The national urban poverty rate plummeted from 52.9% to 38.1% in six months, while extreme poverty halved to 8.2%, marking the sharpest decline in decades.

President Javier Milei’s administration achieved this while slashing public spending by 5% of GDP and navigating a 1.7% economic contraction in 2024. Key drivers included targeted welfare programs and inflation control.

The government expanded the Universal Child Allowance (AUH) to cover teens up to age 17 and increased food card coverage, directly aiding vulnerable households.

So they cut spending overall, but expanded their Universal Child Allowance. I mean, that right there is probably what did most of the poverty reduction. The article doesn’t really say where the spending cuts came from. Could be they just cut a lot of waste, but it could be they’ve made cuts to important government services, and the effects haven’t necessarily been felt yet.

The IMF projects 5.5% GDP growth for 2025, fueled by rebounding consumption and investment. This turnaround challenges conventional wisdom that austerity inevitably harms vulnerable populations, showing market-oriented policies can coexist with poverty reduction when paired with precise safety nets.

Does it? Again, we don’t know what’s been cut and we don’t know what the long term effects of those cuts will be. All we know is that they made significant cuts overall, while also expanding two specific safety net programs. Admittedly, that has resulted in a significant reduction in the urban poverty and extreme poverty rates, for now, which is undoubtedly a good thing, but only time will tell if those will last.

This reads like neoliberal propaganda, but honestly Javier Milei is right of even most neoliberals. I seriously doubt the expansion of the Universal Child Allowance and the increased food card coverage will last. I’m certain Milei will want to cut those programs, at some point. He is anarchocapitalist adjacent, so I’m sure he wants to get as close as possible to no government spending at all, eventually.

No major kernel decisions were made,” jokes Russinovich in a post on LinkedIn.

Man, wouldn’t that be wild, though?

Our ancient ancestors, like most primates today, lived in groups dominated by violent and aggressive alpha males. Yet over the course of our biological and cultural evolution, unlike our primate cousins, we learned to work together to counter those bullyboys, organising to diminish their influence.

Yeah, that’s true, if you ignore essentially ALL of human history, in which violence and aggression were ever present, as was social hierarchy, that almost exclusively had a single male sovereign at the top.

I agree, rebuilding a US manufacturing base will require competent planning and management, but those are bad words here in the US, when it comes to the economy. To many Americans, competent, central economic management, direction, and planning is tyrannical rule by elites. To those Americans, Trump is the antidote. You might point out that there is significant irony in that. I agree, it is ironic, but that irony is completely lost on many millions of Americans.

the US relies heavily on imports and doesn’t have a strong manufacturing base for most products

And that’s the problem Trump is seemingly trying to fix. I agree he’s not going about the right way. His approach is a kind of clumsy shock therapy, that will cause chaos in at least the short term and may or may not produce the desired result, eventually, but reshoring production and rebuilding a strong manufacturing base for the US is a goal shared by the Democrats, as well.

I don’t agree. I think these people are acting out of what they believe to be self interest, even if it is an unenlightened self interest. Why else would they desire to be at the “top of the collective?” What do they hope to gain if not special, INDIVIDUAL, privileges, opportunities, liberties, etc?

The centralized monopolies are built to serve the interests of, and to consolidate the powers and control of, a relatively small number of individuals. There’s nothing more freeing for an individual than total power and control over others.

Nvidia doesn’t give a shit about gamers anymore…Their bread and butter now is AI, and large scale machine learning. Where businesses are buying thousands of cards at a time.

I’m just quoting this for emphasis.

I still think humans

Which humans? All roughly 8 billion humans across nearly 200 countries?

will work it out

Work what out?

in the end

The end of what? This century? History?

and have a good future

Define “good future.” Good how? For whom? For everyone, equally?

The world has reached peak agricultural land, so to feed an increasing number of people, will need to increase agricultural land efficiency (increased food production per hectare). This will likely mean less meat production, since meat production is not a maximally efficient use of land, in calories produced per hectare. That’s certainly not a bad thing, as a mostly plant based diet is better for human health and the environment.

But, we have committed to a market based distribution system, so it’s up to the invisible hand, which is not necessarily great at achieving maximum efficiency.

Their sustainability solution states that we don’t see any evidence of ETIs because rapid growth is not a sustainable development pattern. From this perspective, the Kardashev Scale is rendered futile. No civilization will ever use all available energy from its planet, star, or galaxy, because the growth required to reach that level of mastery is unsustainable.

I think that makes so much sense. I don’t think it makes sense to define “advanced” as a civilization that grows at a rapid and exponential rate, like a plague of locusts, depleting nonrenewable resources and causing irreparable damage to the only human habitable planet known to exist in the entire universe. Even if it can be considered advanced, it should also be considered extremely unwise.

proactively develop governance frameworks, coordinate globally, and prepare our societies for unprecedented change

Get in line behind climate change.

…we’ve been accidentally geoengineering a cooler climate for a while - until we “fixed” it in 2020.

Better start doing it again, only even more this time. Maybe it will even allow us to meet the Paris climate goals, and with the added benefit of not having to reduce our fossil fuel use at all! We can have our cake and eat it too! /s

I think what this shows is that EVs are, as of right now at least, more status symbols than climate mitigation tools. While some people certainly do buy EVs because they care about the planet, many don’t really care all that much. I think this is also holding back mass EV adoption in the US. We need EVs to be seen as the sensible choice for the average person, not playthings for the rich and opulent.

Nintendo doesn’t want you to play their games if you’re not willing to follow their rules. Ok, that’s their prerogative, but that means I will not be playing their games…at least not their new ones.

I prefer playing on my Steam Deck these days, and I really don’t want to buy another handheld just to play Nintendo first party titles. I’m going to play some of my favorite classic Nintendo titles on my Deck using emulators and just not play the new stuff. I’m sure they’re great games, but so what? There are lots of great games. I’ve got a huge backlog of great games already in my Steam library, and 20 more on my wishlist. If Nintendo some day decides to make their titles available for Steam Deck or PC, I’d consider buying them, but since that’s extremely unlikely to happen, I think I’m just done with Nintendo.

Global sales of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose by a yearly 20% in August, driven by record high sales in China…Increased subsidies in China for drivers trading in more polluting vehicles helped drive the EV sales jump in August

I used to advocate for Linux, because I wanted more people to use it, so that more software devs would support it. I care a lot less about that since proton came to prominence. Linux still doesn’t get all the support from devs that I want, but there’s so much great software available now, both open source and proprietary, that I don’t really worry about non Linux users anymore.

So use whatever OS you want, folks. I don’t really care.

Not to be hyperbolic, but this reminds me of when cult members describe the process of them becoming disillusioned with the leader until they finally decide to leave. I’m serious when I say that modern corporations, especially in tech, can often be quite cult like. There is often some charismatic, visionary, larger-than-life personality at the center. Many of the people who work at these companies aren’t so much employees as they are disciples. They are members of the leader’s cult of personality. Many investors, too. They have fully bought in to the leader’s vision, and some will follow their leader seemingly no matter what.

This person even has that kind of wistful tone of a cult member who had to leave the cult because they couldn’t ignore the leader’s increasingly problematic behavior anymore, but still believes in their vision and wishes things could have turned out differently.

There’s nothing wrong with having a vision or wanting to build a better future, but be very, very cautious about any movement centered around a single personality. In the case of Musk, the warning signs have been there for a while. I think the best representation of this was when Musk guest starred on the Simpsons almost ten years ago, and was introduced as “possibly the greatest living inventor!” It was the height of Musk propaganda.

I will never buy a Tesla, so long as the Musk cult exists. I’m sure Teslas are good cars, but I will not support the cult of Elon Musk. He is too dangerous.

When people are told that depression is an aberration, we are telling them that they are not part of the tribe. They are not right, they don’t belong. That’s when their shame deepens and they avoid social connection.

And that’s not the only reason people are made to feel they’re not part of the tribe, that they don’t belong. There are many things in this modern (post modern?) world that cause us to become alienated from other people, even and especially those in our own community. The nature of community itself has changed. Many relationships and social institutions feel more tenuous or impermanent.

It’s a vicious cycle: people feel alienated from others, it causes them stress, the stress causes anxiety, that leads to the immobilization response and depression, the effects of the anxiety and depression cause people to become further alienated from others, and the process accelerates and perpetuates.

Tesla’s have become much more price competitive, in those two segments (obviously that’s not the case in the truck segment, since the Cybertruck is the most niche of niche trucks). If you’re looking specifically for what Tesla is selling, it can be a great option. But, not everyone wants those models. Price isn’t the only dividing line, it’s also how it drives, styling and features, but also the brand. Companies like Ford and GM are pretty simple: they make and sell cars. Tesla is explicitly trying to disrupt the auto industry. I don’t think everyone wants to buy a disruptive product. I think Tesla has tried to “fix” problems that weren’t really problems, at least not for everyone. For instance, I don’t think most people were thinking, “I wish I could replace all the physical dials and switches in my car with a single, 20 inch iPad.” Or, “I don’t like how door handles work, let’s change them.” Tesla is clearly selling what some people want, I’m just not sure it’s what most people want.