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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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My priors are that the progressive technocracy are the de facto rulers of the planet at this point. That means Trump gets his business (of completed buildings, fulfilled contracts, and repaid loans) taken away for “fraud,” and SBF gets a slap on the wrist and another couple billion to play with.

If we were on Reddit, I’d ask the RemindMe Bot to remind me in a year and a half.

I'd take the other end of that action.

SBF is a rich white tech-bro with an eminently-punchable face, who appears to have stolen a lot of money. Blue Tribe benefits in no way from protecting him; he already gave them a lot of money, he's never going to have that kind of money to give again, and protecting him would be terrible optics. So they won't, and he's going away for a long time, 10 years+ easy. There's no reason to believe he has blackmail material or any other kind of leverage, and if he did, we'd see that kick in way, way earlier in the process, not in some surprise courtroom twist right out in front of God and everybody.

The system is crooked, but even crooked systems still have an internal logic and some connection to reality.

It depends what you consider a slap on the wrist but unless the prosecution has built a terrible case SBF is going away for 8+ years at the extreme leniency end of the spectrum. He won’t get Ulbricht tier (because he’ll likely be less obstinate at the end, and it wasn’t the drug + hitmen hiring combo) or Madoff tier (because he was ripping off VCs, pension plans and tech schmucks rather than very well-connected elderly ladies in Palm Beach), maybe there will be some leniency due to his age, but it could easily be 15 years or more if he’s unlucky.

I would bet you a fairly large amount of money SBF will get at least ten years in prison but we're anon, unfortunately. We'll have to settle for fake internet points (which, in the spirit of FTX, I will add to my personal balance sheet as a $10,000 asset).

I don’t see a good reason why he wouldn’t get the same years as Madoff. I guess slightly smaller crime but still in the billions. It seems like the same crime to me.

In all the meme coins that came out a few years ago, I'm surprised there wasn't a coin built around being the currency for personal wagers.

I'm pretty sure there is a coin for that, can't recall its name though.

There are surely crypto (interpersonal) betting sites, but again you’d need someone to manage escrow and judge the winner, at least.

Yeah, 10+ years of work and you still can't do anything useful with crypto. What were we all even doing.