Sobremesa

It’s weird there’s no English word for that, now that you point it out, since it’s a pretty common thing.

Ah, so there has to be active precipitation.

Billionaires tend to be buisnesspeople, plenty of multinationals (most, actually) aren’t owned by a billionaire, and non-billionaires can run businesses that operate in multiple countries (again, probably most of them).

A leader that is elected by their country, represents it.

Well, that’s basically the propaganda. Says who? God? Physics? Neither. And, elect how? Some countries have proportional representation, which neither the US or Canada do.

At the end of the day, a state is anything that has a monopoly on the use of force. Some allocate political power within themselves through elections (of many massively different kinds), while some do it other ways.

You could say, “okay, elections have nothing to do with it, but we’re still responsible for what we let our governments do”, which covers the “it’s a collective responsibility” bit. And there’s a strong argument for that. But, by that measure pretty much everyone sucks everywhere, which you can take however you want.

Oh, and there’s also the FHSA, on that note.

G4S, Dollar Tree or a payday lender like Curo Holdings should go up in any major downturn. Specifically if/when AI craps out, some of the big losers in white-collar services would rebound, although I don’t know enough to really give details on that. Lots, like Nestle or Goodyear, aren’t countercyclical but will be fairly unaffected, because they aren’t in tech and sell something people can’t really do without.

Yes, everything in the market is exposed to volatility. In which direction can vary, though. If you have a crystal ball and know the bubble is imploding this quarter, you could also buy bearish options on things like Nvidia. (There’s no off-the-shelf options that go out many years, I checked)

400 million people is 400 million distinct people. Nobody could or does represent them; the idea that someone can represent “the will of the people” is propaganda. Same with every other government; they actually just have control.

Well, plenty of lives depend on petroleum products, too. And you can use sand or similar to prevent icyness, as well, although you need more of it.

They do not.

And oil. And critical minerals. Apparently road salt too…

It’s far from the least safe country to be gay in, and decent by regional standards, but yes, it’s not the West.

I was wondering if it’s an American dismissiveness thing, but it looks like other Americans in this thread think that’s nuts, too.

If you turned down Harvard, sure, maybe it’s a downgrade. I have to think a community or private school nobody’s ever heard of would be worse. Unless you’re planning to go back to the US to work, in which case US-first might bite you.

Emissions have measurably dropped under carbon pricing.

Diversified stock without AI exposure is an option. Bonds give less return and also are looking a bit funny these days, while metals give literally zero.

Yeah, there is that legal fiction, and typical way of looking at things, so it’s not an incorrect phrasing. It’s just kinda funny.

Yeah, but timing the market is always iffy. For all you know the bubble will burst so far out that it’s still better to buy today.

Plus, you can invest in other countries. I myself hold some of an everything-except-the-US ETF.

… You know, this is kinda true. I can’t think of a single young person who looks at the future (writ large) with hope rather than dread, or at least YOLO-ish apathy. The difference between people is in degree, and if they think it will eventually get better again.

Even most old people know the outlook is kinda fucked.

Although, if you have to gamble, fuck with day trading before slots or poker or whatever. Way better odds.

Yup.

The Canadian equivalent is a TFSA, unless you max it out (congrats), then RRSP. Apparently there’s niche cases where RRSP is better, so look into it a bit.

Yeah, IIRC the force between nucleons is actually mediated by virtual pions, which are themselves composite particles. The direct nuclear force gets stronger with distance instead of weaker, which obviously doesn’t happen with whole atoms.

It turns out that glueballs don’t come from “taking the quarks out” of regular matter but by some kind of direct excitation of the colour charge field – a thing I didn’t even know was a thing.

Yep. It’s like if photons (which are the fundamental particles of electromagnetism) had a magnetic or electric charge themselves. That was a known property, but it wasn’t clear until now if it was enough to weave together into a larger particle like this.