They are (or were) the biggest producer of Fentanyl (allegedly).

But I have also heard experts say that Fentanyl manufacturing is just moving to the US for domestic consumption, so I don’t know if it’s still true.

Not if a trade war can destroy it first!

And how will they know if you’re a fundie or not?

What they’re doing is checking phones and social media. If they see you are a member of some antifa or BLM org, they’ll get you.

So don’t do those things via Facebook. Use meshtastic and hide your receiver.

But if you practice good OpSec and all they see is baseball, BBQ and church, then they won’t be able to tell the difference.

Thanks for the effort post with great tips!

I would also really recommend having a physical community near you, not just online contacts.

I would even go so far as to say: join a progressive protestant church It’s not a silver bullet, but the fascists in the US are Christian Nationalists and some of them will hesitate to mistreat a Christian. And some of them will feel an obligation towards a Christian.

This is a big part of why Martin Luther King wasn’t killed earlier. The thugs in the 50s had no problem persecuting “godless heathens” in the McCarthy era, but black Christians were Christians.

And yes, they were also mistreated, but it would have been much worse if they had been atheist or communist.

Fascists divide the world very black and white. Us v. Them

Looking like them provides a survival advantage.

Another reason to live in a blue state if you can.

I realize you are confused.

You don’t appreciate that having 200 shares of a fund today, at today’s valuation, is better than having 100 shares of that same fund today.

Because that’s the point I clearly made, which you ignored and constructed some kind of straw man on which you had your little Don Quixote party on.

And if you really want to understand the philosophy, the point is to take profits prudently and buy bargains when they present themselves. And that’s very much possible without exactly timing the market.

I have never sold at the top and never bought at the bottom. I have no crystal ball to time the market, but I have made a lot of profit buying low and selling high.

I remember the Russian military recruitment offices burning these past years, and their railroads getting sabotaged.

The western press proudly stated “this is what happens when you don’t allow people to protest, they turn to sabotage”.

But I guess this administration missed the memo.

My audience is people who are literate. You’re just reading stuff into my comments that a reasonable person wouldn’t.

And that’s fine, you do your investment strategy. I’m happy with mine.

I agree, especially since interest rates are currently relatively high, it’s quite OK to remain liquid these days.

If you can’t even understand that I am obviously not including things like stock splits, then I don’t think my comment was intended for you.

Timing the exact top and bottom is impossible, but you can always sell at an all-time high and buy at a 52 week low.

Personally, I find it more effective for myself if I frame it in terms of “owning the most shares” instead of “making the most dollars”.

If I started with 100 shares and now have 200 shares, I consider that a win, even if the 200 shares together are worth less than the 100 shares were at one time.

Thanks, never heard of SimpleX, but I will check it out.

But to make an analogy. Bitcoin wasn’t good for privacy at first. But they added features and new coins like Monero were developed with strong privacy.

So I expect there will eventually be a private ActivityPub, either “on top of” or “next to” the current one.

In my opinion, we really need decentralized, self-hosted infrastructure.

I kind of hope we get a Fediverse alternative for WhatsApp.

I imagine running some kind of relay node on a raspberry pi, for perhaps 20-100 acquaintances. All traffic would be anonymized and encrypted as much as possible. Push notifications replaced by polling. Anonymous broadcast groups that allow anonymous sending and receiving of messages without revealing either who is sending or who is receiving.

Everything wiped every few minutes on the relay node.

Others would also run relays that are then federated together.

People don’t realize how fucked Tesla is.

If protestors burn just 0.1% of Tesla cars on the road every year, then that means insurance companies will need to charge an additional $200-$500 per year to insure a Tesla compared to a similar car of any other brand.

If they burn 1%, then it’s more like $2000 per year in extra insurance costs.

They will become uninsurable.

You have no idea what they did or did not do.

You have no idea what they went through in the USA.

Look, I get you. I come from a family that actively resisted the Nazi occupation with guns, smuggling and at great risk.

And if it ever came to it, I would stay to fight. That’s just my nature.

But it’s not for everyone.

Dude, I understand your frustration.

But these people just want to be safe and raise their kids without worrying that some neo-nazis are going to harm them or their kids for having the wrong race or creed.

They aren’t necessarily affluent, though not poor either. Just middle-class progressive people that need to have both parents working to afford a house, car, groceries.

Yes, I am sorry you got f-d by the medical costs. I really wish it were different.

I’m European, and I get miserable reading about the USA.

It’s also quite telling that I see so many American expats here nowadays. It used to be quite rare, usually if you met an American living here they would be either working for an American company, or have a relationship with a local.

Now, I’m just meeting a lot of super talented and smart Americans who took a major paycut just to not live in the US anymore.

I agree, which is why I advocate for reform, not abolishment.

Perhaps AI companies should pay a 15% surcharge on their services and that money goes directly into the arts.

It just so happens that in AI it’s about copyright and with margarine (and most other technologies) it’s about patents.

But the point is the same. Technological development is held back by law in both cases.

If all IP laws were reformed 50 years ago, we would probably have the technology from 2050, today.

Sam Altman is a grifter, but on this topic he is right.

The reality is, that IP laws in their current form hamper innovation and technological development. Stephan Kinsella has written on this topic for the past 25 years or so and has argued to reform the system.

Here in the Netherlands, we know that it’s true. Philips became a great company because they could produce lightbulbs here, which were patented in the UK. We also had a booming margarine business, because we weren’t respecting British and French patents and that business laid the foundation for what became Unilever.

And now China is using those exact same tactics to build up their industry. And it gives them a huge competitive advantage.

A good reform would be to revert back to the way copyright and patent law were originally developed, with much shorter terms and requiring a significant fee for a one time extension.

The current terms, lobbied by Disney, are way too restrictive.