greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
User ID: 68
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
5mo ago
If the feds determined the coins were procured illegally, any attempt at obfuscation becomes laundering ,even before it gets to the cash-out phase.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
5mo ago
It seems like the cashing out part is where people get caught
Yeah but you always run the risk of being captured anyway. See what happened to El Chapo. There are no safe countries from the reach of the US anymore except perhaps North Korea.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
5mo ago
I saw that. It's amazing how much MTG cards have appreciated over the past 25 years that the market can absorb such a large transaction. It's like an asset class in and of itself. someone should make a MTG card ETF or an ETF of MTG and Pokémon.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
5mo ago
I saw an Nvidia presentation where Ai can be used to simulate an assembly line or an entire factory or warehouse, including even modeling the physics of the entire process of moving and assembling goods. Surely, there will some productivity gains from all of this.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
5mo ago
Bitcoin continues to be useless for organized crime due to the transparency and permanence of the blockchain . There is no way to cash out even if the transactions are anonymous and not tied to a person.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
Many of the elite human capital types are nominally middle class or even below, but are elite through degrees and reach, like low-paid journalists/interns or ppl with lots of twitter followers despite not having much money.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
He would have at least been preluded from running . I think the deep state didn't want to risk an uprising if that happened.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
When everyone has a college degree no one does. I think we've already passed the threshold for too many degree holders being paid too much money to do menial wrist and finger labour.
the data does not bear this out. the college wage premium remains persistently high despite more degrees. They are paid a lot because evidently employers see the value. Companies are obsessed with profit, so they would not spend more on labor, which is among the biggest expenses, unless necessary.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
Anyone can afford to go to college. Anyone. It's just not that expensive. Yes, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be, and yes, the ROI is not as obvious or inevitable (though it was never inevitable) as it once was. But "working class" people buy more expensive things all the time--houses, boats, cars--and those things continue to cost money (beyond loan interest--there's also upkeep). A wisely-curated program of education will in almost any economy be a better long term investment than any of those things.
Yes, after accounting for scholarships and other programs, affordability is typically not the problem. The student loan debt is cheap compared to private debt like credit cards or car payments.
meanwhile, plenty of lower-middle-class people go into debt for frivolities as you describe.
Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling.
yeah, it's status-seeking behavior, they are not morons. They are optimizing for status and an upper-middle class lifestyle.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
I had a different idea. See my thinking is that qanoners are overwhelmingly middle class and below, and a lot of them are the kind of people who couldn't go to college even if they could afford it, which they can't. Not all of them, there are some very clever people involved, but most of the qanoners I've spoken to were primarily uneducated poor people.
interesting analysis, although I disagree about them being poor. I think they are representative of the 'low-status upper/middle class'. These are people who may have decent incomes and jobs, like involving contracting , HVAC installation, and small business, but they do not have much cultural capital or influence individually ,unlike journalists or academics. Their impact is felt at the voting booth other other collective action, like putting Trump in office due to high turnout in swing states or memetic warfare online, but they do not write Substakc or think pieces. Their social media accounts have few followers. Individually, they are unimpressive and not elite human capital , but collectively work as a singular driving force.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
wow that is impressive
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
Trump had made it abundantly clear during campaign and after winning that there would be tariffs, and even when he floated some tariffs in January 2025 and Feb against Mexico and Canada , the stock market brushed it off, only to crash a month ago. The market seemed to have no problem with tariffs until only a month ago.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
He didn't sound like this during The Apprentice . There are plenty of videos of trump pre-2016 when he's not campaigning and he sounds more normal. It's like he knows he has to dumb it down when on camera. it's like code switching. But it's hard to argue with success.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
agree. it's like thinking that imports subtract from GDP and should be avoided at all costs
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
Although an interview is insufficient to diagnose dementia, I think there is something to be said for age related mental decline . I have seen it. Just go to anywhere old people tend to congregate and eavesdrop. Their conversations tend to be very simple. Even if they have advanced degrees and were successful, by their 70s they have regressed a lot. Now compare to conversations by college students, which are faster-paced and more complex. This is why I spend so much time on writing and math, to avoid a similar fate. I am not going to be 70 and sounding like one of those people who have mentally checked out for the remaining 20-30 years of their life ("dead at 50 and buried by 80"). I don't think Trump has checked out, but this is a speech pattern of his.
For what it's worth, i can easily eat a lot of the stuff raw without it affecting me much . Sweetness is subjective, i guess. During my diet I was unwittingly adding 200 calories a day by using too much of it, so the calories do matter. I originally thought it was zero calories, but I was wrong.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them
A tax cut to help the very companies that promote wokeness and censor its users on its platforms. Big handouts to AI companies. But I don't see much else happening legislatively. The real power is in the courts--things like judicial appointments, pardons. SCOTUS is where the real lasting change is. The 2024 ruling on affirmative action, for example. Stimulus and tax cuts tend to be popular.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.
yeah, these big companies have the cashflow, pricing power, and market dominance to withstand tariffs, smaller competitors do not. this works to their advantage, especially after trump is gone and tariffs are reversed. Its not so much about tariffs being good economically, but that it hurts their competitors.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
My hypothesis is Trump did not think the stock market would react as negatively as it did, so he has since backtracked.
JD Vance is competent, but these people are chosen for loyalty
In 2004 I watched some episodes of The Apprentice and he seemed sharper. Trump today is not quite there. Not quite dementia, but not at 100%. Trying to make a diagnosis based on a transcript or TV is always going to be unreliable. There is a reason the criteria for dementia are defined in a certain way. Specific criteria have to be met, like the failure to recall a small string of numbers, fewer than even at the low-end of an IQ test. A diagnosis of dementia entails a significantly reduced level of mental performance, not just sounding bad on TV.
I think also some of this is playing to the audience. Trump repeats himself and uses simple language to prevent being misunderstood.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
6mo ago
I wish this site had a decent user block feature as twitter does.
what do you mean? by almost every metric life has gotten better the past century? GDP keep chugging along too
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