Yes, that's why I completely lost interest in all of that stuff - like Frog Twitter - and just focused on practical subjects (e.g. health and fitness back before covid, game/RP and philosophy now - maybe tomorrow it will be gardening and fishing LOL).

Yes, philosophy is a practical subject IMO. I find my life got a lot better once I actually started examining it. Although being aware of the stupidity all around you is frustrating at times, no doubt.

He's not wrong; Elon did get butthurt mainly because he did not get the carve-outs he wanted.

But neither was Elon wrong about Trump being on the Epstein list...

The Mexican Standoff problem in politics - everyone has dirt on everyone.

Yeah the only thing setting BTC apart was it became a cult like Apple or Tesla - but as we've seen, those are vulnerable to deflating for a number of reasons. Tesla's had a hard run and Apple may run into hard times as well with the trade war and tariffs if they can't get long-term exemptions. They've already been investigated by Congress for using schemes to avoid paying tax in the USA. And BTC has competitors like Tesla has so it's not invulnerable anymore. For right now, I think it still has a few pump and dump cycles left but it may not be forever.

I almost shouted "Heil Hitler !!!" at the (crowded) gym a few years back when I saw a friend of mine coming in and then a voice in the back of my head was like "don't do it".

It's distressing how bad habits at home can creep into public life...

I have 3...

And deer eating the hostas...

Forest life

Premium snatch...

She has more tats than this crazy artist hoe that goes to the dance classes though.

All right, I had a brief lapse where I had to check in with social media. Now I'm going back to detox.

Thanks for the material it will be useful. I'm not doing a pr0n detox after all.

I am seriously considering another digital detox because I need to get some things done and make progress and I feel internet addiction is once again holding me back. After doing this a few times since last summer it is undeniable that they work to reset your priorities. Since I've gotten a bit off-track since this spring I will probably do that ASAP.

Boredom is good in small doses.

You kind of prove the point though - we still use 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year or whatever it is because we haven't built the high speed rail. This isn't China and we prefer to spend money on welfare rather than infrastructure. Mind you the US does have an extensive and advanced rail system but it's mostly used for freight.

Again you are right that dependence on oil is a problem with a solution but it's in nobody's interest to solve that problem right now. There have been some baby steps toward infrastructure investment in recent years like building more chip factories in the USA (since Covid) but that is likely because they see us as being in a war with China eventually, and it became a national security issue.

Yesterday was a "T overpowering reason" day unfortunately...

The girls by the way - I looked them up - are Lexie Hull and Sophie Cunningham. Both are 6'1". Good for breeding, they look classy enough that you could introduce them to the family, but also look like they'd be wild in bed.

Very choice !

Originally I believe the plan was to attack Iran first - that was in the papers they had mapped out back then. At some point they must have decided that Syria (along with other regimes in the Middle East that they didn't trust like Libya) had to fall first. But I think they didn't expect the Assad regime to last more than a decade after a color revolution...

The events leading up to Assad's fall last year do suggest that they were sick of waiting and wanted to fast track the process.

I also think the 2008 crash and related events might have delayed things for a while too, because the Arab Spring wasn't put into motion until 2011.

As I said I'm not sure why they waited so long to do this when the plans have been drawn up for a long time, but I also think even from a realpolitik standpoint the US would want to be involved over there, even if Israel did not exist.

Because, US economy is still dependent on oil, and they still have a majority of the best remaining supplies over there, not to mention US corporations have decades of investment in that sphere at this point and are not interested in having that all go down the drain.

The USA became a big producer thanks to fracking but my understanding of that is there's uncertainty of how long the US supplies will hold up, since most of it is coming from Texas these days and the rest of the US supplies are declining.

That's why I don't think it's as simple as "just a war for Israel" but that's certainly a part of it. Also from the Israeli perspective it's an opportunity for a land grab and they need it at this point.

The wild cards are:

1. Many Israelis are getting sick of their own country/regime and leaving (over 75K in past year I believe) and going to various Western countries. One friend from high school was half-Jewish and he ended up living over there. He was among those that left years ago - when I asked him why he said "that place is crazy" and "I have no intention of ever going back". He lives in UK now. Not an uncommon story.

2. Of the Israelis that are staying, the biggest growth population is the haredi who are basically welfare bums. The Israelis themselves are perplexed on how to deal with this.

Caitlin on camera duty...

Maybe she can get it afterwards off cam if she did a good job.

The thing that's strange to me is why they waited so long. They have been sabre-rattling for war with Iran since George W. Bush was in office. If I recall correctly, we were supposed to get involved there by about 2007. But the last 2 years of Bush in office, he did basically nothing and dished the problem off to his successors.

What just happened is almost exactly the scenario that was discussed back in the 2000s: Bunker busters to eliminate the facilities at Natanz, et al. So, I'm not sure what the hold up was? America apparently had the exact capabilities then, and Iran in that time period gained no additional abilities to deter such an attack.

It seems like America was waiting for something but I'm not really sure what. There are theories though that Israel forced this because popular support for Israel is dying in the USA with the decline of the Boomers and Evangelical Christianity (more recent Evangelicals aren't as pro-Israel and actually want to focus on the American economy, illegal immigration, etc). So it's now or never from the perspective of Israel.

But the delay still is puzzling. Wouldn't it just have been better, from a strategic perspective, to do it back then?

I have used Linux at home for over a decade.

Yikes - I haven't used W11 yet as my work PC is still on 10.

Now I don't want to upgrade.

How much of the traffic on X is AI these days? It seems like the answer is A LOT.

Actually, same goes for all the other centralized social media - IG, LI, FB all full of bots when I've been on in recent memory.

It's a Potemkin Village.

The bad thing is that the HR lady is a parasite that has basically destroyed corporate employment as a viable option for many.

The good thing is they can and likely will be replaced with AI.

Of course, so might many of the other white collar jobs...

I was thinking about trying to vibe code an Android app, but I've had mixed results working with ChatGPT on some boilerplate PHP stuff. Sometimes it does well, and sometimes it "hallucinates" and I have to fix it manually. What have you been using?

If it happens I will announce it when ready.

Somehow much of scientific progress happened without peer review.

Interesting to see the inception was during the peak Cold War era.

Note that Bell Labs era was when a lot of the technology underpinning the current world order was created (computers, OS, high-level programming langs, satellites, networking, microelectronics, etc). It hit the skids after Bell lost the antitrust suit with the Feds in the 1980s though. After that every big innovation was mostly a private or joint-venture affair.

That chart suggests big time bureaucratic intervention was deemed necessary to manage which scientific facts were judged acceptable to make it into the public domain.

It definitely had a deleterious effect on innovation post 1980s.