DefiantTostada

Two points:

1. It’s the fiscally responsible thing for these pension funds to do. They have diversified investments, including S&P500 stocks. I hope the police and firefighter pension realized all those TSLA gains.
2. Institutional investors have POWER, and we don’t want all institutional investors to be investment banks. Why isn’t it good news that a union pension fund is holding a greedy board accountable for outsized executive pay? These guys saw a material impact in their investments at TSLA due to board BS and sued the board.

The Fremen are the most interesting in my eyes. It helps that we are introduced to them through the Atreides lens, so everything seems so strange and alien. The way they respect the desert, worms, and water scarcity is hard to imagine for the reader, but becomes internally consistent with how the Fremen operate. In Messiah that breaks down a bit, as the water scarcity foundation is ripped away and the Fremen lose purpose. They’re initially framed in a positive light (freeing Dune from the Harkonnens) but the jihad and religious fanaticism show their ignorance and weakness the following books. Still though they are just AWESOME

My son (7) and I just finished reading the book, which he loved. I downloaded the 2 hr edit and we had a blast watching it. It definitely skipped parts from the books, but it also largely was missing some exposition and context for why and where they were at a given time. Since we just read the book, it was easier to follow. Without that, though, I think you’d get lost as the scenes jump around quite a bit.

Generally yes. I played for a few hours then stopped as I wanted to keep it fresh for release…but what I did play was definitely fun. I’m excited they pulled the release ahead of starfield.

While this is inevitable, it’s also terrifying. I don’t think we’re close to Skynet, but I could definitely see needless escalation due to over-relying on AI analysis.

Yeah in fairness the article is making that leap as well. But the $ to build an EV factory or a semiconductor fab are so mind boggling that it will dwarf the new construction spend on some of the more traditional manufacturing industries. That said, there are some beautiful buildings- now vacant- in the rust belt that I wish would get re-purposed. The urban ones have likely turned into loft apartments by now, but the rural factory buildings may not ever get used again. Those old brick and stone buildings with the slanted skylights are iconic. I’m not sure they’ll ever get filled again, unfortunately.

When the government is expected to provide such generous benefits (half his salary in Spain, per the article) it seems that something has to change. It’s even good that some people are working past that age, and continuing to pay into it for others. It seems inappropriate to ask the people who are depending on the pension to reduce benefits or pay more- why not ask more of the true beneficiaries of their labor?

My US-centric view is less rosy, as we get WAY less in pension and limited healthcare…all the while there are literal billionaires who pay no taxes. Keep the benefits, tax the rich.

It is interesting that there is a lot of new construction, as it highlights the changing goods that are being produced in the US. I imagine many of those closed down factories in the rust belt/Midwest aren’t coming back, as those jobs (machining, welding, stamping, etc.) might still be done in LCC. The new construction $ is likely driven by biopharma, semiconductor, EV, and other high-tech manufacturing as the article starts to imply.

You’re not a “doomer”, as I read it more like the opposite- your defense of global trade is optimistic. Trade and specialization doesn’t work nearly that cleanly in practice.

Companies and governments saw the disruptions of the past few years and realized that there are unaccounted for costs (and benefits) to the global supply chain. COVID, shipping disruptions (strikes, Evergreen, prices), the chip shortage, etc. all have taught a lesson about the diversification of supply chain risk. Decentralization isn’t less efficient when you include those costs. So it makes more sense now to make goods in America for America, and make goods in China for China. Not all goods, obviously, but the scales have shifted…and that’s a good thing for the health of global supply.

Yeah it’s funny- the trailer “spoils” the plot but only if you already know the whole plot from the books and can pick out the major plot points during the fast-moving trailer. If you don’t know the story, you will probably only see some cool action sequences and character shots with some impactful dialog.