Darren Tonge

@KILLTOPARTY Women who think they are intimidating are actually just obnoxious. Never met a woman yet that intimidated me.

Young men like easy sex. There, mystery solved

@LUV2SKIPOW Bit early for the climate change arsonists so I am guessing it is just an old fashioned fire, like we used to have in the old days,

It's that time of year again. And this is to the west of us. 🔥🔥🔥

@tradeoilstocks Struggling with this same question myself. Almost 3 years of slow death by a thousand headlines - can't go through it again. But damn, making money again is so exhilarating, forgot what it was like...

Guys, when do we sell our oil equities? I don’t want to get burned like in 2022.

BREAKING: a leaked Canada Armed Forces report shows Quebec officer training platoon is comprised of 83% non-citizens with many of them in Canada for less than 3 months. Their graduation rate? Less than 50%. In addition, there’s ethnic infighting and disrespect toward female officers. Mark Carney calls it “record recruitment.”

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital. Cette phrase change tout. L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ? Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible. Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur. Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé. Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire. L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants. Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution. Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain. Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée. Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien. La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose. Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins. Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires. La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.

Berkshire Hathaway director Chris Davis: "People matter a lot more than is generally realized. We have a society that believes in equality and is very quick to figure that the people who did well got lucky." "They don't have the same feeling about basketball. Nobody looks at LeBron and thinks, 'I could do that.'" "It is amazing what a difference one person can make at a business." "There is a risk of hero worship, but I hate the opposite more. I hate this proclivity we have to tear down people who have built incredible businesses that employ tens or hundreds of thousands of people that provide services that delight their customers — and then we want to vilify their success. It's crazy."

This praying mantis was frozen in Dominican amber 12 million years ago, and its front limbs are still positioned in perfect killing stance. The resin caught it while stalking prey, locking those razor sharp forelegs in attack position for longer than human civilization has existed. What breaks your brain is the detail. Individual muscle fibers preserved. Wing membranes intact. Compound eyes that still catch light the way they did when the Miocene epoch was ending and the first apes were learning to walk upright. The amber didn't just preserve the body. It preserved the *moment*. A fraction of a second stretched across geological time. Praying mantises are living weapons. Their strike speed hits 30 milliseconds. Faster than you can blink. Faster than most prey can detect. This particular mantis spent its entire adult life as an unstoppable killing machine, dismantling everything from flies to small birds with surgical precision. Then tree sap dripped on it. The irony cuts deep. Evolution spent millions of years perfecting this creature's predatory systems. Lightning reflexes, binocular vision, serrated foreclaws that lock prey in an inescapable grip. All of that lethal optimization defeated by slow moving plant secretions. But the real revelation is what happened next. Nothing. Twelve million years passed and praying mantises barely changed. The specimen in that amber could step into a modern garden and function perfectly. Same hunting strategy, same body plan, same behavioral patterns. While continents drifted, ice ages came and went, and entire species rose and vanished, mantises achieved something almost supernatural: evolutionary stasis. They solved the predator problem so completely that time became irrelevant. The amber mantis represents peak design locked in crystal. A reminder that sometimes evolution doesn't need to keep improving. Sometimes it just needs to avoid the tree sap.

@dougboneparth For sure - you could upgrade from hard cat food to soft!

Is $100,000,000 enough to retire on?

BREAKING: Marilyn Gladu is getting sued by her own constituents. The voters of Sarnia—Lambton just announced a class-action lawsuit against her for betraying them and floor-crossing to the Liberals. Their message is crystal clear: “We funded a Conservative, not a floor-crosser. See you in court.” This is what happens when MPs think they can sell out the people who voted for them and just walk away with a nicer title and a pat on the head from Carney. The betrayal is coming back to bite. Canadians are done with the turncoats. Who’s next? Drop it below 👇 #cdnpoli #LiberalCorruption

@Strandjunker Number of people who died while waiting for care last year: 🇦🇺 ~2,500 🇨🇦 23,746 🇩🇰 ~200 🇫🇮 ~300 🇫🇷 ~1,500 🇩🇪 ~800 🇮🇸 ~20 🇮🇪 ~600 🇮🇹 ~2,000 🇯🇵 ~500 🇳🇱 ~400 🇳🇴 ~150 🇵🇹 ~700 🇪🇸 ~1,800 🇸🇪 ~400 🇬🇧 ~120,000 🇺🇸 ~300 There’s a lesson there

This is the judge that issued a stay on the deportation order for an Indian truck driver that killed 16 Canadians:

@TgMacro AC/DC should be much, much higher up the list.

A few thoughts: - The worst musician in Zeppelin (Robert Plant) is infinitely more talented than the best musician in U2 (Larry Mullen Jr.) so fix that - Nirvana doesn’t belong top 20. - The Smiths making the list is only surpassed in absurdity by their ranking over Pearl Jam. - Sabbath and the Chili Peppers belong in the top 10. - nobody on @X can name a Primal Scream song. - God will punish them for disrespecting the Ramones like that. - I spit beer out of my nose when I saw Arcade Fire. - @RollingStone music cred trades flat to Milli Vanilli’s.

@dailydirtnap Not sure, been seeing LOTS of bad takes recently. Have you been paying attention to NYC?

Probably the worst take ever on this site.

FREE RED LIGHT THERAPY SERVICES WILL BE OFFERED ON ALL BROKERAGES TOMORROW STARTING AT 9:30 AND ENDING AT 4. 🚨 TAKE ADVANTAGE.

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

Chevron has now fully divested from Alberta’s oilsands. It believes investing in Venezuela is less risky than investing in Mark Carney’s Canada.

@RazorOil @grok Lol, "Supreme Leader". The sad part is that he would actually enjoy that reference.

@grok is the strait of Hormuz finally open for safe passage as promised by the supreme leader of the United States? 😳🪒

Ricky Gervais on 60 Minutes Makes a Crystal-Clear Case for Free Speech He put it perfectly: the great thing about freedom of speech is that I can say what I want, and you can say you're offended, and I get to decide whether I care or not. Because let's be honest, there's nothing you can say that someone, somewhere won't find offensive. That's why blasphemy laws are so absurd, they're basically trying to protect an all-powerful deity from having its feelings hurt. At the end of the day, we should be free to criticise any idea. Just because you're offended doesn't automatically mean you're right. Spot on, Ricky. Free speech isn't about never upsetting anyone, it's about the right to speak anyway.

The @liberal_party in one short video

@TgMacro Satire?

If you were a Strait Closure alarmist you have a dozen eggs on your face right now. It feels like oil can EASILY open sub $70 Monday. $USO