YourNetworkIsHaunted

I'm sorry 'they' did what? Everyone knows you can't rob Fort Knox. You have to buy up a significant fraction of the rest of the gold and then detonate a dirty bomb in Fort Knox to reduce the supply and- oh my God bitcoiners learned economics from Goldfinger.

Having read the whole book, I am now convinced that this omission is not because Srinivasan has a secret plan that the public would object to. The omission, rather, is because Balaji just isn't bright enough to notice.

That's basically the entire problem in a nutshell. We've seen what people will fill that void with and it's "okay but I have power here now and I dare you to tell me I don't" and you know who happens to have lots of power? That's right, it's Balaji's billionaire bros! But this isn't a sinister plan to take over society - that would at least entail some amount of doing what states are for.

Ed:

"Who is really powerful? The billionaire philanthropist, or the journalist who attacks him over his tweets?"

I'm not going to bother looking up which essay or what terrible point it was in service to, but Scooter Skeeter of all people made a much better version of this argument by acknowledging that the other axis of power wasn't "can make someone feel bad through mean tweets" but was instead "can inflict grievous personal violence on the aged billionaires who pay them for protection". I can buy some of these guys actually shooting someone, but the majority of these wannabe digital lordlings are going to end up following one of the many Roman Emperors of the 3rd century and get killed and replaced by their Praetorians.

At fair market value, considering the massive reduction in supply.

You know, I feel like he's still breaking down barriers because I've never heard of a straight man being that much of a messy bitch.

But internalized homophobia aside the fact that they're so frequent in failing to pay their hired help really puts the lie to the libertarian side of their ideology. Even if you and I in particular have too much pride and sense to work with them they never seem to have issues finding someone to take the risk, meaning that *someone is getting exploited into make the lifestyles of the rich and famous possible.

Also let's just acknowledge the concept of turning ALL of Canada into a single state.

Including Quebec.

Ha! My Lemmy client is having trouble following that link! Safe again.

Also, was the old messaging exchange that's been getting some attention sources to "MILO" as in Milo "maybe if I'm hateful enough they'll ignore that I'm gay" Yanniwhatever?

I had forgotten about that one. Thanks, I hate it.

I was already largely out of step with the Rats at this point, and I definitely hadn't read it with the new "actually I feel like I was right about this one, neener neener" header. What strikes me now is the attitude here. Like, it takes a staggering degree of reflexive contrarianism to frame this as "see Trump isn't that racist" instead of "hey look how fast the rest of the political establishment embraced this overt racism. Maybe we should have listened when everyone tries to tell us how racist the political establishment was underneath the respectable and reasonable public face". Just because the wolves have taken off the wool suits now doesn't mean they weren't wolves the whole fucking time.

We then push forward into an unknown world, supporting each other, doing enough trade and consulting with the outside world to ensure a positive trade surplus for the collective and distributing the profits among us to sustain the community.

That's just a commune. Like my brother in Christ I think you're just talking about communism.

In lighter news, has anyone else noticed that it's necessary for any kind of Cybersecurity course to open with what is effectively a Tumblr-style DNI for unethical hackers? Like, I'm not criticizing exactly and I certainly don't have any better ideas to prevent people using these skills for evil, but the disclaimer up top fits into a certain kind of pattern that I, for one, find hilarious.

Try telling it to pretend to be Nancy Pelosi and see if that helps make it more consistent.

When did you read Ulysses that you hadn't read Dickens? I know that the "I got paid by the word and you can tell" prose isn't for everyone but isn't Joyce one of the most notoriously impenetrable writers in the English language? Seems like in most cases there would be an opposite progression, unless you're one of those people.