Open Thread

Open Thread #412: Clown World/Politics/Economics

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35 thoughts on “Open Thread #412: Clown World/Politics/Economics

  1. Why do all of the east Asian ethnicities seem to hate each other? I understand the cause of animosity between Japanese – Chinese – Koreans, but what about all the other ethnic groups?

    1. @Gerd Schmetjen
      You also see this with Hispanics hating on other Hispanics. Mexicans hating on Central Americans and so on. There’s a lot of cultural friction, but you also have a lot of Hispanics who are racist to people of their own race.

    2. @Chris: the fact is that Latin America has been the closest societies will ever get to a somewhat stable multiculturality… which is an indictment as much as a balance.

    3. While this is all true. White people hate each other much more (the 2 world wars). We don’t even have unity within our own families, (which Asians and Latinos absolutely do).. Of course, there is a certain tribe involved in this whole dynamic.

    4. White people really don’t have each other that much. The world wars were almost entirely for political reasons.

      There’s a reason that Europe, despite having such a mix of cultures and so many useless immigrants, is still one of the most peaceful and low-crime areas in the world. Certainly top of the class if you’re excluding relatively homogenous areas in east Asia.

      And latino and Asian families have plenty of conflicts. Especially Asians are usually smart enough not to publicly broadcast their family issues, though.

    5. When I was 14 y/o I had to live with my grandmother against my wishes. One time I was at my uncle’s place ( who lived blocks away) and told him I had to go back to “my house” to get something.

      He said: “You’re house?”

      Me: “Yeah ”

      Uncle: “YOU’RE house?”

      Me: “Ummm, yeah?”

      Uncle: “What did you go out and buy your own place??”

      This is unthinkable in other cultures. But maybe I’m an outlier.

    6. @GLAS: in Latin American countries, there’s much less of a pressure to move out when you hit 18 and/or finish college at 22 (or 23, duration of undergraduate degrees varies). But you still get those kinds of comments from time to time, sometimes tongue-in-cheek or as a reprimand. If it’s very frequent though, either you have a problem or your parent/relative does.

  2. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/18/boomers-wealth-money-millennials-gen-z/77779320007/

    “Wealthy boomers: you can have my money when I’m dead

    A survey of wealthy Americans by Charles Schwab reveals a fascinating generational divide over how, and when, they leave money to their heirs.

    Millennials and Generation Xers want to transfer wealth to the next generation during their lifetime, the survey found. Baby boomers prefer to wait until they are dead.

    More specifically, wealthy millennials and Gen Xers who answered the survey were more than twice as likely as boomers to agree with this statement: “I want the next generation to enjoy my money while I’m still alive.”

    The finding comes from a survey of more than 1,000 Americans with at least $1 million in investable assets, released in December by the investment firm.

    Roughly half of millennials, and 44% of Gen Xers, said they want to share wealth while they are alive. Only 21% of boomers agreed.

    Meanwhile, 45% of boomers agreed with this less charitable statement: “I want to enjoy my money for myself while I’m still alive.” Only 15% of millennials and 11% of Gen Xers shared the sentiment.

    We are, after all, talking about the Me generation.”

    Anyway, the survey is misleading because it forgot the option “I want to take it all with me, even if it means joining my god Mammon in hell.”

    1. Boomers are entitled in a way, but in their defense their entitlement is of a different kind than that of the millennials.

      Boomers always thought they had the right to a good life, but they also thought they had to work hard for it. There were no “participation trophies” for boomers. Good salary, yes, but only if you’re willing to get the grades and then work hard at your job.

      Some of the younger millennials seem to think that a six-figure salary is a totally reasonable expectation with their humanities degree from college.

    1. The most incredible aspect is that there are entire industries, employing hundreds of thousands of people, that produce nothing of value. Here, we have an example of a grifter who used to work in “international development” who realized that she does not only not have any “skills and experience outside this field”, but also that she is useless for the economy. As a society, we were so degenerate that we made it possible for people to have lifelong careers that are nothing but parasitical.

    2. The international development sector seems like a real racket.

      If they actually worked with the nuts and bolts of what they are supposed to do, they’d have the skills to get a job in the private sector (or another part of the public sector). They should have skills in something like purchasing, logistics, management, heck, even performing background checks on the potential recipients of developmental aid/assistance.

      If they don’t have a single marketable skill, then they never really worked to begin with. I think portability is a good test to tell if someone is doing a real job (well, there might be a few exceptions: a sniper might not have any skills that are very useful outside of the military, for example).

    1. I just read about this and my first thought was that the root cause was probably a confluence of DEI policies, thinking of two Jaqueeshas being engaged in a game of dominance, ignoring the instructions of the air traffic controller. In Berlin, there have been a few deadly accidents in which (female) cyclists assumed that traffic regulations are optional, so they ignored them and expected trucks to just stop for them, leading to their untimely demise. Entitlement is certainly a plausible explanation for such accidents.

    2. To nobody’s surprise, Trump has just been proven to be an utter bigot. As it turned out, the pilot of the helicopter was not an unqualified DIE hire (what irony this would have been!) but a “skilled female pilot”:
      https://archive.ph/lVYq4
      The actual cause must be something else rather than DIE because otherwise, we would have to make the claim that there are unskilled skilled female pilots, which is an impossibility.

    3. Decided to ask Grok, the X AI, if 500 flight hours in a helicopter is a lot of experience:
      “For professional helicopter pilots, especially those in demanding roles like emergency medical services, aerial firefighting, or offshore oil rig transport, 500 hours might be seen as moderate experience. Many professionals might accumulate this amount within a few years of full-time flying. However, pilots with over 1,000 to 2,000 hours are often considered more seasoned.”

      So she’s “skilled” at a “moderate experience” level. Heh, ok.

      They just keep inserting words where they want. “Let’s call her ‘skilled’, so people can’t blame DEI!”

      Ridiculous to say that she “had extensive flying experience, with more than 500 hours of flight time.”

    4. There are posts floating around on Telegram according to which the “female” pilot is transgender. Probably you do not want such people in charge of very expensive equipment, let alone a helicopter. This story has not been officially confirmed, as far as I can tell. It it is true, the woke-stream media will work overtime to suppress it.

    5. One thousand qualified applicants were turned down for an air traffic controller job because DEI was more important:
      https://archive.ph/gVxD4
      This was for a good cause, bigot! A crashed helicopter and a few dead people are nothing in the grand scheme of things. After all, this is about societal progress.

    1. Let’s not get too optimistic with recent news coming out from the current administration. I’m almost positive that whatever is being done isn’t to directly benefit the average white American. Though, on the surface it seems nice to deport illegals and eradicate segments of DEI, it is merely essential to keep collapse from accelerating. As you pointed out recently, there are no more host countries to parasitize.

      Here’s a recent black-pilling executive order that is meant to clamp down on anti-semitism, and is probably not very pro first amendment: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-takes-forceful-and-unprecedented-steps-to-combat-anti-semitism/#:~:text=Expanding%20on%20his%20Executive%20Order,streets%20since%20October%207%2C%202023.

      That said, I personally try to look at the bright side. I don’t think I’d be too upset if large swaths of Muslim lands were to end up being purged.

    2. I do not think that Trump is working towards a white utopia. However, given the current state of the world, I am happy to take every little ‘W’ there is. Even if it is far too early to claim that the West is becoming a better place, the United State is at least no longer perpetually getting worse. The situation in Europe is not nearly as hopeful.

    3. Pickernanny:
      From what I’ve heard of the EO, it seems to be used to target mainly pro-terrorist Arabs, and Chinese political instigators.

      To the extent that it is, I’m all for it.

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