Say what you want about LA, but amazing you can get a pint of raw cream (for $18!) to put in your ice coffee. Like drinking a health milkshake. Despite the traffic, the homelessness, the skyrocketing costs, this place where I lived for 16 years still has elements of a paradise. Haven’t been back since early ’24 and appreciating it more this time. Other thing about LA (and the US generally) when you’ve been in Europe for a long time is how good and friendly the service is. Seems like a trivial thing, but you notice it.

Few thoughts about the Odyssey which I haven't seen though I might at some point, probably on an airplane: 1. Don't cry about who is cast as whom or "cultural appropriation." It's a work of art, Nolan can do whatever the fuck he wants. Your remedy is not to see it if it doesn't interest you. 2. If you're pointing out the hypocrisy of other people crying about cultural appropriation when the culture being appropriated is non-white, save your breath. Leftists don't give two shits about hypocrisy, and it's not even really hypocrisy to them since they have long ago abandoned rational argument and logical consistency. 3. If you're complaining about the hypocrisy (fruitless) or mad about the cultural appropriation (dumb) online, you're feeding the controversy, and the controversy is good for box office. That's because once it becomes coded as "good" by one team and "bad" by another, not only does it get tons of free publicity, but the cost/benefit is asymmetric. The people who would have bought a ticket but didn't due to perceived politics are fewer in number than the people who wouldn't have bought a ticket but did for the simple reason that there are more people who don't buy tickets for any given movie, i.e., the pool you're drawing from (non-buyers) is much larger than the one you're losing (would-be buyers).

Why am I talking? I made a substantive post about something on my mind which you unsolicitedly trolled rather than engaging on the substance. I am here to say what’s on my mind, that’s obvious. I’ll ask again, what are you doing here? View quoted note →

LOL “hide and run” — anon troll accusing someone who puts his name and photo on every post of hiding and running! Why are you even here? View quoted note →

Think this dude is alleging I used AI to write this post. Not true. I’m a professional writer, never used AI to compose anything, don’t need it, don’t want it. AI doesn’t own m-dashes, certain phrases, etc. I just write what comes into my mind, not going to go out of my way to avoid things just because they overlap. View quoted note →

People talk about money printing by the banks (every new mortgage or loan is a print), but I would bet that's rivaled, if not exceeded, by the healthcare industrial complex (HIC). Think about it, every time a boomer gets a scan, a checkup, a procedure, the government has to issue a transfer to HIC. Not even talking about the Learing Centers which siphon off hundreds of billions collectively via fraud, but the legal, "legitimate" health care system which provides actual services. I know boomers whose entire lives revolve around seeing yet another specialist, getting another test, talking endlessly about health issues. They are like a marauding army seizing enormous amounts of wealth from wage earners and savers and transferring it to the HIC. The system almost seems set up by design for this purpose. And they are oblivious because it's all "covered." The problem isn't merely that old people get sick a lot and need medical care, but that old people are incentivized to seek it as a first rather than last resort, and the system is set up to treat this as normal. Your doctor with his pills and potions, scans and procedures is in charge of your health, not you via eating right, exercise, attitude, habits. That's one problem. Another problem is the system takes advantage of old people, endlessly prescribing HIC solutions to lifestyle problems and stoking their fears to keep them as customers. Politicians call these "entitlements" and warn of "unsustainability", but it doesn't to the heart of the problem which is HIC-capture that sets the prices, optimizes for extraction and controls the messaging. People believe *health*care is how you stay healthy rather than something you only use if absolutely necessary IF you get sick, which you do everything in your power (and you have a lot of power in this area) to prevent or at least delay for a long time. Just changing the HIC to SIC (sickness industrial complex) would go a long way. It's not how you preserve your health, it's where you go when your efforts have failed, and it's a weak substitute for success. I don't know exactly how much money is siphoned legally from the tax payer/saver/wage earner to the HIC, but I do know it's an unfathomable amount. I also suspect that's why the vaccine cult has so much power, part of why the covid response was so all-encompassing, why anyone who spoke out against the mRNA was demonized, fired, excommunicated and destroyed. It's not just a few large companies who spend ad dollars on CNN or whatever, it's a multi-trillion dollar extraction engine, and the entities positioned to receive the spoils have almost limitless unchecked power. Inflation comes from money printing, but it's not like the treasury just runs sheet after sheet of hundred dollar bills and dumps it into the economy. It's the bank reserves enabling issuance via loans, yes, but also this incredibly escalating healthcare black hole, fed largely by old people who are getting it for "free". Ironically many younger people, who are not completely covered have their savings wiped out by it and fall by the wayside as inflation gets worse every year, advocate for universal sickcare, not realizing that the reason it's so expensive and inflation so severe is in large part due to the universal sickcare (for old people) in the first place. The solution to this would be to open sickcare to the free market, not cover it at all, let private insurance and private providers compete for business. This would coincide with lower taxes on everyone, less national debt, lower inflation, cheaper sickcare (no endless demand backstopped by govt dollars.) Young people would be more able to afford sickcare when needed too. Of course, many old people would suffer and die sooner. More families would go broke paying for their elderly parents during the transition phase before the savings from lower inflation and lower taxes offset the cost of private insurance (that would be cheaper because prices would come down.) That's always the problem -- going from the obviously broken, catastrophic, unsustainable state of affairs to a much better, saner, fairer, more sustainable ones involves real short-term pain. That's how parasites survive, make the cost of getting rid of them painful enough that no one does anything about it until they consume the entire organism.

People are driven by incentives, don't let language fool you.

Went away for 11 days, came back, was smoking a cigar on my balcony, and a pigeon brushed by my head very close. Was like WTF, then noticed an egg sitting in an empty pot near the railing. Now I look out the window, and there’s the pigeon sitting on it, and there’s two eggs. Not thrilled to have a pigeon taking over my small cigar smoking lounge/herb garden, but don’t have the heart to do anything about it. The empty pot is in the corner, away from the herbs, and I’m going away again next week for 12 days. Suicidal empathy probably, but assuming these dudes will hatch and fly away.

EU chat control passing in the shady way it did is good news. They were spying anyway, now the tech cos have to show their hands by complying or not. Second order effect is incentive for freedom tech innovation/adoption. This is what winning looks like — desperate flailing and overreach of illegitimate authorities.

A lot of you are fake and full of shit.

@YODL knows what I'm talking about

Remember when MSTR mooned, and Saylor was CIA?

no one is still taking covid boosters, right?

Good article. Would just argue SpaceX is being valued on the VAST future potential, not present earnings, and future potential is relatively uncapped in this one case. The AI companies are pretty hard to justify given it's almost a commodity at this point. Of course the numbers would be very different if we had a market-based hurdle rate rather than the FED. I also watched The Great Taking, and while it scared the shit out of me, I think it's not really saying anything we don't already know, namely that IF things break down badly, anything you don't physically (or mentally) hold will be a legal claim and nothing more. Think of the Palisades fires -- you can sue the insurance company for non-payment, but you no longer have a house, and you are reliant on third parties to enforce your contract . And the only thing ensuring your claims have real value are incentives -- they won't default on your shares or bonds because that would be catastrophic for their own portfolios and those of their friends and families too. Mutually assured destruction is what keeps the system afloat. But once things get so out of whack that there's nothing to lose, the incentives break down, and the great taking occurs. I think it definitely COULD get to that point, and when it does there probably won't be much warning, but in the meantime you have to live in the world as it is, pay the fiat bills, etc. because that time could be 5, 10 or 20 years away or happen never. Just make sure you have some insurance in the form of a bearer instrument rather than a claim.