Peak

Happy birthday Moop! <3

The only terminal goal that corporations have is to make money. As much of it as possible.

Production of Andor was greenlit with the assumption that investing money in it would result in a positive ROI. Nothing more, nothing less. The same applies to them funding the fascist admin.

I’ve no idea why I thought reading the comments would be a fun experience, but holy moly… I’m so sorry you guys had to go through that, holy shit.

My worst pain that I can remember was probably when I fell on my knee from my bike after tripping over a pothole. It hurt like a bitch. But yeah… But now after reading the comments… I’m glad this was my worst experience lol

#blessyourkidneystones

Most monologues and speeches from Andor:

• Nemik’s manifesto: Talks about liberation and authoritarianism.
• Kino’s speech: I interpreted it as a call for revolution against the ruling class.
• Mothma’s senate speech: Talks about how fascism rises with a loss of an objective reality (in the public consciousness).

Andor’s really a banger! Please consider watching it if you haven’t already.

Yes.

Racist post. I hope it isn’t tolerated by the community.

Do activists with a messiah complex exist? Yes. Are they annoying? Yes. Should folks considered “white” and politically “liberal” be generalized into having this attribute? No. It’s racist to do so.

OP is quite bigoted and should know better.

WELL. Now this is going to be quite unhinged. It all starts with one of my favorite stories I’ve ever read. In it, the protagonists are given powers by the gods to exercise their will in the world. But, realising that these gods are assholes, the protagonists rebel (while keeping the powers). A war breaks out and well, the plot happens.

Personally, I’ve always hated authoritarian figures in general. By hated, I mean HATED. With a burning passion.

In the story, there’s an analogue to Loki. This character is shown to whisper “thoughts” into people (and gods) he wants to manipulate. Whenever I begin to procrastinate, I imagine it’s Loki whispering mischief in my ear. Him attempting to manipulate me to stop me from doing the good things I want to do. A simple, “fuck off Loki” works wonders!

I kinda did something similar when I was plagued with suicidal thoughts. I imagined it was Badb (the Irish goddess of death) circling around to claim her prey. To add some plot, I imagined it as, “Badb wants to snatch me away, as my survival means less prey for her in the years to come”. Basically, some “main character”, “protagonist” energy to keep the entire thing interesting. Whenever I even came across the thought of kms, a simple, “Haha Badb you bitch, not today. It ain’t that easy (to get me), you collosal loser” worked! I haven’t come close to spiralling down AT ALL after I started taunting Badb. So hey, it worked for the better, right?

Now here’s the thing - I know this is objectively false of course. The “war against gods and authority” is objectively not real. I KNOW THAT. But, I subjectively like to pretend that it is, just so that it:

• makes me connect abstract things that strongly motivate me to do/not do something with real life.
• makes stuff more interesting and fun! I mean hey, rebelling against the gods is kinda based, and it’s even cooler if it’s YOU who’s doing that (pretending to do that, I know)!

The argument for privacy in monetary transactions is much more nuanced than the one for simple text messages. Reducing privacy in text messages only punishes the “good guys”, as bad guys can still use e2ee communication media very easily.

For monetary transactions, things get more complicated. Tax evasion, money laundering, human trafficking, purchase of weapons can be done using super private payment systems. If adoption of this becomes widespread, then liquidity of these currencies increase. For example, if I’m selling illegal weapons, then the Monero that I receive from that purchase needs to be somehow converted into real money so that I can buy a house, groceries and so on. If Monero becomes widespread, then I don’t even need to this.

Imagine Bezos, musk and all the other crooks just getting way way more of powerful.

How do they handle the traceability aspect? Like, if it’s a blockchain, that makes transactions public by definition right?

Not quite. They use something called “ring signatures”.

Centralised payment systems are much more efficient. Yes, corporate capture can make them suck (visa/MasterCard duopoly). To ensure security, financial infrastructure tends to be super capital intensive. This leads to an oligopoly in a best case scenario and a monopoly in the worst case scenario.

Being a natural monopoly, I would highly highly be in support of state owned financial “stuff”. Cooperativize operations as much as possible, but let the state raise capital for this. Good for national security too.

Certain types of crypto can be very good if you want transactions to be anonymous (Monero being the best example). Wanna purchase drugs from an illegal ecommerce platform? Monero is untraceable. Wanna buy weapons, launder money, etc? Monero works. Otherwise, it’s pretty much useless in the face of existing non crypto services.

BTC sucks for transactions. But its value proposition is kinda different. It’s kinda like gold (kinda).

Humans throughout history have based currencies based on items that can be easily verified to be real, and are scarce. Gold is an example. Gold can be mined, yes. But it’s pretty scarce. It’s easy to tell gold from “not gold”.

Hence, in a world where financial systems weren’t exactly integrated and digitized, assets and market info was hard to track, trust in other countries and their institutions was super low, gold worked.

But we abandoned the gold standard for a reason. Hence, do we really want a digital gold equivalent (in terms of verifiability and scarcity)? What even is the point? That’s why BTC doesn’t make sense (for me)

Sorry for the non answer, but here’s a little rant:

Honorifics should go away. They unnecessarily create and restate hierarchies that don’t really need to exist.

On the receiving end, it has always felt weird being called “sir”. A smile is more than enough, thank you very much.

I don’t necessarily boycott businesses just to achieve some higher purpose like beating fascism away or whatever- most of the time it’s cuz I know the owner(s) are assholes to their workers. Fuck those guys. Plus, most food served outside is inferior to the one I make at home, so not much of value is lost.

Spaghetti with peaches… Kinda sounds like something that would taste… nice?

Ew. What a repulsive dude…

If I ever have kids in the future, and if my kids do this seat kicking bullshit, I give total permission to this distinguished individual to eat my kid.

Thank you so much.

Jobs aren’t this static thing that immigrants come and steal. Immigrants also increase consumption. Increased consumption = more jobs. Basic macroecon.

At no point has any modern macroeconomist ever condemned immigration. Immigration from a low economic productivity country to a high productivity country is always a net positive.

Canada is facing scaling issues with respect to population increase. Again, as you said not being able to construct new houses quickly. Why is supply not meeting demand? Shitty zoning laws, red tape and long, drawn out public consultations mostly attended by boomer NIMBY homeowners concerned about increasing the valuator their home.

Hey, funny picture, though could you please not link to Musk’s platform? He’s kind of a dick, n we don’t really like supporting his businesses here. Sorry <3

Why’s that? What part from that era would you like to see again today if you could?

I hope you’re right. Although that Pahlavi fellow scares me. I’m not aware of how much support he truly has, but I hope it’s super low.