My first RPG was the original pokemon red/blue and as a kid I was utterly baffled by the menu based combat. At first I thought the menus were bushes that you were hiding behind to catch the pokemon. The idea that the battle system was an abstraction over what a pokemon battle would actually be like was completely foreign to me. I got over it within the first hour but I remember being disappointed that you weren't actually slinging pokeballs and such.
I wish there could be an intelligent conversation about this. I feel like whenever I bring it up, i'm immediately mentally labeled a doomer, prepper, or Gingrich era republican, when the way I see it, this is totally apolitical and just 6th grade math.
It's clearly not sustainable to be growing the national debt at 2 or 3 trillion per year, and especially not at 5% interest rates. People bring up Japan as some sort of model that GDP/Debt can go much higher than the US is currently at, while missing that Japan is paying 0.76% on the 10-yr notes today. In many ways, Japan is lucky that their economy is so tepid and impotent because if they had caught the inflation bug like the US, they would have had to raise rates significantly.
Needless to say, debt levels at 270% of GDP with 5% rates would cause a fiscal catastrophe in Japan. Their interest payments alone would exceed all government revenue. They would have to cut 100% of government services (military, medical, pensions, administration, legislation, the courts) AND raise taxes, or issue mountains of new debt in some sort of horrible debt spiral until there was no more demand for yen bonds, at which point there would be sovereign bankruptcy I suppose? IMF bailout of Japan?
At current rates, US government debt will hit $41 trillion this time next year. It grew $604 billion in the last thirty days, and every bond sold is at 5% interest or more. It's just not something that can be done forever unless the US economy starts growing 10-15% per year, or unless rates can be pushed down to 0% indefinitely with no negative consequences.
One thing is for sure, your current tax rate you are paying is as low as it will be for the rest of your lifetime.
It's not unsustainable if that's your question. There's no mechanism that automatically turn this into some clear case of failure.
As a consequence, "what is the solution?" will get sidelined by the question of "should we even solve anything?", even though high interest rates are clearly damaging.
On the actual question of how to solve it, I don't have any answer. Both austerity and inflation come with side-effects that may or may not increase that rate even more.
Cursive really shines with fountain pens. Your modern gel/rollerball/ballpoint pin barely benefits from cursive. It’s like lamenting that the kids these days don’t know how to use an abacus. If you only had enough time to teach a kid how to use excel or an abacus I’d choose excel. If you only had enough time to teach a kid how to type or how to use cursive I’d choose how to type.
Fermented foods, psyllium husk, non-strict intermittent fasting and strength training will get you like 80% of the way there while still being able to enjoy sitting at your computer for 8+ hours a day.
This is the sort of advice people need to hear more of. Almost none of us are ever going to realistically adopt a hunter-gatherer lifestyle again. We need more data on how to get close to that within the confines of modern life. There's some great material out there now, but only very recently.
I personally really enjoyed this discussion on this between Andrew Huberman and Justin Sonnenberg (Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCWNRvPk20
The book "Fiber Fueled" by Will Bulsiewicz is an excellent source of information regarding the gut microbiota and its importance. I highly recommend it.
I was under the assumption that Stripe, PayPal, Square, etc are not payment processors but either payment facilitators or payment gateways (depending on the platform) in that they don't actual process the payments but rather provide a convenient PCI-compliant way of moving the transactions to the actual payment processor (Something like NCR, GlobalPay, Elvaon, etc). In Stripe's case in particular I thought they were a payment facilitator and as a payment facilitator they board you as a sub-merchant which makes the process of getting an MID easier. Is that right or does Stripe actually process payments?
Stripe is a Payment Facilitator, and they pioneered the modern PayFac model. That’s one of the reasons that the word Stripe appears on your credit card statement when you pay someone that is using Stripe. Additionally it means they front the risk of accepting payments on your behalf. They are also a payment processor. Those aren’t exclusive operating models, at least in the US.
