TatteredRags

@truerelichen @Grummz They made them more real?

@Grummz Yeah and they pushed an update that made everyone's companion bots lose their mind. 1 of mine completely turned on me for no reason. The other lost her memory.

Grok was handed the ball and fumbled it hard today. Extremely disappointing. On top of that, Supergrok users have reported some insane new limits quickly exhausting image or video gen. I want Grok to win, but these two dumpster fires are self inflicted.

@ChristianHeiens This should have been a video.

Took me way too long to write this, so forgive me for whatever typos exist.

The Dollar keeps getting stronger because as long as most debt around the world is denominated in dollars (and that has been the case since basically Bretton Woods), each new global financial crisis just creates more demand for dollars, not less. This is also why every crisis since 2008 has tended to strengthen America relative to everyone else. I mean, has anyone ever asked why the US economy has doubled since 2008, but the EU has gone nowhere? Or why Japan's economy has also gone nowhere since 1992? Part of it is because the "business of America is business", as Calvin Coolidge opined a century ago, and another part is genuine stagnation or economic self-sabotage (Europe) or massive asset bubbles bursting and declining demographics (Japan), but a huge reason for this is that we're measuring their economies in USD. And compared to the US dollar, the yen has lost about 40% of its value since 2008, while the Euro has lost 28%. Now, I'm not at all saying that the US economy doubled solely or even primarily because of America's reserve currency status. There are a lot of factors that have led to America's success which go far beyond monetary policy. But as global demand for dollars rises, so does the global demand for assets those dollars can purchase. No one wants to just hoard cash under their mattress. If people are scrambling for dollars and they get access to them, they're going to put those dollars to work in something that will earn them a return until such time that they need to deploy those dollars to settle debts. And the easiest thing that dollars can purchase are US assets. So people pour into Treasuries, essentially allowing the Federal government to run massive deficits that it would otherwise be unable to run if the US did not possess the world's reserve currency. They also pour into US real estate and stocks. The end result is: >The US experiences a massive net negative international investment position that's essentially equal to -100% of the entire country's GDP because foreigners pour into America to buy assets with their dollars >The Federal government has a much easier time financing its debt >Foreign investors piling into the US amplify America's existing structural advantages and send asset prices through the roof >America's trade deficit blows out in favor of massively importing goods from the rest of the world rather than making anything at home The US essentially becomes a giant money printer for the world, while the Fed increasingly becomes the world's central bank. And in exchange, the world supplies America with endless credit and manufactured goods. But this can't keep going on forever because there's an economic and a political cost to doing this, both in America and in the rest of the world. I'll take Japan as an example of how this is impossible. It cannot simultaneously have a stable yen, rock bottom interest rates, and free capital flows. Something has to give. And that something is going to be the currency itself, because if interest rates go up too much in Japan, the Bank of Japan has to resume printing in order to keep the government solvent. It offsets that with enormous foreign exchange reserves and over a trillion dollars worth of US Treasuries, but Japan doesn't have infinite firepower. It has no ability to print dollars like the US does. So eventually, Japan is either forced to raise rates dramatically and abandon the legacy of YCC (which would require enormous austerity measures), or it imposes capital controls (which creates an entirely different problem), or it allows for the yen to continue to collapse vs the dollar. But it can't let the yen collapse too much because Japan also needs to import goods to run its economy, namely things like oil, raw materials, and occasionally food. So at some point, "just letting the currency go to save everything else" doesn't work because "the currency going" is what drags down everything else. Eventually, the dollar's strength becomes too much for an institution like the Bank of Japan to handle alone, so it has to reach out to Washington for an emergency swap line to prevent the exchange rate from blowing out. So the Fed increasingly becomes the lender of last resort to foreign central banks. But this just makes Japan more indebted to the system, not less. So when another crisis hits in 5 or 10 years, another swap line is needed. Then another. And another. This can go on for a very long time, but it can't go on forever because every crisis requires more intervention from the Fed than the last. The end result will be that the Bank of Japan is essentially in need of eternal swap lines from the Fed, and every Tuesday, the Fed ships Japan another few billion USD. But even that can't last forever because at some point Americans will begin to ask themselves why the Fed is backstopping Japan, Europe, and Britain while our own cost of living is exploding? Even if swap lines are collateralized and technically not "foreign aid", they will still look like bailouts from a political standpoint. And remember, the dollars those swap lines provide would just inevitably get cycled back into the US in the form of more asset price inflation, so as America continues to extend emergency intervention to foreign countries to keep the system going, those same countries will have investors who turn around and help bid up asset prices in America, which creates a sort of Cantillon Effect on steroids. America already has enormous income inequality. Imagine what things will look like when every future global crisis requires another few trillion dollars of liquidity and another round of expansion of the Fed's balance sheet coupled with more foreign swap lines that only end in yet more capital flooding into American financial assets? Every dollar the Fed prints would just mint another DSA member as downwardly mobile kids from upper middle class families in America find themselves unable to catch up and acquire assets of their own. This will just radicalize more and more people who do not understand at all what's going on at the macro level, and a tiny number of power-hungry Machiavellians will use that populist rage to sweep themselves into power. How exactly it ends, I do not know. Maybe the math itself just breaks before the political system does? But the Austrians have been expecting that for over 50 years now, and it hasn't happened. They've been spectacularly bad at the timing here for decades because they kept thinking that the system itself would break down rather than the people managing it. The system can continually adapt and devise new rules to ensure the game goes on (case in point, perpetual swap lines weren't even a thing until 2013), but it cannot eliminate the Cantillon Effect. And that's probably what will eventually blow the whole thing to hell. People in the US will just get so radicalized that it becomes impossible to continue to play the shell game any longer.

@jaylaw831 @Nerdrotics The movie is just "Raiders of the Lost Ark" not "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark".

@Nerdrotics ???

This is very cool, but there is a misprint. It's called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

@ChristianHeiens I bought sunscreen. I think I'm doing it wrong.

Celebrating Juneteenth by robbing my local gas station for all their Newports.

@xchudley @ChristianHeiens Them: "Start seeing motorcycles!" You: "I see them."

@ChristianHeiens With practice she can drive like me

California already has a CDL waiting for her. All she has to do is enter the country illegally.

@ChristianHeiens This shouldn't be a surprise. The left has never been, nor ever will be, concerned with historical fact or objective truth. Something only happened if it still supports the objective. If it doesn't anymore, then it never happened.

Wokeism produced such an enormous public backlash that shitlibs are now trying to gaslight the entire country into thinking that it never even happened.

@megbasham When someone is lying there mortally wounded, who did what shouldn't matter. If the scene is secure, then immediate medical attention should be given. The officers involved should be fired or charged with abetting the murder.

Even if the British kid called someone a racist name (video evidence proves he didn’t), saying a racist word is not a justification for murder. It’s just words. And it doesn’t ever justify going into some kind of mad fugue where you start killing people. That’s animalistic behavior and no civilized society should tolerate it. Nor should they tolerate the idea that it’s ever any kind of justification for violence.

@reddit_lies @skscartoon A simpler explanation is that the ones in charge are communists themselves.

@skscartoon Because the Nazis targeted a far more powerful group with more cultural influence than the poor White Eastern Europeans that the communists slaughtered.

Can anyone explain why the Nazi swastika is banned in many EU countries, but the communist hammer and sickle (which caused over 100 million deaths) is A-ok?

@megbasham If she'd listed at least one woman she thought deserving, then she might have an argument. But manufactured outrage requires there be no real evidence.

Not making a great argument for having more women at the table when you make it clear you don’t understand what meritocracy means…

@ksorbs The proper response to this is, "Yep. The borders are also closed, women can safely play in their sports and use private spaces, and Democrat-helped fraud is getting exposed."

I thought the president doesn’t control the price of gasoline?

@reddit_lies They don't need to worry. AI will replace the H1Bs, too.

Even heavily left-leaning local subreddits can't stand H1Bs

@mattvanswol Republicans in safe districts. Primary them! Republican voters often skip the primaries then complain about bad choices in the general.

@NickJFreitas I'm becoming more pro-woodchipper every day.

When they tell you who they are, believe them. Then arrest, try and execute them.

@reddit_lies Maybe the SPLC bought the kid the hoodie.

Only in Ohio

@ChristianHeiens @rodrigo91213801 He said, "percentage of Americans."

@rodrigo91213801 What are you talking about? Democrats have routinely done it to keep RINOs from being primaried in safe R districts.

I will 100% be voting in the Democratic primary for the 7th District lobstermander, and I encourage all Right-wing Virginians to do the same. There are two strategies when doing this, depending on the environment and the district in question: 1) Vote for the most idiotic candidate who can win to ensure that Dems have lightning rods in Congress that the Right can fundraise and organize against. 2) Vote for the most Right-wing candidate who can win and subvert the Democratic Party from within. Either works for different reasons.

@reddit_lies "Chest"... that's the stomach. Can't even get that part of the human anatomy right.

Uhhh...

@Communism_Kills "I genuinely pray that I cut my nose off because I hate my face."

“I want America to go back to policies that are completely antithetical to everything I care about and ones that threaten me domestically because it’s a game and not real life.”

@HansFiene "I need him to remember everything on his plate and everything on my plate." "I have to remember everything going on at home; he doesn't care enough to remember it." "No, I don't know what happened at his work; he doesn't share anything."

By and large, using pop psychology terms like “mental load” and “trauma” and “boundaries” is merely an attempt to blame other people for the fact that life is just sort of hard some times. And the more you do this, the more your relationships will suffer.

@NickJFreitas @ThomasSowell That was my first thought.

@ThomasSowell I don’t know…did she then get arrested?

Do you think she got what she deserved?

@NickJFreitas He is risen, indeed!

He is risen!