IDGAF about a partnership. Make a stand against micro transactions in Dynasty and RTG. Take them out and bring XP sliders back @EASPORTSCollege#CFBPlayDontPay
🚨 San Antonio Spurs are no longer expected to pursue LeBron after signing Tobias Harris, per @TheSteinLine
The sweepstakes for The King is down to 28 teams 👑
Tired: The Pistons are missing out on every move they’ve tried to make
Wired: The Pistons are forcing every other team in the NBA to overpay by bidding on every single available player
I don’t know how you can look at all of this and not feel like our society is being swallowed by a moral darkness that’s eating away at whatever social order remains.
More and more, it feels like every human vulnerability is being identified, exploited, monetized, marketed, and then brushed off as “harmless fun,” or even worse, “freedom,” by people who should know better.
And because someone is inevitably going to say something like, “These things have always existed,” yes, but what’s new is the scale, the ease of access, and the fact that we’ve allowed some of the most morally bankrupt industries in the country to remove every barrier between impulse and indulgence.
OnlyFans made entry into the pornography industry as easy as opening an account. Sports gambling apps put a casino in every man’s pocket. And in both cases, everyone is supposed to pretend this is just entertainment, empowerment, convenience, or innovation.
These are morally bankrupt industries feeding off boredom, loneliness, lust, desperation, impulsiveness, insecurity, and the fact that millions of people are one bad month away from turning their worst impulses and deepest vulnerabilities into revenue for some app.
So what’s next? Which vice gets rebranded as freedom? Which destructive impulse gets an app, a payment processor, a marketing team, and a bunch of people insisting that anyone concerned about it is just being dramatic?
How investing has changed: in the late 1990s, Wall Street used to guess interest rates based on the size of Alan Greenspan’s briefcase.
A larger than usual briefcase signalled a change (he’d need more documents to justify a hike or cut).
Asked if the “Briefcase Indicator” was true, Greenspan said: “Not at all. Whether my briefcase was fat or thin depended on whether or not my wife made me lunch that day."
The Pakistani cashier says “you back again boss?” as I place another concerning assortment of zero-sugar energy drinks and knock-off zyns on the counter. I give him a weary nod, like a gunslinger returning to the frontier town for ammo and rations. I want him out of my country.