Tootfinder

I've been reading Ray Dailo's "Principles for dealing with the changing world order" in which he charts the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms and dynasties.
The main cycle, he reckons is:
1) Winner of a war consolidates power, unites the population (often through oppression)
2) A smart cooperative equitable educated society with meritocracy means good societal progress and wide sharing of the wealth.
3) Long period of peace, building good tech and military and financial systems.
4) Leadership corrupts: Excessive debt, money-printing, inequality, financial ruin, no sense of solidarity, then a natural disaster pushes it over the edge
5) The fall: Escalating rebellions, very bad inequality, internal conflicts
6) Civil war, revolution, eventually a strong leader proves the winner and back to 1.
We in the western civilization are very clearly in the late states of this kind of cycle, and it's frankly terrifying with the weapons we have these days when it comes to a war.
The leadership is too corrupt to try and fix the inequality or invest in that well educated, equitable, cooperative society.
He explicitly agrees with Marx and implicitly with me a lot more than I'd have expected from the rabid capitalist that Ray Dailo is.
It's interesting to hear his emphasis on inequality and how a prosperous society depends upon sharing the gains of prosperity widely. You tend to hear hyper-capitalists mostly emphasizing that capital's gains should go to capital, and Ray is certainly suggesting the opposite here. That if that happens, it corrupts the leadership and ends with cronyism and debt and revolution.
We seem to basically agree what creates good prosperous peaceful civil society, and that capitalism in the Anglican world isn't doing it, and that fucked up corrupt government is why we aren't doing it.
We'd offer fairly different prescriptions though I think.
#reading #books #economics

I get a lot of flack about owning my home, but owning a home is not the same as being a landlord. On two occasions I have *given* people $2.5k for housing (a 24 year old friend I knew since they were 21 and my aunt). I even offered to let them use my spare room (although this was not viable for my aunt because of needing space for four people and two dogs and not being able to split up). Home ownership can be praxis under our current system of capitalism, but not like I am opposed to communist proposals

Me: Hmm, maybe I should look into Bun again and see how its Node.js compatibility is coming along.
Also me: I wonder who makes Bun…
Me, yet again: Ah, it’s a venture-capital funded startup called Oven (see what they did there?)
Finally, me: rm -rf ~/.bun
(Remember, kids: Venture capital is the fart that precedes enshittification. It’s best not to linger once you’ve caught a whiff of it.)
#bun

#ThrowbackThursday #RockyMountainNationalPark #ElkOfMastodon
Yearling elk bull in Moraine Park. September 2006.

Everyone remember when Potus joined Geocities?
Oh, the way we mocked them.
"Got a spinning logo there Potus?" we'd cry, "ha, how lame"
"Get your own domain you geocity plebs!" we'd say.
Eventually they registered .gov of course to stop the relentless mocking.
it was a different time back then. Global states were expected to run their own fucking internet infrastructure not rely on surveillance capitalists to do it for them.

Despite a crypto rally, VC funds focused on crypto are struggling to raise money, as limited partners prioritize tangible gains after the 2022 wipeout (Ryan Weeks/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Crypto Venture Capital Funds Under Pressure to Produce Returns
Judging by a record Bitcoin rally that fueled a $1 trillion jump in the digital-asset market this year, crypto fever is back. But look beneath the surface to trends in venture capital and a far more sober picture emerges.

Grateful Dead from Tue, Apr 1, 1980 at Capitol Theatre
#GratefulDead #TIGDH #LiveMusic

Grateful Dead Live at Capitol Theater on 1980-04-01
Set I Promised Land * Promised Land Candyman Me & My Uncle > Big River Friend Of The Devil It's All Over Now Don't Ease Me In Looks Like Rain > Deal Set II Feel Like A Stranger China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider Estimated Prophet > He's Gone > The Other One > Drums > Space > Stella Blue > Around & Around Shakedown Street   Comment April Fool's Joke: Bob on Keyboards, Brent & Jerry on Drums, Billy on Bass, Mickey & Phil on…

Romney: "You Don't Pay Someone To Not Have Sex" - Joe.My.God.
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/04/romney-you-dont-pay-someone-to-not-have-sex/

Romney: “You Don’t Pay Someone To Not Have Sex”
Mediaite reports: “I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump’s character,” Sen. Mitt Romney told CNN’s Manu Raju outside the Capitol on Tuesday. “And so far as I know, you don

Questo sembra interessante:
*VIII zona. Pratiche di resistenza e reti clandestine a Roma*, curato da Riccardo Sansone e Anthony Santilli (Edizioni Annpia–associazione Bella storia–Narrazioni di strada): racconti e testimonianze sul “nido di vespe”, la borgata del Quadraro tra il 1943 e il 1945 e, più in generale, sulla lotta contro l'occupazione nazifascista nella VIII zona partigiana della capitale (Pigneto, Tor Pignattara, Villa Certosa, Centocelle, Quarticciolo e Quadraro):

Quadraro, la memoria antifascista ritrovata di una borgata ribelle | il manifesto
(Cultura) «VIII zona. Pratiche di resistenza e reti clandestine a Roma», a cura di Riccardo Sansone e Anthony Santilli, Edizioni Annpia. A 80 anni dal rastrellamento del quartiere, un libro e un festival per non dimenticare. Di Alessandro Santagata

I was in the Arizona National Guard between 2004 and 2010, and my unit would often do ceremonies at the Arizona state capital on December 7th. I met a lot of the survivors over the years. It was sad to see fewer of them each passing year.
https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/1