The truth of matter is that there’s very little screaming.

Americans were conditioned decades ago to be a quite docile. they work in their cubicles and have their families and their little house in the suburbs… America has been a beige, thoughtless landscape for the majority of people for decades.

The only thing needed was to consolidate the media to create enough fear and control to drive enough people to give away their rights, which I’m sure the rich and powerful will point out that the people aren’t even using!

Obama himself has repeatedly come out and said that if people want change then they need to go out and vote. Vote? It’s crickets instead.

If you actually go out and meet enough people, you begin to realize that the real reality of America is far different than this Internet supposition. People have wanted a strong man authoritarian for a very long time. They are exhausted. They don’t care about their country , their community, their culture… capitalism has worn them down so much that all they really care about is getting to each weekend and having enough to pay for housing and some food. Subtle propaganda helps take care of the rest.

America hasn’t been able to think for itself in decades. The people at the top know this, and they have a lot of disdain for the fact that the majority of people just go home and watch sportsball on Sundays. So they finally decided to see how much they could get away with, and it looks like it’s going to be the entire pie!

You have Jared Kushner pulling a lot of strings on one side, and you have his brother, Josh Kushner, giving enormous amounts of money to the other side. They’re both incredibly evil. And it’s obvious that both sides completely disdain their civilian constituents, because their real constituents are corporations and oligarchs.

It’s not just the two party system. You have to get the money out out of politics before anything else can positively move back toward democracy.

....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way.

my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe and they don’t share it.

The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit. i’ve seen inside some of the homes, and they are filled with independent black power movie posters about shooting Whitey. No kidding.

I know it takes a village, but when people are so very different and forced to be near each other, it doesn’t mean that they will socialize or help each other; it’s like living on two different planets. there’s all kinds of social research showing this now, and what you get is micro segregation along income lines, rather than everyone helping each other and lifting up the community together.

I wanted for most of my life for people to get along and the world to be a better place, thinking that education and modern access to information could somehow make things better. It seems that was entirely and completely wrong. when people have any kind of discomfort at all about new culture or new person or new idea? They pretty much just run away.

The people here on hacker news are probably an exception, because we are here searching for commentary and interesting ideas and new information.

This is exactly my experience. I moved into a black neighborhood and it's real bad for me. My neighbor, a white elderly woman, organizes sort of community events, but it's 90% white people from nicest houses.

> The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit.

Did you replace folks' smoke detector batteries for them?

The way I found to get around this prejudice was to go to church most Sundays and walk around with a sling bag full of 9V batteries and knock on doors to offer to maintain smoke detectors. (It probably didn't hurt that I was also good for bumming cigarettes off of and slowing down to have a chat.)

YMMV, but showing up and doing work was apparently what my neighbors in East St. Louis and Atlanta wanted.

Wait, so the smoke detector thing is real? I assumed it was just a racist stereotype.

It's something of a meme that's grounded in reality, but it's honestly less grounded in race and ethnicity than it is in socioeconomic status.

That said, there's a joke that the white people version of this is the little bug in the lower right corner of the Windows desktop background that tattles on you for not having activated.

Which, like, y'know, that's fair.

What an awful society you live in.

It is not like that where I live.

The first generation of immigrants have trouble, natural enough. But are very keen that their children do better.

As for racism: Most racism here is systemic, from the state. There is casual ignorant racism, of course, but little hate.

What a mess has been made of your country. You should work to fix it.

It took us a lot of work to get here, and we have a long way to go. But I cannot imagine living in a society such as you describe.

Where I’m from, Sweden, typically it is the second and third generation immigrants who exhibit antisocial behaviour.

Its true im many places. First generation hard working. Second generation lives in the inprint of the first generation. Third generation has no connection to the original homeland and tries to find connection or it turns to antisocial behaviour.

Worth specifying that this also applies to the "good" immigrants such as the Poles, not just the much vilified Muslims. The kids of Polish immigrants really struggle. And if you go a generation back, the Vietnamese boat refugees had similar issues: their kids really had issues, there were Vietnamese criminal gangs in Oslo in the 90s. The ex-Yugoslav organized crime groups were maybe more notable in that they were often first generation, but they're mostly a memory too by now. Then there's the "hapas", children of Asian women who immigrated by marrying native men. Scandinavia hasn't seen much trouble with them - yet. But I think there's some danger here, online I've seen some worrying communities.

I think identity rootlessness is an underestimated factor in immigration woes. Youth of all kinds can often be exploited into adopting a destructive self-identity, but some groups are more vulnerable. One notorious Swedish gang actively recruits from the foster care system.

I think less people expected those to cause generational trouble and so a common pro-migration argument 1-2 decades ago was that these people from mena regions would assimilate. After all the people from (in our case italy) mostly already did.

It's wild to see how this flipped completely around in such a short time and now some markers of integration seem to go backwards and at the same time some consider it biggoted to demand/expect assimilation.

The first generation could hardly be classified as “hard working”, the sad fact is many of them live on (generous) welfare.

Ok, this is very different from the situation in Sweden. Many were analphabets and live completely segregated from mainstream society with little hope(or wish) to integrate with Swedish society.

I agree with your analysis of the Trump family who have been detrimental for US society.

Good point.

Questions for Sweden might be "How did the US integrate all the illiterate Irish?" (and should they do the same), "How did Australia integrate many non English speaking / writing Vietnamese 'boat people'?", etc.

Unless Sweden in majority is prepared to broom out all that they have accepted in, then this how it is, a mix of cultures having to find common directions and minimise friction over the next generation and a half.

These are valid questions the western Europe dodged for far too long. Looking the other way created the rightwing monster of today.

or the third generation are just natives at that point, and will commit crimes at a similar rate to the native populace?

The thought and consideration is worth the time, I think.

However, in a certain respect this is why government is supposed to exist: we never would have gone to the moon. Or built the highway system. Or train tracks. Or a whole lot of big things which don’t immediately seem to have a benefit.

It takes a large body with power and money to enact regulations and movement and take on big projects which would obviously benefit a majority of people in the long-term.

When this is done, countries can move mountains, literally, but without it? We are just left to boil in our own juices as people running around flailing.

I think your idea is absolutely worth personal consideration, but at the same time my feeling is the answer is somewhat obvious on a societal scale. But we’ve lost all trust in government, and there is no political will left to get almost anything done in North America

> However, in a certain respect this is why government is supposed to exist: we never would have gone to the moon. Or built the highway system. Or train tracks. Or a whole lot of big things which don’t immediately seem to have a benefit.

> (...) I think your idea is absolutely worth personal consideration, but at the same time my feeling is the answer is somewhat obvious on a societal scale. But we’ve lost all trust in government, and there is no political will left to get almost anything done in North America

I agree with you on both these points as well and I would like to add a few thoughts that I have onto it: The trust itself within the government is eroding. I feel like trust within institutions is a highly large factor but we have come to such a wide lack of trust that we can't even communicate on basic matters let alone come to agreements at times.

I have also written an comment about it just a little under a week ago which feels relevant and talks about the trust within institutions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49351114

One paragraph from that comment which I had written which I would like to say again is this:

"Trust works in a society when incentives are aligned with trust ie. you trust the society, the society trusts you back and you do the work with these principles and you are rewarded. Even this belief is something that you must trust that the society is fair. This trust creates your beliefs which sets your base-line incentives.

(Note: I feel as if in this example, society/government are interchangable and perhaps government is part of the larger societal structure in it, I feel like the fundamental issue is of trust/incentives within society. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about it as well)

And look what happened to Sonos soon after that! I’m sorry, but I’ve gotten to the point where I would’ve just yelled back at the guy “Prove it, chudmuffin! You’re advocating for something you know nothing about and sending the company in a disastrous direction which will lead to its demise. If your idea is so great, then you prove it’s better than decades of established precedent at the largest companies in the world.” Then watch their head asplode and challenge me to a fistfight in the parking lot. Yes, I’ve had that happen with a sales “guy.”

Not saying that’s what you could or would have done, I’ve just gotten to the point in life where I’m alreaover it, ready to throw it back at them. Maybe it’s from living in this part of the world, but our plumber said “always be ready for people to be mean to you“ and while it doesn’t make for a very peaceful life, it certainly makes for fun ripping heads off.

Does it, though? Tesla stock hasn’t run into reality yet. All that’s required to avoid reality is for enough people to keep believing believing the lie. If a bunch of big companies all invest in each other and never sell, then wouldn’t it prop up the whole thing and the valuation stays high? I’m open to ideas

The Keely Engine continued to get investors until Keely died.

Sometimes, a conman outruns the con. They just die of old age before it falls apart.

It's the 1880s all over again. Conmen can outrun the press and overall information space. Back then you took investor dollars and shoved them into wagons that traversed the West selling stock.

Today, you can accomplish the same with a few Facebook campaigns.

Valuations are not value.

There’s a point where if you ask to be paid a billion dollars for something that is worthless, people just laugh at you.

Until the next transaction you can keep pretending the old inflated valuation is real, but you can raise capital, not without popping the bubble.

At some point people will stop giving Tesla and NVIDIA more money.

Care to expand upon that? Where do you think things are headed? I have some ideas, myself, as a form of financial guy and I’m very interested to hear other opinions

One fascinating small indication is the relatively underreported machinations in the last couple of weeks where the USA has been selling billions of its Euro holding, without any co-ordination with the ECB, to buy Yen, so that the Japanese don't sell US bonds to get out of a hole, which would be bad for the USA.

Also the brinkmanship in the way Bessent "announced" that, without announcing it formally, by writing down his plan to do so clearly on a notepad so a reporter would photograph it, which is something he has already said he's done before and, to my mind, comes across as beyond childish.

The EU apparently is furious and considers this reckless, and the strategy itself is incredibly time-limited because they will soon enough run out of Euros to sell. And then what? Japan liquidates its US treasury bonds anyway and the USA has burned another bridge with Europe.

Just a small, self-contained example of the USA acting without care or co-operation internationally. And yet Trump has repeatedly threatened consequences if the EU sells US treasury bonds in response to the tariffs.

Nothing about the USA speaks of the kind of trust you need in a country and its currency for it to be the de facto global reserve currency. Though whether the world actually makes any change there in my lifetime, who knows; there's an enormous amount of inertia to overcome.

This is just flat out untrue. Going a day or two without eating anything feels freeing and wonderful. You simply have some coffee and go through your day, drink water. By not eating anything at all it’s much easier. Even having a couple bites of food gets the body revved up to eat more. Fasting is a choice to simply not. To abstain. To stop and pause. This idea is so un American that I believe people are simply unaware and unable to process the notion.

Putting this idea in people’s mind, that they will be OK if they don’t eat for a day, would be revolutionary. However, companies want to sell things rather than simply give people a basic idea and open their world to possibilities.

This simply isn't how any addiction works. You can just as well say to an alcoholic to "just stop drinking". Humankind tried to rid itself of obesity for too long and it only kept getting worse. GLP-1 is the key.

Thanks for the details, really liked your posting this.

As a former Climber, moved to an area that doesn’t have a decent rock Gym and bought a house, this is inspiring. I have a chance to climb again and it will require losing some weight loss. I’m just a hair into the overweight category at the doctor.

One question: how tall are you?

I'm about 5'10", so technically "just a hair into the overweight category" as well, hence the desire to loose another 10lbs. Sounds like you'd be starting where I took a year getting to, so go get after it.

The additives to the meat. Has to retain its color, be preserved, and they also add pink slime to it. McDonald’s adds soy, I believe, and there are all kinds of other things that go into it. If you grind your meat at home you’re going to get some delicious burger.

Heh, grind your meat

As of the last 10 years none of this is true for McDonalds. Their published ingredients say 100% beef with no additives, and they stopped using pink slime 10 years ago.

But we’d still designate McDonald’s as junk food, so it can’t be the additives that make the category