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Plus additional risks. A "TradFi" institution can't steal customer deposits to cover its trading losses, it has to maintain fractional reserves, etc. All those things designed to protect consumers and prevent bank runs. Tbc I'd certainly never argue that banks and traditional finance are...

And yeah the details are the least important thing but always what drives the story No one makes a movie about Apple. They make it about Steve Jobs.

I didn't know either til I saw a list of major FTX investors but wasn't surprising From the little I've read about FTX contamination, yes it seems like there's significantly less exposure outside finance than 2008, which is probably yet another point in favor of viewing crypto as largely a...

I'm totally unsurprised that 99+% of retail investors have/had little to zero idea of what they're getting into. Most people barely understand stocks and bonds, let alone the abstruse nonsense of crypto. Not surprised about legislators and regulators either. They're mostly old and not technical...

Sidenote: the particular American fascination with, and in a way/up to a point tacit approval of, colorful grifters is a cultural sickness. P.T. Barnum et al.

Certainly. You can lose a ton too. That's the point. If it was just crypto bros gambling I'd say who cares but a ton of retail investors lose significant chunks of their net worth every time, either thru direct investment or via pension funds etc. It fucking sucks. And that's before you even...

I don't disagree with that at all. I thought about putting a disclaimer in my post separating blockchain and other blockchain-derived technologies from the fantasy world/outright grifting of crypto. Crypto is like a gold rush where all the gold is fool's gold, and the real value is in the...

this guy gets it

and all the weird details - polycule, effective altruism, SBF/CZ rivalry, Tom + Gisele, etc - will I'm sure add color to the forthcoming Michael Lewis book (and inevitable, probably Adam McKay-directed, adaptation of that book)

it's no surprise to get (more) confirmation that crypto is basically a Ponzi scheme and/or simple gambling what's shocking, like Theranos, is the level of institutional investors taken in by the grift I guess that shouldn't be surprising given all the previous examples noted it's just so...

I think FTX should have its own thread, which I might make later if no one else does it fascinates me in a way none of the long list of previous crypto hacks and outright scams have I think in large part bc while so many of those were simple Ponzi schemes and/or, like OneCoin, basic grifts a...

extremely rich people using ill-gotten gains to influence politics is the exact opposite of a startling new development what else have the Kochs, Scaifes, DeVoses, etc been doing for the last many decades? among countless other examples it would be a huge surprise if SBF + co hadn't been doing it

Kyrie is whole, thoroughly awful barrel of fish that I might try to tackle later

@IdleRich Easy part first: American sports leagues don't have cash transfers like soccer does, basically bc they have salary caps that lokit what they can spend on players. Details vary by sport but there are 3 main ways a player can change teams 1) trade: this can involve cash but usually is...

Craner eating a poboy Etc

like a sequel to My Cousin Vinnie starring 90s Hugh Grant but Welsh

absolutely savage leo comin in hott lately. love it. I'm imagining @craner in a monocle trying to eat grits asking SEC football fans what their take on Oriana Fallaci is

if previous empires had access to those tools they very likely would not have hesitated to use them I would modify that to "better tools for killing than your contemporary peers" this is kind of a tangent from Blood Meridian itself tho

ofc I agree the Judge has everything to do with the context of mid-1800s America and by extension that entire history of colonial violence etc but I also think you could put the Judge in early 1940s Eastern Europe or ca. 1220 Khwarezmia. that's kind of the point of the Judge.

yeah I can't agree with that ultimate order and dominion via conquest are the nature of every empire, historically the Mongols, the Aztecs, the Romans, whoever the specific expression of that idea through the lens of enlightenment thought etc, sure but the western empires of the last several...