Interestingly, capital returns and population growth are (unquestionably?) on exponential curves. So, are production factors too slow to evolve along with the exponentials? Maybe they are, because of waste, lack of recycling, raw resources decline and environmental damage.

>> The other near-ponzi scheme is the real estate market. In my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. > >Hello from a Vancouverite! I broadly agree with this point, and I'm not sure how to work our way out of a housing bubble beyond popping it and dealing with the aftermath. Too many people are invested in the status quo, so any politician who tries to pop it will be crucified for destroying the savings of a large portion of the population.

You could argue that in the same time frame, world population has more than doubled, and because the cost of capital is a lot cheaper elsewhere than in Canada, pressure on attractive living space in peaceful and stable countries has increased exponentially. At this point, the "liberal" view on capital flows and capital control, the fuel of foreign direct investments of Western countries into overseas properties since WWII, came back to bite the originators of the idea in the ass.

Perhaps this time what's different is that due to our information age and accelerated rates of change, cultural history's process of change has been pushed from being viewed closer to evolution (the next step of the change being defined by "environment and chance", that is, stretched out over long periods of time and caused by factors not directly being under human influence) to being much closer to immediate, accountable, man-made history (the next step of the change being defined by "environment and choice", that is, actors making active choices causing outcomes) [2]. And so, because most humans, even humans of influence making the choices altering the life outcomes of populuations not over generations but even within single, half or quarter lifetimes, are terribly selfish and stupid and unwise, the outcomes of bad choices just never seem to stop coming.

I'm no expert, but topics like shifting balances between global powers which are interested in different kinds of change (from hegemonic US in a post-WWII word to a very multi-polar world order to xyz) causing metrics like HDI to even out between global population groups have been "hot" since when? the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s? So sure, things might keep falling apart for one population group but still improving for the other group(s).

Another interesting take on "falling apart narrative" interpretations of current history might be a take on how looming juggernauts like climate change, migration waves and so on play into it. This kind of change may be good for something, but surely not perceived stability in the factors that make up human societies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West

[2] "Environment and change", "environment and choice" --- words borrowed out of recently read "Red Mars" by Kim Robinson.

There are alternative solutions: QubesOS uses VMs as the isolation layer, desktop application confinement using firejail with its good selection of profiles tweaked to my liking, systemd-run confinement configured through the vast resource control options made configurable through systemd. There is no reason ~ or even / shouldn't appear completely empty to Firefox the process except for the resources you pass to it (open file, grant download permissions...) or which it needs to run (of course, those would be immutable as far as possible). SELinux and AppArmor are child's play; you don't have a lot of problems of those tools if there are no objects a process could acceess in its namespace to begin with.

macOS I believe is already there in terms of desktop app confinement. Windows is not but at least it has the controlled folder access layer available after they gave up on making store apps meaningfully secure as its own app category (too many escapes/config tweaks possible now). Desktop Linux though has not had squat in that field in the mass market for 2 decades. Basically, you guys run all applications unconfined. Snap is a way to work on changing that.

Not saying though that the current implementation is exceptionally good. It's too slow, and they should have reused systemd or whatever for a thin, tweakable resource control and container layer, not invent a container format from scratch.

Does it also tell you of its own volition if the tax office owes you money instead on a return without you having to declare anything? For example, if the tax office knows where you work as an employee and where you live, and the tax code has provisions that stipulate that an employee gains a tax advantage of 0.xx€ per kilometre commuting distance between his home and his place of work, does it factor that in or doesn't it? Because that would actually be _nice_.

I don't wish to comment on the "and quality" part in your question though.

It's the same reason I buy my nongreat nonoffice furniture from IKEA --- because they have the product and the logistics.

A "research precariat" is what keeps German universities going as well. This is an international issue; even the OECD seems to have studies on the subject. Would be interesting to see a cross-country comparison of who really has the "best" universities --- or university systems, as this kind of issue does not tend to be specific to one institution.

Instead of believing, perhaps ask them?

In general, I find this article to say almost nothing. The headline is the clickbait bringing in a Fortune of clicks, I'm sure.

In any case, I treat this as a high risk operation; no HDD/SSD firmware flashing without making sure the backup is working...

What I was running up to say: whereas the quality of CD masterings typically was consistent and befitting the medium, many of my audio drama cassettes have quite varying physical qualities. It esp. gets noticable with long-running series such as the "three ???" series; over 100s of cassettes, you can make out the slumps and peaks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama#Germany

This is also the reason why I'm sceptical ordering things like the "Framework Laptop". If it's a hobby expense it's an alright expense and risk, but for productivity, I need assurances, and part of that assurance comes from a track record, which not all niche vendors have (with me).

When you build a reactor, you probably don't want "first-timers" working on the project for you.