sp3tr4l

joined 2 years ago
[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not easily anymore no.

He either sued or threatened to sue the people/person that were running that.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So, its now around a day or two later.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/09/dramatic-sell-off-of-us-government-bonds-as-tariff-war-panic-deepens

I was right, Varoufakis is wrong.

Again, Varoufakis idea is:

Central to this new global order would be a cheaper dollar that remains the world’s reserve currency — this would lower US long-term borrowing rates even more. Can Trump have his cake (a hegemonic dollar and low-yielding US Treasuries) and eat it (a depreciated dollar)?

and

Consequently, the euro, the yen and the renminbi will soften relative to the dollar. This will cancel out the price hikes of goods imported into the US, and leave the prices American consumers pay unaffected. The tariffed countries will be in effect paying for Trump’s tariffs.

Summarized, he thinks that:

US Bond prices will go up

and/or

US Bond yields will go down

and

The USD will appreciate compared to the Yen, Euro, Renminbi, that is to say, a dollar will be worth more yen, euro, ren.

What is actually happening is:

US Bond prices are going down.

US Bond yields are going up.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/USD-JPY?window=1M

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/USD-EUR?window=1M

USD is depreciating, not appreciating, compared to yen and euro.

The USD/CNY is exchange rate is set at a fixed rate by China, and they haven't moved it yet.

So uh, no Mr. Varoufakis, Trump cannot have his cake and eat it too, infact he shit in the cake and then threw the mixture all around the room, now he gets nothing that he wanted.

Trump has destroyed the Bretton Woods USD hegemony, but in a way that is utterly catastrophic for the US, not some extremely clever 12D chess move.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I too have significantly more sensitive hearing than seemingly just most people, and can hear and often get annoyed by high pitched but low decibel sounds, very often caused by electronics, off balance high speed fans, etc.

Got gaslit about it by my family as well.

You may wanna look into an autism diagnosis, autists often have this kind of thing going on.

You'd think it would be called super hearing, but instead its often everyone without heigtened senses calling you delusional.

Same thing happened to me when I described seeing the entoptic blue field phenomenon to my family, but not knowing the fancy name for it because I was 11. Family got very concerned I was hallucinating, the reality is I am just more attentive to reality than they are.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

OP, are you seriously whining about reading a moderate length satire 'article'...

... when the thrust of that satire is ... illiteracy?

... Anyway, Roseanne Barr is basically a hyper mega MAGA Karen, like the ur form, the closest to a physical embodiment of the platonic ideal.

She's led or headlined or featured in a good number of Trump rallies / Republican functions... she's a rascist bigot and anti lgbtq... she is a delusional christian nationalist who believes there is a vast global conspiracy to create a global muslim caliphate and implement sharia law literally everywhere.... she has literally declared her unwavering faith in Trump as dear leader.

She is a fucking maniac.

... Also there is a rather funny video where RFK Jr is recounting the insane story of him dumping a bear carcass in NYC's central park, where rosie is very obviously disgusted and dismayed by this, and barely manages to only slightly grimace and stare in horror.

Oh right, she also used to play a mom in some shitty sitcom that ran in the 90s, serving as an inspiration to white christian moms whose children have gone no contact with them in the 2020s, but hey, at least they've got a lot of 'live laugh love' posters framed on their walls.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago

Ok so... FOSS Dev submits a software (music creation tool) to Steam, to be 'sold' for $0, ie, available freely.

On the splash welcome screen to the software, there is a link to his patreon for donations.

Steam's automated vetting/verification process identifies the keyword 'patreon', but misreads a u as a v, or that reversed, in the url, and sends out an automated response saying 'direct links to request donations are not allowed, please remove'.

FOSS Dev somehow thinks this is a real person talking to him, writes up a response (with valid objections, that Godot and Krita and others feature donation links)...

... He does not recieve a response, but changes the link in his software to point to another webpage with a different url, where that webpage then points to his patreon, and uploads this new build to the automated first pass vetting system...

... and is surprised when this immediately passes vetting and is accepted.

Ok. Mhm. Yep.

...

Does FOSS Dev... did it occur to him that a platform like Steam that recieves, what, thousands of these kinds of applications a month, tens of thousands?, and is extremely well known for having a shockingly small employee headcount... might be using automated systems?

Might have a detailed flow chart for producing what are basically detailed error messages?

Has this person never heard of how call centers for large firms just give their phone support staff a script generated by such systems?

Has this person never used an automated support chat bot that only actually kicks you over to a real person if you specifically request it and/or exhaust its pre built in help options?

I am sorry but this dude is having an emotional breakdown from an automated bot response he doesn't realize is an automated bot response.

He at no point ever shows the response from Steam to his pointing out that other FOSS software has donation links. There apparently... wasn't one? ... Because actual lengthy responses get assigned to a ticket cue for an actual human to read and reply to at some point, later?

I am absolutely baffled as to how anyone with any familiarity with 'Steam Support' could possibly think they are talking to an actual human being in this scenario.

This is like feeling personally betrayed by a nonexistant YouTube video reviewer support person when you upload a video with copyrighted music and are told it won't be elligible publishing.

...

Now as to the actual Steam policies, the actual issues here... yes, in general, Steam is not geared toward FOSS releases with optional donations, yes it is bullshit that there are older software/games that got grandfathered in, no argument with any of that.

But he already solved the problem, on his end.

He already changed the url to not include a direct donation link by bouncing it to patreon via some other link.

The entire tech support adventure he had with trying to get donation DLCs was completely unneccessary... he already had an accepted build with a donation method accepted.

The entire tax adventure he had is also... he just says he has a very weird and uncommon legal setup with his sole proprietorship, and is frustrated that that makes the process complicated as well.

I get that this is frustrating, but again... if Steam said no to a donation only DLC... and he already has a build, accepted, with a working donation link that entirely circumvents the process, meaning he would not even be getting any payouts from Steam at all, and Steam will not be generating any revenue, whatsoever, because that software is listed as available in Steam for free, so there is no Steam cut...

Then this person is complaining about having to deal will some bs paperwork to be able to have his free software published on Steam, for no cost to him, at a cost to Valve, and he benefits massively by increasing the number of potential eyeballs on his software.

This is analagous to complaining that you have to fill out paperwork to recieve like free food benefits or reduced cost housing or a low cost bus fare.

...

In conclusion, yes, Steam is not the best option for FOSS releases.

Yep. Its a commercial storefront, primarily.

Alternatives exist, that are specifically supportive of FOSS projects with flexible donation/payment models.

I don't know why you'd go to the hardware store and be angry that they don't sell fresh fruit.

Should there maybe be some kind of push to try to convince Valve to offer some kind of option like that?

Well... maybe?

If Steam actually did basically what itch.io does, then uh, itch.io stops existing in ... what, 2 years?

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've very recently also seen this.

Basically uh, yeah, that tracks, that seems completely inline with the rest of how completely ridiculous this all is.

So... why haven't the books been withdrawn?

Because academia, academics, ... they regulate and peer review Journals. Published papers. Textbooks used in classes.

Not books designed for popular consumption, pop-econ, pop-psych, pop-whatever.

Why hasn't he been rejected by the Econ community?

Ironically, because of the nature of the incentive structure of the field of Econ.

Way, waaay too much overlap with politics and business, so its basically split into psuedo religious ideological camps, who often realize they can make way more money or have may more power by working for a hedge fund or being some kind of propogandist.

So... in that sense... the academic Econ community rarely is even capable of coming out as a unified body of academics and rejecting someone. There are too many different ideological camps, they're all arguing with each other all the time.

There is no broad consenus view as there is with say all climate scientists saying climate change is real, all biologists and archaeologists and geologists saying evolution is real and the earth is 4.5b years old.

But with Navvaro... he apparently hasn't done much or any really groundbreaking research, spent about two or three decades teaching, and during that time he realized he could make way more money selling pop-econ books to people who want to be able to argue about Econ to support their ideology without actually learning Econ.

You know, pretentious blowhards.

Anyway he also went to jail for Contempt of Congress for lying to the Jan 6th committee.

He is an absolute hack fraud at this point.

So there, me with a BSc. in Econ, I'm calling him out rofl.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, asterisk to indicate multiplication is much, much more common amongst coders.

... And script kiddie DOGE interns.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I am from Seattle.

Anecdotally:

This is correct.

People are absurdly transactional, performative and superficial about relationships and also very anti social compared to basically anywhere else I've ever been in the US.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago

Just for the historical record, here's Mussolini's last public appearance:

Just Hanging Out (nsfw)

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This article has been posted by me several times. You are only the second person who notices.

Probably because I am one of the few people on lemmy that actually has a degree in Economics.

EDIT

jammed the rest in spoiler tags for the thread's sake

Granted, just a BSc, but I got it during and after the 07 08 financial crash in the US, and remember arguing with my PhD professors that uh actually, the fact that Iceland just literally jailed all their bankers and did not bail them out... and then their economy just suffered a moderate down turn, instead of a complete collapse, meant that their whole reasoning behind 'we have to bail out the banks and do QE, there is no other way' ... well here is a case study that disproves your model.

The US cannot have it all. I think Varoufakis just doesn't want to be the one who delivers the message. He must have known better.

I get that he is attempting to explain what he thinks the real plan is, and he's done a decent job of theory crafting...

But he is wrong. There is no hidden well thought out plan.

The people in the Trump admin are unqualified, uncoordinated morons. They are only there because they are loyal to Trump.

It is chaos. Not 12D chess.

Varoufakis, and you, are sane-washing the Trump regime. You both cannot comprehend something this tumultuous would occur without some reasoning behind it.

There is none, at least none that is coherent and makes any sense.

These people are dangerous megalomaniacal idiots who failed upward because of nepotism and corruption.

They are idiots, as are the Americans who voted them in.

There is no silver lining to this.

America is now as corrupt and broken and oligsrchichal as Russia, if not more.

I don't fully agree with your outlook. The companies are not massively objecting.

Please give me some examples of any companies based outside of the US who are doing anything other than cowering in fear and issuing statements that amount to 'We believe in Donald Trump's plan, we love Trump, please don't hurt us, please give us a tariff carve out, we'll bribe you.'

I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about.

Even domestic US companies are going fucking nuts.

I think the concept has already been discussed by key people, in the US and internationally. Like Japan is prepared to build a nuclear bomb and Britain was prepared for Brexit, the big companies are prepared for decoupling from China.

Are you just stating your opinion?

Britain was not prepared for Brexit, and it was a disaster.

The US is currently trying to do... WorldExit, just fuck over our capacity to trade not just with the EU, but the entire fucking world.

It will be a much larger disaster.

What big US companies have plans to just somehow not use any imports from China?

What are you talking about?

We do not have the capacity to source the needed materials internally, at comparable prices.

The only plan there could be would be basically 'fire half our workers, pare down operations to the bone, focus on core competencies, pray to baby jesus that somehow this nightmare all ends.'

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago

This is impossible to 100% confirm or deny with solid evidence at this point but uh...

Good chance it wasn't just hentai.

It was loli. Drawn CSAM.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Varoufakis is wrong.

Central to this new global order (Trump's plan) would be a cheaper dollar that remains the world’s reserve currency — this would lower US long-term borrowing rates even more.

What Trump is doing will result in a cheaper dollar.

It was also destroy the USD as the world's reserve currency.

wall of text further explanation so as not to clutter the thread

The USD has been the reserve currency because:

Huge, growing, stable economy.

Low debt to GDP ratio.

Very, very willing to cooperate with international trade deals.

Powerful military that can enforce its will as a hegemon.

Many deals with many oil producing countries who agree to only sell their exported oil via USD.

... all of these except the last are as seen in statistical comparison to other countries. Its all about comparative advantages.

Not sure if you haven't noticed, but all of those are now rapidly crumbling, after a last 2 decades of slower, more incremental decline.

But ultimately, all of those things could be smoothed over by a reasonable presentation of trustworthiness and reliability generally.

Trump has utterly destroyed all of that now.

...

If Varoufakis were citing some kind of Project 2025 masterplan for this, I'd be more inclined to believe his read on the situation here is at least Trump's plan.

But even then, it still won't work as he describes.

Trump is acting with unimaginable hubris, his actions will destroy the USD as a world reserve currency, rapidly accelerate other countries looking for regional or possibly international alternatives, and as a result, less people will need to use dollars for trade, there will thus be less demand for US debt.

Less demand means we have to offer higher yields, higher interest rates on our debt, as the us dollar weakening means the real price of debt goes down.

Varoufakis may be correct in that this is what Trump will try to do, but I see no evidence that... the plan has actually been thought out that far by any actual administration or adjacent thinkers.

Beyond that, this plan won't work.

We are acting like a rogue nation doing economkc terrorism to literally the whole world... other than basically Russia and Israel.

China, Japan and South Korea have recently entered into a pact, an agreement, to coordinate their responses of retaliatory tariffs.

Please take a moment to appreciate how insane that is.

The past ... since ww2, SK and JPN have firmly been in the US's sphere of economic influence and military collaboration.

They just fucking noped out of that the economic part of that and made a pact with China.

Japan is now rapidly trying to militarize and there are even talks of starting their own nuclear program.

Please, again, appreciate how fucking insane it is that the most anti nuclear weapons country on Earth is now maybe rethinking that.

Most other world leaders are not stupid. They know Trump will try to do piecemeal, one on on negotiations.

They are already forming into blocs to resist this tactic.

There's talk of Canada joining or at least much more seriously integrating with the EU.

NATO is now basically defunct in all but paper only, the EU is finally 'shouldering its burden of defense costs', but uh, they're working on an EU Army, that doesn't involve the US, after Trump repeatedly threatens to acquire Greenland, and has totally betrayed Ukraine.

The EU is also rapidly pivoting away from being reliant on or using US software solutions.

These actual adults in the room have actual plans to deal with the US, and they have been enacted astonishingly rapidly given how comprehensive they are.

... The rest of the world does not need us anywhere near as much as Trump does, as much as Varoufakis estimates Trump thinks they do.

 

So, I made a comment on the 'two goobers' community of lemm.ee, moderated by Bubs.

I gave a rather cynical, but nonetheless accurate imo description of a particular comic, explaining that it showed an overly lovey dubby relationship that was likely doomed to failure.

Made some more comments explaining my reasoning, ended up getting into some arguments as two users seemed genuinely sceptical, and one of them very defensive, about the idea that CPTSD is usually caused by abusive narcissists when it isn't caused by ongoing, severe material deprivation, such as being very poor, homeless, or living in a war zone.

As of time of writing this, my first comment was the most popular in the thread, something like 45 up, 5 down, and I have been banned from the community, almost the entire comment chain has been nuked, no explanation has been seemingly given for the deletion of any comments, unless my view or understanding of modlogs is somehow borked, though I am apparently banned (indefinitely?) for Rule 1: No Abusive Language.

I can maybe see how a few of the latter comments could veer into being interpreted as 'abusive language'.

Maybe.

... But the entire comment chain?

The two I was arguing with used language about the same level of 'abusive' as myself.

They don't appear to be banned though, just had their comments removed.

... I ... don't really care about being banned from an apparent hugbox community that has a single mod, but just from a point of ... attempting some kind of professionalism, maybe Bubs could have just deleted the specific comments they found to be 'abusive', sent all involved a clarifying DM about that, not just jump straight to a ban?

I dunno.

I hereby submit this to the tribunal for public commentary.

Here's the link to lemm.ee's modlog

EDIT: It looks like a whole bunch of at least my removed comments are not even showing up in the modlog.

I... don't know if thats because of some technical issue?

I had a bit of a tit for tat with both Ocultoconoclast and Count Regal Inkwell, and you can see their removed comments in the mod log, but my one for one responses are not even showing up as removed in the lemm.ee modlog, though they are all removed/'deleted by moderator' when I go through my own comment history.

 

After Michael Moore was directly mentioned in Luigi Mangione's 'manifesto', as someone who can explain the shitshow that is the American healthcare system, Moore's response included posting his entire 2007 movie SICKO to YouTube, in its entirety, no ads.

Here's his full post about it: https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/a-manifesto-against-for-profit-health

Here's the movie: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YbEQ7acb0IE

 

I said something along the lines of:

"Wow, I haven't had a reason to smile ear to ear in a while."

Along with

"Nah, the more dead ~~corpos~~ dragons, the better."

In response to some liberal going off about how violence is never the solution, not mentioning how this murdered dipshit has personally overseen a system that perpetuates harm, suffering and death (violence) in the name of profit.

...

Good ole' civility clause.

Whats the paradox of tolerance?

.world mods have never heard of it I guess.

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