I mean, the funny thing is that the UON-B (The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – Bandera faction) has unequivocally been operating as a stateless paramilitary seeking political reform through violence. Not unlike the Houthi Rebel movement or Hamas, after the IDF killed all their civilian bureaucrats and political functionaries.

But because the term carries “brown person acting badly” connotation, people reflectively reject the idea that a white person can earn the title.

The very same.

I think it can be fixed

I mean, good luck. The Principle-Agent Problem is a classic of sociology, particularly with respect to business. If you can solve it, there’s a Nobel in Economics waiting for you.

Democracy is an attempt at aligning in the interests of the plurality principles with their government agencies. But there’s obviously a whole lot of flaws with democracy generally speaking, even before you get into the particulars of the American system.

I do think that the Lockean Social Contract, as the foundation for any governmental system, is a more interesting and more well-thought-out concept to explore than the mythology surrounding the American three-branch system. Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent does an excellent job of breaking down how a public body can be turned against its own interests. Zinn’s People’s History gives a ton of insight into the underbelly of the American political beast and how people respond to industrial and state oppression. State and Revolution does an excellent job of describing the role of the state in society and how it can best be dismantled.

But the endless debate around whether US Government works as described or intended really loses the forest of social economy for the ideological tent post trees. Fetishization of the US system only contributes to its rot and our own downfall.

SAT Score.

Purely for dick-measuring.

We’re trying pretty hard to slow down EV and green energy adoption as much as possible in my country, that count?

Well, on the one hand, we’re trying some very heavy-handed bureaucratic strategies to prop up O&G and to undermine domestic green alternatives.

But, on the other hand, we’re fucking up all the major international suppliers of O&G while incentivizing the world’s manufacturing powerhouse to spam green energy grids across the underdeveloped world at below-cost in order to build out a 21st century trade network.

So it’s a double-edged sword, and we’re just pinwheeling around with that thing.

“it’ll cause a negative feedback loop” technically they’re referring to a positive feedback loop

I’ve heard the terms “vicious”/“virtuous” cycle kicked around.

We need that for wealth as well, ie, wealth caps.

The perpetual struggle of any human-administered system is in how you keep the agents of the system (those implementing the policy) aligned with the principles (those setting the policy). Because we did have high tax rates and nationalization plans and even outright communist manifestos floating around the country eighty years ago. And then they were systematically sabotaged and dismantled by bureaucrats more aligned with the monied interests than the voting public.

In the modern day, you can’t even get a ballot amendment passed on majority (even super-majority) vote without a court casually overturning it, a legislature refusing to implement it, or the executive to enforce it.

Even something overwhelmingly popular, like high-speed mass transit or national health care or the policing of pedophile super-predators, is neglected on a bipartisan basis time and time and time again.

Who Watches Taxes the Watchmen Taxmen, so to speak? What kind of social organizing principle gets a large bureaucracy of people committed to redistributing wealth suited up and on the ground to do what must be done?

My favorite episode in the series.

“It’s not a swimming pool, it’s a reflecting pool. Going to be very serine. Nothing in the bylaws against it.”

In America, it is illegal to leave the car.

You travel in the car. You sleep in the car. You shit in the car. You are born in the car. You die in the car. If you leave the car, they run you over

You’ll notice one of these countries still has enough money to bribe a FIFA official.

But it’s the pump price that people respond to. Natural gas has fully outrun petroleum, but nobody seemed to notice during that bull run.

It’s only the big signpost with the number in 10’ letters that seems to engage people.

Gasoline isn’t even that expensive. At least, not compared to the 2008 oil crunch when prices got up to a 2026 adjusted $6.30/gal.

Even 2022 saw higher prices, shortly after the COVID supply shock, at north of $5.

Given the percentage of my budget that’s gasoline related, I just don’t see how it ranks beside the sudden spike in water bills we’ve been seeing. Or the inflation in rental rates. Unless you’re driving an absolute hog of a car, it’s just not that much by comparison.

Pic Unrelated

“Once we have enough information on our elected officials, they will most certainly align with our interests” is a beautiful idea. But simply not born out in practice.

Far too often, you can have someone on camera dead-to-rights doing the most corrupt shit imaginable and… they’ll win in a landslide in the next election cycle, because they’re doling out the red meat to the right constituents.

• Lands on Mars

• Attempts to turn Martian sand into glass panes

• It doesn’t work

Omg. On Mars we will never experience Windows.

That’s very unlikely.

Not as unlikely as you’d like to think

Now did Joseph profit from this type of bet?

Joe Kennedy was famously a booze smuggler who profited most handsomely from black market liquor imports during Prohibition.

I’m sure he made some savvy stock trades in his day, but the seed of his fortune was the illicit sale of alcohol.

I think these (largely apocryphal) stories overlook how shoeshine boys have been giving stock tips during rain and shine for centuries. I wish it was the sign of a peak, but it’s more the continuation of an enduring trend.

Christ, I got solicited by my fucking cab driver to buy Bitcoin. These people are everywhere. They’re constantly dangling “I can hook you up” bait in front of anyone who will listen. It’s downright suffocating.

Hey now. There’s also the “lure someone to a remote location, kidnap him, and beat him up until he transfers you a bunch of money”.