Increased work and fuel means increased costs, increased costs means increased prices, increased prices means less food available for purchase by those on the margins, less food means starvation.
No, not regardless of magnitude. But anything that have a large impact on food prices will decrease the ability of poor people to pay for it. It’s not rocket science.
Price increases due to disruption of Ukrainian grain shipments from the war substantially threatened African food stability.
Despite their being plenty of capacity elsewhere because the smaller redirects of trucking into the European markets crashed prices enough that it led to protests in Poland and discontent elsewhere (though probably with significant Russian psyops involvement).
I've always felt this is an absurd statement. Yes customers are paying the wages of the people working at the store, that's literally how basic exchange of goods and services has worked forever.
Like what is the alternative? Businesses sell things they sell those things for more than they make and then they use that money to pay people to work for them. People agree to work for them expecting they will be paid primarily from the money made by the business saling things to customers.
Like what is the alternative businesses pay their employees from some magic pool of money that you get the key too when you file articles of incorporation?
At the end of the day the customer is always paying the wages of the employees, that's literally how it worked since ever. Which is honestly an improvement where the local lord would take 30% of whatever you grew and in exchange would give you diddly and squat.
I'm working on an edutech game. Before I would've had much less of a product because I don't have the budget to hire an artist and it would've been much less interactive but because of this I'm able to build a much more engaging experience so that's one thing. For what it's worth.
The Oracle that published an announcement that said "we didn't get hacked" when the hackers had private customer info?
The Oracle that does not allow you to do any security testing on their software unless you use one of their approved vendors?
The Oracle that one of my customers uses where they have to turn off the HR portal for 2 weeks before annual performance evaluations because there is no way to prevent people from seeing things?
The only reason Oracle isn't having nightmarish security problems published every other week is because they threaten to sue anyone that does find an issue.
Oracle is a joke in every conceivable way and I despise them on a personal level.
I have a buddy that works as a red team engineer for a large company, the models are becoming close to unusable for him now as everything he tries to do they start refusing after 2 or 3 requests because of the "security implications"
There are six or seven unrelated mammals that evolved to depend on eating termites, including a marsupial, a monotreme, and a wolf. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is good advice, but nature will persistently try every bad strategy until it works out. Nature is a terrible role model.
It is currently in commitee the energy and commerce committee. If one of your reps sits on this committee my suggestion is to reach out to them and voice your opposition to this measure. Consider writing a letter or email as well.
So apart from all the geopolitics of it this line is interesting
"few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,’ Hosseini added"
Maybe I'm ignorant of Bitcoin but isn't Bitcoin transactions recorded in a public cryptographically signed ledger? Isn't that literally the opposite of "can't be traced"?
Or, if you knew the bitcoin addresses, you could figure out exactly how much oil is being moved. I would think oil data analysts would love to have access to that data (if they don't already).
Are you not aware of the techno-authoritarian ambitions of the silicon valley tech bros? It isn't much of a secret these days, after they published a few books detailing their aspirations, a bit like Project 2025. There are even public videos where they express their disdain for competition and democracy. A few prominent individuals in this cabal are publicly known. Mr. Lawn Mower here is at the forefront of it and it also includes the owners of many AI and surveillance companies. And they're all actively associated with extreme right wing governments.
Look at the known uses of AI by governments these days. Targeting of immigrants in Minnesota and selection of targets in Gaza and Iran to blow up. And look at the companies contributing to them. Some of the usual suspects are all present and contributing models, data centers and intel inputs.
Is it possible that some of the richest people are collaborating to subdue the rest of the population for their benefit? Does this sound like a conspiracy theory to you? Good! This sounds too fantastic and alarmist even to me. Skepticism is warranted. But the evidences are not mere speculations or leaps of faith. Many are well known facts reported by mainstream media. Besides, this isn't the first time that the greedy and egomaniacal individuals have banded together to consolidate wealth. You already know what they mean when they talk about 'absolute free speech', 'free market capitalism', etc. You've also seen their birth defect of missing empathy in action. And it doesn't help that many of them have an unhealthy obsession with apocalyptic prophecies of several religions (meanwhile, they never seem to notice the nice parts - ever). So a nightmare scenario isn't entirely inconceivable.
Why hasn't the AI bubble burst yet? Why do high profile men engage in cringy public bromance, followed by a messy divorce and then get back together again discretely? What are all their Mein Kampf style fantasy books and outrageous opinions about? Why did doge vacuum up highly sensitive demographic data that seems irrelevant to them? What's with all those shady and convoluted business deals and money transactions that look as if they're scheming a coup? And why the hell are all of them so obsessed with building fortified bunkers under their backyards?
Forget all that. Trump publicly announced yesterday that the military is building a 'massive complex' under that gaudy monstrosity that he calls the ballroom. Apparently, that hideous structure is only a lid for what's underneath. But I wasn't surprised a bit! The reason? A very smart lady had argued the exact same assertion two months ago! She took the details of the 'private donors' of the ballroom, the construction partners and their spending and purchase manifests, to convincingly argue that they're building a massive AI datacenter underground for the military. The costs were too high for the ballroom and many purchases were unconventional, to say the least. She said the exact same thing back then - that the ballroom is just a lid for an underground facility! I mean, if you are a military with a lethal strategic AI, you certainly wouldn't expose it like a traditional datacenter.
I feel like I'm paranoid just saying all these. But the world we live in today was unthinkable more than a decade ago. I don't want to spread confusion and paranoia. But it's also getting too late to ignore the developments. Just keep an eye for what's happening in this area. It's safer to be an unpopular prepper in this political climate, than be caught by surprise if it comes down to that.
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