Just remembered the world sauna championship. Was one of the most interesting things I've read about
It used to be hosted in Finland every year until the incident in 2010. Rules were that it started at 110°C (230F). Then 1 litre of water was poured onto the stove every 2 minutes
The last person to walk out under their own power won
In 2010, both finalists had to be dragged out
The russian finalist died, burned all over, and the reigning Finnish champ went into a coma and woke up 6 weeks later with 70% of his skin burned, kidney failure and his airways completely roasted
One peculiar thing about it was there were no prizes. Only in one particular year did the winner get 1 small prize, some special heat resistant speakers that could be used in a sauna
But despite this, participants went to the edge of death every year and would do insane stuff like grow their hair out long specifically to cover their ears so it didn't get burned by the boiling water vapor
It was interesting to me because it's another piece of evidence that as soon as you create a ruleset... no matter how ridiculous it is, no matter how small the group of participants, no matter the extremely chance of death, and no matter a total lack of prizes. There will always be men willing to compete to the point of actually killing themselves
The male brain enters a kind of hypnotic trance where it will completely convince itself of the worthwhileness of the task, so long as it begins to venture seriously down the path of a competitive interest
It's kind of like a hijacking of the programming evolutionary mind, where no incentive makes sense but it happens anyway. You can find a million examples of this for every male interest on the planet. Just the simple act starting down a path confers it meaning to the person, and the more they are surrounded by other men who care about the same thing, the more they learn and compete, the more entranced by it they are, until their identity is fully subsumed by it and stuff like these sauna deaths happen
Seeing lots of things like this taught me to be very careful when I start down the path of any competitive interest or business, because getting hypnotized by what you are doing is essentially guaranteed. So it's good to assume it'll happen and be totally sure the outcome is worth your potential self-destruction
@elonmusk elon you are the only man who can land rockets, get faster internet on planes than on earth, build data centers and normalize fsd evs. you need to do this this needs to happen
I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.
This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.
JPM: Another beneficiary of the AI cycle is European luxury stocks
The report argues that the AI supercycle has driven a surge in HBM and memory demand, sharply improving earnings expectations for Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. This, in turn, has supported equity-market strength, with the KOSPI up 91% year-to-date, bolstering consumer sentiment and high-end consumption.
While Korean households’ allocation to equities, bonds, and funds is only around 4%, lower than in the U.S. or Western Europe, the magnitude of the market rally means the wealth effect is still meaningful. JPM also estimates that the after-tax bonus pools at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix alone could reach roughly $25 billion in 2026 and more than $35 billion in 2027.
JPM expects this wealth effect to be particularly concentrated among younger male consumers. Given that roughly two-thirds of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix employees are male, the categories most likely to benefit first are luxury cars, watches, high-end ready-to-wear, and outerwear. Leather goods and jewelry, which are more female-oriented categories, could also benefit, but more through gifting demand than direct consumption.