I think the point of the song is inevitability (in the context of African liberation). The idea being that Africa is indispensable to the world and will eventually overcome.

I feel like a really good writer could turn these crazy debugging incidents into a Columbo-style story series.

I am always mystified by the level of attention applied to the Doomsday Clock. The organization behind it seems to be staffed by serious (TM) people so there is probably some amount of analysis behind their proclamations but to what end? What is the difference between 85 seconds to midnight or 100 seconds or one hour? All sound pretty scary to me so I can't quite differentiate if I should be more scared (by how much? to what end??). This really seems like the power of storytelling (the clock metaphor is really striking) over any real substance.

I am of two minds here. I can understand how the filmmakers can feel insulted by this demand but I am also one of those viewers that watches movies with one eye on my phone so spoon feeding the audience benefits people like me. I only pay full attention to one or two shows (usually those that I watch with my spouse) and every other show can only get my divided attention. My product manager sense says that you should give people what they want even if my artistic sense is indignant.

I guess the best analogy I can think of is the transition from writing assembly language and the introduction of compilers. Now, (almost) no one knows, or cares, what comes out of the compiler. We just assume it is optimized and that it represents the source code faithfully. Seems like code might go that way too and people will focus on the right prompts and can simply assume the code will be correct.

A compiler is deterministic though.

Does a system being deterministic really matter if it's complex enough you can't predict it? How many stories are there about 'you need to do it in this specific way, and not this other specific way, to get 500x better codegen'?

Which jurisdictions tax unrealized capital gains? Asking for a friend so I can avoid passing through.

I don't know if this counts, but I believe Norway taxes unrealized gains (indirectly) via wealth tax. All stock value is on the chopping block come tax time.

I doubt this is a common thing. Whereas the other case (dividends tax credit) is far more common. It impacts those of us in Canada. Our government disincentivizes buybacks and encourages dividends instead. Typically, if you're in a low income bracket, and have investments brewing for decades (with high amounts of unrealized gain) in an unregistered account, it is preferable to get dividends over buybacks.

Denmark is one of them. Germany has something similar. But you can ask your friendly neighbourhood LLM for details on the world's jurisdictions to get a complete list.

Germany doesn't tax actual unrealized gains. They do tax foreign accumulating ETFs, but those really just dress up dividends to look a bit like unrealized capital gains to brokerages and, in the past, tax authorities.

Btw, I wonder why companies bother with dividends at all, when for most of their shareholders buybacks have tax advantages. (Economically, the two are the same.)

Denmark taxes unrealized gains in accumulating funds, unless they are on the “exception-list” (SKATs positivliste) or you use the tax advantaged “aktiesparekonto”.

If you buy regular stocks in a regular brokerage account, you do not incur taxes before selling (with profit).

Same for dividend-distributing ETFs.

Every morning I make a list of tasks I want to accomplish during the day. Whenever, I get a little in-between time, I look for something on my to-do list that could fit and knock it off.

> and thinks most of the stories are mostly false/lies/storytelling.

It's been a while since I read "Surely, you must be joking" but I seem to recall Feynman himself makes the same point. He basically says something to the effect that some of his stories and bon mots are things he wished he said or did rather than stuff that actually happened.

I obviously don’t know your specific situation but having brought up kids in a similar environment, I may be able to offer some possible explanation for what you are living through.

First, never underestimate the impact of your environment on your way of thinking. We all like to think we’re independent thinkers but really we’re much more influenced by the people we interact with than we could even realize. Once you have a kid, a lot of your social circle will consist of other parents so you will unconsciously absorb their values and motivations as well, including the desire to put your kids through all these hoops.

Second, many professional class parents believe that the key to future success lies in getting their kids into the right school. Hence, it’s never too early to start the kid on the path to great grades, background experiences, scholarships, etc. I’ve seen parents stress out about preschool enrollments because of the “advantages” these schools provided.

Lastly, this is very often the default path for parents. It’s just what you are supposed to do. Everything is set up in that direction. Defaults are powerful and govern our behavior much more than we all realize.

Final last point, the truth is no one knows what works when raising kids. For every story of a free-range kid becoming self-reliant, there’s a story of a latchkey kid that became a bum. Therefore, parents are generally risk-avoidant with their kids (there’s no do-overs) and tend to do “good” and “respectable” approaches in child rearing (like signing them up for sports, extra curriculars, etc)

These parents (who believe there is one path to future success) will be in for a rude awakening in the coming 10-20 years when all the traditional high-status career paths have dried up. Can they not see the writing on the wall? Not that I would ever be such a parent, but even if I was, there's no point in pressuring and forcing your kids into this lifestyle given the unpredictability of the future. My goal is just supporting and letting my kid do the things that interest them.

How do you prevent your house key being used by a different person, that it was not issued to?

I don’t get the analogy. I keep my house keys out of the hands of people I don’t want in. In this case, the age verification is being circumvented by someone simply asking another person to perform it on their behalf.

I guess the practical answer is that it’s impossible because there’s always the option to have an adult perform the verification and then hand over the device to the minor

Yes, the analogy is the burglar getting into the house by asking you to open your door for them. Adults are permitted to decide such a thing, because they know the risks and are expected to be able to reason about that. When an adult has decided, then there is no problem, as far as age verification is concerned. We have regulations when adults are in fact not able to decide such a thing "correctly".

We already have penalties for adults mistreating children by exposing them to dangerous things, but this is orthogonal to age verification.

Why do you want the online process to be more secure than the one using physical IDs?

Mostly because online process can scale a lot further and faster. An older cousin can only walk into a store to buy so much alcohol but a stolen token can be reused a million times in a second.