enabler 🌴

KEXP DJs speak like they’re talking you off the ledge

Community banks are the last place in America where a man in a short-sleeve dress shirt can approve a $400,000 loan based on the fact that he went to high school with your dad. There are 4,100 of them left. There were 14,000 in 1984. Every time one gets acquired, a teller named Brenda learns a new software system and a small town loses the only institution that would lend against a combine. The acquirer always says nothing will change. Brenda is gone in eighteen months. The lobby cookies go next. Then the branch closes. Then the building becomes a vape shop. This is not a financial trend. This is the slow administrative murder of the only version of capitalism that ever knew your name.

I have built a spreadsheet. It has 847 rows. Each row is a community bank in the United States with a market cap below $200 million, a price-to-tangible-book ratio under 0.85, a non-performing loan ratio below 0.4%, and a CEO who has been in the role for at least twelve years. I update it every Sunday from 6 AM to 11 AM while my family attends church without me. I have visited the headquarters of nineteen of these banks in person. I have eaten a complimentary lobby cookie at each one. The cookies are how you can tell. A bank with a good cookie is a bank that respects its depositors. A bank with a stale cookie is a bank that will be acquired within 36 months at a 40% premium. I am never wrong about the cookies. The cookies have never lied to me. The cookies are the only thing left that tells the truth.

the US is easier to understand once you realize we are actively surrendering to prion diseases

@minordissent Most Americans will never understand this, but mankind totally lucked out that the key leader in charge of the foundational technology underpinning AI is ethnically Chinese.

Before joining or starting a new lodge, try having at least 4 friends over for dinner or drinks and get all of the men to wear shirts with buttons and the women to wear something vaguely cocktail appropriate

They missed out!

The video cuts to an Uber driver and literally within seconds it shows him using his phone while driving

the number one defining activity of tech bros is grading their own work

@digitaltf1821 @jpc2384 @mcsquared34 How are the hutterites doing

@jpc2384 @mcsquared34 I'm actually a Hutterite. Amish came first, Mennonite second, Hutterite last. We just use modern technology tools they don't but share many many many other beliefs and habits. I'm not saying everything goes great for anyone, but it is an option.

The Artemis II astronauts were all smiles on the flight deck of USS John P. Murtha after they were extracted from their Orion spacecraft after splashdown.

@abcdentminded Veiled! Ha Veiled Messages 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪

A little different than usual, good luck VEILED MESSAGES connectionsplus.io/game/MbDWee

@DaleStarkA10 Remember that time NASA set up a bunch of facilities in poor states to help them out. Or that time they flew a Saudi astronaut to inspire the Muslim world. It’s been like that ever since the agency was founded.

And splashdown! America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon and bringing them home safely. Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy did an outstanding job. These talented astronauts inspired the world and represented their space agencies and nations as humanity’s ambassadors to the stars. This was a test mission, the first crewed flight of SLS and Orion, pushing farther into the unforgiving environment of space than ever before, and it carried real risk. They accepted that risk for all we stood to learn and for the exciting missions that follow, as we return to the lunar surface, build a Moon base, and prepare for what comes next. And they were not alone. The entire NASA workforce, our commercial and international partners, and the hopes and dreams of people all over the world were with them. The astronauts know it, and you should too. This mission would not have been possible without you. Congratulations. Artemis II, mission accomplished.

I 100% agree with this take, and also I don't think it's a coincidence that two of the most famous theorists on orality and literacy (Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong) were devout Catholics

Japan is a zeroth world country