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Joined 1 year ago
Aquileo | cake
Cake day: June 5th, 2025

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  • I don’t know why you’d conclude that we’re going to be worse off than older generations. Dementia is multifaceted, and associated with a lot of variables, including some that have decreased over time.

    Younger generations are far less likely to smoke, less likely to be exposed to concussive or sub concussive head trauma, and less likely to be exposed to loud noises that cause hearing loss. The standard of care for cardiovascular health is different, too, and faster interventions with statins and GLP-1s, greater availability and adherence to vaccine schedules (especially the shingles vaccine), all may result in much better old age health.

    Will that make up for greater exposure to other factors that make us less healthy? I’d actually think so.





  • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoGreentext@sh.itjust.worksAnon is 23
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    6 days ago

    Where are you that plumbers don’t get paid well?

    I’m in the U.S. Here’s an interactive, searchable table of U.S. stats for all job codes Note that you can dig around the site by state, as well.

    It shows the mean, median, 10th percentile, 25th percentile, 75th percentile, and 90th percentile wage, plus the number in each job, by both hour and by year.

    For 47-2152, “Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters,” we have 465k people making an average of $72k. The 10th/25th/50th/75th/90th percentiles are $44k/$50k/$63k/$85k/$108k. Those numbers are exactly what I’m talking about: a high floor and a very flat trajectory, where the 75th percentile doesn’t even double the 25th percentile.

    Compare to something like Human Resources Specialist, one of the more unremarkable college-educated office jobs. They’re averaging $82k, with $47k/$59k/$76k/$99k/$129k on those percentiles. And they have a clear pathway towards Human Resources manager, where the average is $164k and the spread is $88k/$111k/$149k/$199k/$268k.

    Note also that the U.S. employs almost twice as many HR specialists (912,000) as plumbers (465,000) in our job market. And HR Managers are over 200,000 people.

    Start digging into different jobs and you can see a lot of the same trends. Non-college educated white collar jobs (secretaries, assistants) don’t pay well, and jobs requiring a bit of a certification but not full blown bachelor’s degrees (paralegal) are comparable to plumber incomes.

    But my general point is clear: the trades have a high floor, very flat trajectories, and a low ceiling. They deal with higher unemployment rates and the jobs are harder on the bodies. The college educated pathways have a huge up front cost (tuition and late entry into the workforce), and take up to a decade to actually catch up. But most of us work 30-50 year careers, so a 10-year break even point is actually pretty good.

    And if you want to work with your hands, the educated blue collar job fields can be super lucrative: field engineers, outdoor researchers, even things like surgeons.


  • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoGreentext@sh.itjust.worksAnon is 23
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    6 days ago

    An electrician certification proves that you can do something. A bachelor’s degree is just a checkbox to prove you went through the motions.

    Why is it that you think that an electrician certification is less about checkboxes than a 4-year university degree? Or that the checkboxes are somehow more difficult to game? Most trade schools themselves are a joke, so you have to play the meta game of getting the cert and networking your way to a job. You know, same as your university degree.

    The fact is, most trades pay shit, and their big advantage is that you get to start earlier in life, and that you have more opportunities to get overtime pay. That can be a good option for your 20’s, especially during a jobs boom (most trades are infamously boom and bust cycles), but by your 30’s you will get passed up by most of your degree holding peers (and you’ll totally get left in the dust in your 40’s and 50’s).

    It’s not good advice to young people. Electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. don’t get paid very much on average, and the ones who break out from that low pay are either highly specialized or climb the small business/management ladder (at which point they benefit from concepts taught in school as well).



  • Intellectual property is shorthand description for a very particular type of exclusive right. Compile enough exclusive rights and you might have a big competitive advantage that nobody else can overcome in a particular market.

    But not every exclusive right is actually intellectual property. Sometimes it’s just normal property, like owning a particular building that is really good for filming particular scenes in. Or owning a particular unique car that you can rent out to those who want to use it. Or it might not be property at all, like the simple right to truthfully declare that a particular movie was directed by Christopher Nolan.

    IMAX’s competitive moat includes intellectual property (its trademarked name, presumably a bunch of patents in its equipment), but also includes a bunch of physical things: a production line and supply chain for a very specific format of physical film, physical equipment like cameras and projectors and editing hardware/tools, etc. And some of it includes other intangible rights or legal powers (contracts, rental agreements, financial arrangements that make it hard for others to compete).

    So both of you are right that IMAX keeps its competition at bay through both intellectual property and other property rights, and other financial and legal powers and relationships (like, I’m sure they work closely with these A list directors). All it it blends together into a dominant position in their niche space. Most movies just choose not to use film at all, and even a bunch of other film formats are still in use. But IMAX still stands out for their specific format.


  • I’ve always been in that weird space of apparently hella attractive to some and then the complete polar opposite to others, so I’ve experienced both.

    I’m a man, but in a similar boat. In terms of physical appearance I’ve been unconventionally attractive/ugly hot most of my adult life. The way some people react to, like, Adam Driver or Benedict Cumberbatch or Cillian Murphy.

    It took my entire 20’s to learn to steer my dating life towards wanting to be with people who already found me attractive rather than trying to convince someone to find me attractive, and finally learning to deal with higher rejection rates than the typical person, while sorting through the people who found me to be ugly, without necessarily knowing in advance who would be in which category.

    I also learned that there were people who were embarrassed at their own preference of finding me attractive, and that was its own minefield. Or those who wanted more external validation of their choice in me and didn’t necessarily find it in their friends who thought I was ugly.

    I came out of that roller coaster of a decade for the better, and ended up picking up from that experience a certain amount of confidence, the kind that says “I already know I’m attractive whether you think so or not,” and having less patience for certain types of relationship insecurities, either from myself or my partner.

    And then I met my wife shortly after that revelation. She still teases me that I have the confidence of a much taller man (a riff on a 30 Rock line we both love), but I don’t think I could’ve gotten her attention if I didn’t learn lessons from a series of failed relationships.




  • I think there’s some truth to the idea that the relative ranking depends on what context you’re talking about.

    Pure population? Houston.

    History and politics? DC to the top, Philadelphia and Boston in the mix.

    Economically? The Bay Area has tech and Houston has oil and gas.

    Domestic tourists and international tourists? Certainly a conversation to be had for DC, Las Vegas. Miami maybe?

    What about cultural influence domestically, and abroad? Do Nashville, Atlanta, and Miami fit in somewhere?







  • I wear colorful men’s clothes. Fun designs on things like short sleeve button shirts in the summer (Hawaiian shirts and similar things), fun sweaters in the winter.

    Even my office wear usually has a splash of personality, with the amount of subtlety appropriate for the setting: suits or jackets with interesting textures and weave patterns, neckties with interesting designs, a bright color on my socks. Some settings allow for a bit more expression, and other choices can be more adventurous if you prefer, including intentionally contrasting choices in glasses, watches, shoes, other accessories. Even a pair of headphones can be a fashion accessory, although it is true that women seem to be able to pull that off better.