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greyenlightenment

investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...

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User ID: 68

greyenlightenment

investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...

2 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 18:26:17 UTC

					
				

				

				

				

				

					

User ID: 68

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The big story today: Xi Jinping secures historic third term as leader of China

The Communist Party leader broke with the traditional two-term limit, extending his authoritarian rule over the world’s second-largest economy.

HONG KONG — Xi Jinping secured a historic third term as the leader of China on Sunday, cementing his status as the country’s most powerful figure in decades and extending his authoritarian rule over the world’s second-largest economy.

Xi’s third five-year term became official when he was the first to walk out onstage at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where a twice-a-decade congress of the ruling Chinese Communist Party wrapped up Saturday. He was followed in descending order of rank by the six other members of the new Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top leadership body.

Chinese stocks are falling hard on this news, down 10% or more. Is the prelude to something worse, or will China recover?

Of course, the media has its priorities right:

In his speech opening the party congress on Oct. 16, Xi said he remained “committed to the fundamental national policy of gender equality.” But only 11 of the new Central Committee’s 205 members are women, and there is not a single woman in the new 24-member Politburo. (The previous Politburo’s only female member, Sun Chunlan, retired at 72.)

The second largest economy in the world may be in economic and political crisis, but are there enough women in power?

Louis C.K. was trending on Twitter because his Madison Square Garden concert was sold out, which some on the left are interpreting to mean that cancel culture is not real, or that it does not hurt people's careers. (link: https://archive.is/ryKrI )

What does it mean to be sufficiently canceled? I think Louis C.K. qualifies as having been sufficiently cancelled. If you look at his Wikipedia page, his sexual misconduct scandal, in 2017, killed off his TV and movie career. His filmography abruptly ends in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K._filmography

Sure he's still able to sell out, but this reflects individual preferences for his comedy, not the approval of the media establishment, in which he is still damaged goods. Comedians are sorta like contractors in the sense that they have to hustle, not depend on a platform or the backing of a major media establishment. I think this is is what gives comedians an advantage over actors in regard to cancellation, because stand-up comedy can be inexpensively distributed at scale, such as digitally online, without needing the backing of an entire studio or publishing house.

I am a black professor, I directed my university’s black-studies program, I lead anti-racism and transformative-justice workshops, and I have published books on anti-black racism and prison abolition. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood of Philadelphia, my daughter went to an Afrocentric school, and I am on the board of our local black cultural organization.

On the sunny first day of seminar, I sat at the end of a pair of picnic tables with nervous, excited 17-year-olds. Twelve high-school students had been chosen by the Telluride Association through a rigorous application process—the acceptance rate is reportedly around 3 percent—to spend six weeks together taking a college-level course, all expenses paid.

These people live in such a bubble even by 'blue tribe' standards. He preaches inclusion yet the program has a a 3% acceptance rate. There is so much material abundance and prosperity that elites have to invent scarcity. Being a professional victim confers more status than inclusive equality and is easier than having to actually accomplish something useful.

Given that obesity is sorta culture war related and in the news a lot, I figured this story would be relevant: Weight-Loss Stocks Soar After Obesity-Drug Study Spurs Investor Frenzy

Weight-loss tied stocks jumped following the update with rival Eli Lilly & Co. surging 15% to a record high. A positive outlook in Lilly’s earnings report also helped fuel the climb. Viking Therapeutics Inc., a drug developer working on a treatment similar to Novo’s Wegovy, jumped 12%. And WW International Inc. — better known as Weight Watchers — which bought a telemedicine firm that prescribes obesity medications earlier this year, soared 13%.

Novo’s Wegovy showed a 20% reduction in heart issues compared to those getting a placebo in a closely watched study. The results cheered Wall Street bulls who called it a best-case scenario. Analysts saw the benefit extending the market for Wegovy as well as Lilly’s Mounjaro and possibly removing an obstacle in insurance reimbursement.

I am more convinced than ever that these drugs are not only the future of wright loss, but similar to Paxil, is also going to a part of culture too and another tool or crutch to mitigate the downsides of modernity, except instead of social anxiety , it's too much food. We're sorta collectively inflicted this on ourselves, as victims of our own success. The pendulum if progress has swung so far towards abundance that we need modern technology just to try to undo it.

It looks like it's finally happening: Elon Musk Twitter deal back on in surprise U-turn

Billionaire Elon Musk has apparently changed his mind about buying Twitter, again, and is now willing to proceed with his takeover of the social media platform.

In a letter to the firm, Mr Musk agreed to pay the price he offered months ago before trying to quit the deal.

The surprise reversal comes just weeks before the two sides were due in court.

I wonder if the recovery of Tesla stock has anything to do with this reversal. TSLA got as high as $310 two weeks ago (now back at $250), which is around the same price when he originally made the offer.

It will be interesting to see what happens if it does go through. Will Elon fix the bot problem for good? (likely not). Will some famous previously banned users be restored, notably Trump? Same for Jordan Peterson, who has not tweeted since July after being forced to delete a tweet, which he has refused. Same for The Babylon Bee, which stopped tweeting out of protest. Probably. Not good news for the left though if he does succeed.

He survived in the sense he stopped making any movies or acting . There is a 5-year gap in his filmography between "Edge of Darkness" and "Complete Savages ".

This is trending on Twitter Jury decides Alex Jones must pay $965 million in Sandy Hook defamation trial

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday.

The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

It is unclear how much of the verdicts Jones can afford to pay. During the trial in Texas, he testified he couldn’t afford any judgment over $2 million. Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection. But an economist testified in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million.

There is no way he or his company can afford $1 billion. What is the point of these huge verdicts if there is no hope of it being paid. From what I understand, collecting on a judgment can be as hard as winning. Likely Mr. Jones has various forms of asset protection set up. Texas and Florida have the most generous homestead protection.

Because this is a civil matter , not criminal, it means Mr. Jones can avail himself of these protections.

This website has a predominantly US readership, I think .

In other news, the Euro and Pound are in freefall , the former down 5% and the later down an astonishing 10% over the past month. This show how bad things are over there even compared to here. Inflation higher ,too. It's a mess over there due to a combination of poor policy, risk aversion (flight to safety trade), and other factors, and will probably get worse. Western Europe pretty much missed out on the entire 90s and 2000s tech boom and you can see it the huge difference between the returns of the US vs. UK stock market starting in the early 2000s which has continued since . There is nothing to be optimistic about over there .

To be honest: I don't know how I can trust these companies after this.

I didn't trust them long before this. They have given me no reason to trust them. The media's credibility has nosedived since 2015 when Trump became a threat , but even before it was bad. (link to my blog There is no reason to trust the mainstream media ) An obvious example being the Iraq War , such as the reporting of non-existent WMDs and chemical labs, which The Times has since apologized for being so wrong. In fairness, the conservative media was equally bad in this regard. Apologizing probably is not good enough, because the damage has already been done and they profited from it. The media just cares about turning hype and controversy into clicks, while innocent parties suffer the consequences of hoaxes and other bad reporting.

person is accused of one thing and then they go over their entire career with a fine-toothed comb until they can find anything to make it stronger (this happened to the journalist accused by Felicia Somnez - who, ironically, used to work for WaPo.

They certainly did this with Trump. Wapo, NTYs had an entire staff designated with going through every piece of minutia of his financial history and every person he associated with.

You cannot trust these people, and not just limited to the media. Anyone who is employed by think tanks or organizations can be dismissed for the smallest or imagined of transgressions like Jim DeMint in 2017 being fired from The Heritage foundation https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-heritage/conservative-u-s-think-tank-heritage-foundation-fires-leader-idUSKBN17Y2IH . David Shor comes to mind as an obvious example of this.

Part 2 of the Twitter Files have been released

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600

Instead of Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss is doing the honors

Twitter suppressed the virality of certain accounts and hashtags of conservatives and covid-skpetics, such as Sanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who came out against mask mandates, and Dan Bongino. Twitter also has different tiers of moderation. Highly controversial, high-traffic accounts have an extra layer of oversight.

I thought it would be worse, but still makes twitter look bad.

This is going to turn into yet another meta thread. Critics of The Mote, especially former posters on Reddit, do not appreciate that The Motte is probably one of the few places online where any position, provided it's well argued and not too egregious, is allowed and will not be censored or ghosted by overzealous mods. Go ahead in find any other community on Reddit that allows this. Or any forum.

he's playing to the crowd but at the same time he's probably actually concerned too

Terence Tao on trump

Scott Aaronson especially. He thought that in Jan 2017 that Muslims would be totally barred entry due to Trump's executive order. I think maybe 2 people total were inconvenienced .

being an above average IQ , attractive white women is basically a license to print money . ASMR vids, math vidoes, twitch, only fans...does not matter.

While Kanye obviously does some things to be provocative he’s also someone who can sense which way the winds blow.

He has done this for a while, like appropriating the Confederate flag, wearing a MAGA hat, meeting Trump, etc. It seems effective at getting media attention, but in terms of selling music or clothes, who knows.

I strongly dislike this article because it's simply not true

https://compactmag.com/article/woke-ism-is-winding-down

Data on media outputs and “cancel-culture” incidents also suggest that a corner may have been turned. Across a range of datasets, we see apparent declines in “grassroots” attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus (even as there are growing attempts to suppress political scholarship from external stakeholders). Media discussion of various forms of prejudice and discrimination also seem to have declined significantly over the last year.

Within the Democratic Party, following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters. The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.

Even if one can cite evidence of people turning against woke-ism, this does not change the fact that the woke still hold considerable power for a large number of institutions, at work, and various digital intellectual properties. The woke, the DEI people, BLM, etc. do not need to see the huge number of downvotes on their content (such as youtube videos , before downvotes were removed) to know that their ideology is not that popular, but this does not dissuade them: they still persevere. It has never been about popularity but about power.

When workers at Netflix attempted to cancel Dave Chappelle in late 2021, the company didn’t respond by issuing apologies and promising more programming on LGBTQ topics, as it had in the past. Instead, executives issued a memo informing protesting employees that if they weren’t open to publishing content they disagree with, they should quit. When an insufficient number of activist employees took them up on this invitation, the company proceeded with aggressive cuts apparently targeting these employees and the programming they worked on.

Too bad not all of us have the backing of a multi-billion dollar corp like Spotify or Netflix. It's not like Netflix can easily find another Chapelle or Spotify can find another Rogan. Regular people who get banned or suspended from twitter, reddit, etc or fired have far fewer recourse. It's all in the background: no one even notices or cares but the person who is affected. The marginal cost incurred by Facebook deleting an inconvenient account is zero. It has 2 billion users. No skin off its back.

This is funny or sad ,depending on how you look at it

US Justice Dept Mulling Criminal Charges Against Binance Founder CZ: Report https://decrypt.co/116961/us-justice-dept-mulling-criminal-charges-against-binance-founder-cz-report

Imagine you're CZ. You just exposed one of the biggest fraudsters ever. And now the DOJ wants to investage...you. Meanwhile, the actual fraudster is still free, giving interviews. Yeah, the DOJ has been looking into binance for years, but it shows the unfairness of it all I guess.

Why would I buy AI-generated imagery from Shutterstock when I could just make it myself?

Why does McDonald's exist when you can make a hamburger yourself? People pay for convenience .

Kanye West is buying ‘free speech platform’ Parler

Kanye West, the musician now known as Ye, is buying Parler, a social media platform that styles itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter. The acquisition was announced by Parler in a press release, which said that it has entered into an agreement in principle with Ye that’s expected to close later this year.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” said Ye in a press statement.

Parlement Technologies, Parler’s parent company, said the acquisition would help create “an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome.” In a message sent this morning to the “Parler Family,” (included in full below), Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said, “The current Parler staff you’ve come to know —many of whom you’ve interacted with— will still be working on the app, and the platform will continue to utilize Dynascale’s cloud services.”

How much do you think he paid? (Parler raised $56 million recently after its site famously went down.) My own take is, it seems like a waste of money given that the market for alt-tech is getting saturated and the tendency of these platforms to lose money. It means he is not only buying Parler outright, but also covering all future losses. There is Rumble, dLive, Odysee, Bitchute, etc. None of these small video sites are making much money, probably most will not survive. Social media , like online dating, is a very saturated market, which doesn't make me optimistic.

If someone has $50-100 million to invest in 'free speech' or to promote anti-woke causes, how would/should he or she go about it? Someone like Elon can buy Twitter outright, but Kanye is not nearly as wealthy.

Say what you will about school shooters or suicide bombers... of the columbine shooters or 9/11 hijackers...Their rejection of this life and the world had the grandiosity and horror such a choice deserved. In their pain, rage, hate, and nihilism they at least had the dignity to let out a primal scream in their rejection of life.

I think it's a good thing that more people do not choose to end their lives that way. If you want to go out in a blaze of glory, fine, just don't bring others with you. I think this is why Pinker is right that the media bears some responsibility for mass shootings and other violence, by giving shooters the attention and martyrdom they seek. More suicides and violence means possibly more gun restrictions for law-abiding citizens, as well as lower social trust. All of these impose social social cost. If suicide is inevitable, let's try to keep such externalities to a minimum, imho.

Many dems believe 2016 was stolen; for the right, it's 2020. The problem is , recent elections have become too close and too high stakes. no one talks about irregularities or inconsistencies of the 1984, 1980, 1996, 2008, or 2012 elections, which were more overtly lopsided. Instead of either side occasionally running duds like Mondale, Dole, Romney, etc. the process of selecting candidates has become much more optimized and the nation more divided, overall, leading to closer elections in which refereeing and counting plays a more important role. This is going to get worse and people will continue to lose faith in the process, for both sides.

I actually was thinking about giving this topic a rest - it makes me feel like I'm being radicalized in slow motion - but...just when I thought I was out...some room for optimism: NY Times: In Defense of J.K. Rowling

I don't think it's harbinger of much. Left-wing publications occasionally publish counter-narrative stuff, because controversy and debate generates clicks and viralness. An article castigating J.K. Rowling is less likely to go viral, given it's old news, than one praising her. Look at all the articles from The Atlantic, Washington Post, and elsewhere from 2015 or later about the 'coddling of the American mind', overprotective parents, 'how the left has gone too far' etc., yet Covid and post-Jan 6th has seen the most restrictions on discourse to date. There has always been a niche of 'center-left critique of the left'. Reddit and other sites have more censorship than ever. Unless you are already rich, and or famous, or have a big brand, your options are much more limited if you are outside the window. Discussing and debating race vs IQ and crime stats will still get you banned from almost everywhere online.

Kanye, like JK Rowling and Elon Musk, are one of a handful of individuals who seem too big to be cancelled. All of these stunts and the predictable media pearl clutching only boosts his brand and attention as evidenced by social metrics , such as like and comments, on his tweets. Hardly anyone is actually genuinely offended by these tweets or the white lives matter shirt; it's just performance outrage or operant conditioning .

I'm still wondering what got Amazon hooked to a billion dollar disaster.

Amazon's billion dollar mistake for a $1 trillion company is like the equivalent of making the wrong order at Chipotle. I think they will be fine.

this pearl clutching by the ADL is the worst. it turns off almost everyone and frames them as being the victims, when they are not. disagreement about foreign policy is not hate speech.

This, combined with Nikki Haley's recent bizarre "Israel doesn't need the US, we need them" nonsense makes me think the GOP is trying to make some sort of push regarding foreign policy towards Israel. Or maybe it really is all one big conspiracy lol?

like 2003 again. the possibility of deployment cannot be ruled out if things get worse.

Looks like Dilbert is being pulled from newspapers following controversial remarks by its creator, Scott Adams https://www.foxnews.com/us/laid-off-newspapers-drop-office-cartoon-dilbert-over-creators-racial-remarks

Multiple newspapers have pulled the popular office comedy comic strip "Dilbert" after its creator Scott Adams made racist comments in his podcast, and then doubled down on them.

"If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people – according to this poll, not to me – that’s a hate group," Adams said during his "Coffee with Scott Adams" vlog, referring to a Rasmussen poll published this week. "That’s a hate group, and I don’t want anything to do with them."

"And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I can give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people," he continued, adding, "There is no fixing this … you just have to escape," which he said was why he moved to his current neighborhood that has "a very low Black population."

I don't think this is quite that big of deal personally. He has FU money and his brand/career at punditry keeps growing. I think his bigger risk would is being de-platformed from Youtube/Twitter. He don't need Dilbert anymore but he does need his Youtube and Twitter accounts.