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Launderette
Protos writes up a peculiar story about a tiny bank in a Palouse town that ended up as a node in Bankman-Fried’s crime syndicate. Farmington is a typical leftover small town between Spokane and Pullman. It briefly flourished as a rail terminal, then faded down to the magic number of 150. The Farmington Bank remained…
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Regret?
As equipoise to previous ‘thankful’ item, here’s a newly formed regret. This week I’ve had a standard common cold. It’s not standard for me! My nose gets annoyed sometimes from dust or allergens, but I haven’t had a proper cold in at least 50 years. I had to google the right way to cough and…
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Thankful for?
This year I can finally see one point of gratitude. QT. Jerome Powell at the central bank is RESOLUTELY turning away from infinite counterfeit and infinite debt. He can’t solve the problems that began before 2008, but he is QUICKLY solving all the shit that started in 2008, including social media, tech craziness, bitcoin, and…
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More wasted energy
Rehashing from a few weeks ago: = = = = = START REHASH: What the world needs now is NOT love, sweet or otherwise. The real tragedy of the bitcoin/NFT/DAO crap is identical to the real tragedy of the hippie crap. Both were motivated by youthful idealism, and both ruthlessly exploited the idealism to gain…
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Mark of aristocracy
The Buttcoin reddit notices a year-old picture of Bankman-Fried speaking to his political slaves in a congressional meeting. His shoelaces are weirdly tangled up, just barely making it through the holes. He responded to the earlier twitter thread by saying that the shoes “came that way”. Well, okay. Shoes do sometimes come with the laces…
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Atomic house
Expanding a random thought in previous. Through most of history, families lived together. In many parts of the world families still live together. American houses built before 1946 made provisions for internal subgroups with occupied basements, occupied attics, and occupied porches. The ‘nuclear family’ crammed into a tight one-story house was part of Deepstate’s 1946…
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Penthouse > basement
Via Reuters: Bankman-Fried’s luxury party pad / office / crackhouse was bought by his parents two years ago. The best way to get rich is to choose rich parents. Overall I’m tired of the mommy’s basement shit. It’s used as an insult against poor people but never hurled against rich fuckheads. Through most of history,…
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Trend?
First signs of a trend? If so it’s a stupid and intentionally destructive trend. The establishment in “both” parties was boosting the Bush/Cheney family for the last few years. Now they seem to be going back to Reagan for the 900th time. I guess the openly bipartisan aspect is somewhat new. 538, a pure DNC…
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Aqua regia
Tablet mag has an interview with Edward Luttwak, a classic galaxy-brain bully. He’s a HARDASS realist about everything from politics to fighting to smoking. And he firmly believes in bitcoin. Yes, my son has made me a believer in the almighty blockchain. It creates an irrevocable past. A tweet is a blockchain of statements. Before…
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More idiotic fake surprise
FBI is pretending to be “concerned” about Chinese secret police offices in NYC and elsewhere. These offices keep track of Chinese nationals living here, and use blackmail to keep them under control. Jesus. This has been going on since 1949. Mao’s revolution mobilized Chinese ‘social centers’ in NYC and SF to blackmail Chinese nationals. If…
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Sam’s system
In one episode of Calling All Detectives, Browning is wasting an afternoon at the racetrack and notices an apparent swindle. A young man is trying to persuade a rich elderly man to adopt his Betting System. As Browning watches, the youngster does indeed win several bets in a row, and the old guy is starting…
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Boss vs boss
Wandering through ‘Elon Twitter’ for chuckles, ran across a surprisingly non-partisan take from an unexpected source, a wonderful reversion to how entertainment used to function under the Fairness Doctrine. Bon Appetit is for gourmet cooks. They focused on Twitter’s wildly expensive free lunches: Musk’s incessant tweeting, mass layoffs, radical changes to the platform, and public…
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Stop the goddamn fake surprise.
The latest official line about Bankman-Fried is the old “Nobody expected!” “Missed warning signs!” Raw ratshit. The regulators and political operators knew full well what Sam was doing. Many of them were in constant contact with him, and he certainly wasn’t shy about stating openly and clearly what he was doing. He said “I AM…
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Somebody finally gets it!
Finally some belated SENSE from the establishment stock-scammers at Financial Times. Actively intervening would convey undeserved legitimacy upon a system that does little to support real economic activity. It also would provide an official seal of approval to a system that currently poses no threat to financial stability and would lead to calls for public…
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Both sides should read
This is a 2009 article by Paul Graham. It’s a rare example of real two-way empathy. Most articles about the conflict between creators and managers are strictly from one side. Managers say creators are lazy slobs, designers say managers are cruel villains. I’m purely on the designer side, and this article helped me to understand…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 