Lord Ratner

I agree with the decrying of polarization, but this is revisionist history. Identity politics can be traced back to the 60's and 70's and have been incubated by far left (Marxist and progressive circles) for decades. Clinton was the last Democratic president who could be considered "liberal" instead of "progressive," whereas the Obamas were completely and proudly progressive. Joe isn't anything but an idiot, but his staff are all loyal Obama adherents. The "far right" identarians would be the white nationalists I guess, but the difference is the establishment right, Republicans, have never embraced the theories or promoters of white nationalism, whereas the left, Democrats, still heroize the grifters of critical race theory and their new scam, "equity." What you are seeing on the right is the response to unfairness. Fear, rage, and a retreat to tribalism. The tribe can be anything, but since the attacks from the left have been focused on race, the tribe of being white is seeing a resurgence. That should have been obvious when Obama said Trayvon Martin could have been his son. The Right's last unrighteous cause was the restrictions against gay couples. That fight is over, the Republicans lost, though curiously the most alarmist claims about the gay rights movement targeting children seems to have come true, if you accept that the trans movement is a branch of the gay rights movement. Either way, Republicans have not made an explicit claim that we are not, in fact, equal. Democrats have, and we are paying for it more each day.

Individual/small group actors. There are riot police, and they look quite different. I don't think it would be reasonable to expect a handful of cops to take on a mob. I'm on the "this was a riot, not an insurrection" side of the debate. Usually I like Tucker's view on domestic issues, but on this one I think his rage at the hypocrisy and double standard of the left is giving him a huge confirmation bias. I've said it before, but the appearance of fairness/unfairness has always and will always overcome any rules, laws, or customs in a society. Our system was unique and successful specifically because of the intense focus on fairness. Sure, there were always violations of that principal, but it was always treated as an aberration. Now we have an entire political philosophy being based on the explicit abandonment of fairness, and the Democrats are embracing it because their entire strategy for electoral success is the coalition-of-minority-groups plan, based solely on their grievances against the majority. This will end badly. Either for the aforementioned minority groups who have been promised things that cannot be allowed to happen, or for everyone.

Or, you know, Russia going back to their country. That would be pretty clear, and much better for Russia than either escalation or nuclear war.

Can you give one example of a nuclear armed country getting desperate and using nukes? I can think of an example where a Russian speaking empire, armed to the gills with nukes, went through an economic collapse and didn't nuke anyone. And of course doesn't rule out of the alternative, but you just made a declarative statement about what desperate, nuclear armed nations do, based on nothing at all.

I'll take this one. Yes. If the Earth is to descend into a multi-polar world again, in which war is inescapable, then I'll "take" WWIII. But exactly who will be fighting in this scenario you're hyperventilating over? Russia? The country that has wiped out half of their military capacity fighting a third-tier democracy? The country that is drafting the bottom of the bottom of the barrel to fight their failed conquest of a vastly out-gunned neighbor? It's going to be a pretty dull WWIII when one of the three key players can barely invade their neighbor. China? The belligerent dictatorship that has been almost entirely funded by the West? They might try to take Taiwan, but WWIII? You think the country with the worst demographics on Earth is going to risk conventional war with the West in order to defend the Russian campaign against Ukraine? Or do you just mean that Russia will launch nukes? That's not really WWIII, but if they do in response to losing a pathetic war THEY chose to fight, so be it. That genie was let free 80 years ago. Thinking we wouldn't eventually have to confront the reality of nuclear proliferation was just one of many fairy tales we've been telling ourselves for the past 30 years. Though it would be interesting to see China and India forced into eschewing Russian oil for fear of getting pulled into the inevitable shit-show that will follow a Russian nuclear attack. China already smacked Russia down when they started to rattle the nuke sabre. We spent decades appeasing the bullshit Russia and China have been pulling, all while funding their countries' growth. Now that they've reached a point where they must split with the West in order to pursue their imperial ambitions, you want to show your belly in the hopes they will be satisfied with your humiliation. They won't. We are in the way of their goals, and they have finally shown their cards. That isolationist nonsense failed spectacularly the last time the world hit an inflection point, and it will fail again. Either way we will be at war if the other near-peer countries decide the risk is worth it. It'll take one hypersonic missile hitting the US to wake up the blind patriotic fury that has accompanied every attack against this country. Personally, I think Ukraine will end up forestalling that inevitable confrontation. But not for more than a decade or so. WWIII indeed.

Nevertheless, he persisted.

A lot of people in the investment in financial world are coming to the conclusion that very few people were actually good at investing over the past 15 years. People who made a lot of money were actually benefiting from a world where the fed pumped unfathomable amounts of money into the system, so all boats benefited from the rising tide. My point is that we are no longer in that world, at least not for the short to medium future, so playing around in stocks is going to be a lot more like it was pre-2008, that is to say, exceptionally risky. If you are going to take the time to become a researcher, which is possible but very time demanding, then have at it. But if not, I can't recommend enough that you find someone whose job it is to analyze the market and the companies that make it up. That doesn't have to be a full-blown investment service that does everything for you, in fact, there are a ton of newsletters and services that give very detailed information on companies and their research. But if you are going to take someone's advice on investing in a stock(s), you need to make sure you have access to their advice consistently, because buy and hold as an investment strategy might be at the end of its life, at least until the next money printing cycle. Personally, I use hedge fund telemetry. The guy used to run a hedge fund, now he just runs this service, but he sends out three notes a day with detailed information, and it's very easy to follow along with your own portfolio. Though he does a lot of short selling as well, you can decide how much of that to participate in. I also use uranium insider because a big part of my investment strategy is based on my prediction that nuclear is going to come back in a big way. Ultimately, I think the best way is to find an investment advisor who shares your thesis about what the broader economy is going to do. Because at the end of the day, some people are going to be right and a lot of others are going to be wrong, and those people are going to lose money. You can't outsource the ultimate decision of what type of portfolio posture you want to maintain. I believe that bad times are ahead, and so the service I subscribed to is one that shares that sentiment. Happy hunting

Look into brokerage link. We have an incredible 401k, and it allows you to contribute beyond the ~21k individual limit. In five years I've been able to max it out 4 times, and then with brokerage link you can invest it into *anything.*

It's about time. Men have spent thousands of years being told how hard it is to be a woman. Now we've only been doing it for a few years and we're already winning awards. Truly inspirational!

Not usually. I do the same. Easy peasy

You can be stupid and right at the same time. While we generally agree on a lot, reading your posts feels like chewing on tin foil. They are inane enough to make some smart part of my brain wish we didn't agree.

That could be the title of every chapter of this pandemic.

Wealthfront is simple and great. I use them for our emergency cash supply.

You can't remove them, even amongst a seemingly small subgroup. They have and always will form. Bad ones can form, but the solution is not to get rid of it entirely. Doing so just means you aren't influencing the hierarchy that forms as the replacement. This is a huge reason why liberal policies fail so hard, so often. The hierarchy itself *is* the enemy, that which offends the liberal conscious (because they are not fair, and often exceedingly unfair). So why on earth would you replace a bad thing with another bad thing? Jordan Peterson talks about this often. The trick is to create a wide range of numerous hierarchies that allow for more people to find one they can excel in. This Chicago thing is about predators. They aren't caused by the hierarchy, so removing ranks won't fix it. Though it can give the appearance of "doing something," which quite often allows the real problem to persist.

When I was at the academy in 03-07 you could get a CD at 7%.

I'm always puzzled when people blame the construct for the behavior. Rank is just a reflection of hierarchies, which are inseparable from humanity. You get rid of cadet ranks and they will be replaced by another construct, which will act the same way. You have to structure the hierarchies in a way that promote stability. But acting as though they can be removed from the equation is like arguing that we should just remove hate, or fear, or greed. They are foundational components of humanity. The failure was not the existence of rank. It never is.

Be careful with long bonds. The entire market is pricing in the defeat of inflation by early 2024. If the narrative shifts to entrenched inflation (got a little taste of that fear today), all bets are off with bonds. Tbills, however, are a fantastic deal right now

Exactly. Prior to the internet. Laws became necessary with each technological revolution. Fortunately with the internet we acted with great discretion to see what the new technology would become, and now almost 30 years later, I think we know enough to decide what is and isn't ok. It's easy to just stick your fingers in your ears and call on "personal responsibility," but do we really expect 13 year old girls to just be responsible and not consume content that makes them suicidal? But Seth, what about the parents!? That's their job!! Well what about kids with no parents? Or shitty parents? We just doom them to the predations of corporate sociopaths who will do anything to sell more ads? We need laws that protect children because we have decided as a society that they can't protect themselves. Adults don't need the same protection, but they do need to know the rules of the game, and that the game is fair. Expecting everyone to read dozens of EULAs and consent to selling their personal data to advertising giants to use software that is expected by most professions now is a broken concept. I do not trust the government, like many here. But I think people are forgetting *why* it's bad to trust government. Too much power in the hands of too few people tends to create tyrants who act to enrich themselves and lock out competition to their thrones. The tech "oligarchs," as this thread is titled, seem to fit that description a little too well these days, and I don't trust them either.

They are going to burn the furniture now that it's finally starting to come apart from the decades of abuse. Just wait, when the economy rolls over into a recession, they will howl for the Fed to start printing money again. Then we're really going to see some shit...

No clue, I've been out for 5 years already.

Okay I think I see where I'm missing the point. "Imaging IR missile" Imaging doesn't mean "visible light spectrum imaging" to me, because you can just as easily have an IR image. Imaging and IR missile. Gotcha. My B.

Don't think I said anything about AIM-anything. The physics of light transmission don't change based on the platform. "A white balloon" with zero additional heat source, as quoted, has a particular IR signature. A very, very, very mild one. Looks more like a shadow than an object, depending on the IR sources behind it. Now, the equipment attached to that balloon is a different story, and from the video of the first shoot down, it looks like it was the equipment that was targeted, not the balloon. Wonder why. Looks like the other balloon was mylar, which is yet another signature type, and much brighter than thin rubber

Not necessarily depending on what type of balloon it was. If it was a rubber birthday style balloon, then yes, it would have a different IR signature than the sky, but if it was one of the metallic balloons it would depend heavily on what type of paint was on it. Metal is an IR reflector, so if you look at a baking sheet pan through a thermal camera, it looks like you're looking at a perfect mirror, even though in the visible spectrum, you don't see a reflection. With the round surface of a metallic balloon, I suspect it would be incredibly difficult to get some sort of reliable lock on it. Depending on what angle you are coming at it from, it might be reflecting the ground, or the sky, or more likely some sort of distorted combination of both. But again, this depends on the balloon and whether or not the metallic surface was covered by paint, which emits IR predictably. I bought a flir camera a few years back and it's actually pretty neat to see the world in that spectrum. Yeah I got to see it in the military from one of the cameras on the plane for hours and hours and hours, but it's a lot different when you are looking at things within 100 ft versus thousands of feet away. Add to that that thin plastics and rubbers are nearly IR transparent, then even a rubber balloon would be a rather difficult target. If you look at a shower curtain through a flir camera you just see what's behind it. It does dampen the image a little bit, but not enough that I think you would have an easy time getting a lock on something made of very thin rubber from thousands of feet away. As you said, the sky is a very high contrast background (since there is very little heat being emitted from empty space), but that also assumes a clear sky

This was the inevitable end with fiat. Either the BRICS coalition creates a new currency bloc backed by gold (or anything not fiat-like) and the dollar is forced to abandon the money printing parade to survive, or the new currency bloc will act like fiat (because making money from nothing is the ultimate government dream) and thus pose no real threat to the dollar.