domain:shapesinthefog.substack.com
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2m ago
I suppose a perk of medicine is that I get in my good deed quota on a daily basis, while getting paid for it. I tried offering first aid to a lady lying in the middle of the street (and somehow also holding on to a wooden chair of unknown origin), but the local security shooed me away after confirming paramedics were enroute. I think she was drunk, concussed or both. I also hold open doors, and I gave a hot woman her expensive looking scarf back when it fell out of her bag.
(Her being hot had nothing to do with it, I'd have done it for anyone without an obvious, contagious dermatological illness)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2m ago
I think if you're pro Trump doing this you also need to consider you're implicitly pro Kamala doing this, do you think that sounds good?
That would sound scary, if I didn't see the entire tech and financial sector coordinate to cut off dissident companies way before any of this was ever talked about. If stuff like this is going to happen anyway, I prefer state control to be made explicit, so you know which companies are allied or compromised, depending on the administration.
SSCReader
3m ago
Then you missed quite a bit. The plan was most of the resistance evacuate on cloaked ships to Crait, where they can hide in a secret base, while a skeleton crew on the main ships leads the First Order on a wild goose chase. If the cloaked transports were undetected that was a reasonably solid escape plan. Because the First Order would have no reason to search Crait because they would have destroyed all the main ships and thus believed the Resistance destroyed.
I'm not saying its a great movie but the plan was slightly more well thought out than a one in a million shot.
phailyoor
4m ago
their value is equal to the net present value of all future cashflows from now until the end of time,
Totally false. The vale of an equity is simply an estimate of the future value of itself, ad infinitum. A perfectly rational trader will be perfectly happy to buy a stock if he thinks it will go up, even if the stock costs more than the expected sum of all future dividends and distributions.
The value of the company's assets, dividends, buybacks, hostile takeovers, etc prevent the company's value from reaching totally arbitrary values, but none of those can be plugged in to a formula to determine the current equity value of a company.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
15m ago
why not get something in return?
The question is how much return. Do we trust the government to be a great asset manager? Why not just have governments dump money into PE funds if you're trying to IRR-maxx?
Do we think government agencies/employees are better capital allocators than the current cohort of capitalists and Wall St et. al?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
19m ago
Stupid government scope creep is fine when my favorite team does it!
I think if you're pro Trump doing this you also need to consider you're implicitly pro Kamala doing this, do you think that sounds good?
Because in 4-8 years the blue tribe might start doing it too, and this is a silly road to go down.
Does this represent a leftist turn in the Republican Party's view on the state's role in the economy, leaning more towards a nationalist democratic socialism?
It's definitely a move away from New England Finance's control over the party
Are there risks of corruption arising in the Trump administration related to government acquisition of major shares in large companies?
Profoundly, this is a risk for every government in perpetuity
Does this represent an expansion of executive authority? What do we expect USG to do with its stakes in these companies?
Yes, I'm not sure but I have serious doubts as to their ability to make better choices than businesses now. If they could, planned economies would have a way better track record than they do.
Does this raise potential conflicts of interest, directly aligning the interests of the Federal government with large firms (rather than their merely influential status today)?
Yes.
I can kind of think of a Steelman here where government shareholdings in major national champions could enhance corporate governance and specifically help align business and government interests over the long term, but I give this roughly a 0% chance of happening with the current status of western governance institutional skill.
Feels like everyone in the political class finally woke up to China's industrial results and going "oh fuck maybe there was something to be said for this" and are now trying to cargo-cult-government to replicate.
Lazuli
23m ago
My dream video game is to get a Final Fantasy VII remake which is actually good.
Have you tried Expedition 33?
Lazuli
24m ago
Players want this, yet the developer has no intention of including it any time soon. Madness.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
27m ago
Started playing Route 96, a coming of age story + illegal emigration simulator. The idea is that you traverse the same route multiple times with different characters, interacting with NPCs in ways that change future playthroughs. Pretty enjoyable so far.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
29m ago
I don’t know if this counts but I was really drunk with my buddy on the beach during a hurricane and we went swimming. The waves were literally on the walk way of the beach - he jumped in and immediately was flipped and went head first down disappeared. I vaguely sort of waddled in where I thought he may have been, grabbed him, and pulled him out.
He was sort of stunned and non verbal.
The issue is: I know something like this happened. But I don’t remember anything else before or after. I don’t know how heroic I was, and if my mind is remembering more and more heroic feats in that moment. It was some 20 years ago and we were drunk and it was way late at night.
But I do know that he got in the ocean and I had to get him. And if my mind is adding a bit of extra flair, so be it, I’m 6ft5 and it’s believable even to myself.
Also I was really stupid around that time so it all checks out.
Last year a lady kept fainting at a WWII reenactment and I was like the only person to grab her and put her on the ground gently and give her water. She was very fat and old and so was her husband. It was really good seeing my two teenage boys seeing me do that. Like, hey, you gotta do good things rather than staying neutral.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
30m ago
Can't wait to stare at the new Helvetica TSA logo while I stand in line to go through the Faction Exterminated machine.
hydroacetylene
48m ago
You said ‘engineering and technical staff’. These people are technical staff and lots of them have ‘engineer’ in their job title.
GBRK
56m ago
My grandpa mentioned her-- he keeps track of all the successful people he's related to/otherwise knows in order to flex.
I plan to reach out only after getting published; it would be intensely gauche to show up like someone pretending to be long-lost family of a lottery winner when I have no similar accomplishment to call my own.
"the Government taking a direct share in owning companies isn't a state-owned enterprise, it's simply market-flavored convergent evolution (??????)"
The government owning common shares in a company makes it (partially) state-owned, the state has a share of ownership. No amount of word games will change this underlying fact.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
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