1. Why does a publicaly traded company have to show continuous rise in profits? Why arent steady profits good enough?
A publicly traded company has to show continuous profit growth because of how investors think about money. Imagine you have $100, and you want to invest it in a company. If Company A makes the same $500 million every year, but Company B increases its profits from $500 million to $550 million to $600 million, which one would you pick? Most people would choose Company B because it looks like it’s growing, meaning their investment could be worth more in the future.
Investors don’t just want a company that stays the same—they want one that keeps getting bigger and more valuable. If a company’s profits stop growing, investors might worry that it has run out of good ideas, that competitors are catching up, or that something is wrong. When that happens, people start selling their stock, the price goes down, and it becomes harder for the company to raise money or attract new investors.
It’s kind of like a sports team—winning one championship is great, but if they stop winning, fans might lose interest. In the stock market, companies are expected to keep winning, year after year.
Some companies don’t need to keep growing their profits every year to keep investors happy. A great example of this is utilities—companies that provide essential services like electricity and water. These businesses are called income stocks because instead of focusing on massive growth, they pay out a steady share of their profits to investors in the form of dividends—essentially, regular cash payments.
Since people will always need electricity and water, utility companies don’t have to constantly chase big profit increases like a tech company or a fast-growing business. Investors buy their stock not because they expect the price to skyrocket, but because they know they’ll get a reliable payout every year.
However, for most companies, especially in industries like technology or retail, investors expect them to reinvest their profits into expansion—creating new products, opening new locations, or finding ways to make more money. If they don’t, investors may see them as stagnant, and their stock price could fall. So, unless a company is structured like a utility or another dividend-paying stock, it usually has to show continuous growth to keep investors interested.
2. Why the apparent rise in autistic people in the last 40 years?
The apparent rise in autism over the last 40 years has been the subject of extensive research, debate, and, at times, alarm. But experts largely agree: the increase is not because more people are actually developing autism—it’s because we’ve gotten much better at recognizing and diagnosing it.
Forty years ago, autism was understood in a much narrower way. It was primarily diagnosed in children with severe symptoms—those who were nonverbal or had significant intellectual disabilities. But as our understanding of the condition has evolved, so has the definition. The introduction of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in 2013 formally recognized that autism exists on a wide spectrum, including people with high intelligence, strong verbal skills, and subtler social or sensory differences. Many people who might have been considered “quirky” or simply “shy” decades ago are now correctly diagnosed as being on the spectrum.
Increased awareness has also played a major role. Pediatricians, teachers, and parents today are much more familiar with autism, leading to earlier and more frequent diagnoses. Additionally, social stigma around the condition has decreased, making families more likely to seek evaluation and support. At the same time, changes in government policies, including expanded special education services and disability benefits, have given families incentives to pursue diagnoses that might provide their children with extra resources and accommodations.
That said, researchers are still investigating whether environmental factors—such as older parental age or prenatal exposures—might play a small role in the rising numbers. But for now, the overwhelming consensus is that the increase is largely due to better identification, broader diagnostic criteria, and greater awareness, rather than a true surge in autism itself.
3. Why is working a manual labor job (construction, manufacturing, etc) destructive to your body but going to the gym every day isn’t?
At first glance, working a manual labor job and going to the gym every day might seem pretty similar—both involve physical exertion, lifting heavy things, and using your muscles. But the key difference is how that stress is applied to the body and whether it allows for proper recovery.
When you lift weights at the gym, you’re doing controlled, intentional movements with good form. You’re also balancing different types of exercises, targeting specific muscles, and—most importantly—allowing time for rest and recovery. This is what helps muscles grow stronger over time. You’re training your body in a way that builds resilience instead of breaking it down.
Manual labor, on the other hand, often involves repetitive, high-stress movements done for hours at a time without proper recovery. Many of these tasks—like lifting awkwardly shaped objects, working in bad postures, or standing for long periods—aren’t designed with biomechanics in mind. Over time, this creates chronic wear and tear on joints, tendons, and muscles. Instead of balanced, structured training, manual labor often leads to overuse injuries—things like chronic back pain, knee problems, and tendonitis.
Another big difference is recovery. At the gym, you might lift heavy weights for an hour, then rest and eat protein to help your muscles rebuild. A construction worker, by contrast, might be lifting heavy loads or hammering for eight to ten hours, five or six days a week, without enough time for tissues to repair. Over time, that constant strain accumulates damage, leading to inflammation, joint degradation, and long-term injuries.
In short, manual labor is like overtraining without recovery, while gym workouts are structured stress designed to make you stronger. This is why people who work physically demanding jobs often end up with chronic pain and joint problems, whereas people who train properly in the gym can improve their health, strength, and longevity.
4. Why is gentrification bad?
Gentrification is often framed as progress—new businesses open, buildings are renovated, and once-forgotten neighborhoods become “desirable.” But this transformation is rarely neutral. It carries with it a story of displacement, loss, and deep inequality. To understand why gentrification can be harmful, you have to look at who benefits and who pays the price.
When wealthier people move into a historically working-class or lower-income neighborhood, they bring investment with them—coffee shops, yoga studios, high-end grocery stores. But these changes drive up the cost of living. Rents rise, property taxes increase, and suddenly, the people who built the neighborhood—the families who have lived there for generations, the mom-and-pop stores that formed the community’s backbone—can no longer afford to stay. Gentrification doesn’t just change a place; it often erases its history, its culture, and the sense of belonging for the people who made it what it was.
Some argue that gentrification “improves” neighborhoods, but for whom? It’s not an improvement for the elderly tenant forced out of their rent-controlled apartment or the small business owner who can’t compete with a chain store moving in. It’s a shift in power, where those with money get to reshape a place at the expense of those with less. And when people are pushed out, they don’t just lose a home; they lose their connections, their communities, their sense of stability.
The deeper issue is that gentrification isn’t an accident—it’s tied to larger forces of economic inequality, racism, and housing policies that prioritize profit over people. The question isn’t just about new coffee shops or fancy apartments; it’s about who gets to call a place home, who has the right to stay, and what kind of world we want to build—one that values wealth, or one that values community?
5. How good is the worst NBA player?
Alright, let’s go even deeper. The worst player in the NBA is still in the top 450 basketball players in the entire world—think about how insane that is. There are hundreds of thousands of college and international players who would kill for that roster spot. There are millions of high school kids dreaming of even making it to Division I, let alone the NBA. And yet, this guy—whoever we decide the “worst” player is—actually made it. That alone tells you he’s an absolute anomaly in terms of skill, athleticism, and talent.
Let’s say he’s a 6’9″ power forward who barely gets minutes. He might not be a great shooter, maybe he struggles with defensive rotations, but he’s still an NBA-level athlete. He can run the floor, he can defend at a high level in practice, and he can dunk effortlessly. The speed of the NBA game is so fast, so physical, that if you threw even the best college player into a real NBA game tomorrow, they’d get completely overwhelmed. Meanwhile, the worst NBA player has been in that fire and can at least hold his own.
And that’s another thing—these guys are victims of circumstances more than anything else. The “worst” player in the league might have been a star in college, dropping 20 points a night. But in the NBA? Maybe his game doesn’t translate. Maybe he’s a tweener—too small to play power forward, not skilled enough to be a wing. Maybe he’s playing behind an All-Star and never gets a real shot. Fit is everything in the league.
Now, imagine taking this guy to a YMCA or a local rec league. It would be an absolute massacre. We’ve seen clips of end-of-the-bench NBA players playing against overseas pros or elite college guys in summer leagues, and they dominate. There was a clip a few years ago of Brian Scalabrine—the ultimate “end-of-the-bench” guy—completely dismantling top amateur and semi-pro players in 1-on-1 games. He wasn’t just winning, he was toying with them. And that’s a guy who was barely playing in the NBA!
So yeah, the worst NBA player? Still an absolute monster. The real problem is we rarely get to see them in settings where they can actually shine. But don’t get it twisted—if you saw them in a normal basketball environment, you’d realize immediately just how different they are from everyone else.
