FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
I feel like there's a certain tone that attacks on candidates take, you saw it with Trump and with Mamdani, that goes something like "You aren't allowed to like this guy." We'll see if the pattern holds with Platner.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
Why is Peter Thiel Moving to Argentina?
Some Irresponsible Speculation
Billionaire Investor and ideologue Peter Thiel has publicly announced that he is moving to Argentina. Among a grab bag of explanations that included nuclear war and AI risk, along with the obvious implications of the California wealth tax on his residency, Thiel reportedly was concerned about the political direction of the United States. Given Thiel's ties to much of the American political right, what does this tell us? What should our Bayesian update be from this information?
Some possibilities:
-- Get the obvious out of the way: Nothing ever happens. This is a non-event, Thiel is moving for publicity or tax reasons, and the announcements are just him engaging in punditry.
-- Alternatively, none of this may indicate anything because Thiel himself might be stupid/mistaken/prejudiced/insane.
-- Thiel is in deep with MAGA, but thinks that the wind is changing direction, the MAGA project has failed, and he doesn't want to be left holding the bag in America when the left comes back into power. This seems like a sub implication of the action even if he doesn't believe it, because his very act of fleeing and blaming the political climate will tend to reinforce the idea that MAGA has failed and increase the odds of it failing.
-- Alternatively, Thiel thinks MAGA will be triumphant, but Thiel is on the outs with The Donald, and he is concerned about being targeted after Trump turns on him. Moving to Argentina is an attempt to hedge risk.
-- Thiel is a true believer in the Argentine project, and thinks Millei-ism will succeed beyond all our wildest dreams.
It feels like something big for Thiel, who is intelligent and well informed if perhaps nuts, to make this move and publicly announce it is motivated by the state of the union.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I mean who cares? The annoying thing about this is getting dragged into a Trump discussion when it's a "$100 bills aren't big enough" discussion we need.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
@FiveHourMarathon Did you ever end up tackling your 100-miler?
I have not. I'm still hoping on doing a 100k this spring, but my pregnant wife has been much less tolerant of hobbies that involve me leaving for hours during time I could be spending with her. Which is, yeah, totally reasonable. But complicated by her disjointed sleep patterns, which no longer allow me to easily sneak out at 5am and lose nothing.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
The thing that broke the timeline was the Cubs winning the world series and Leicester winning the EPL. After the writers paid off those storylines, it was clear the series had jumped the shark.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there, and like any foreign country Symbols of wealth aren't necessarily easily translated. The great Agatha Christie quote applies:
I never thought I would be so rich as to afford an automobile, or so poor as to be unable to afford a maid.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I think we're overdue for a $250 bill. From 1969 when the $100 became the largest banknote, we've seen inflation to where the $100 in 1969 was worth about $800 today.
Large cash transactions are becoming difficult. If you sell an old car for $5,000 cash, just the act of accurately counting to 50 is difficult and introduces easy honest errors, which are impossible to distinguish from easy dishonest errors. Counting to 20 is much more reliably accurate.
A $100 bill in an inside jacket pocket or folded up in a cubby in your car were enough to get gas dinner and a cheap motel room in an emergency when I was a kid, now it's barely enough for the gas depending on your vehicle. A single $250 bill would serve a similar purpose today.
So it should be a Donald. After he's dead.
Certainly, which means that by making it publicly and stating that part of the reason has to do with the state of the US vs the state of Argentina, he's making a deliberate action to make that statement.
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