Social Security has shifted far from its original intent. It was once a system where your taxes were set aside and invested, creating a fund for your own retirement. But over time, the baby boomer generation began drawing heavily from these reserves, turning what was meant to be a self-sustaining system into a pay-as-you-go model. Now, instead of relying on their own invested contributions, Social Security is sustained largely by taxing the younger generations to fund the retirees, shifting the burden and undermining the system’s original promise. This approach leaves younger generations on the hook, fueling concerns about the system’s long-term viability.

He won. Get over it.

Yes, nothing, which means not fixing it. Which means it will be depleted in nine years. I guess it depends on how long his mom plans to stay alive.

Who cares.

K

So let’s break down some of these “dubious achievements” people love to throw at the Zapatistas. First off, the whole “refusing government aid” argument misses the point entirely. They’re not declining aid because they want to stay impoverished—they’re rejecting the strings that come with it. Accepting aid often means compromising autonomy, becoming dependent on a state that historically hasn’t had their best interests in mind, and losing control over how their communities develop. Instead, they’ve built their own systems for education and healthcare, and while those systems aren’t perfect, they’re trying to solve their own problems without interference. So yes, they’re poorer than if they sold out to the government—but they’re at least in control of their poverty rather than having it dictated to them.

As for “sabotaging national left movements”—give me a break. Their cautious stance toward leftist parties like MORENA is more about protecting themselves from co-optation than about undermining anything. MORENA and other parties have plenty of their own issues and aren’t exactly champions of Indigenous autonomy. Leftists always think they’re great for Indigenous people, but history and contemporary politics around the world shows that settlers, even leftist settlers, need to be dealt with cautiously. Just because the Zapatistas aren’t blindly falling in line with a leftist party doesn’t mean they’re sabotaging it; maybe they’re just refusing to play a game they know is rigged.

Then there’s this idea that they’re somehow “bleeding the youth from the region.” The EZLN’s focus on community involvement isn’t about trapping young people; it’s about empowering them to be part of something that isn’t just another cog in the mainstream system. Sure, opportunities might be limited, and not every young person wants to stay, but they’re offering a path that’s rooted in autonomy and cultural integrity. It may not compete with the economic lure of the cities, but it’s a meaningful alternative in a world where indigenous voices are often marginalized.

And that last bit about “preventing outside examination”—that’s ignoring the reality on the ground. The Zapatistas restrict access not just because of a supposed lack of transparency but as a necessary response to the constant threats they face from both government forces and cartels. They’re located along the border of Guatemala/Mexico, and the cartels are encroaching on their lands, bringing violence, kidnappings, road blocks, robberies, and forced recruitment into the region. Opening their communities wide to “outsiders” in this context isn’t just risky; it could jeopardize their security and survival. So, while it may frustrate people looking for a close-up view, this control over access is a form of self-defense against a very real and immediate danger.

Imagine being upset by something as normal as different opinions about what is attractive. You’ll be shocked to know that some people find mustaches and/or beards disgusting too. The horror!

Literally any of the major LLMs.

Yeah. Almost every car has a higher vertical weight limit.

It can PULL more. It just can’t handle much for vertical load. This is true of all Teslas. They are all aluminum frames. This is specifically for things like a cargo or bike rack. The leverage becomes greater every mm away from the hitch the weight is. There’s some question of what a stress test would show. But the problem is there’s no standard distance for those type of racks from the hitch.

Imagine a 10 foot steel bar in the hitch, and you hopped up and down on the end of it. If you weigh 200 pounds, you’re applying roughly 2,000 pounds of effective vertical weight on the hitch. If you do it again only two feet from the hitch, it’s 400 pounds effective vertical weight. What is the actual upper limit of effective vertical weight for a tesla hitch? Likely much more than 160 pounds. But that’s what is put in the manual because they don’t want to warranty the hitch because of the composition of the frame.

The real issue is that the hitch is attached to the frame, and the frame is aluminum. So it’s not the case where you might bend the frame and could then have it bent back to good working order. If you put too much weight on a Tesla hitch, the frame itself will simply fracture.

I feel ya

Elon.

Avoid and mitigate fumes. Buy a jug of D-Lead hand soap and laundry detergent and use it. Get regular blood tests for lead levels.

If you have or are regularly around small children, you need to be extremely diligent about the above. That goes for all you idiots obsessed with guns as well. Primers use lead styphnate and create lead vapor everytime you fire. Worse with rifles because your face/body is closer to the expelled gases. Aside from breathing it in, you’re also getting a nice patina of lead residue on your arms, shirt, face, hair, etc. You’re also likely tracking in lead residue from your shoes into your home. If you like to hug your kids or your kids play on the floor, guess what.

Do NOT fuck with lead. There’s no safe level of exposure, and it can be devastating to the developing brains of children.

You’ll also break the frame if you hop on the hitch. It has a vertical load rating of 160 pounds and the frame is aluminum. No bending, just breaking. It’s poorly conceived, executed, and implemented from top to bottom.

Yeah well imagine what its like being a non-binary half black half Mexican person with disabilities. Ugh I’m so tired of privileged people like you whining about how no one will listen.

You’re half right. This is a drive-in theater. It was called the Moonlite Outdoor Theatre and was around long after the 1950s. However this is during the off season, and during the that period it was used by a nearby automaker for vehicle storage. Additionally, drive-in theaters (which still exist btw) don’t show films during the day. The first showing is usually at dusk.

But the general public will just get the wrong idea and make baseless generalisations - as evidenced by comments under this post. All in all, this is bad science communication.

Perhaps, but to be clear, that’s on The Economist, not the researchers or scholarship. Your criticisms are valid to point out, but they aren’t likely to be significant enough to change anything meaningful in the final analysis. As far as the broad conclusions of the paper, I think the visualization works fine.

What you’re asking for in terms of methods that will capture some of the granularity you reference would need to be a separate study. And that study would probably not be a corrective to this paper. Rather, it would serve to “color between the lines” that this study establishes.

Alright, but dismissing the study as “pretty much bullshit" based on a quick read-through seems like a huge oversimplification. Using canonical syllables as a measure is actually a widely accepted linguistic standard, designed precisely to make fair comparisons across languages with different structures, including languages like Japanese. It’s not about unfairly favoring any language but creating a consistent baseline, especially when looking at large, cross-linguistic patterns.

And on the syllable omission point, like “probably” vs. “prolly," I mean, sure, informal speech varies, but the study is looking at overall trends in speech rate and information density, not individual shortcuts in casual conversation. Those small variations certainly don’t turn the broader findings into bullshit.

As for the bigram approach, it’s a reasonable proxy to capture information density. They’re not trying to recreate every phonological or grammatical nuance; that would be way beyond the scope and would lose sight of the larger picture. Bigrams offer a practical, statistically valid method for comparing across languages without having to delve into the specifics of every syllable sequence in each language.

This isn’t about counting every syllable perfectly but showing that despite vast linguistic diversity, there’s an overarching efficiency in how languages encode information. The study reflects that and uses perfectly acceptable methods to do so.

In most cases, being vague requires more informational transfer. To be vague but still connected to whatever is the signified, you need to give more information around the idea rather than simply stating the idea. Think about being vague about how you feel versus being blunt about it.

Writing a number on someone with a marker is not branding. This is stupid. The IDF is committing actual atrocities, and this article is about writing a number on people with a marker and referring to them by that number. Relatively humane prison systems refer to people by their inmate number as well.

What is even going on? This is literally a distraction from the actual terrible things regularly occurring. Think about it this way: within the horrifyingly violent context of Palestine right now, here is an entire article that could be headlined: “IDF Uses New Weapon Against Palestinians: A Marker.” See how absurd that is when there are much more important events occurring?

Who wrote this? The IDF?