Vaguely remembering what that craze was about, the basic idea that if you have savings you should invest them was good. Not sure if he ever added the diversify and wait patiently bit. Generally all “rich guy books” belong in the trash.

Pharmacy liquor is a new one to me, lol.

Because a slight orange hue is a mark of good cheese, so fluorescent orange must be even better, right?

At this point it’s just tradition, and people in anglo North America don’t realise it’s not naturally that colour.

Yes, I don’t think Americans realise how good they have it with Mexican food. Ditto with barbecue.

The sheer number of people who support and vote for a party who will do absolutely nothing for them, and will enact policies that will drive them even further into poverty and destitution just so their Parasite-Class campaign donors can get even more obscenely wealthy. Conservative voters are just weird, man.

I mean, we have deep blue (Conservative) ridings too.

Another Canadian.

All-green money is weird, about as weird for us as ours is for you. Once I knocked over some products in a store and then picked them up. The staff acted like that was saintly, so I guess other people just make a mess and move on? Drive through liquor stores are weird, and seem like an invitation to drink and drive. Paying at a hospital is weird just in concept, although thank god I’ve never had to deal with it down there.

Uhh, other than that it’s been pretty similar in the places I’ve been. Etiquette around “sorry” is famously different, but aside from giving me away as Canadian it has little impact.

Edit, to add a couple positive things: Amazing Mexican food and barbecue not only exists but are ubiquitous. Coding jobs pay good money.

Everyone has an air conditioner, although Canada might be the weird one there.

I mean, given that it’s all speculation that’s not really a mistake. I just thought it might be good to mention.

I really don’t think so. If you went back in time and bought a bunch of Apple stock you too could be a billionaire, no obviously antisocial behavior required.

There are examples of billionaires that were helped along the way by being an asshole, and it might improve your chances slightly, but it’s neither necessary nor sufficient.

That’s a given and the fact that most megarich people don’t recognize this feeds back into them being assholes.

Unambiguously agree. They actually prefer being called evil to being called lucky.

Heroes have a way of always disappointing. There’s people like Malcom X, John Brown or Thomas Paine who I’d say were the good guys of their time, but I really try not to lionise them beyond the flawed humans they were.

Most people stop making more when they have enough.

I can’t think of a single person like that.

Nah, it’s all a lottery. If being an asshole was enough there’d be way more rich people.

True, but I wouldn’t really hold the people that buy in responsible for each other’s misery. They’re doing it to themselves just as much.

Even in a complex system, though, if something doesn’t happen continuously it’s bound to have characteristic conditions that precede it. Describing it as cause and effect is a function of language, then.

Inb4 somebody calls you a bourgeoisie parasite or something, since this is Lemmy.

At least on my behalf, thanks for commenting.

Yup.

OPs point stands, though, because we could still do that without Gates, and for every Gates there’s a Musk that does evil and a ton of Arnaults and Bezos’s that just spend it on whatever.

Some of the royal families in the Gulf are also thought to be trillionaires.

Probably neither. As far as I can tell rich people are completely unremarkable. Some use their money for good, some for evil (and the media loves that) while most just buy tons of stupid shit and enjoy the good life.

I guess the media thing is the real answer. You don’t hear much about Bernard Arnault because he’s boring, while Musk is walking clickbait.

They’re trained on both, and the kitchen sink.

I doubt it. It’s the sort of thing that would be prone to survivorship bias. If someone dies at an opportune moment, it makes a nice story and is repeated. If someone dies randomly in spite of something they’re looking forward to, it tends not to get mentioned.

That being said, the placebo effect is real, so it’s not impossible.

Disclaimer that I’m still a noob, too.

I gave my main recommendation there, for transceiver. I haven’t done the research to have a model or brand in mind, but a cheap SSB (single side-band) radio seems like it should exist, given that you can make such a device with just 7 transistors. Any remotely modern computer will be able to generate an audio signal that, when mixed up to RF the way a SSB radio does, will look like the mode of your choice. Software-wise, I’ve really liked working with GnuRadio so far.

Amps go for a lot more new, because they have to handle both radio frequencies and >100W powers, and do so without causing distortion. Ham radio is a dying art, so poking around for ones at estate sales or similar seems promising. 100W is generally the recommended minimum if you don’t want to be frustrated.

For the feedline, assuming you’re doing coax, the design tension is between bendability and DB/meter attenuation. For radio 50 ohm impedance is standard, not 75, so you can’t reuse stuff from cable TV without transformers. (Impedance matching is very important, as you’ll learn getting a licence)

For the various accessories you may need to connect cables, amps, antenna wires and maybe filters, Amazon. They even have the obscure stuff I’ve needed for my direct sample radio.

All the prefab antennas I’ve seen seem ludicrously expensive, given that it’s a chunk of ordinary metal, so probably skip that and cut your own. Antenna recipes are all over the place on ham homepages. If you’re doing a bunch of non-resonant antennas, a tuner will save you time, but they cost as much as an amp. Everything that works at the high-power end is expensive.

No, I wasn’t quoting anything there. People are used to choosing who they want to communicate with, sending a message, and everything either working or (rarely) not working. Power, noise, space weather, multipathing, interference and the vagaries of antenna performance all make it a bit more involved when manually operating a radio. And that’s not even getting into whatever you need to make your own setup work.