees. “That would make the cost of hiring workers extremely high, and that might trigger a recession — and then the recession creates even more expectation for lower prices. This is why economists are very concerned about deflation.”

Laura Veldkamp, a professor at Columbia Business School, said even the expectation of lower prices can trigger a recession. “If I thought that was going to cost less tomorrow, why would I buy it today? … As soon as we believe the prices are going down, demand will plummet and we’re likely to immediately have a recession,” she said. “Price declines are typically associated with really severe negative outcomes.”

And while Americans might be clamoring for lower prices, surveys suggest they don’t actually expect it to happen. According to the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, most respondents expect inflation to go higher in the next year.

Veldkamp likened the economy to a car speeding on the highway. “The solution is not to stop and throw the car in reverse,” she said. “Under no circumstances should somebody try to make that happen.”

Copied and pasted the actual reasoning from the article since it was paywalled. I was expecting the headline to be rage/click bait, but the article was just as bad.

The emphasis above is mine. The reasoning provided was because “companies won’t make enough profit to pay their employees.” Lol. Lmao even. That has never, and will never, be true. Basically just corporate gaslighting.

I also found the assertion that the expectation of lower prices later would cause people to stop spending absurd. Excuse me, what? People aren’t complaining about the cost of yachts going up. They’re complaining about the cost of essentials: groceries, gas, utilities, etc. Do they really think people are going to stop eating while they’re waiting for groceries to get cheaper?! This comes across as tone deaf and completely disconnected. Clearly that professor and the author of the article are so far removed from the experience of the working class that they can’t even understand why high prices are causing problems for working class people.

There’s a dive bar near where I live that has the wrong signs directly above the handle on both sides of the door. First few times I went there I fell for it on the way in and then AGAIN on the way out. It probably makes it really obvious if you’re not a regular, lol.

I think we should have a progressive inheritance tax similar to federal income tax (except maybe the 0% range could be a little larger), and by the time you’re in the $400k+ bracket, that rate is 95%+ (or even more potentially). But as with all taxes that primarily target the wealthy, the trick is to proactively close as many loopholes as possible (i.e. parent sets up non-profit and makes kid president), otherwise the tax will barely accomplish anything.

For the FAANG companies, they do it in part so they can then turn around and make those flashy claims you see in headlines like “95% of ours devs use [insert AI product they are trying to sell] daily” or “60% of our code base is now ‘written’ by our fancy AI”.

What in the Kentucky fried fuck is this? I feel like I’m going to get a virus on my phone just from reading it.

OP is some sort of Russian propaganda account. Previously they had posted some much more obvious anti-western, unsourced military “analysis” (something about the US trying to provoke a nuclear war against Russia IIRC), and when called out on it, they deleted those previous posts.

Maybe we will lose low effort artists but gain great music by passionate people.

This is such a bizarre take.

I wouldn’t characterize musicians who depend on some financial return as “low effort” at all. Almost all the best musicians, going back to classical music and beyond, were dependent on their music as a source of income.

If anything, the people who do music as a side hobby are usually more “low effort” than those who actually make it their main career. And if artists can’t make money of their music anymore, we’ll really only get music from rich people who can afford the lessons, instruments, recording studio, production, etc. as an expensive hobby rather than a source of income.

This isn’t really an answer to the ‘universal negativity’, but for a somewhat reasonable analysis of the pros and (surprisingly high number of) cons as well as some interesting grey areas, there’s an old LWT episode on this topic: https://youtu.be/AJm8PeWkiEU

And more on topic, the obvious problem with withholding congressional pay is it transfers leverage to wealthier representatives. It’s way easier for a wealthy career politician to pass up pay than it is for a newer, less corrupt representative.

This is really neither here nor there, but I fucking hate listening to Senator Kennedy talk. He’s so busy jamming folksy aphorisms into every sentence that he can barely string together a coherent thought.

The median age of first-time buyers rose to 40 in 2025 from 38 the year before, and is up sharply from 33 just five years ago

In case anyone else was wondering what “typical” means, they’re referring to the median. Not sure why they wouldn’t put that in the headline since, unlike “typical”, it actually has a clearly defined mathematical meaning.

Wow, even after all the insane stuff that’s happened, I can’t believe that webpage is real. Genuinely insane that that is an official government website. 💀

Essentially, no one uses prions as a weapon because if you’re going to carry out a bioterror attack, there are much easier to acquire and more effective agents.

When I saw your long comment, I was really hoping for some reassurance around how many safeguards would prevent what OP described. Now I’m twice as worried. 😥