Today is really the first day of the new year.

The stalest genre of geopolitcal analysis is the one-note retards who see EVERYTHING as “this is a distraction,” “this is another neo-con forever war,” “this is done at Netanyahu’s behest,” “this is more of the same” no matter what happens. That’s not to say that these conclusions couldn’t be correct in any given case — they might, and surely they have at times in the past — but applying them lazily to EVERY case is retarded. The world-weary “I told you so” mantra in the face of ANY development is a tell a person hasn’t looked into what’s going on, and just wants to sound savvy to others. You are under no obligation to pay attention to geopolitics — maybe you’d even be better off hiking in the mountains and swimming in freezing lakes. But if you’re not paying attention except to headlines and hot takes, why make the discourse dumber?

It's obviously wrong to break into someone's home, but if a guy shoots a few people, then goes home, the police are justified in breaking in if he won’t voluntarily go outside and surrender. It’s obviously wrong to break into a sovereign country and capture its leader, but if that leader has done something to warrant it, has been asked to surrender himself and refuses, it would be justified. Did Maduro’s behavior justify this? I don’t know. Government allegations are not proven facts. So we’ll see (or we may not see.) But that the US went in and arrested him isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It might be, and it might not. What would be a bad thing unequivocally is if the US invaded Venezuela and killed a million people because it wanted to get Maduro. That would be very bad. Kind of like what the FBI did in Waco, Texas when they wanted to get David Koresh.

I don’t know whether taking out Maduro was good policy or bad, time will tell. I do know for sure people comparing it to invading Iraq and killing 1M people to take out Saddam Hussein are retarded.

All governments fascist in that they use top-down coercion to achieve their agendas. Legitimate governments use only the minimum top-down coercion to perpetuate conditions for bottom-up prosperity which is the ONLY kind of prosperity. If there is rampant murder and gang violence in say El Salvador, the fascist government uses top-down coercion to remove it and bottom-up prosperity is possible. Unless it goes too far and becomes the impediment itself. So government is “fascist” yet can be necessary the way medicine is, only insofar as it’s used to facilitate natural healing and never more than that. I was thinking this might also apply to foreign intervention, i.e., war. War is always a breach of sovereignty, but is only legitimate when the minimal use of force is used for its objective. The problem with government and war (and medicine) is humans are very bad at limiting force only to the minimum amount necessary. But the alternative is also untenable — not using force even when force is necessary.

Same people who said bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would lead to a ground invasion, Iraq 2.0! and WWIII! are reprising the same tired hysteria to Venezuela. They say bets are a tax on bullshit, and I’m happy to bet some sats on this if anyone wants to take the other side.

Had this thought that someone (funds/nation states) is simultaneously losing money on purpose to short bitcoin/keep the price in this range and buying large sums of it OTC at these prices. IOW, you pay the $10M a day or whatever it costs to keep the price in the 80s, and you buy 1-10K coins/day at a small premium to spot OTC. If you didn’t pay to short the spot price, the OTC price would be much higher. When there are no more OGs unloading OTC, they will pull the short and price discovery will return.

real pandemic starts in 2026, pandemic of cognitive dissonance.

the range-bound price action is fake as fuck

My friend injured his Achilles heel, was walking around in a boot. I asked him: “Would you say that’s your Achilles heel?”

Maybe the reason they were so slow to go after the daycare fraud is most of the medical system in general is fraud.

There are no journalists anymore, only party apparatchiks perpetuating narratives and conspiracy theorists testing their hypotheses.

Was bored on the flight last night, had this conversation with Grok about possible guard dogs/animals for one’s house: https://x.com/i/grok/share/hQdZcOZPcuPwwlbSxm7f0ZmfM

Central Park yesterday: