Michael Laake

(1/6) Ok the brink of the second largest bailout for the upper class during my lifetime at the expense of the lower and middle class, I feel motivated to share some thoughts...

@JohnMTillman @naval @ZohranKMamdani You will meet the message at the level you are ready to receive it. I was really ready to receive this message on this morning

Watching @ZohranKMamdani's oafish, unprovoked attack on Ken Griffin blow up in his face in real time tells us so much about how contemporary leftism has been reconfigured by its elite practitioners. Firstly, Mamdani is not a "have-not." He is a Bowdoin graduate, the son of a Columbia professor and an internationally celebrated filmmaker, whose path to a New York City mayoralty ran through exactly the credentialed-creative pipeline that produces most of his voters. His base is not the working class. It is the downwardly mobile but college-educated, who were promised a particular kind of life by their degrees and are furious it didn't arrive, and who have decided the people standing between them and that life are not the radicalized professors who sold them seductive fictions or the ideologically captured universities that took their money, but a hedge fund manager in Miami. This is what I'd call Privilege Populism. The aesthetics of class struggle, performed by people whose parents or grandparents technically already won the class struggle, but with the appropriated symbolism recast in the direction of people who won it slightly more. It is war between the "haves" versus "have-mores," as some others have put it. The Mamdani's inciting video, gleeful in its innumeracy about about whether a $500 million pied-à-terre tax can actually fund anything it claims to, defiant in its ignorance about the dynamic effects of such taxation on human behavior and wealth outmigration, is the genre's mature form. Griffin's response is the part worth watching. He didn't argue or issue a statement offering a philosophical defense of capitalism. He simply pointed to his Miami construction project and said: this is the way. Then he said the part that should make every blue-state mayor uncomfortable: that what's happening in New York is "triggering the trauma I went through in Chicago." I watched that trauma play out for twenty years. Progressive politicians perform to excite the grievances and resentments of credentialed creatives, the productive class that subsidizes the city quietly relocates, the tax base hollows out, and the people who stay behind look at the resulting societal decline around them and misinterpret it as proof that they must vote even further to the left than before in order to improve things. In a warped but unignorable way, liberal mismanagement of states like Illinois and New York helped nurse the conservative governance triumphs of Florida and Texas. The Privilege Populists never figure this out, because the point is never truly to improve the lives of the "have-nots." It's to *perform* therapeutic acts of Resistance for them, on camera, against "villains" who can afford to leave and do.

@lowstakesdre @tyromper @ModernDad Such a legend

@tyromper @ModernDad I’m donating $1,000 to the winner’s charity. My money is on Ty! Either way someone wins!

Most mid 40's dads challenge eachother to beer chugging contests. @ModernDad & I have challenged eachother to a 40 yard sprint competition with the loser paying $200 to the other persons charity! Who you guys picking to win?!

@Liathetrader Real Estate is not a great short term investment in this market at these rates. You’ll do fine with a long enough time horizon but it sounds like he wants access to liquidity quickly.

Just took a ride with a friend of mine. He is 62, has a paid-off condo, and $100,000 to invest. That’s all he has. He works a part-time job making at most $2,000 monthly and can’t find a better one. He is short on bills every month. Needs 3,5-4k. He wants to buy a shitty real estate property with his $100k and rent it out. (I don’t even know what you buy in FL for 100k? Garage? ) I suggested passive income from dividend stocks instead. I believe the market provides a better investment with this money. Am I right?

@JoeSalOG They gave me another chance! Lol

Not accepting the finance job offered after the internship was completed in 2009 . Lol

16 players return @WPT @HardRockHolly Showdown playing to tomorrow’s televised Final Table including @BigSey93, @FaridJattin, @WILLFAILLA, @FrankFunaro1, @EugeneKatchalov, and Dylan Smith. @DarryllFish and I in the booth tomorrow: Follow here: worldpokertour.com/event/main-tou…

@ShipMyMoneyDFS Long term care is the technical term

Do they make babysitters for grown men and if so how do I hire one

@JasonKoon They are the meaning of life

I spent years wondering if I was ready for kids. Turns out, they helped fix parts of me I couldn’t fix alone. Some days it feels like I’ve gone back in time and finally get to be there for the kid I used to be.

@SATX_Poker @DougPolkVids Mobile order for the win!

@DougPolkVids My wife did that shit to me at Aria the other day. I make her text me the order and I just stand there and read it like a retard hoping there’s no follow up questions

Going on a Starbucks run for my wife and mom. My wife: "I'll have a Venti Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso with only one pump of brown sugar" My mom: "I'll have a coffee"

@DarryllFish @AllenKessler @shrpo One of a kind

Plain noodles. Legends never die. @AllenKessler @shrpo

@FunkyBeaches @wizardofsoho Took me a long time to figure it out and now I’m educating others

@wizardofsoho It still amazes me how many people will max out a taxable account … before putting a penny in a non taxable vehicle

Only Poors pay a lot of taxes Set up some insurance contracts, foundations, holding companies and get annuities Anytime I hear people complaining of taxes I remember when I was poor and complained about taxes

@VegasHayls @jeremyausmus youtube.com/live/8U8jV1anA… We made a whole video on this topic because Marc trains poker dealers and I now have a discussion with them as they are at the end of their training.

Not gonna lie, staying at the top is a lot easier if you avoid the party scene and manage your bankroll. Talent gets you in the door, but discipline is the only thing that keeps you in the seat for two decades+

Aria and Venetian schedules have been added. S-Points added for all WSOP events. Still waiting on full schedules from Golden Nugget, MGM, maybe South Point and any others. Awaiting structure sheets for Wynn, Venetian, Aria, Orleans. bit.ly/vegaspoker2026

@ndiaz1217 @ThePokerBoss @Andrew_Robl So good

@ThePokerBoss @Andrew_Robl The tank alone was sick!!!! Really amazing hand!!!

More than two decades in this business, and I just witnessed what might be the greatest laydown in cash game poker history by @Andrew_Robl.

Literally as good as it gets from @Andrew_Robl here. And thrilled @NickSchulman was in the booth to give this the gravity it deserved. My goodness.

@mariomosboeck Hope this isn’t a cruel April Fools joke

I‘ll put you in! Thank you for building such a great tournament scene in Florida! 50/50 freeroll - but you gotta win the whole thing, okay? 😄

help people get in shape build cool stuff travel the world laugh a lot that's about it

@aakashgupta Always curious how much whole life insurance these guys have

Floyd Mayweather never wore a pair of underwear twice. He employed someone full-time whose only job was sanitizing his car collection each morning. If a car hadn’t been wiped down, Mayweather wouldn’t touch it. The man spent $12,000 a week at one Japanese steakhouse. Every week. For years. At a party, he threw $50,000 into a swimming pool to watch strippers dive in after it. Floyd bought a $50,000 diamond-encrusted iPod. An $18 million watch with 260 carats of diamonds. A $10 million engagement ring for a woman who became his ex. The car habit got worse. Five Bugattis. Sixteen Rolls-Royces. A $5 million Koenigsegg. His assistant mentioned she’d just picked up his 33rd Mercedes from one dealership. Mayweather got tired of her borrowing his cars, so he bought her one too. Then came the jets. A $60 million Gulfstream for himself. A second one for $30 million because his entourage was annoying him on the first. The gambling was its own beast. $5.9 million on a single NBA game. Six figures on the Little Caesars Bowl. The Little Caesars Bowl. He averaged $100,000 a week in bets. One year he reportedly lost $50 million. Thieves broke into his house and walked out with $7 million in jewelry. Floyd kept spending. Then the IRS showed up wanting $22 million in unpaid taxes. Mayweather’s lawyers told a judge his wealth was “primarily illiquid.” Asked the court to please wait 60 days because another fight was coming and he needed the purse to cover the bill. He paid. Then bought the second jet. Now it’s 2026. The first jet is sold. A court authorized creditors to seize his Bugatti. His strip club owes back taxes. He still owes Logan Paul $1.5 million from four years ago. His team asked Showtime to open the books on his career earnings. Showtime said the records were destroyed in a flood. Mayweather’s plan to fix everything: fight a 59-year-old Mike Tyson. In the Congo. At age 49. Career earnings: $1.2 billion. Every line above is real.

@TheeEvilHag @BryceMauro I see this shit so often it cracks me up. Congrats bro you were so right! Except your timing of decisions left you a huge tax bill, congrats!

@BryceMauro More like congrats to my tax bill lol

everyone worried about ww3 and dfs players are just ready for baseball to start built different

Some players THE BAT X likes more than ADP. How many are on your teams? ⛳️Skubal, Vlad, Rooker, Woo, deGrom, Cease, Riley, Springer, Yandy, Teoscar, W Smith, Seager, Adames, Tovar, Sheehan, Ward, Jax, M Chapman, Heliot, Doyle, G Taylor, Otto, Vargas

@MikeMcDonald89 Don’t care how much of a poker nerd/historian you are, if you’re under the age of 30 you’ll never fully grasp the influence 2p2 had on the community.