in a world of draftkings and polymarket, this almost feels quaint. the stock-based gambling houses are losing to the prediction markets and sportsbooks and they're flailing around trying to catch up. I wish them all the worst

if even half of this is true, it's really fucking bad lol

to what extent does he actually believe this? is that even a meaningful question? i think this narrative is way too esoteric and absurd to really convince anyone, so it doesn't even appear valuable if his goal is to flood the zone with post-truth nonsense.

the answer is definitely not to sanction and attempt to destabilize them on behalf of your two equally evil regional client states. The corollary to that is that you cannot produce the necessary conditions for future prosperity by destroying their economy in a way that harms the average person more than the elites.

And that's assuming that we (the west) even want them to prosper or care about their future as a nation. Perhaps in an alternate universe, that would be the motivation for regime change but that is not and has never been the case.

i expected alastair reynolds to look different but i'm not sure what i actually expected him to look like

i don't find that name too strange, it's a post-ironic Online Leftist shibboleth

They’re not cutting jobs because their financials are in the shitter

Their financials are not even in the shitter! except insofar as their increased AI capex isn't delivering returns, so they need to massage the balance sheet by doing rolling layoffs to stop the feral hogs from clamoring and stampeding on the next quarterly earnings call.

while it's obviously stupid and misguided to try to hold the nobel foundation criminally liable for making yet another bad selection for a prize that has been given to egregious war criminals (kissinger), it is a very funny joke.

true, usually i put that term in scare quotes to emphasize its fraudulence

this is weird. My first thought is that it's just another vector of normalization for the idea that people who are afraid of and Post about genocide or other forms of discriminatory violence are not to be taken seriously. By putting a variety of insane victimhood appropriating subcultures into the internet milieu, it allows people to ignore what's happening (and what may be about to happen) in the real world, where groups of people actually are subject to fascistic violence.

i'm only at the beginning, but this already stuck out to me:

It would be extremely bad if many people come to believe this: arguments about existential risk mostly rely on the assumption that AI is capable, so they fall flat for people who don't agree with that. I think we should be emphasizing the core capability of AI more and talking about x-risks less.

"Guys we need to pump this ~~bubble~~ Rational Stock Appreciation Trend more, the plebs are starting to think it's all bullshit!!"

none of this was new to me as a long time crypto gawker, but it was still tied together in a nice package which drew some particularly apt connections. I can't help but believe that the bitcoin thesis is fundamentally flawed. Being superimposed on the structure of financial capitalism itself, it seems to me that bitcoin and cryptocurrency are leveraged bets in the stability of the system. we haven't seen how crypto will function during a serious recession yet. I'm not a professional prognosticator by any means, but i have a hard time believing that it will go well for them, and a very easy time believing that it will go worse for them than the rest of the economy, broadly speaking. I hope that people in texas and other crypto-humping locales that host bitcoin "mines" take the opportunity to do something extremely Cool when that does happen.