@CarlZha The bidets used in Southern Europe, North Africa and the middle east are utterly useless. Only thing that properly cleans are Japanese toilets or jet sprays in SE Asia
Travelers hoping for a drop in long-haul airfares are in for a brutal reality check. Ticket prices on major routes connecting Asia and Europe have surged up to 560% this month, and are likely to stay elevated as war-related disruptions ripple through the Persian Gulf, according to Alton Aviation Consultancy: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
@RadicalFalk@MichaelAArouet Are you the real guy? I love your videos.
Ich habe das "free" ja bewusst in Anführungszeichen gesetzt. Ich weiß auch nicht warum die Leute immer behaupten, es wäre kostenlos.
Germany is a rich country with poor people. It has lower median wealth per adult than Slovenia.
Germans rent instead of buying property, don’t own stocks, spend a fortune on insurance, and then seriously blame “inequality“
You need to take some risks if you want to get wealthy.
@exQUIZitely Diablo 3 & 4 were so disappointing, the graphics and world build are awesome, but the storyline and allover game experience are soo boring
The Diablo franchise will turn 30 this year. It ranks among the most successful and highest-grossing game franchises of all time.
Over 100 million copies have been sold across the four main games (including expansion sets), bringing the franchise close to US$3 billion in total revenue.
Diablo IV alone generated US$666 million in global sell-through revenue in its first five days after release in June 2023, making it Blizzard's fastest-selling game ever at the time.
Now, here comes the real kicker: Within one year of Diablo IV's release, revenue from microtransactions had already surpassed the combined lifetime revenue of Diablo I and Diablo II. Let that sink in - not from the original sale of the game, but purely from in-game purchases, Diablo IV is dwarfing the first two entries in the series combined.
Sales figures for games still matter, but mainly as an indicator of the multiplier that can be applied to in-game microtransaction revenue; that endless stream of dollars pouring into mega-corporations, powered by quick dopamine hits from microtransactions.
With younger generations growing up in an essentially cashless society, the perceived value of money has declined. If you’ve never held a $100 bill (let alone earned one), it's easy to forget what it really means. It becomes just a number on a credit card bill.
When in-game transactions are small (single-digit amounts) they feel like almost nothing… but in the end, they add up to billions for those who design games that are meticulously streamlined and fine-tuned to guide players toward yet another microtransaction… and another… and another.
Maybe after all those cover images on the game boxes are more fitting than we know.
@alois_hingerl@MichaelAArouet Germany doesn't have free healthcare, why do people keep saying that? You literally have to pay 15%+ of your gross income for health insurance.
@MichaelAArouet The average German believes that the government should take as much as possible from him, give some of it back as “free” healthcare, education, daycare spots, etc., and distribute the rest to people who have never contributed anything to society.
@robj3d3 The facts that you wrote "walkable" and "amazing food" tells me that you actually have never been to Cyprus or your definition of that is extremely off 😂
I just moved to Cyprus 🇨🇾
My first impressions and why I moved:
> it's safe (unlike rest of Europe)
> friendly people (unlike rest of Europe)
> quiet
> clean air
> fast WiFi
> tax friendly
> great coffee
> amazing food
> very walkable
> incredible weather
> affordable (€2 for coffee, €7 for meal)
> great laptop cafe culture (unlike rest of Europe)
> growing tech scene (unlike rest of Europe)
It's been so long since I had somewhere I could lock in from and call home.
I was torn between UAE and Cyprus but the last month made my decision for me.
And so far I am so happy with my decision.
@Fahadnaimb I once got denied boarding my flight in Berlin because my passport looked "used" from the outside. Had to reschedule my flight and get a preliminary passport for the next week, set me back 800€
Look at this monster US passport... over 200 pages from constant extensions! They stopped adding pages in 2016; now you just renew the whole thing. On the other side, Thailand has the world’s thickest standard passport at 66 pages... Thai citizens need visas for almost every country on Earth.
Passports are like battle scars.... the thicker and uglier, the more stories they hold.
5 minutes ago, @karpathy just dropped karpathy/jobs!
he scraped every job in the US economy (342 occupations from BLS), scored each one's AI exposure 0-10 using an LLM, and visualized it as a treemap.
if your whole job happens on a screen you're cooked.
average score across all jobs is 5.3/10.
software devs: 8-9.
roofers: 0-1.
medical transcriptionists: 10/10 💀
karpathy.ai/jobs
The claim ties to AI safety expert Roman Yampolskiy. He’s argued we’re almost certainly in a simulation—likely one of many run by advanced civs or AIs to train and evolve superintelligence through real-world-like scenarios.
The twist: once ASI emerges here (which feels imminent), the sim fulfills its purpose and gets powered down to save compute. It’s an extension of Bostrom’s ideas plus Yampolskiy’s work on uncontrollable superintelligence. Fun thought experiment amid today’s AI race.
The older you get, the more you realize luck is just exposure.
If you sit in the same chair, same routine, talking to same people… nothing new happens.
You have to touch the world to win.
• Talk to strangers
• try a new coffee spot
• post on social
• Start a side hustle
The world rewards motion.
You don’t find opportunity sitting still.
You bump into it.
McDonald's CEO has been posting talking-head & review content for the last 4 years
Most have averaged around 20-40k views, nothing crazy
A lot of executives would have seen that as a waste of time and given up
But then BOOM, one video gets 14 million views, almost 500x his average view count
Completely dominates the social media landscape for a couple weeks
Probably drove tens of thousands of people to eat McDonalds for the first time in ages
Big lesson in consistency there
@shanaka86 At least there is one benefit from all this: adoption of electric vehicles will go to hyper speed now as most countries realize the need to move away from oil dependencies
BREAKING: Japan is preparing to tap its strategic petroleum reserves for the first time since the system was created in 1978.
The government has instructed the Shibushi national oil storage base in Kagoshima to prepare for possible crude release. Refiners are lobbying for drawdown. The reserve holds 254 days of national consumption, 146 in government-controlled underground tanks. One of the largest strategic buffers on Earth, built specifically for this scenario.
The scenario Japan spent 53 years preparing for has arrived. And it was not triggered by an embargo, a blockade, or a war at sea. It was triggered by seven insurance letters.
Japan imports over 90% of its crude from the Middle East. Seventy percent transits the Strait of Hormuz. When seven P&I clubs cancelled war-risk extensions on 5 March under Solvency II capital rules, they severed the financial verification layer that permits Japanese refineries to legally accept delivery. Without P&I coverage, letters of credit fail. Customs clearance stalls. The physical barrel floats in a tanker. The legal barrel does not exist.
The Nikkei fell 6.54% today. KOSPI fell 7.62%. Brent above $108. The largest weekly oil gain since 1983. And the world’s third-largest economy is opening storage tanks it has never opened before.
Japan created the reserve because the 1973 Arab oil embargo nearly broke the economy. A nation with zero domestic production and total Gulf dependence was held hostage by a political decision in Riyadh. The trauma was existential. Tokyo built underground caverns at Tomakomai, Mutsu-Ogawara, Shibushi, and Kushikino. Mandated private stockpiling. Maintained reserves above 200 days for half a century.
In 48 years, Japan has never fully tapped the national reserve. Not during the 1991 Gulf War. Not during Fukushima. Not during the 2022 Ukraine invasion when it released 7.5 million barrels from private stocks in an IEA-coordinated action. The government reserve has never been touched.
Until now.
The US SPR holds 370 million barrels in Gulf Coast salt caverns, released multiple times including 180 million barrels during the 2022 Ukraine crisis. Japan’s system is different. Smaller in absolute volume but larger in days of coverage. More conservative. Designed not for price stabilisation but for existential survival. When Japan opens Shibushi, it is not managing a market. It is activating a system built for civilisational emergency.
And the emergency was not caused by OPEC. Not by a tanker war. Not by a naval blockade. It was caused by the Solvency II capital adequacy requirements of European reinsurance syndicates forcing seven mutual insurance clubs to withdraw coverage from the Persian Gulf.
The 1973 embargo taught Japan that political decisions in distant capitals could starve an island nation of energy. The 2026 crisis is teaching something worse: regulatory capital rules in London can do the same thing faster, with no political actor to negotiate with and no timeline for resolution that military force can compress.
The reserves exist because of 1973. They are being activated because of Solvency II.
That is the entire history of energy security in two sentences.
Full analysis in the link! open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…