BahRamYou
2d ago
interestingly, there appears to be no age limit for the bar exam. So there could be a doogie howser situation where a teenager becomes a lawyer.
...but I assume he just meant that she became a lawyer later.
BahRamYou
4d ago
It seems like a widespread problem in the US that public defenders get paid like shit, even though most of them have huge loans from law school. Or more generally: the people who need a lawyer the most are also the people least able to afford one.
BahRamYou
7d ago
he's not, like, some obscure writer. he's been a best seller for decades. but yes, he's very quotable on all sorts of hot culture war topics.
BahRamYou
7d ago
from the context he's pretty clearly talking about young adults, not kids.
BahRamYou
7d ago
I counter you with a cold dose of Houllebecq!
“Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.”
Uh yeah... don't take any of that too seriously, I don't think he does either. Kids are great, keep having them. Just felt like throwing that out there.
BahRamYou
7d ago
I agree that was his goal but... he just wasn't that funny? Like I said before he just lacked any charisma as a live streamer. More importantly: I don't think people were looking to him for jokes. The "joke" is the money involved, particularly for people who have invested their life savings. What they wanted was some confirmation that this is real, some sort of smart financial insight like he had originally. Not just dumb memes- anyone can do that.
BahRamYou
7d ago
You would think so! But no. If you have a margin account and enough capital, you can sell them "naked" without owning the shares. Basically the broker just thinks "eh he's good for it" and will let you do whatever you want. In this case it's been eye opening... the shares are "not available to short" but there was no problem selling options. Options really are the tail that wags the dog, in this kind of market.
BahRamYou
7d ago
"To me, it seems obvious that he bought far out of the money GME calls, then posted on Twitter to pump the stock, then closed those positions for others. The alternative: that he 7x'd his money in 3 years seems unlikely. Naturally, he hasn't posted his trade logs so we can only speculate.
In my opinion, DFV should have stayed out of the spotlight. As a "regular person", not an insider, I think there's a good chance he ends up in jail."
Agreed. The original boom was a nice story- average* Joe (not really that average, he was a CFA and a registered securities broker, but he wasn't rich) finds a massively undervalued stock, puts all his money into it, tells the world, and a bunch of average people make money. Great story.
This though- this just seems like market manipulation. There's no fundamental analysis going on, it's just pure speculation and market manipulation. People tuned into his live stream hoping to get some transparency, but he didn't give that at all, just some crazy rambling and dumb memes. At this point he's doing market manipulation aimed at teenagers and crazy desparate people.
I've been making a lot of money selling far out of the money calls against it whenever the price bubbles. I'll take the easy money but I feel bad for the idiots losing their life savings in this.
BahRamYou
8d ago
AKA deep_fucking_value, the guy who started the frenzy on gamestop stock.
BahRamYou
8d ago
Watching RoaringKitty's livestream right now. This is crazy, on multiple levels. This is his first time ever live streaming, and he's got half a million people watching him, with something like half a billion in potential value open right now (fluctuating wildly by the second).
I think this will be the end of him though. He's out of his element, or at least not ready for this level of exposure. He was brilliant at reddit and twitter, but he looks like a clown on stream. Gamestop is going to tank, and that will tank his reputation along with it.
edit (12:38 EST time): if you're watching this now, my advice is sell sell sell GME. it's at 33 right now, going down as he talks.
"AMLO" is the nickname of the outgoing president, López Obrador. Reuters says that the party is Morena (which, admittedly, was founded by López Obrador).
Wait, I'm confused. So she started in the social democrat party, then moved to the current president's center-left party? So this election was between two candidates in the same party?
edit: nm, i'm wrong. Mexico has term limits, so the current president wasn't running.
BahRamYou
17d ago
Their brand is nowhere near as strong as it was 10 years ago. Rivian is the new "cool" EV company, while Kia, Hyundai, Ford, and GM offer perfectly good normie alternatives. They had the dream of being apple, selling for twice the price of anyone else, but I don't see that happening.
BahRamYou
17d ago
Diversification seems like a really good idea here, in that it seems to bring the nature of the disagreement into focus. Almost all the replies I'm seeing are related to SpaceX, but Musk has multiple businesses. Is the general consensus that those other businesses are write-offs, and thus SpaceX has all the value? Does anyone actually expect him to crack auto-driving or tunnel boring or robots or making twitter profitable? Is it just the rockets? Maybe the rockets are enough, maybe not, but is any of the rest plausible enough to bet on, or is it essentially fog?
SpaceX is so far the only really "cool" company that Musk has. Maybe Tesla used to be cool, when EVs were new and they could shatter acceleration records while talking big about "saving the earth." Now they just seem normal- lots of other companies make EVs now too, and we've all had a chance to ride in them and see "OK yeah it's pretty just another car." It's decent but no where near enough to justify it being one of the most valuable companies on earth, ahead of other companies that produce way more money.
SpaceX can still trade on that "we're going to mars!!!!" sci fi aspect. But I think their real value is launching spy sats for the military, and maybe eventually ABM missiles like Brilliant Pebbls, or straight up weapons like "Rods from God." For that, they can pretty much name their price to the military and the US taxpayer.
BahRamYou
18d ago
I've always thought of Elon Musk as being essentially the world's greatest tech recruiter. Maybe for a while he was also great at sales at marketing, but like you said, the reception to him has really turned a corner recently- people have started to notice that he never delivers anything like his promises and are openly mocking him. Plus it doesn't help that half of silicon valley now hates him for ideology reasons.
But the one thing he does still have in spades is to attract talented young engineers in spades who will work overtime for sub-market rates. Even at the boring company, which is literally boring and is out in the Nevada desert, they seem to be flooded with talent. Even if most of his ideas fail, it seems like all the talent he has working there should be able to make something worthwhile. It turns out that young engineers really want to work on sci-fi hardware, not manipulating data to sell ads.
SpaceX specifically might pay off if it can land a big military contract. Get the government to pay him an oversized for providing a service that no one else can do.
But yes I've been thinking for a while that Tesla is in trouble... vaguely considering buying some puts there. They've been in this game a long time now, still selling very few cars, and are now getting tons of competition from foreign car makers selling good EVs for cheaper prices.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Well it's always opportunity cost. "I can't afford to give away my house for nothing." Why not? It costs nothing, right? "Because it has a huge mortgage attached, and also it would be insane to give away something worth that much for nothing." "Oh, so you could give it away, you just don't want to?" "yes."
I think the finances of plantation slavery were also a bit weird to modern eyes. when cash was low they borrowed money, since selling slaves was tough. When cash was high they bought more slaves, since it paid better than paying off debt. I don't pretend to understand the business decisions of the time. Anyway I think we agree- this was a business decision, they weren't just giving up on something worth nothing.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Yeah but... that's with all sorts of legal and ethical rules.
Ask yourself. If there were no rules. You could own a slave. Human chattel. Do whatever you want. Do you really not think you could make money from that?
BahRamYou
21d ago
Thanks for linking the anecdote, I hadn't heard that before.
Presumably that debt was being serviced by the income of the land and slaves, no? In modern terms, it's possible to own a business (with income) that also has a debt. If you inherit that business, you also inherit the debt. It doesn't mean the business was worth nothing, even if you don't have the cash to pay off the debt instantly.
I agree that Jefferson's situation was wierd and maybe a bad example for the economics of slavery, since it seems like he was more concerned with other things like art, politics, etc and didn't really care about money. On the other hand... maybe that's the point? The guy was so rich, and from such easy money, that he never had to care about money at all. He could afford to throw away money on things like turning Monticello into his own personal architectural vanity project, while also being president, and it just didn't matter. Slavery was profitable.
BahRamYou
21d ago
like you said, Haiti was hell on earth. It didn't have to be that bad. I really think the US could have done it better, even under the rule of the old south. certainly the modern US could handle it better. But instead we just... let it rot because it's not our country and we have no responsibility.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Jefferson is admittedly a complicated case. The man spoke grandly about human liberty, but also spent money like water and needed slaves to pay his bills. I can't say for sure that he wanted to free all of them. He freed a few, while the others were sold to pay his debts. You can't say it's "straightforward" when we're talking about human slavery here, plus a very large amount of money for the time.
Regardless I think it goes to my original point- slavery was not on its way out economicacally, since those slaves were worth such a large amount of money. If you really want I'll link some books on "yes slaves were worth a large amount of money."
BahRamYou
21d ago
LOL i love the way you phrased this. As an Expat American it's incredibly annoying that my home country is still stuck on SMS messaging, and they just take that as a default ("texting") to where it's hard to even describe anything else to my friends back home.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Oh ok cool. Thanks for clearing that up. I mean, you didn't really make any logical argument or cite any sources but you're here on the internet so I'm sure you're a trusted authority figure. I trust you. All those southerners selling slaves at high prices were just idiots I guess. There's just no use for a free labor source, might as well just kill them all.
On another note, do you have any advice on where I can hire a good gardener? I've been paying a Mexican guy, but I feel weird paying a guy who's obviously here illegally. I'd like to hire an American, but the going rate is way too high and there's just no way I can afford that.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Weird how sweatshops, prison labor, and human trafficking are still things then.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Maybe it's to filter out guys with low social skills who don't know how to read non-verbal social cues?
Also: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y6NWDBFo0gQ filters out guys like that
If any of them can learn english and learn how to make videos, they're going to make bank as a internet streamer/influencer.
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