If Covid had been more deadly than it was, the average IQ of the country would have soared.

Well, there will be more pandemics….

Good point from @Noahpinion that real wages haven't recovered…personally while I am doing fine economically, my wage increases since 2021 have definitely not kept pace with inflation https://t.co/bbUW4DPAnj pic.twitter.com/zWGXUGYtKz

— daeveningglow (@InlandCaGuy) June 28, 2023

I have all kinds of certs, rare skills, and recruiters contacting me constantly.

My wages have just barely kept up with inflation. So most people’s have not. That’s why all the economic-related malaise.

In common with Gen Z, my job does not define my identity at all. I could quit now and not think a single thought about it again. I’ve always felt that way, even when I had no money.

I think it helps having an intellectual life and a big ego. I have both — so a job just always felt like something I did, not something I am.

Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud.

I already avoid Windows as much as I can but I will redouble my efforts to do so as this occurs. We knew it was inevitable; they want your data and your rental fees in perpetuity, and to prevent any blocking of ads. It was always gonna happen.

But no reason to just go with it.

Vladimir Putin says Wagner paramilitaries paid billions by Russian state.

I told you so. Cash grab and it worked.

Europeans saying "Silicon Valley" like it includes Microsoft pic.twitter.com/abdOYmEx5b

— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) June 27, 2023

Most Europeans do not understand how absurdly large the United States is compared to their pipsqueak countries. (Sorry, Europeans, but it’s true).

I once spent two days driving across a single US state. That was Texas. And it sucked.

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House in my book (heh) has the best opening para of any novel:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Let’s see ChatGPT do that. Yeah, right. What a fucking barnburner of a start.

The Oppenheimer marketing team has an opportunity to do the funniest thing possible https://t.co/LTI644XiTm

— skoova stev (@bootcutgenes) June 26, 2023

Did someone give them a second nuke?

This Alex Tabarrok nonsense is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve read recently.

It’s obviously false and the first commenter ably refutes it. In terms economists use to lie about it, I make far more than my grandfather did at the same age. My grandmother did not work, and at one point they owned three houses (none of them for renting out), four cars, a nice boat and raised three kids on a single salary.

The reality once you leave the economist fantasia is that I could not afford to do this even though I make “more” than he did. Not even close. If I tried to simultaneously own three homes, raise three kids, have four cars, all while having other nice things, I’d be bankrupt in mere months.

By the way, my grandfather was not considered rich and was in fact not rich by the standards of the time. For the 1960s and 1970s, this was considered upper middle class. Doing well, but certainly not that abnormal for someone with a college degree in a STEM field (he was a traffic engineer).

Now, you’d probably need to make what, $700,000 a year or more to do what he did? It depends on the COL in an area, but in most that’s what it’d be.

Tabarrok is a fool.