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iamthemonster commented on Solution to US debt crisis is severe austerity triggered by a fiscal calamity   fortune.com/2025/12/06/us... · Posted by u/mohi-kalantari
techgnosis · 17 days ago
The healthcare portions of the debt seem unsolvable but I don't know why we think Social Security is that complicated to fix.

1. Define very clearly what SS is. We need to be clear that it's an agreement between the working class and the retired class that says "if you are too old to work and you can't afford to live, we will take care of you"

2. Get rid of the SS tax cap. You don't pay any SS tax above 180k ish, which seems silly. Get rid of the cap and let every earned dollar participate in the program. It doesn't feel like that hard of a sell.

3. You don't get SS payments if you already have enough income. See #1, the agreement. We are agreeing to take care of you if you need it. Many, many retired persons do not need their SS income. Even if you paid SS tax your entire life, see #1. It is not an agreement that you will receive the money you put in later in your life.

Those aren't popular ideas but they are simple and easy to understand for everyone.

iamthemonster · 16 days ago
I was interested to hear Trump mention Australia's retirement system the other day (amongst the endless stream of what he normally talks about, it really stood out).

In Australia you have a universal Age Pension which is a backstop against extreme hardship set at the equivalent of US$20.5k, but your rate of Age Pension reduces linearly with income levels between US$9k and US$44k.

Similarly, the rate of Age Pension reduces linearly with asset levels between US$213k and US$474k, but you don't count your own home in that.

The private retirement savings system is similar to the 401(k) and Roth 401(k) except the employer doesn't typically do a match, they are just legally obligated to pay 12% of your salary. You can then contribute an extra US$20k as an income tax reduction or pretty much however much you want after-tax.

Inside the superannuation system, the gains are only taxed at 15%.

In general, it's a pretty perfect system that just leans a little too far towards being a rich person's wealth preservation tool, but overall it enables self-sufficiency while also preventing real poverty in old age.

iamthemonster commented on LinkedIn is loud, and corporate is hell   ramones.dev/posts/linkedi... · Posted by u/austinallegro
andy99 · a month ago
Is there some legitimate thing people are doing on LinkedIn that the crap is getting in the way of? One can make a profile and (thought it’s terrible for this) search for jobs without ever scrolling the feed. If you don’t like it just don’t use it.

It feels like complaining that the strip bar has alcohol and nudity everywhere, why are you there?

iamthemonster · a month ago
I've benefited a lot from my specialist area (energy industry) in which consultants and analysts will post genuinely informative and thought-provoking articles. It works to enhance their technical reputation and give them publicity, and it can be very informative for me.

But to achieve any usefulness from the platform I have to aggressively prune, by blocking every contact who ever posts something I don't find interesting. My block list is vast, and my threshold for blocking is incredibly low.

Ultimately, it's probably only a community of about 100 experts that post informatively on the energy industry.

So long as you don't mind doing the work, I find LinkedIn's algorithm to be the best of the main platforms at respecting my choices of who I want to hear from (although admittedly I should probably be using Bluesky instead).

I've also had tens of people tell me they really enjoy my posts on LinkedIn - I tend to post slightly against the mainstream opinions in my industry, and with humour, so I may not have developed a particularly professional reputation, but I've gained more publicity than anyone else in my company outside of the Exec level.

iamthemonster commented on Famous cognitive psychology experiments that failed to replicate   buttondown.com/aethermug/... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
jbentley1 · 3 months ago
This is a great list for people who want to smugly say "Um, actually" a lot in conversation.

Based on my brief stint doing data work in psychology research, amongst many other problems they are AWFUL at stats. And it isn't a skill issue as much as a cultural one. They teach it wrong and have a "well, everybody else does it" attitude towards p-hacking and other statistical malpractice.

iamthemonster · 3 months ago
I was very surprised at how many statistical methods are taught in undergraduate psychology. Far more statistics than I ever touched in engineering for sure. Yet the undergrads really treated statistics as a cookbook, where they just wanted to be told the recipe and they'd follow it. Honestly they'd have been better off just eyeballing data and collaborating with statisticians for the analysis.
iamthemonster commented on Australia once the gold standard for gun safety: Experts say it's losing control   theguardian.com/australia... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
iamthemonster · 4 months ago
I don't own guns myself but I know someone who runs a gun club and a policeman. They are both in agreement that the latest legislation changes have introduced absolutely no improvement, for example a recent lifetime ban for somebody who renewed their license one day late.

Australian gun legislation already has every protection you would expect built in. As soon as a Violence Restraining Order is in place, guns are immediately removed. Your guns need to be stored in a locked safe where the safe is bolted to the ground. Background checks on every license application. You really couldn't name a practical improvement to gun safety.

However the "something must be done" approach is applied, which wastes time targeting clearly responsible gun owners.

The trend of firearms per capita and firearm related deaths per capita is relatively stable, although it might have increased from about 8% of USA's figures to 9% of USA's figures, although I haven't established whether the apparent trend is statistically significant (since gun related deaths are a small sample size so the numbers jump around per year).

iamthemonster commented on Building ultra cheap energy storage for solar PV   austinvernon.substack.com... · Posted by u/theptip
iamthemonster · 4 months ago
Absolutely superb. The 'hot bricks in a box' concept of very high temperature thermal energy storage has been really coming into its own with the fall of solar PV costs, and it's quite suitable for industrial consumers of medium temperature heat. There's also a heated granite storage silo in Scandinavia that's recently gone into operation. The rate of heat transfer in the heat storage material is a classic constraint.

I think this niche of 'very long duration, very constant slow rate of discharge' is clever, and it would suit industrial heat consumers but could also suit district heating for buildings in a climate that's predictably in need of heating all winter long (Canada for example).

They seem to have a decent grasp of the fundamentals, both of the technology and how to commercially carve a niche. I wish them well, and thank you for the post.

iamthemonster commented on     · Posted by u/gjvc
iamthemonster · 5 months ago
Porter's a well known climate denier, this article about her gives some background: https://www.desmog.com/2023/06/22/climate-sceptic-goes-uncha...

We're really past the point of climate denialism now, there's no point giving such people airtime.

iamthemonster commented on The Moat of Low Status   usefulfictions.substack.c... · Posted by u/jger15
AceJohnny2 · 6 months ago
Tangentially, I've been applying something similar, but actually thinking of it as the privilege of high status.

As a very senior member of my team, which has a lot of new college grads, I've been asking the "dumb" questions, the "irritating" questions, intentionally speaking up what I believe others may be thingking, specifically because I figure I can afford the social (career) hit.

iamthemonster · 6 months ago
Yes - I'm a senior member of my team too (to the extent that I've previously been the team lead of similar teams) and it's so freeing to be able to:

1. Give plenty of credit to the juniors when they do good work, even if they were reliant on support, with no need to take credit myself

2. Give up some time working on my own objectives to coach the juniors, even though there's no cost code to book the time to and nobody asks me to do it

3. Easily say, with zero guilt: "no sorry that can't be done in 2 weeks, that's a 6 week job" or "sure I can do my part of this job but I'm going to need you to commit XYZ other resources if you want it to be a success"

4. Interpret the rules in the way I think is best for the organisation, not trying to please the person with the most pedantic interpretation

5. I can produce convincing explanations of how my work performance is delivering value to the organisation (whereas juniors can sometimes work their arse off and get no recognition for it)

I'm also a middle aged white man which seems to confer a lot of unearned trust, but combined with my professional experience I seriously think I have it easier than the juniors in so many ways, and it's my responsibility to give back a bit.

iamthemonster commented on Finding a former Australian prime minister’s passport number on Instagram (2020)   mango.pdf.zone/finding-fo... · Posted by u/guiambros
phs318u · 6 months ago
Understanding that Australia doesn't have a Social Security ID (as the US does), might explain why passports play a similar role with respect to "proof of identity".
iamthemonster · 6 months ago
In Australia you start with a birth certificate and photo, and that leads to passport and driving licence. The three of those are the holy trinity of ID (though you'd very rarely be asked for your birth certificate).

With passport and driving licence, you can do anything you want, but at least they are photo ID with some anti-forgery features.

The time to steal someone's identity is before they get their first driver's licence and passport!

iamthemonster commented on AI Is Coming for Your Job, Much Faster Than Anyone Thought   decrypt.co/323916/ai-comi... · Posted by u/methuselah_in
iamthemonster · 7 months ago
For the rest of my life, AI will be coming for my job and full-self-driving cars will be just around the corner.
iamthemonster commented on BYD Beats Tesla in Europe for First Time with 169% Sales Surge   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross
spwa4 · 7 months ago
So, fresh from angering virtually every government in the world, Musk will move on to introducing a service that utterly requires government approval and licensing, while costing a lot of jobs. To do this he'll have to get approval from politicians that are taking a leftist turn just to avoid being associated with either him or Trump (or didn't and are very angry at him and Trump for costing them a LOT of votes) ...

Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"

iamthemonster · 7 months ago
I can't believe we're still asking Elon about when we'll get full-self-driving, he's already answered that question every year since 2013. It's coming next year.

u/iamthemonster

KarmaCake day1278February 8, 2020View Original