Humble Beast

The lab leak is a conspiracy theory. The vaccine stops transmission. The laptop was an illegally obtained hack. Getting the new booster is beneficial. Inflation is transitory. The list goes on. Narratives, spin. Whatever you want to call it.

You’re just discovering that? A primary method of official information and narrative dissemination has been hijacked. “Build your own social network”. So some guy bought a big one. Histrionics have ensued. I think it’s all pretty amusing. I’m very aware of Elon’s moral failings. I don’t support him in all his endeavors, but I think Twitter succeeding as a more neutral platform would be a net positive. As a both sider I’m pretty accustomed to nuance.

Grow up

What about Bari Weiss? Is she controlled by the Russians too?

But, muh advertisers. This may be true. I can cite a bitcoin specific example of Elon doing this recently. When he picked up on Dogecoin, he discovered the blockchain scaling debate like it was 2017 and these things hadn’t already been settled by the market. He sounded like a total dumbass. He’s since moved on. Maybe he does the same here. Who knows? What are you talking about? I like it here. That’s a dumb comparison.

The Twitter people that thought they could namelessly suppress info are being doxxed. Oh no, anyway.

FAFO.

Twitter suppressed a news story about their preferred Presidential candidate just before the election. They went so far as to lock out the Press Secretary of POTUS because she tweeted it out. They didn’t want a fully informed electorate. It’s being called a nothingburger even though this is the exact reason people on this thread are so upset about Elon buying Twitter. They believed the proper people had this power. Now they don’t. The real concerns here have nothing to do with “hate speech”. They want Twitter to die and a viable alternative to pop up so they can regain this power that is rightfully theirs. It’s really simple. They claim there’s more to follow. We’ll see.

You make some great points, except there’s been widespread bitcoin ATMs since at least 2017.

Y’all appear to be the ones obsessed with it. Go take a cold shower.

I guess Elon gave Taibbi access to everything.

He addresses that in the interview I posted.

I don’t know, but do you see the whole world deciding to blow itself up over Ukraine? I don’t. You have a lot invested in this, but you have to think reasonably. Basically all the hawks like yourself underestimate the consequences of pushing a great power to the brink. Kick his Ass! Calm down keyboard warrior, you’re going to get us incinerated while you’re mowing a lawn. I’m glad you’re not in charge. You’re arguing against the realist view. You would risk global nuclear war over Ukraine. I wouldn’t. That’s straight up regarded. Give me a break.

Of course I did. He’s worth listening to. He warned pretty clearly about the disaster that was brewing with Russia/Ukraine. Plus he has a nice, grandfatherly cadence to his speech that I find easy to listen to. 1) He reiterates how preventable this was. 2) At this point there’s no viable diplomatic solution. Ukraine will want territory back. Russian non starter. Russia will want guaranteed Ukrainian status as “neutral” state. Only possible with security guarantees from nato/US thus effectively Nato state. Non starter. 3) Nuclear weapons on the table. Paradoxically, the better Ukraine and allies do, the more likely that nukes come into play. Ukraine without nukes has no deterrence. If great power has poor options they take extreme measures. Cited Pearl Harbor and also our dropping nukes on Japan. His opinion, challenged pretty strongly by the interviewer, is that Russian use of any nuke on Ukrainian territory would likely result in West standing down. We’d realize that it means more to them than us and not worth thermonuclear war. He feels this risk is underplayed. 4) Believes China should be our focus. They are peer competitor so there’s a different calculus. Where he sees Ukraine as not a core strategic interest, believes we should strongly defend Taiwan. Thinks we have to defend against China having regional hegemony in Asia like we own the Western Hemisphere. Muh it’s too long I need sound bites

New interview with Mearsheimer. Headline is clickbaity but it’s good. A lot of uncertainty in how this plays out.

A couple more highlights from his media blitz. admitting they “sold” bitcoin they didn’t even have.

Investor psychology personified.

sure sure

Here’s another passage. “Fried's writing ties into her family's belief in "effective altruism", a movement that uses calculations to understand how people can use their time, money, and resources to best help others, with a focus on the ends of an individual's actions justifying the means of getting there.” He gave a lot of money to people and entities. I’m not a lawyer. Is there a difference in clawing back money in bankruptcy if loss was due to catastrophic levels of incompetence vs fraud? If so maybe that’s why it’s being pushed that it “just went bad”. Now let me pull out my tinfoil hat from under my desk… I think given the offshore, unregulated nature of his exchange, it’s a given that they were utilized for large scale money laundering, shuffling funds around the world. The most common domicile of their account holders was the Cayman Islands. It’s quite possible that whoever was doing that, doesn’t want it more fully exposed by a criminal investigation. Could it be criminals, governments, both? I’m a little surprised he hasn’t been Epstein’d.

former Fed member here.

Wonder if he and Tim Apple worked something out?