Given Tucker’s views on women, I don’t see a discrepancy

He realizes this every couple of years and then he forgets again during the next shareholders meeting

You’d think if these people read the news outlets they share their stories with that they would have seen one of the articles already because they’re so common.

Crypto scams have overwhelmed the news feeds. I see scams showing up on the front page of my fucking retirement account. Dumb money retail investors chasing fictitious capital are setting off a feeding frenzy.

Tesla, a failed venture living off government subsidies

It’s not a failed venture precisely because it lives off government money. Show me a Fortune 500 company and I’ll show you a large stream of public sector receipts.

Citadel commands something like 8-10% of daily market volume. They’re the textbook Too Big To Fail investor. SEC won’t touch them for that reason alone, although there are plenty of other ideological/conflict of interest reasons, too.

Long term market rate of return is positive (extremely positive of late), where as casino gambling is EV negative.

But options and futures exist as a short term hedge on equity investment. Combine that with the vig Robinhood takes on the front end in the form of higher contract prices, and you end up with an EV negative return - more consistent with high stakes gambling than equity investing.

Really knows how to give a pounding

Me, at the opener for Bright Eyes

you being able to only get one internet service provider at that apartment, despite that being illegal now

Your option is the Mediocre Internet everyone uses or the Shit Internet that exists pretty much exclusively to fulfill this requirement. Fuck Windstream, somehow managed to be worse than Comcast.

Work more night shifts. Date more goths.

Cut the toxic diurnal people out of your life.

A lot of the people falling for these scams are straight up mentally ill or disabled.

It’s funny to think of some blowhard yacht guy getting fleeced. Less funny to see an adult with Down’s Syndrome or Schizophrenia or Dementia or a child who got hold of a parent’s credit card and sucked in by some Mr. Beast tier grift get played.

What is with people and self-snitching?

It’s AI generated and getting passed around Twitter/Right-Wing Facebook ad part of MAGA hysterics.

But again, what tangible benefit does that have for the average user?

You have more control over your front-page content. If you don’t want to get a particular feed, you unsubscribe from it.

who feel superior to those that like one form of media over their preferred media

I don’t watch the TikToks. I get my information from a source I know I can trust.

What benefits does federation offer the user? How does the recommendation algorithm give users what they want? How will a decentralised platform perform the kind of centralised events a platform like TikTok is known for?

I might argue that the ability to curate your own content, rather than being plugged into the Main Feed that just front-loads whatever the highest bidder wants shoved into your eyeballs, is a relative improvement to the current Facebook/Google ad-supported algorithm model.

But in the end, it just gives more weight to advertisers and influencers. You have to lure people into subscribing (like old school newspapers/radio/TV had to do) rather than buying visual real estate directly in their eye-line. You’re still going to have InfoWars and Drudge Report and Joe Rogan tier content. Its just something you’re going to be baited into opting into rather than struggling to opt out of.

But it will keep you using the Fediverse as a model longer, because you feel like you’ve got a degree of control (I don’t have to listen to Rogan if I don’t want to). Whereas services like YouTube and Facebook are forcing their users to choose between getting injected with the cheapest, hackeyest swill or to switching providers.

it drains our energy and motivation

All this time, I thought the daily grind of employment - consuming 8-12 hours of my day for someone else’s profit - was what exhausted my free time, limited my opportunities for socializing, and drained my enthusiasm for local organizing. Turns out it was the fifteen minutes of free time between meetings checking current events that was to blame.

It’s like digital weed

So its palliative care for our lack of comprehensive healthcare, but even less effective at the job?

TikTok is popular because it’s addicting, not because it’s useful

TikTok is profitable because it is addictive. But the idea that short-form video is less useful than print or radio is flawed.

I don’t understand why anyone would use this.

For the same reason someone would turn on the TV, download a podcast, or pick up a magazine.

multiplying $5,000 a day by so many years is a silly comparison

Sure.

it ignores the dominating factors to building wealth

It ignores the existence of wealth by focusing on income. And it neglects where income comes from.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist but also they don’t exist because they stuff X dollars under their mattress every day.

Something of a joke about the modern billionaire is how much debt they’re carrying around. You don’t become a billionaire by having a high salary. You become a billionaire by getting access to enormous volumes of low interest credit, in order to monopolize a limited stock of productive capital. It isn’t like being an employee with a sky-high salary so much as it is a member of an elite club with access to amenities nobody else is allowed to use.

The ANC made a special point to protect the apartheidists during their Truth and Reconciliation hearings. It wasn’t until said white farmers began violently resisting efforts to repatriate land to native farmers that the government lost control of retribution. Even then, they weren’t “slaughtered”. Many simply abandoned the properties after the ANC failed to intercede on their behalf.

Quite a few white South Africans are currently leaving to become converts to Judaism in order to participate in the Israeli Settler Movement

From a former Pentecostal pastor to entire families, a growing number of Afrikaners are converting to Orthodox Judaism and swapping South Africa for Israel – and, in many cases, West Bank settlements

Gradually inflating the currency

Gradual inflation that happens under the national growth rate is fine. You need more currency moving at a faster rate in an expanding economy.

Gradual inflation in a contracting national growth rate is a huge problem.

Thomas Picketty lays this all out mathematically in “Capitalism in the 21st Century”, and builds a strong economic case for a high graduated tax rate as a means of tying inflation back to real economic growth.