Life and Times of Ogn Dulk

Vivek Ramaswamy Is Uninvited From My Sleepover 100+The Atlantic by David Brooks / Dec 30, 2024 at 12:54 PM//keep unread//hide I could have been a tech entrepreneur, but my parents let me go to sleepovers. I could have been a billionaire, but I used to watch Saturday-morning cartoons. I could have been Vivek Ramaswamy, if not for the ways I’ve been corrupted by the mediocrity of American culture. I’m sad when I contemplate my lazy, pathetic, non-Ramaswamy life. These ruminations were triggered by a statement that Ramaswamy, the noted cultural critic, made on X on Thursday. He was explaining why tech companies prefer to hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers instead of native-born American ones: It has to do with the utter mediocrity of American culture. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the Valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he observed. Then he laid out his vision of how America needs to change: “More ...

10 Stunning Things We Learned From Trump’s Time Interview Portrait of Margaret Hartmann By Margaret Hartmann, senior editor for Intelligencer who has worked at New York since 2012 President-elect Donald Trump rings the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after being named 2024 “Person of the Year” by Time. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Time magazine has named Donald Trump 2024 “Person of the Year,” finally giving the president-elect some much-needed attention. This is a big deal for Trump, who has a long-standing, retro obsession with the magazine: He’s previously lied about how often he’s been on Time’s cover, put himself on fake covers displayed in his golf clubs, and lashed out at Taylor Swift when she won “Person of the Year” in 2023. The Trump Time interview is also a big deal for the American people. Sure, after years of campaigning, other major post-election interviews, and constant social-media updates, most of us are pretty clear on Trump’s views. Bu...

Crypto’s Legacy Is Finally Clear The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel / Dec 11, 2024 at 9:33 AM//keep unread//hide For years, crypto skeptics have asked, What is this for? And for years, boosters have struggled to offer up a satisfactory answer. They argue that the blockchain—the technology upon which cryptocurrencies and other such applications are built—is itself a genius technological invention, an elegant mechanism for documenting ownership online and fostering digital community. Or they say that it is a foundation on which to build and fund a third, hyperfinancialized iteration of the internet where you don’t need human intermediaries to buy a cartoon image of an ape for $3.4 million. Then there are the currencies themselves: bitcoin and ether and the endless series of memecoins and start-up tokens. These are largely volatile, speculative assets that some people trade, shitpost about, use to store value, and, sometimes, get incredibly rich or go bankrupt from. They are also infamousl...

The Medicare Advantage trap: What they don’t tell you 300+Alternet.org by Thom Hartmann / Dec 6, 2024 at 4:35 AM//keep unread//hide Feedly AI found 3 Companies View All You have three days left, if you got suckered in by those omnipresent ads for Medicare Advantage and left regular Medicare for the siren song of cheaper coverage, “free” vision, hearing, or dental, or even “free” money to buy groceries or rides to the doc. The open enrollment period for real Medicare closes at the end of the day Saturday, December 7th; after that, you’re locked into the Medicare Advantage plan you may have bought until next year. If you’ve had Medicare Advantage for a year or more, however, the open enrollment period is still “open” until December 7th, but you will want to make sure you can get a “Medigap” plan that fills in the 20% that real Medicare doesn’t cover. Companies are required to write a Medigap policy for you at a reasonable price when you turn 65, no matter how sick you are or what ...