domain:youtu.be
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
12hr ago
I could say that I do want to shrink the non-government surplus in hypothetical situations, if we're having obnoxious levels of inflation, maybe caused by too much government spending being indexed against the price level
Ill note that you still havent explained why too much inflation is bad, or how we would know what "too much" is.
Having some amount of taxes is what gives the currency an initial anchor value... That's what allows them to indefinitely print up IOUs that promise to pay nothing but an abstract amount of value in a unit of measurement they make up, and people will still line up to earn those IOUs
Transitioning out of just questions, I agree that the taxes give value to the IOUs, but I dont think the made up unit gives you all that much long-term. You can inflate away your debt, but expectations of inflation are built into the interest rate you are offered. Unless you can somehow inflate above expectations indefinitely, in the long term you need to tax back what you borrowed plus interest in real terms. There is no reason to borrow unless your position as the government gives you investment opportunities above market returns, youd just pay interest for no good reason.
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
12hr ago
They can if the trust holds Polish assets or the ultimate beneficial owners of the trust are Polish (they shouldn't though because they don't have world hegemony or something equivalent to the IRS, they actually need to remain attractive to capital to succeed). All you do is require US citizens and permanent residents to declare details of any trusts they benefit from, subject to the usual penalties the IRS have if they fail to do so and then tax the value of them. Plus you put in FATCA sanctions for any place which doesn't willingly share this info. Already most places in the world don't let US citizens open bank accounts easily because of all the extra regulatory burden the US currently imposes on third countries for US persons, there's no reason they can't extend that to trusts and foundations.
This is something that only the US can do btw due to its exorbitant privilege, a very bad idea for basically any other country.
How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?
You don't? But I'm not sure why you'd want to. Watching the last wave realize that the next wave is really a wall of autistic guys who took "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" as an honest description of reality has been fairly funny.
PokerPirate
13hr ago
Yeah, I was discharged from the navy as a conscientious objector.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
14hr ago
What is a woman?
I had an epiphany a while back and it's so obvious in retrospect that I'm mad about it. And I don't have anyone else to talk about it with, so you people can suffer this.
They actually don't know what a woman is.
Not everyone. I'm not saying there aren't any AGPs, or bad actors, or just people with extreme dysphoria. But a significant subset, including among the supporters? They actually just don't know.
Like, literally. They are not dissembling. They are not fucking with you. It's not Kolmgorov Complicity. They actually do not have a mental construct for "woman" that is a distinct referent class from a mental construct labeled "man".
I think this is the intersection of a couple of different things.
First, if a core conservative flaw is Othering, perhaps the core progressive flaw is the Typical Mind Fallacy. Think of the guy who can't even pretend to believe that fetuses have souls. Or the dude who looks at a religious extremist screaming "I love killing women and children in the name of my God!", and thinks "This person would adopt all of my beliefs about queer theory if they were just a bit less poor and uneducated and oppressed." Why on earth would that provincial fool do any better at understanding the alien category of "women"?
Especially with the elephant in the room, feminism, insisting that there are no meaningful between men and women that could justify any discrepancy in representation in any professional field. Women are just like men and want the exact same things, right? So, what exactly are the differences you're allowed to talk about?
(Writing prompt: explain gender variances in readership between romantasy and milscifi... to HR.)
And the cruel irony is that a lot of progressive men can traverse that minefield. Just blame the other men for gatekeeping and emotional immaturity. It's not a fair answer. It's not a true answer. But it threads the needle. There are plenty of people who can accomplish that task, because they have the mental agility and verbal IQ to mouth the platitudes while internally running logic straight out of a Hoe Math video.
It creates this doublethink world where everyone is supposed to know what a woman is and how to treat them differently, but never acknowledge the source of that knowledge, or openly admit to any real world implications. In fact, they have to actually deny that knowledge in a mass gaslighting. Remember Darwin? He was doing that all the time. A critical precursor to this epiphany was that time he pulled the mask down a little bit, and expressed his annoyed bewilderment that the rest of us spectrum-y nerds were taking progressive politics literally, instead of understanding it as a cynical exercise in tricking other men into acting like dumbasses.
Now what about the guys who aren't that mercenary cynical socially adroit? What happens when we combine the preceding socially-required doublethink with the common autistic struggle to model other minds? Remember that autistic-to-trans pipeline? Yeah.
So what the hell even is a woman, if you struggle to understand other people in general, and you don't think you're allowed to notice any impactful differences between men and women and all of the smart and successful people in your (blue) tribe sneer at the idea of any meaningful differences? The resulting rationalization is like a pastiche of the Jack Nicholson line: "I think of a man, and then add some cuteness and whimsey".
Which is, I observe, is exactly what it looks like when a pro-T prog guy tries to write women characters. They write women as men with some shallow "loli Dylan Mulanney" cuteness, because they don't actually have a mental model of "women" as having any differences in mentality, life experiences, preferences, traits, qualities or viewpoints compared to men. "A woman is a dude who spends 12 hours writing spreadsheets about Warhammer 40k battleships and then adds a heart emoji and a tee hee at the end. Don't deadname her, bigot."
And terfy ladies, you didn't just sow the seeds here. You plowed the fields, fertilized them, then set up aggressive arrangements of killbot scarecrows to fend off any threats to the seeds. I'm not sure how you can recover from that without rewriting a significant portion of third wave feminism, but maybe that's a me problem.
How would you explain to an autistic teenage boy the differences between boy people and girl people? In a way that provides useful guidance and doesn't make T seem like a normal thing for any boy who isn't obsessed with sports? In a way that let's them successfully navigate the differences?
How do you teach them to actually understand the difference?
LateMechanic
14hr ago
My thinking is not confused because I admit that money and treasuries are (consolidated) government liabilities, both of which need backing and ability to repay. People get confused with “fiat money” and think that it doesn’t require any backing. But the value of fiat money today depends on the expectations of its value in the future; that value depends on the demand and supply of money then.
I don't know what you would mean by "backing" in this context. The treasury issues IOUs that pay interest (bonds/bills/etc), and they make those interest payments by issuing more of the same IOUs in the future: they indefinitely roll over. The central bank issues IOUs that pay interest (reserves), and they make those interest payments by issuing more of the same IOUs in the future: it indefinitely rolls over. There is no promised future real 'value', it is what it is, and if there's inflation, so be it (other than the inflation-indexed bonds). And the only thing any of these government IOUs can be redeemed for when returned to their issuer is tax relief (or you can freely swap them for other different types of government IOUs).
If the federal reserve has no assets, then it cannot react to a lower demand for money by withdrawing the money from circulation so the value of money would be lower.
They are the monopoly issuer of the currency, and thus can either control price or quantity. There was a bit of a monetarist experiment with Volcker where they tried to control quantity and let price float, but that just caused the price (interest rate) to keep ratcheting up, because commercial bank lending creates deposits endogenously. They have since recognized that they just have to fix price and let quantity float, to run the system properly. So they just set the interest rate and do not care about 'demand for money' - it's infinitely available at some price. We're simply talking about numbers in account balances.
Finally, repayment in real terms is the concern. Inflation is default.
Whose concern? The government doesn't care. And no one else's opinion matters. They are not beholden to the market. If inflation ticks up, that is definitely not the same as defaulting on the debt. We still need the government's IOUs to pay taxes, so they will perpetually be valuable to that extent.
No serious monetary economist will ever tell you that a central bank has no meaningful budget constraint
Not sure what you mean by a central bank budget constraint. They have various expenses each year, but any preparation of a formal budget is to make their case to congress that they're behaving well and shouldn't be slapped on the wrist. It's not an economic constraint. They tend to end up in profit every year and just dump that amount into the treasury's account.
The usefulness of money allows you to get some value without any backing (for a different example of that look at Bitcoin).
Bitcoin has no issuer offering a redemption value, and thus is a commodity rather than money. As an economic instrument, the fair value is $0. Any valuation above that might be a small amount for the utility of making transactions (would work if each btc were 1 cent or something), and otherwise just speculative (don't get caught holding the bag).
If you're saying that bitcoin has no 'backing', but US dollars have 'backing', maybe you're using that term for what I'm calling IOU 'redemption'? (returning an IOU to its issuer, to get what is 'owed')
Didn't it?
That's my entire point, It did... but it didn't. The gains in productivity from paper to digital were massive, they should have allowed us to carve out entire swathes of administrative bloat out of our systems, but instead the opposite happened. I have my own anecdotes from older people living through the digital revolution, and Nybbler got my point instantly - we just came up with more meaningless paperwork to fill, to compensate for the gains.
gakles
14hr ago
This is half culture war half Friday fun but I'm a bit more than halfway through reading The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Politics aside, it is a very well written political science book. If you wanted to, you could turn the book into a chart, with every thesis supported by claims which are in turn supported by (cited) evidence. This gives the book a sort of structure of hard logic, which I think is a consequence of Mearsheimer and Walt trying to avoid the charge of antisemitism (which the ADL and others have nonetheless leveled at them). The authors are very analytical and never take sides in any of the conflicts mentioned, the entire situation is presented from afar: "There is a network of individuals working to influence the US government to act in certain ways that they believe will benefit the state of Israel" (Part 2, which I haven't read yet, seems to be "why the polices the network advocates for may not serve the best interests of the US or Israel"). This book was published in 2007 so it's not a wholly contemporary analysis of the situation, but it provides a good recent history and background. Apparently the book sparked a good deal of scholarly debate, and I plan on reading some of the back-and-forth articles once I finish it. I think the book creates a strong argument that at least in in 2007 there was a network of individuals and organizations seeking to benefit Israel by influencing American opinion, discourse, and government policy. (Mods feel free to take this down if it's too spicy)
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
15hr ago
When you read about Ross he failed on so many levels. Just the most basic opsec. I guess it worked out in the end . Pardon + huge donation + stash. The vast majority of peopel in his situation will not be pardoned.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
15hr ago
It would seem that is a bad idea because now you've admitted to it after going through with the crime . It's like writing a confession letter and hoping nothing happens. The pure white hat way is to just disclose privately and hope you get some remittance or there is a bounty program. most do
Some of programs are surprisingly quite limited. Chat GPT cannot download videos off youtube for example. Or remove text from images. Some random website can do it, but not 'state of the art' AI. Instead it shows a guide on how to do it with python . So basically it's like google, instead of actually automating said task. It also runs into meager data usage limits when performing computations , like trying to to solve 4x4 systems of equations (it will run into limitations when trying to solve more 4 of these matrices in 5-10 minute interval), and makes mistakes with other operations such as complex logarithms. Again, crappy websites can do this without limitations. It excels at rewriting and text though. For a free program it's not bad, but does not live up to the hype either. So I think it may not be the economic gamechanger as some expect.
ChickenOverlord
15hr ago
Even Ross just got social engineered.
Nah, Ross was straight up retarded and ordered fake ids from Canada to his actual home address
JarJarJedi
15hr ago
No, the revenue was higher - around $40bn. Moderna also got a lot of public money for vaccine project. I am not sure what cash has to do with it. Profit and cash are completely different things - you can make a profit on X and then invest it in Y and have no cash at all or negative cash flow. In fact, a lot of R&D-heavy companies operate in exactly that manner. Or you could just distribute all the profits as dividends and have no cash on hand at all. I am not saying these things aren't related at all - if you have a lot of profits, you'd usually have some cash, but there's no direct relation between how much the company makes in profits on specific project and how much it has on hand in cash at any given moment.
As for market cap, it used to have 180bn market cap in 2021 at its peak. I'm sure there were some events happening in 2021 that are much less happening now that could explain that, but I am having hard time remembering what could it be...
I admit some of these figures may be inaccurate, there aren't official number of how much profit they made specifically from COVID, so I had to assemble the information from pieces lying around, and make some assumptions (like about what exactly generated their profits in 2020-2021 and doesn't in 2025 anymore) but I am pretty sure even if I was wrong it's not by an order of magnitude. So the original point still stands - they have enough money to do what they want to do. Of course, if they can get money of my pocket for free (with the taxman serving as the delivery boy) and then pocket all the profit, it's much more lucrative. But I don't see how comes I owe them that.
Closedshop
話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
15hr ago
Vintage Sam Hyde 2070 Paradigm Shift TED Talk: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4jRoatZizQ0
Sam Hyde on The Ladies: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SPRupa0oShs
Fantastic sketch Officer Maggot: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7qJqEgWRTQ8
MDE Moms sketch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cS0jTbzd8Q8
Sam Hyde's thoughts on Self Defense: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Ui8BdIYRk
The Idubbbz documentary must be enjoyed on both sides, especially after recent Idubbbz revelations that have come to light. Chronologically, Sam put his side out first, but I think Sam's video serves as almost a commentary track on Ian's:
Ian's video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5jTdu3FI7vo&t=5s
Sam's video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xn52d_vTtSk
The Mind of Samuel Heydrich: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5LfAu-evUl8
I'm trying to find the World Peace episodes online, but I can't. Here are the first 2: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFmy7ubUEy0KNr27q7yLDLvLBX_6wtIg0
Finally, watch Fishtank. The season 1 edited episodes aren't that good, but the season 2 edited episodes are kino. Season 1 you're going to have to piece together through commentary and recap channels if you want the full experience:
Season 1 official: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnvpt5I0X2oyiViFuwi995k8JNJgdS0CN
Season 2 official: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnvpt5I0X2oxdWx0V94TxNKJWMKTuMOwr
Listening
15hr ago
feds aren't welcome in California.
I feel like Newsome isn't stupid enough to call for a second Civil War, but you could be right.
Forty-Bot
16hr ago
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
16hr ago
Newsome is trying to pivot to look like a moderate in preparation for a presidential run. He needed a Sista Soulja moment here, and instead he's whining on Twitter about how Law and Order will only make things worse. Meanwhile protestors, his constituents, are slashing tires, breaking into federal buildings, and assaulting federal officers while they carry out their duties.
LiberalRetvrn
16hr ago
Trump sends in the National Guard, Newsome looks like a pussy.
Why would he look like a pussy for refusing to help ICE agents who he disagrees with? Letting them get locked in a building for 2 hours is an alpha chad move, he's showing that feds aren't welcome in California.
No_one
16hr ago
I’m being a bit blithe or cynical here, but am I going to have to join a dating app just to find someone to hang out with?
Hanging out was a 20th century activity. Since 1/2025 it's finally the 21st century now. You're supposed to be doomscrolling or compulsively watching short AI generated videos on tiktok, utterly hypnotized.
aldomilyar
16hr ago
Depends how vigorous you are with it. There's plenty of ways of mixing if you take it slow and steady but if you've hit a 9-figure hack you're probably better off just taking the 10% bounty as 'clean money'
No_one
16hr ago
Here's how I got it to finally recognize the damn crap. Hit it with a not particularly egregious piece of this crap.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gs5FWhZWMAEAXNk?format=png&name=4096x4096
Then told it to analyze the slop.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gs5FlFzWkAAFCLf?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
Then told it to amend the prompt it wrote for itself. Then tested that on a bunch of examples and it worked.
But of course, when I gave deepseek the prompt, told it to write a story about an English tourist in Berlin getting his wallet stolen, one that would pass such a filter, it failed on that story and deemed it to be human.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
16hr ago
I'm eagerly waiting for all the deeply sincere civil libertarians who were minted on January 6th, 2020, to come forward and angrily denounce these insurrectionists. I expect calls for Palantir to have them all IDed and then rounded up and fed into a woodchipper of a prosecution storm, including random grandmas who just happened to be at the protest, but too close to someone obstructing federal business.
Trump sends in the National Guard, Newsome looks like a pussy.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16hr ago
Didn't it?
In college I had a part-time job with the facilities engineers. They'd digitized the blueprints for every building on campus, plus the full history of change orders. Before that, they had to go down into the halon-equipped archive and pull out file drawers with the originals. Surely that led to some productivity boost.
A couple years back, I was talking to an elderly woman who had worked in Saudi Arabia in (I believe) the 80s. She did payroll for an American-run hospital system, and oversaw their transition from bags full of paper money to checks. It sounded like a real quality of life improvement for the employer. Employees were a little more reluctant, but today, paychecks are ubiquituous. Except they've also been superseded by faster, self-documenting digital finance.
Then there's programmers. Even mirroring your hard drives has got to be more convenient and more scalable than a couple extra filing cabinets of punch cards. I don't even want to think about how the programmers of yore attempted version control. The productivity gains from digitization were obvious.
I suspect these generalize to most data-based industries. We're just more likely to take the improvements for granted.
🍿🍿🍿
I don’t see how anyone intelligent can see the protests continuing when the NG can arrest and shoot people who interfere in a federal investigation. Nor do I believe that Newsom is going to avoid prosecution for siding with the protesters assaulting federal officers. They wanted this, they wanted to mess with the government because they have TDS. Now they can paint tge ground with the blood of protesters who want to LARP as rebels.
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