Way to bury the lede. Being able to average 80%/yr returns takes talent and skill and is a type of work. The type of work, by the way, that is rewarded with millions at finance companies in NYC, or even more if you launch your own trading shop.
I’d sooner eat crow than work for a living again - and this ain’t work. I just think while I’m out for a hike, driving, whatever, and decide to make some investments in X, Y, Z next time there’s a decent looking moment to realise and reallocate some profits.
Plus, the kind of investing I do would never fly in a hedge fund - I’d just make the risk desk piss itself with laughter.
In Germany, for many years we had been told that climate change is the most important thing ever, that we need to change our habits or else the world will go down, that if we don't act now, we will all be doomed. Then the Ukraine war happened, and suddenly nobody was talking about climate change anymore.
I'll admit, I'm a simple man and I don't know the science behind all of this. But as a citizen, it does feel confusing how one day you're being told that we're all going to die unless we change something, and then suddenly even though nothing changed, it seems to be fine after all.
Plenty of people in Germany (on all social/political levels) still talk about climate change, and have done so without pause before, during and since Ukraine.
If you think that everything "seems to be fine after all", you're in for a very rude awakening.
Is that your perception, or do you have data to back this up?
For context, here's one source saying public concern for climate change has fallen in Germany from 42% to 34% from 2022 to 2025, in line with other European countries. [0] This was a study done by a German sustainability non-profit.
Here's another source stating that globally, news coverage about climate change has diminished by 38% from 2021 to 2025. [1]
Here's a third source stating that the share of German citizens who claim to be "very concerned" about climate change has dropped from 50% to 33% from 2019 to 2025. [2]
It is not stated explicitly in the article, but the implication seems to be that fame causes a higher mortality risk.
Whereas my intuition is that there are traits that help you become famous (competitiveness, savant syndrome, prioritization of success over happiness, etc.) that also raise your mortality risk.
That’s probably a factor in some way but my intuition is it’s the lifestyle itself that’s the dominant risk.
The control point is comparing to less famous musicians. I’d assume many of which have similar personality traits and desire for fame. But when it doesn’t materialize, their personality traits arent causing them to die early.
The lifestyle of constantly partying, drugs, sex, little consequences, money, excess, etc. Versus the less famous musician who has to function like an adult, stresses over their mortgage, etc. Is sure to have a variance with respect to mortality.
I agree with this. Tony Hsieh (founder of Zappos) also ended up dead because of the lifestyle enabled by his wealth, and he wasn't a famous musician. The wealth also led to lots of hangers on around him that didn't care about his well being, just personally benefiting.
> The lifestyle of constantly partying, drugs, sex, little consequences, money, excess, etc.
I don't know how much truth there is to it, some musicians are famous for that, but touring is far from easy, musicians move a lot and have to give their best every time when they are on stage. Especially singers, as their body is their instrument, they can't really afford to be out of shape. I am sure that after big public events like concerts, the thing musicians really want is to get done with it and go to sleep, not party all night. There may be drugs involved, but I'd expect it to be more about enhancing performance than recreation.
And that would apply to all professional musicians, famous or not. For most, I'd say what is excessive is their job, not the life of partying famous people are said to have.
> The control point is comparing to less famous musicians.
Maybe, although an alternative explanation would be that those musicians with the strongest traits are the ones that succeed, and that same strength of those traits also leads to early mortality.
On the other other hand, success in music is at least partly luck.[1] So there should be some not-quite-successful musicians who are similar in most respects but actual success.
Anything is possible. But wouldn’t that kind of also mean those traits are necessary for talent? For recognition? For art that is appreciated?
I don’t know if I buy it myself as being a big contributing factor. The lifestyles of famous people are well known to be indulgent. So that seems like a more direct explanation. But anything is possible
I think this is a very valid hypothesis but it's hard to control for in experiments, since if these traits are necessary to become (or stay) famous, we don't really have a control group.
Even if you don't do all the drugs and have an agent running around slapping McDoubles out of everyone's hands the health effects of simply living on the road and touring are not great.
I wonder how these results would stack up against something like pro baseball players or pro cyclists - both have a very long season (6 month season for baseball, even longer for cyclists). Maybe a bit like touring bands.
Three main differences that come to mind...
- athletes repeat this annually (famous touring musicians might take a year or two off to record new material).
- athletes likely live a healthier overall lifestyle because being extremely fit is part of the job. Plus the teams have embedded MDs and other health support staff (some musicians will, some won't).
- athletes usually retire from their primary sport in their 30s, so only ~20 years of touring on the high end, where musicians can tour into their 50s or 60s (or beyond for a few).
It cuts both ways - in those environments, very unhealthy lifestyles (high stress, drug abuse…) are quite common, if not the norm, so even people starting with healthy lifestyles are under significant pressure.
1) It's in the title: "The Price of Fame" implies that there are downsides to becoming famous, rather than there are downsides to having traits that might make you famous.
2) While the abstract merely claims "associated with" (which is correlation not causation), the phrase "beyond occupational factors" implies that the authors felt they removed important non-causal factors, hinting at likely causal relationship.
And yes, any causality implications are completely unfounded, and so this paper is of low quality.
Probably. I was going crazy working there, I grew to really dislike it. But from a purely selfish $$ POV, it's likely I would have got caught in one of the rounds of layoffs or been able to take this latest voluntary layoff package.
Unless the frustration led to bad performance reviews, which could have happened.
My mental health would have suffered, but holding on another 1-3 years would have probably led to me being 5 years closer to early retirement.
It was also 2021/2022, when the job market was completely bananas. The temptation to leave and get a decent paying remote job was very high. And at the time I felt Google was doing a very poor job of remote work, at least on the teams I was on. And they made the hybrid in-office unpleasant (floating desks, nobody else there, just a weird vibe).
My story is the same as yours, and the same timing, but it was Meta. I missed out on a LOT (!!!!) of money by quitting, but I don't regret it at all. The place was rotten.
I'm actually now at Google and things are just fine and peachy.
.. and that's YT's problem? This is like being angry with Apple, because an app developer created only an iOS app and didnt create an Android. What did Apple do wrong if a developer chose to only create an iOS app?
YouTube is the system, you've not heard of "don't hate the player, hate the game"?
If I "blamed" the creators, you'd be telling me it's not their fault, they're just incentivised by the system, they're just playing the game.
But when I "blame" the system, you're telling me the system is not at fault, that it's individual choice to choose a near-monopoly on video discoverability that is propelled by and heavily benefiting from the same company's actual monopoly of search.
Is it "YT's problem?"? No, it's to YT's massive benefit, it's my problem when I have to suffer through adverts.
Alphabet is the fifth largest company in the world, has earnings higher than most countries' GDP, and is established to have engaged in illegal behavior as a monopolist. It's fair to say they're closer to "the system" than "a player".
Not that this was part of the suit, but the whole practice of giving things away for free and subsidizing them with stalking and ads obviously distorts or completely destroys markets, so yes they can be blamed for doing that. The behavior of these companies is so bad that people in a recent thread were claiming things like chat services (where a single computer can provide service for millions of users) cannot be sustainably run by charging money.
This bit of information makes the entire thread hilarious to read.
Bunch of hackers using adblockers that modify the client-side UI to cheat Google out of money and then complaining loudly about a minor UI convenience. How dare Google not optimize for them!
I say this as someone who uses an adblocker myself. But come on.
Ordering my go-to meal at this restaurant down the block with Grubhub+ has $0 delivery fee and $1 "service fee". It takes roughly 4 minutes to go get it myself, assuming there's no line. $1 for 4 minutes is $15 an hour -- I value my time more than that.
It's always here within 10-15 minutes. It's never been cold, and the bags are stapled shut, so I don't think the meals have ever been sampled.
Plus it feels nice to be able to stay in sometimes.
grubhub raises the prices for a lot of restaurants by like $1 on every item even if youre ordering takeout here in Chicago. Calling the order in yourself can save more than you expect
It's well documented that user flags affect the ranking of stories even before stories are marked as [flagged]. While flagging certainly contributes to the lack of discussion on your articles, I believe that the main reason is that, for the most part, the Hacker News audience is less interested in your take than it used to be.
Case in point: In recent months, a lot of recent Trump/Elon posts have been flagged and disappeared from the front page, but still managed to garner hundreds of points and comments. My assumption is that a significant portion of users use hn.algolia.com, circumventing the flagging algorithm. Personally, I've recently found myself using hn.algolia.com (filtering for top stories in the last 24h) more often than news.ycombinator.com.
If your issue was purely flagging-related, your articles should be able to generate engagement. That's why I'm saying I think there is a lack of interest.
Personally, while I appreciate your work, it's become less interesting to me over time. The value of your blog to me is mainly around getting a perspective into how a die-hard Apple fan would think about a certain topic. This was fun in the period from 2007 until some point in the mid-2010s, when smartphones were revolutionary and the iPhone vs. Android ecosystem battle was still relevant. But ever since phones converged into commodities, it just stopped being interesting. No one is emotionally invested in their choice of phone anymore.
Don't take my word for it. Compare the Google Trends for MacRumors [0] and Daring Fireball [1]. Both faced a sharp decline starting in the mid-2010s. It's not a surprise that engagement on Hacker News would mirror those trends.
Interesting trends! I wonder what Gruber would say? Certainly the tone around Apple is different these days. One indicative moment was when Hollywood made Tim Cook the villain of Jurassic World Dominion and the reaction was... crickets. Or should I say grasshoppers? Not good, not bad, we just didn't feel anything at all. Now imagine the villain was Elon Musk! That would make people feel something.
That's what the last paragraph is about. You're technically right. He spoke out against Israel's right to exist. That's functionally the same, or even worse, but not exactly identical to what you mention. You pick.
In the five links you provided, there is nothing supporting that he spoke out against Israel's right to exist or that he described the protests as anti-Israel. Can you provide anything that supports your statements?
