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Saarth OP ,
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If the gross margins are higher on the GLP optimised Food options, the companies will be incentivised to sell more of those rather than conventional products. And more shelf space and ad space etc will be allocated to these too, making conventional products less readily available.

Saarth ,
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I believe all advertising exists to manipulate people. Behaviour change is a key aspect of marketing, from how things are kept at a store shelf, to putting the right hoarding on the right street, it's all done to guide consumer choice in a profitable way.

Advertising was never about giving you information, it was to make you feel cigarettes are cool or you need an more expensive toothbrush to be more confident. Advertising moved away from giving you information to 'connecting with consumers on an emotional level' decades before the Internet.

While yes information age has made advertising a lot more effective than it was 25 years ago, but brands were still trying to get you get the most money out of you back then, same as today, only their tools of doing so have improved vastly.

New photos released from Epstein’s estate showing Trump, Bannon, Bill Clinton and other high-profile people | CNN Politics ( www.cnn.com )

One image released Friday shows what appears to be a bowl of novelty condoms with a caricature of Trump’s face; the bowl has a sign saying, “Trump condom $4.50,” and each condom bears an image of Trump’s face with the text, “I’m HUUUUGE!”

Saarth ,
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This Jeffery Epstein stuff looks a lot like World Economic Forum more than anything, a circle jerk of the rich and elite.

Saarth ,
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This is bullshit.

When it comes to measuring their wealth it's not real money.

But when it comes to calculating GDP and growth and other economic metrics these are still included. Make up your mind, either equities are real money or GDP is made up nonsense.

Saarth ,
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Is the money earned by hedge funds and investment banks part of the GDP calculations or not ?

Edit: Example if Elon Musk takes out a loan with his tesla stocks as collateral, will the financial transaction that have taken place, be part of GDP calculations or not ?

Saarth ,
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The point I am trying to make here is the equities act like real money. They can be traded, and profits can be generated by said trades and deals (the profits are part of the GDP calculations). Which means that for all practical purposes equities are equivalent to real money.

Now we can debate what actually constitutes real money, and whether the definition ends at dollars or all global currencies or government bonds or assets like gold etc etc.

Saarth ,
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And my second issue is that when it comes to personal wealth of billionaires we always caveat it with 'it's not real money'.
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But when it comes to measuring the success of any country's economy, we don't caveat it with something similar. Countries like Singapore or even US make a lot of money from financial services. The success of American economy is heavily reliant on these unrealised gains compared to China for example where I am guessing it will be a smaller proportion of the total economy.

Saarth ,
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This is exactly my point, their equities act very similarly to our real money/assets. There is nothing unrealised about it

Saarth ,
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Thanks for the detailed response, I'll probably need to Google a bunch if stuff in here which I will.

But to the point that didn't make sense to you: The american economy is considered to be big/high growth simply because it's financial sector is so big. And yes this could mean it's markets are efficient, but efficient at what? Often it's trading stocks or debt instruments or some obscure financial instruments, and if that's the case then the size of the economy seems quite made up just like Elon's wealth.

Saarth ,
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Yeah i guess when you stop looking at GDP as a real fact about the real world, then it makes more sense. That's funny 😂

Saarth ,
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With all the layoffs right now, it's a great opportunity for unions to make people aware about them and how they can be beneficial.

I wish unions were more active on LinkedIn, so that we could like and share their posts. Recent layoffs at Omnicom/IPG have led to people discussing unions in the advertising subreddit..

Saarth ,
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While advertising for literal scams. About 10% of Meta's revenue is from literal scams.

Saarth ,
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Fake niceness is nauseating.

Saarth ,
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It reads as very inauthentic. Just like HR workers who pretend to be nice (and on your side) while prioritising the company's interests over yours.

Saarth ,
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Because who uses "thank you for taking the time to get to know each other" in common everyday usage?

Saarth ,
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The choice of words is really off to me. Sounds too much like corporate speak I guess.

Saarth ,
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Onyx Boox, runs on Android so you can install whatever apps you want.

Saarth ,
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With rising sea levels and general water shortages, why don't we also use them as desalination plants?

Surely there has to be a way to deal with brine, it's just salt and water after all?

Saarth ,
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Companies have already been SEOing LLMs for a few months now. There are companies who have a panel of participants who are willing to share their data, and this is then used to estimate what people might be searching on LLMs and now to optimise content so that it shows up on responses across LLMs.

Ads was the logical direction for LLMs and has always been the only pathway to any substantial revenue.

Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Owns All The IMAX Screens for an Unprecedented Month ( nofilmschool.com )

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is set to dominate IMAX screens for an entire month in 2026—the first film ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras. As theaters and studios fight for limited premium screens, this move could mark a turning point for theatrical releases and cement IMAX as the future of the moviegoing experience.

Saarth ,
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I am convinced Nolan is basically just a 'influencer' paid by Imax to keep Imax alive.

Saarth ,
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It's only going to go up. Look at how revenues are increasing, it's basically ad and PR money.

Saarth ,
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They can finally get rid of McKinsey and blame it on cheaper and faster trendy butthole logo of the month.

Saarth ,
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Our team has been working on implementing AI across functions in our company. And I was told me that the CEO wants to eliminate jobs and hence these AI implementations need to succeed.

PS: So far they're not succeeding.

Saarth , (edited )
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There are dedicated tools, called Social Listening tools that do just these. Some examples are Brandwatch, Sprinklr, Talkwalker and Meltwater.

Not just Palantir, anyone and everyone is using these tools. From consumer companies to investment banks to your favourite content creator is using some kind of social listening to stay on top of trends and understand how you behave.

Reddit and Twitter are two social platforms that provide the most data openly and freely, and in reddit's case you can get a lot of historical data without extra cost.

Your favourite candle brand, and your favourite outdoor clothing company and protein shake company is part of your favourite reddit community listening to what you're talking about. They know if you like energy drinks, you might light heavily scented bath soaps too.

Deleted posts show up on these platforms quite often but when you click on them to go to reddit or twitter you'll get a not found or deleted page.

PS: I've been working in social listening for last 8 years.

Saarth ,
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I've been working mostly on the analysis side of things, currently I do this for a consumer goods company.

And yes I do it to make a living. Got hired as an analyst in this field out of MBA and stayed in this. Also being chronically online and familiar with social networks helped.

Saarth ,
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I think coming out of an MBA, this is one of the less harmful jobs. I'd rather not be in consulting or investment banking or sales or big tech.

Saarth ,
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I wish lmao. But there are tons of data companies selling all kinds of data on people to whoever will pay them for it.
Me working for identifying trends or what flavour of green tea is popular are less harmful use cases.

What we need is regulation to reign in big tech. These API licenses are expensive and I suspect is a big reason why Reddit ended free data sharing (which led to death of third party reddit clients).

Saarth ,
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There isn't much to tell. We gather conversations and analyse it to understand consumer behaviour, trends, campaign performance etc.

If you don't want your data showing up in social listening tools, make your social accounts as private as possible.

Saarth ,
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I can tell you from the perspective of someone working in consumer insights for a consumer company, sales and retail data is far more important and influences decisions way more.

So I'd say put your money where your mouth is. If you don't like certain companies or brands stop buying their products. If you think groceries are getting expensive buy cheaper alternatives or private labels. You can do this with a lot of non-food grocery items. Private label is almost always cheaper and you get pretty much the same shit as global brands.

Saarth ,
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I see a lot of conversations of people mentioning how expensive things have gotten, yet we see in sales data that our expensive products sell more (this is also due to the fact that more ad dollars are spent on higher margin products) but try and buy cheaper alternatives whenever you can.

Saarth ,
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I stopped using Spotify exactly for this reason. Plex it is.

Saarth ,
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Spotify is playing AI music and they're also inserting AI generated songs into playlists without informing the user. I was getting AI generated music in my blues and jazz playlists, and I didn't even know until I reverse searched the artist.

Saarth , (edited )
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This stinks of (rotten) meat lobby.

I hope the meat substitute industry comes up with some kind of 'it's not meat' marketing campaign to counter this.

Saarth ,
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If companies gonna push AI, I am gonna use AI. It's on the company infosec to ensure my workarounds dont work.

Everyone should have a home server (or a friend that has one) ( tilvids.com )

Hi there! This is a video that I made that I'm hoping can act as a beginner friendly entry level point to the world of self hosting and running a homelab. Just thought I'd share in case anyone is interested, and I hope it can be a resource to share with noobies. I don't claim to be an expert at all so I'd also love some ...

Saarth ,
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I want a future where communities self host their media and circumvent media companies like Netflix and Disney.
Local film clubs, TV clubs, hobbyists, etc. can come together and host as a collective bringing down costs and making this more accessible.

Saarth ,
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There are a lot of independent creators out there too.

Saarth ,
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You see productivity gains have nothing to do with AI. It's being pushed down our throats because some elites have vested interest in its success and it's another way to extract more money from the consumers.

Saarth ,
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Before e-slaves, we had real slaves made of organic grass fed flesh.

Saarth ,
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I wasn't burdened by the curse that is awareness before I was born, and hence now as a result of this awareness, I am scared.

Saarth ,
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Don't the internal angles need to be 90°? Two of those right angles aren't right angles on the inside.

Saarth ,
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I would assume Bosch knows how blatant paywalling features looks and will backfire just like it did for BMW.

I am guessing Bosch wants to create a Bosch ecosystem where you can control all your home appliances with a single app. This is what PC OEMs did with RGB software. It's not really for surveillance although they do use it to push ads/premium features. The main intent is to lock you into their ecosystem and then you only buy products from them. Samsung & Apple do this are well known for this, and that's what they're emulating.

Saarth OP , (edited )
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Not really death but going in and out of Lumen kind of resets things and they have to figure their way out. It seems similar.

Saarth OP ,
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Yeah i was wondering if these shows are channeling some kind of anxieties around futility/hopelessness of the system.

Also Mickey 17 is by Bong Joon Ho, so the class system analogy makes sense too.

Saarth OP ,
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Yes but even in most video games, when you respawn you don't have to start from the beginning each time. You start from where you die or a save point.

I guess what I am noticing in these shows is that you die or go out and then come back again and do the same things again. And it loops ad finitum.

Saarth OP ,
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Probably makes sense yeah.

Saarth ,
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There is nuance to Ukraine Russia war too. Yes Russia is the obvious aggressor, and strengthened secession movements in eastern Ukraine through propaganda, but there were always some ethnically Russian people living there who felt they belong more with Russia.

They, along with the help of Russia were leading some kind of separatist movement and Ukraine bombed their own citizens to quel this issue. It's hard to tell amidst all the propaganda on both sides, but there is definitely nuance here. Also not to mention Ukraine flirting with NATO membership was apparently a red line for Putin.

Saarth ,
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Hamas might be doing terrible things, but they are also fighting a disproportionate war, and it's not like Israel is respecting any of the human rights conventions either.

And in Ukraine, the Ukrainian army is fighting for freedom from invaders and fighting a disproportionate war too, and are committing war crimes like torture of prisons or targeting of energy infrastructure just like Russia is doing.

War is always messy. To paint Hamas as exceptionally evil is unfair and probably an outcome of racial bias.