I remember I bought a book, Instant HTML Programmers Reference by Wrox, in 1998 and I poured over every page, used it so much the cover then all the pages fell out - very little online HTML reference at the time. Seeing the cover design now still gives me a strange sentimental feeling.
Plastic is probably the single greatest threat to our environment right now. Solve the plastic problem, and CO2, and other forms of carbon based pollution will come down.
The key point here is the credibility part. The Nigerian prince has no credibility. If you are approaching someone looking to solve a problem and you demonstrate competance via an extensive Github profile / blog your chances of a response are enormously increased I'd have thought.
I've read (in Freakonomics I think) scam emails often have deliberately low credibility to "improve" the quality of warm leads.
High credibility emails that deceive digitally savvy people can create a lot of warm leads who take expensive resources in phone calls and human interaction, but often fail to convert to paying victims. At some point down they funnel they realise it's a scam.
Low credibility emails generate replies from less digitally literate people who're easier to convert into a paying victim when they reply. The response rate is lower of course, but sending another email is free.
Some do, others ruthlessly murder their rivals to get to be prince (in the sense of ruler, not 'son of the king'). Others have to win a power struggle to maintain the accident of birth that put them there.
They're a prince. Of course they have credibility. Of a country as populous and gifted in natural resources as Nigeria, even!
But I get your point, and eagerly await my spam with deposed princes' githubs profiles not stolen from MIT licenced projects, and blog photos not written by GPT and illustrated by DALL-E.
Perhaps what we need is a credibility coin, based on blockchain. Or a national ID card system. To prove I am who I am. As without it, I am not.
The secondary education my children recieved was awful. UK Secondary schools seem more interested in their uniform policy than the quality of learning.
If you think you can make deep friends when you're 40+ with 4 kids, you either don't have to work for a living and your wife does 90% of the work with children or you don't understand what deep friendship means.
Given that I nor the GP ever mentioned "deep" friendships, I probably don't understand your definition, no.
I'm simply saying there are places to meet other people 40+. Whether it becomes "deep" or not depends on both your and the recipient's dedication to maintaining such a relationship. And since you can't control the recipient, it's basically a crapshoot. But there's nothing wrong with more casual frienships.
As a result of being a bit obsessed with fool.com around the turn of the millenium I invested some money into Index Funds. I still have these investments now and they have tripled in value.
My wife and I have made far more money via house sales however, due to the rise in UK house prices in recent years.
I'd agree most people I know don't directly invest in the stock market. You use to hear much more small talk about stock market investing 20 years ago than you do now.
Maybe:
Less money to invest (price of housing / cost of living etc)
Difficulty focusing on the longer time frame required for stock market investing
This is a really interesting perspective. Yes, your reasoning seems sound. I'm in the States - I would have assumed that the UK would be a much trickier place to invest in real estate than here.
It definitely seems to be a world-wide trend for people to stop planning long term futures and start betting on whatever crypto or other bubble seems hottest.
Having tripled in value I assume you're happy with your mutual funds; but that's not where you're going as a long-term strategy? And if not, why?
Which is irrelevant, and wasn't part of the original claim. He still made his livehood singing and playing guitar to tens of thousands of people at a time.
Besides, virtuoso guitarists also use cheap inexensive guitars all the time. Some examples, out of the top of my mind:
Prince, a big virtuoso, favorited his "Madcat", a Tele clone he bought for like $50 dollars.
Eddie Van Halen often used cheap Teisco guitars.
Mike Rutherford (the Genesis guitarist) used mucho-cheapo Squier Bullet guitars (Fender's cheapo line) for Generis 2020 live tours.
Marillion's Steve Rothery also uses a Squire as one of his main axes.
The Beatles were also known for using cheapo guitars like Epiphone Casinos.
