Einstein might be good at physics, but he is the last person you would ask on ecology.

Einstein was no expert on ecology, but he was well-informed about general matters. Trump is profoundly ignorant when it comes to basic knowledge you’d expect the average 12-year old to know. Like, who doesn’t know what health insurance is?

That’s fair enough. But Trump’s Project 2025 buddies have the intention to undermine Europe. Unfortunately, when America sneezes, everyone catches the cold.

Yeah, they’ve been at it even today, with JD Vance cheerleading for Orbán Viktor.

If Trump and Musk are stupid, they would be poor

This type of thinking is known as the just-world fallacy. It’s very tempting, because people prefer to believe that things happen “for a reason” and not just randomly. Yet there is no basis in reality for this type of thinking. Trump is stupid, and many of his comments can’t be explained by mere showmanship and playing to his base. The only reasonable explanation for forest raking, or negative GDP, or look, having nuclear etc. etc. is that he is a clueless idiot, and he is.

Musk is evil, and certainly no genius, but also not stupid. He has an undergraduate degree in physics, whereas Trump merely has an MBA of negligible academic standard, which certifies basic literacy at best.

The existence of markets naturally leads to an upward flow of capital from the have-nots to the haves. One of the interesting things researchers have found is that simulations with identical agents (i.e. all equally smart) and simple market mechanics lead to the emergence of extreme inequality. You can find the details in the economic literature if you’re interested.

Plenty of famous intergenerational wealthy families eventually lose their status because their descendants squander the fortunes handed to them.

As it happens, Trump did squander his inheritance, but managed to claw back his fortune, first by money laundering for Russian mobsters, then by using his political office for personal gain. Fake it until you make it very much applies here.

You may not be politically active, but they know already that you’re possibly anti-Trump because they took your social security details and other public records, and fed it into their surveillance system.

Well, call me naïve, but they are pretty cautious around this kind of stuff in Germany, I doubt the US government has access to these kinds of records.

Putin wasn’t the only KGB colonel before he became the president of Russia. He had peers and were given equal footing as him. But he had proven to be more cunning and ruthless than them so he gained power.

Putin isn’t in the category I mentioned. Even so, Putin rapidly rose up the political ranks and in the chaos of the later Yeltsin presidency ended up prime minister largely by chance.

Those low level conning salesmen you mentioned, they probably weren’t savvy enough.

The numbers don’t add up. Suppose there are a million savvy conmen. How can they all become major players on the international business and political scene? There just aren’t enough of those positions.

However, if they had been as savvy as the most successful con salesman, Elon Musk, then their fates would have been different otherwise.

Elon Musk started with a heap of money (as did Trump), in an oligarchic system heavily favouring those with money.

And well, who lived until the ripe old age of 70, while the other was murdered in cold blood with an icepick?

Not Lenin, who died of an unknown illness. I think you mean Trotsky.

Never underestimate the opposition.

My opposition, personally? That would be practically all politicians, ideologically, to some degree or other. I am not a member of any political organization.

One should also not overestimate them.

On the one hand, I think it is true that a certain kind of skill is required to read and manipulate people - the same kind of skill a conman or used car salesman needs to do their work, and that kind of skill obviously doesn’t need knowledge of quantum physics or even a rudimentary understanding of how the world in general works.

On the other hand, one shouldn’t give people like Trump, Berlusconi and Idi Amin too much credit. They ended up where they did largely due to historical happenstance, and millions of other conmen and used car salespeople stayed small-time.

Single-transferable vote with multi-member districts is not really a proportional system. Due to the necessarily small number of seats per district, it favours the larger parties, though not by as much as first-past-the-post or STV with single-member districts.

If you consider the political dynamics of systems with open-list PR, closed-list PR and MMR, the difference actually isn’t all that significant. The average person doesn’t have the time to investigate the merits of each candidate, so in these systems most people vote according to party preference, perhaps also considering the charisma of its leader. Of these systems, MMR is probably the least effective, since it requires an electoral threshold (5% is chosen in both Germany and New Zealand) to keep the system workable. This electoral threshold again favours the larger parties, and skews the system away from proportionality.

The top of the global quality-of-life rankings is dominated by countries using open and semi-closed PR.

Do you think this is helpful advice for someone who has already decided they want a photographer and have budgeted for it?

I think it’s good advice, which is unlikely to be followed in this case.

It’s cool that you didn’t feel the need for photos. I will point out that physical photos are one of the first items people try to grab when there’s a fire or other disaster that forces them from their homes.

All the more reason not to have them.

Different people will place different priorities on wedding events. It’s ok for OP to want to have photos of their wedding.

I think it’s OK for OP and anyone else to ignore my advice in this case.

Just don’t have one and save some money. My wife and I never miss having a wedding photo album. We also didn’t have a wedding, which helped mitigate the need for a photographer.

NFTs are not a good comparison, because NFTs were only ever a gambling instrument, lacking any practical application.

Instead, the dotcom bubble is a better comparison. E-commerce didn’t go away after the bubble burst. Likewise, AI will continue to have applications and be part of the economy - as it also was prior to the LLM-driven boom. It’s just that some of the more bullshitty aspects will disappear, and the remainder will have more sensible market valuations.

The social democrats were leading a coalition in the previous government. Their leader called an early election in the hopes of capitalizing on the Greenland issue. They perhaps did not perform as well in the recent election as they hoped, but they are poised to lead the next coalition government nonetheless.

Okay, but it’s Denmark, one of the most efficiently run countries in the world.

In fact, the top rankings of global economies by living standards are completely dominated by multi-party democracies, while two-party semi-democracies and dictatorships find it much more difficult to pass effective legislation.

You can just hire a shipping container and send your stuff. Will cost you a couple grand.

I have lived in a couple of different countries and in total moved about 20 times or so. It’s really not that big a deal, but I do recommend throwing away most of your stuff. Most of what we have fits in a few boxes, aside from some cheap furniture.

Now is a good time to move away from the US because you are ahead of the large refugee waves that will come if and when things get really bad (but even if they don’t, it’s unlikely the US is going to catch up to Northern Europe economically any time soon). You do need to have a job lined up though, no Nordic country is going to give you a residence permit just because your grandparents were from there.

The logic is a bit weird though. Like picking up smoking out of solidarity because your buddy died of lung cancer.

Have you noticed how ancient religious texts like the Bible often heavily focus on financial themes, especially debt and inequality? This was long before capitalism existed. The existence of markets (capitalist or not) tends to lead to inequality. In fact, modern capitalist societies were the first to have the ability (though not necessarily the will…) to adequately address this issue using progressive taxation, as opposed to the older methods like the Jubilee, bans on usury, and later feudalism (all of which have severe drawbacks).

I traveled alone by train for the first time when I was about 10 years old, though not abroad.

There are Europe-wide train tickets you can buy, I’d recommend this if you’re curious. Plenty to see.

Some comments mention safety, probably Americans who don’t realize how safe Europe is. Though of course something bad can always happen.

Funny, I have to ask permission to work on weekends since they have to pay me more for it.

(Not USA obviously.)

First as tragedy, then as farce.

Some very good suggestions, and not just the already well-known stuff among mainstream audiences from most of the other comments.

I would personally cite Cocteau Twins over This Mortal Coil, not only did they predate them, but Treasure is also the better (and more influential) record in my opinion.

Therion has been quite explicit with its acknowledgment of Celtic Frost as a major influence (even taking the name) - though their records suffer from subpar production, and one could argue Therion was able to fulfill the ambition of Celtic Frost.

One shouldn’t mention no wave without mentioning Swans, who were massively influential to grunge, post-punk, post-rock and heavy music in general. The colossal Soundtracks for the Blind is their magnum opus.

Aside from Kraftwerk, the krautrock scene spawned several more highly influential groups, including Neu! (who invented the remix), CAN (cited as a major influence by Radiohead and many others) and Popul Vuh (pioneers of early ambient, electronic and “new age” music).

A few more suggestions not related to yours: Oddly enough Zappa hasn’t been mentioned yet in the comments (as of writing this comment), probably the most influential pop music artist of the 20th Century, though his music can be challenging at times and not all of his humour has aged very well. We’re Only In It For the Money is probably the best starting point.

Brian Eno - Apollo. Not Eno’s first ambient album, but probably his most accomplished one.

Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden. It’s hard to believe you are listening to what used to be a new wave band only a few years earlier if you play this record. It was so far ahead of its time their label dropped them amidst an acrimonious lawsuit.

Ulver has been cited as a major influence by modern electronic music artists (e.g., Carpenter Brut). Their output is extremely diverse and creatively shifts dramatically from album to album. I would recommend Perdition City as a starting point.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A#∞. Not coincidentally released shortly after Soundtracks for the Blind, a massive creative leap nonetheless and one of the defining post-rock records of the 1990s.

Life expectancy globally is around 71 years. Only a handful of countries (Afghanistan and a few sub-Saharan countries) have a life expectancy below 60.

In my experience, they work as engineers, engineers or engineers.