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Comment sanctions (Score 1) 180

ensuring they can't be traced or confiscated due to sanctions

This got me interested. What exactly is he saying there? Does it mean what I think it means - that they immediately shift that money around, possibly through some mixers, to muddle the origin? And, of course, make it better suited to pay their proxies now that Qatar isn't sending suitcases of cash to them anymore?

Comment Re:Pyrrhic Victory (Score 1) 180

It's designed to keep people off balance, uncertain, distracted and misinformed

Thank you for writing that. I was starting to think I'm going crazy and I can't possibly be the only one who sees through that.

If you ignore the messaging, and pay attention to what's actually happening

And if you realize that Trump is just the clown at the helm. There's literally an entire bureaucracy underneath him doing most of the planning, deciding and executing.

Douglas Adams was right. The role of the president is not to excert power, but to distract from it. President of the Galaxy, president of the USA, no difference.

Comment Re:on the one hand (Score 1) 70

This.

You don't need billions to be care-free. Even double-digit millions in some nice safe assets already give you enough fuck-you-money to be good. And while everyone looks at the super-super-rich and they're in various public lists and tracked by not just the tax authorities, barely anyone knows the multi-millionaires. I know three or so that I'm sure nobody on here has ever heard anything about. They stay quiet, comfortable, private.

Comment Re:Sometimes I hate the direction of tech (Score 2) 35

Each to their own. You have no choice when it comes to the notch and the ribbon (unless you decide to not use a Mac or MS Office). But while it's clear that there is a market for folding phones, it's also clear that it's not for everyone. Folding phones are not going to replace regular ones anytime soon.

Comment Re:Done. (Score 1) 180

Because they don't. That's the basic error. Yes, sometimes they cooperate. But the U.S. cooperates with China from time to time. And even with Russia, when it comes to the Ukraine War, especially with Donald Trump at the helm. Is the U.S. now a secret ally of Iran, because the U.S. sells soy beans to China, and Iran sells oil to China? As I say, you have a completely simplistic world view, lumping everything together, and blind to what really goes on.

Oil prices rise, and what's the U.S. answer to that? Lift oil sanctions against Iran and Russia. What does Putin want more than more revenue to finance his war? He does not need to step in in support of Iran. He got everything he wanted out of the conflict already. Even the amount of air defense missiles the U.S. could potentially sell to the Ukraine is reduced, because they are now all fired into Iran, 10 million dollar items, each to shut down a single 1000 dollar drone. North Korea acts according to the well known strategy: "Don't stop your enemy when he is making mistakes". And what does Trump? Getting angrier and threatening to leave NATO, which has nothing to do with the war on Iran, did not want the war in Iran, even warned him that this would be exactly the big blunder it proves to be. But I fully support the other NATO members here: You break it, you own it. Donald Trump led the U.S. in this quagmire without any necessity. It's his very own job to clean up the mess he made.

Comment Re:Pyrrhic Victory (Score 2) 180

He's running his messaging strategy like a reality show. It's designed to keep people off balance, uncertain, distracted and misinformed. It's designed to encourage you to "tune in" a few hours later.

I think you give him too much credit. I don't think his "messaging strategy" has any design, nor is it a strategy. It's just Trump saying whatever shit bubbles to the top of what sometimes passes for a mind. And it's random and changes every four hours because he's random and changes what he believes every four hours. Or every four minutes.

I don't think he even "learned" to act like a reality show... I think this is just who he is and who he always has been, albeit with an added layer of growing dementia. He was moderately successful on reality TV not because he figured out how to be moderately successful on reality TV, but because his normal personality, style and complete lack of ethics, morality or consistency just happens to be perfect for reality TV.

Comment Re:Absolutely needless (Score 1) 60

It's not difficult - Iran must be balkanized if Israel is going to conquer the Middle East and expand its proper borders to "those promised by God". They will demand a regional empire beyond their borders as a "buffer zone".

The Eschatological Christian Zionists want them tp destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque and build the Third Temple so Jesus can come back. Much of the Senior Brass at DoD (or Department of War Crimes) believes in this.

Is it all absurd and crazy? Doesn't matter, it's what motivates the people with nukes.

That and Trump being blackmailed with Epstein Tapes. The news says it's specifically an audio tape of a phone call between those two.

This is what the people who want peace in the world are up against. We can't counter what we deny.

Comment Re:They checked the writing. Nobody checked the ch (Score 1) 70

> when your investigative toolkit is journalism

Exactly. The English Majors went where other investigators have previously gone and ruled out.

The stack of blockchain, Merkle Trees, halvings, etc. show a level of insight a quantum above Hashcash.

There's noting wrong with being "quite good" but "engineering genius" is something different.

Besides, Satoshi would never have stood for not funding mining with txn fees. The BTC chain is in danger of being unmineable very soon.

Comment Re:Done. (Score 1) 180

but i do consider the Islamic Republic, North Korea, Putin, to be "bad" in terms of being a menace in their neighborhoods

That's your error in a nutshell.

Yes, they are bad, and I don't want to live in any of the countries. But lumping them together and consider them a monolithic block marching in sync is such a misjudgment of reality, that it is exactly that simplistic world view I am referring to. If the police chases a suspected killer, do you expect the thief to come out in support of the killer, just because both are bad? No, the thief does not care if the police catches the killer or not. He will seize the opportunity with the eyes of the police somewhere else to continue stealing unimpeded. That's what Putin or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-Un are doing right now. There is no point in defending Iran and getting into the line of fire. The eyes of the world are somewhere else, and they can continue whatever they are up to right now with less scrutiny.

The world is not a superhero comic, where the superhero with supernatural superpowers thumps the baddie and everyone applauds. The world is not a secret agent movie where there is only one real antagonist, everyone else considered bad is in serfdom to him, and his henchmen lack any marksmanship, while the agent will hit two of them with a single .22 round from 1000 yards away. And the world is not a chess game with a limited set of pieces, each with a limited set of legal moves, and you win by catching the enemy's king.

Comment Re:Done. (Score 1) 180

1) They knew it already. Nothing to see here. Iran was always the outcast on the Persian Gulf, being Shiite, anti-monarchist and Non-Arabian.

2) That's the whole point. Iran shows that you can do damage cheaply, and very expensive to defend against, even against an enemy with far superior firepower.

3) It was before, and like Hamas, it is so deeply rooted in society that you have to kill the population, e.g. commit genocide to get it out.

Why should China and North Korea come out in support? Do they gain anything from their verbal support? As long as China gets its oil from Iran (which it does, and cheaper than other countries), it just sits and waits. And North Korea could not care less for Iran, but grins broadly because the U.S. is wasting money and military power somewhere else.

Your whole idea how the world works is very simplistic and in a black-and-white, us-versus-them scheme.

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Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. -- Bertrand Russell

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