Technology

I luckily found a one bedroom apartment with AC in downtown San Jose starting at $1585 in 2021. Now I pay $1774. I lucked out!

Only good things in SV: conveniences, the people if you manage to find a community.

I recommend checking out privately owned properties for rent, which allows for a more flexible option. You may surprised by some of the available options for rent, compared to large property managed apartment complexes. Sometimes you can negotiate with the landlords on the rent price and length of lease.

Why do you want to live in the Silicon Valley? Maybe you like to live among the tech bros, if not I recommend to look for another place. Besides renting at that price is really a waste of money and of your future.

Villas on the boulevard, Santa Clara

Yeap i live here and hate😂

I'm paying $1500/month rent to my parents to live at home in SV right now. They split their time between here and Hong Kong, so I more or less get the house to myself 4-8 months a year depending on how long they decide to stay overseas. I'd much rather help my parents out with the mortgage instead of giving some greedy landlord or corporation my money just to have a roof over my head...and hopefully in the next 5 or so years, the real estate market will crash hard so I wouldn't have to move to bumf*** nowhere to afford my own house.

Two things: 1. Africa is a continent - not a country. 2. Today there are around 50 independent countries in Europe. Around 10 had colonies. What is with the other 40? As an European I am tired of the oversimplification of the world by the North Americans. That's not our fault your education is dysfunctional.

I don't know why I saw this now. But $3100 for 2b2b in South San Jose if not more if you are looking for a nice place. Just moved out of it after almost 4 years but that's before literally everything else you need. Most of the people I know cannot survive on their own without roommates. My roommate and I were even annoyed and we do well as Software Engineers. It's wildly expensive.

That was very helpful , thank you

It's a good book, it makes you rethink certain preconceptions you may have previously had. But it does oversimplify a lot and make presumptuous conclusions. Such as being overly geographically deterministic for example. Great review !

Relocated to Sunnyvale from out of state and was put into corporate housing at Shadowbrook. The apartment reeked of mildew and you could find mold growing all around the bathroom. I left the fully furnished, fully paid for apartment after 2 days and checked into a hotel.

San Jose born and raised, I wish that California would protect its residents from needing to move out of our home city because we can not afford to live! Currently living in Fremont now. Prices are crazy

The food issue has nothing to do with this process. The pastoral and hunter-gatherer systems are more efficient and stable in providing food, and cost less time than agriculture. Freedom of thought does not result from agriculture, but precisely from the pressure of mobile peoples, characterized by better technology and health, against starving settled peoples, who could squander their larger but not very healthy population. (Diabetes, diseases resulting from vitamin deficiency, etc.) It was the Nomads who forced development, through military pressure. In the case of North America, the same thread, namely the Comanches, had the opposite effect, being overly effective against settled peoples, despite the fact that they were entering copper technology. The North also has its own fertile crescent, where food is not a problem, namely the region around Washington State and southern Canada. Mainly because of fish. The same is true in the South, in the areas of peoples with a horticultural economy and Terra Nova. All of these areas are characterized by relative technological stagnation despite food security and stable populations. In Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, technological stagnation is usually due to elite mentality. In China, bureaucratic culture stifled any systematic approach to change. Nothing else destroyed the treasury ships that traded with Africa while Europe was recovering from the Crusades. That, and the cycle of civil wars that occurred every 30-50 years, destabilizing the central government and putting innovation on hold as the population resuscitated itself from losses of hundreds of thousands per battle. In North America, there was a culture of splurging on resources in order to gain social status. (And the Comanche.) The situation was similar in Africa. As for South America, stagnation was most likely due to a lifestyle free from resource pressures on the one hand, and to the regular pruning of the population by religious rites on the other. Cultural pressure is at the heart of the changes and time to reflect, or food security while helpful, does not formulate any answer. An organism adapted to conditions has no need to change.

The main reason Europe became a superpower in the world is thanks to the church, and governments allowing and helping their rich and powerful citizens pay groups of people to innovate in a concentrated place. An excellent example of this is the Renaissance when you had inventors and artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Titian in Milan and Florence. This only could have happened when the Crusades recovereding Roman and Muslim texts and innovations and made the Europeans curious about their world.

I hope you tour redwood place apartments in Sunnyvale. It’s within that budget and a very nice surrounding!

Great book. Jared has a great breakdown of another of his books on Ted Talks, 'Collapse' done in 19 minutes. Worth taking in.

Guns, Germs and Steel is a complete joke of a work.

As a historian, I should point out that Guns, Germs, and Steel is generally not favored academically for understanding European expansion. The criticisms are numerous, too much for me to go into detail, but to put it in in short: 1) It's not his original argument, he's just copying work from the 50s and 60s; 2) He relies on geographic determinism; 3) there are numerous counter examples to his models; 4) lack of historical agency; 5) he gets a lot of details incorrect. I recommend you read Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomeranz for a better more accepted scholarly discussion of this issue. It's not as sexy a read as Guns, Germs, and Steel; but factually more nuanced and more accurate. Maybe you can do a video on Great Divergence later, then re-evaluate Guns Germs and Steel.

Oxford study?

Asides from observations on disease, this book is pure copium. Why did Spain conquer Mexico? Cortez. There is no other conceivable way it would have even been attempted without that man's personal ambition. Same goes for Peru and Pizarro. Geography, economics, and religion are typically given as explanations for why empires rise and fall, but it's all cope. There is no resource that matters other than the quality of men.

It was Spain that approved and financed Columbus’ voyage, not Portugal!!

I think you'll love a book that I'm writing, considering what you said in this vid. I also think you'll love my YT content

It's really interesting to see this book recommended considering how much controversy there is around it.

Genetics, no Jews, and the divine spark of the Apollonian Aryan man will take you places.

Diamond overstates geographic determinism. Mercator projection gives a false impression of east west v north south axis relationships.

madness, that's part of a spectrum. a good amount of genius's are on the edge. Europeans i suspect have a higher percentage of genius's and thats what powered European expansion. science food surplus and a thirst for trade and exploration. just a few men with good idea's not Europeans as a whole.

Innovation is just a neutral tool; what frames it is what controls it and in our reality violence and imperialism are it.

you need to put your voice to both channels, left and right, llistening to this on headphones is disorienting

This video blew up! Yeah bay pricing omg don’t get me started

I agree. I recently moved out here and the APTs are outdated, ugly and yet expensive

China also isn't nearly as historically unified as people think. Read Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Chinese culture is also historically not driven by a culture of evangelism and the need to spread their way of life (Christianity, Capitalism, Democracy, etc) via violence. This attitudinal difference is present even in today's geopolitics, where China doesn't seek to spread communism, whereas the US overthrows governments world wide to spread democracy.

I did not read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond or the books that @j4x.luxciou is recommending (Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest and Facing East). However, decades ago I did this Dutch/Belgian Open University corse that included a book about the colonial history of the Netherlands. As a result, I was confronted with the way I understood the colonial era. I saw Europe's colonial past far too much as a competition between European players. Until I took that course, I didn't pay enough attention to the active role that Asians played in this story. In fact, that is the way the colonization of the East is presented in the most summary and popularizing sources. A history of Europeans who are entrepreneurs and Asians who are passive. After taking that course, I had to nuance and revise that vision of enterprising Europeans and passive Asians. ("Oriëntatiecursus cultuurwetenschappen deel 3 : Java en de VOC" first print 1992 ISBN 90 358 1029 5 )

actually it was queen Isabella I of Castile who gave Columbus the "go" - Castile later became a part of Spain (not Portugal !)

audio is not good i only hear it trough my left ear

Traditions tell our hearts what is right. Science tells us which tools are useful. I think the Meiji restoration and Japan in general is the perfect example of how to embrace technology while preserving tradition. "Western technique with Japanese soul" was the motto. Poland is a country thats rapidly expanding its economy while still being loyal to its soul.

A book build on nonsense premises. It's an interesting opinion, but people should understand the difference between an opinion and actual facts.

This book's argument is founded on a false premise. Worth reading, but dont just accept it as is.

While GG&S makes some convincing points, there’s some really important rebuttals that should be considered. Everyone who reads it should also read Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest and Facing East. I think after these you’ll find this book provides a very neocolonialist rationalization of European conquest.

There's so much missinformation in this video, but saying that Indonesians and Polynesians are Chinese descend is just absurd propaganda. They are related to Chinese, but they branched out long before China and Chinese people ware a thing. Also many wars are direct result of USA and US Army. For example CIA killed Patrice Lumumba so the West could continue stealing from Congo. You need to read many more books before starting getting any conclusions. But it's a possitive thing that you decide to learn. Just don't stick to your opinnions and only look to confirm them, becasue that's just conservatism once again.

Eurasia is the largest continent. It should have had the most geniuses to come up with ideas. But what would have happened if there were no horses, and horses were only in North America?

The last 550 years has been a record of who had technology versus who did not. The Chinese brought a giraffe 🦒 back from Africa with there fleet. They could have discovered and colonized Australia 200 years before Europeans. Why didn't they?

Imo what triggered the European explorations was islam. Islam had conquered almost the complete Roman Empire were it not for the Franks that halted them in France in the 8th century. Before islam the Mediterranean was one big interlocking economic whole that traded with China and India. Due to islam, North Africa was cut off from Europe, just as were the trade routes from India and China. So when the Reconquista on the Iberian peninsula proceeded and piece after piece was liberated from the muslims, the Portuguese started to try to circumnavigate the muslims in North Africa to get to the Indies themselves. And this process started the systematic evolution of science and technology on how to navigate on unknown waters etc.

Europeans colonised the world through greed and violence. China was a major player in the ancient silk route, but they have NEVER colonised SE Asia. The last diplomatic mission abroad was in the 1400s and there was no intent to conquer and subjugate a foreign kingdom. Their biggest mistake was closing itself up from the rest of the world in the 1500s which led to its exploitation by European powers over the 19th century.

I suggest a follow up reading of how the west came to rule by Anievas and nisancioglu. An added perspective of global political economy in the analysis.

I would be astonished theres nocomments because nobody cares.

as a European I find it so strange that you say you feel very safe in the USA. Violence by guns is practically unheard of here, whereas it sounds like you have one mass shooting a day over there. I loved the book too, as you said it answered so many questions on how and why the West has dominated the world stage in the last 500 years

Because they are evil.

I read this book a number of years ago... and yes, a very interesting read.