Jeremy Wald

Tech is the future. There is always a better way, we should never stop improving.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

I'm a storyteller.

I will tell you a story.

Not a thinly veiled allegory or analogy. Not a fable. Not a parody or a satire, or some smug little parable featuring characters "Ronald Grump" and "Alan Tusk".

No, this is a true story, and it means what it means, with no hidden symbolism whatsoever. It contains only facts, and general principles to derive from them.

It is a story about Rome.

We all know what Rome was. It was a republic, then an Empire, then nothing.

But every time we ask why, historians wish to tell us it is complicated, and that we desperately need historians, such as themselves, to sort it all out.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was not complicated.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire can be explained in two words.

Cheap labor.

The Romans, as you know, had two classes, the patricians and the plebeians.

The patricians ruled Rome. But the plebeians were Rome. And the patricians forgot this.

Around this point in the story, you may be thinking you understand me already. You may think you have anticipated where I am going with this. You may think that this is going to be some general polemic about the importance of remembering the little people.

It is not. I have a very specific meaning, and I always choose my words very, very carefully.

Two words.

Cheap. Labor.

The Romans patricians, like the old and the rich of any society, owned land, and sold goods. To do this, they bought labor.

The Roman plebeians, most especially the young, sold labor. So that they could buy goods and land.

So, it should go without saying, but often doesn't, that it was in the interest of plebeians that goods and land be cheap, and labor be expensive, and in the interest of patricians that land and goods should be expensive, and labor should be cheap.

Now, markets have natural cycles. The price of every thing fluctuates up and down, looking for an equilibrium which is only ever temporary.

Sometimes goods and land are cheap, and labor is expensive. Then the plebeians become fat and prosperous, and they marry pretty girls and have lots of healthy children.

Sometimes goods and land are expensive, and labor is cheap, and patricians amass vast fortunes and build fine estates and eat honeyed dormice.

To every thing, there is a season.

But the patricians controlled Rome. Not fully or directly, not in theory, but they had money. And money buys power. Just as power buys money.

And the temptation, in the long run, became irresistible. To buy political power, and put the finger of that political power on the scales of the market.

To make sure the cheap labor stays cheap forever.

In Rome, cheap labor meant slaves. Elsewhere, it has meant other things.

In Rome, slaves kept labor cheap not only because slaves don't get paid, and can't quit, but also because every plebeian who sells labor must compete with the slave on price.

Little by little, this took away from the plebeians, not only because real wages were depressed, but more importantly because there were no seasons of labor scarcity. No cycles in the market where wages went high.

No fat seasons for the plebes, just an ever-increasing drought.

And, while the patricians controlled Rome, the plebeians were Rome. It was their blood, shed in the legions, that conquered the world. Their sweat that built the shining city of seven hills.

And their patriotism that defined what Rome was.

The patricians ruled Rome. But the plebeians were Rome, and when they ceased to bear allegiance to Rome, Rome ceased to exist, because the only thing that Rome ever was, the only thing that any city or nation ever is, is its people.

A man who has no work, a man who must compete with slaves, a man who is beaten down to want the hungriest beggar will take, is a man who cannot have a home and a family.

Not only because he cannot afford such things. But because no woman will have him. No woman will bear his children.

The ultimate expression, after all, of female lust and admiration, is "I want to have his babies".

Fewer people seem to realize that the reverse is true.

I was told once, by a man who should have known better, that Rome fell because the Romans forgot what it meant to be Roman.

Nonsense.

Rome fell because Romans knew exactly what it meant to be Roman. Which meant they knew that to be Roman meant to be replaced by slaves.

The patricians bore no allegiance to Rome, because it was cheaper to replace the Roman workers with slaves, and the Roman legions with mercenaries.

The plebeians bore no allegiance to Rome, because Rome bore no allegiance to them.

And so Rome simply ceased to be.

The outward forms hung around awhile, until the mercenaries, bearing no true allegiance to Rome, realized they didn't have to wait to be paid. They could just... take.

The patricians destroyed Rome because they thought like politicians instead of kings.

A politician buys a crown by offering the most to those whose support is most in doubt.

A king knows that crowns and thrones are only symbols, and power comes from armies of loyal men, whose loyalty must be bought with loyalty in turn. Not table scraps.

The Roman plebeians didn't want, and couldn't survive on, free bread and circuses. They needed work and land and incomes to have families and happy lives.

But no Caesar emerged in time.

Tick tock, Mr. Vance.

Tick tock.

[Jordan Harmon @JordanHarmon]

We just made a promise no Hollywood studio has ever made. No sex or nudity on screen, no F-word, and no misuse of God's name in Angel originals. And 3 million Guild members get a veto on everything before it ever lands on Angel.

Parents shouldn't have to sift through a dozen movies to find one they can watch. That's why we made the Angel Promise. https://t.co/NdKCY2cisr

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Part 3. My brainstorming sessions on how to drop in a female replacement for Draco Malfoy seem to turning into a sort of character workshop.

But I'm having fun.

We've talked about "Malfoid"'s basic character, why she falls for Harry Potter, and reimagined her father and his relationship with her.

But we haven't touched on an important part of making this whole story work: why does Harry fall for her?

It's not enough to appeal to Japanese "tsun-dere" tropes. That's just the name of a story convention. It might say something about why people like the story, but it doesn't make the story make sense, according to its own internal logic.

For that, we need to do some actual thinking.

Well, where does he come from? He's the unwanted foster child of a family that sees him as an unchosen responsibility and nothing more.

So, for the first few years of his life, he is resented, ignored, and utterly unloved by anyone.

So what does this do to a boy?

Rowling has a little bit of trouble with this one, because she has some pretty advanced women-writing-men problems. Understandable, given her history.

But an ordinary little boy, who is written as an actual boy, gets angry. Resentful. That's what Rowling couldn't write, because to her, a good man is a non-threatening man.

Now, this would impact Harry's character and story in a lot of ways, but since we are looking specifically at why he falls in love with the Malfoid, we must look first at their initial encounter on the train.

What she says to him isn't an attack. From her worldview (discussed in the quoted article), she's trying to help him. He's an important person, but he's not familiar with her world, so he has fallen in with the wrong sort.

Come sit with us, instead.

Come sit with the cool kids and the pretty girl.

Now, on one level, this is exactly what an unloved boy raised in a closet wants. Acceptance. To be treated as important.

But on another level, this is his first Hero's Trial. The boy who was treated like dirt can have status and be somebody. All he has to do is inflict the same rejection and contempt he experienced on his new friends.

Of course, he passes this trial.

And Draecena, or Lyra, or whatever name we wanna call her, doesn't take it well. She's vain, and not used to hearing the word "no".

In reality, it's her fault. She could have sat down beside him. Or simply said, "come with me for a while, I'll introduce you around".

But she doesn't see it that way, and so she does say something nasty. At this point, they become rivals. They have hurt each other's pride.

For her, it is the pride of a haughty heiress, who not only things she is better than everyone else, but that she must be, because that's her responsibility in life.

For him, it is the pride of a boy with nothing, loved by no one, who will therefore not tolerate the slightest insult.

But the import thing to realize is that he doesn't hate her and want nothing to do with her. Oh, no. Not a bit of it.

She's the popular girl. The wealthy girl. The pretty girl. And everything about her, everything she has, everything that has been given to her in life, tells him that she is loved in ways that Harry was not.

All the time she is envying him because he doesn't have to fit in, he envies her because she has somewhere she belongs.

He doesn't want nothing to do with her. He wants what she has.

He desires her, abstractly at first, then more concretely when puberty hits, but boys without mothers who love them will not chase girls. Their wounded pride simply will not sustain it. They want girls to chase them.

He doesn't want to hurt her. He wants to humble her. To make her accept him on his terms, not hers. He doesn't want to orbit her universe and petition for acceptance. He wants her to come to him, to admit with her words and actions that he is not, in any way, beneath her.

What do we covet? That which we see every day and cannot have.

He wants her to yearn for him, the way he does for her.

And as circumstances, and her hidden desires, repeatedly throw them together, small hints come to light that her feelings for him might not be just contempt.

Harry misses all of them.

Why? Not because he's stupid. Not just so the plot can happen. Not because they're too subtle to see. For the reader, they're pretty obvious.

No, he misses them because of who he is and where he comes from.

He grew up without love. And some part of him will always fear that he is unlovable. Of course Draecina Malfoy hates him. The Dursleys hated him, didn't they?

And she keeps saying she doesn't like him at all.

It never occurs to him that she says it with increasingly shrill desperation. It never occurs to him that she says she wants to avoid him, but she always seems to be around.

And he has absolutely no idea why his scarves keep disappearing.

He won't take the hint. He won't pick up the dropped handkerchief. He won't chase her the way pretty girls expect to be chased. Because a boy who has never experienced a mother's love can never bear to risk rejection.

He nicknames her "Malfoid", and it sticks. And she would rather die than give the slightest hint of how hard she cries into her pillow that night.

The next day, she hides a Strong Toad in his locker.

All he would have to do is face down her pretended scorn. Offer her one kind word. One gesture. And she would melt into his arms.

But he can't.

He may be the big hero in public, but in his heart he's just as broken as she is.

To have the love of the girl he desires, he must grow up and become a man. He must stop looking to the world, or to her, to heal the injuries that are uniquely his.

He cannot, must not, must not try to break Draecina's spirit so she will love him unconditionally. Unconditional love is for children alone, and it is not her fault that he will never experience it.

It is not her job to make it up to him.

It is Tom Riddle, not Draecina Malfoy, who deprived him of a mother's love.

And as long as he doesn't see that, he will keep fighting her. But she isn't a vicious dog, biting at him for no reason. She's a scared kitten, hissing and clawing because she is afraid... her heart is bound to a man who offers her no patience and no mercy.

He will have to rise beyond his own pain, accept that it will never heal, accept that he still has responsibilities beyond it.

Accept that is it only her job to love and support him, not to give him back what cannot be given, because time only flows one way.

Just as she will have to take a leap of faith to be worthy of him, to offer her heart without certainty or deniability, he will have to catch her before she falls. To bear her claws until her fear subsides and she can love him without lashing out in a desperate need to protect her heart from the man who holds it.

She's not a monster. She's just a girl.

[Lyndsey Fifield @lyndseyfifield]

The irony is men love bragging about it because having a SAHM wife and lots of kids is the new Lamborghini.

You can’t fake the decades of wise life choices, self control, and sacrifices it requires to create and support a large happy family.

[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints @Ch_JesusChrist]

"Gambling is morally wrong. Gambling is built on the desire to obtain something for nothing. Its structure requires that any gain comes at other's expense. It is hard to reconcile that with the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves."

—President D. Todd Christofferson (@ChristoffDTodd) #GeneralConference

https://t.co/Qcl9fb7veD

[D. Todd Christofferson @ChristoffDTodd]

Putting money or something of value at risk to bet on a particular outcome or event is an activity that has plagued mankind almost, I suppose, from the beginning of time.

And time has not made it any more worthwhile or any less harmful. Unfortunately, in recent years, gambling has become incredibly pervasive.

#GeneralConference

[Buddy Mac @TenGallonTroub]

Anyways, here’s wonderwall…

#cowpoke #yodel #country #western #tengallonhat

[Publius @OcrazioCornPop]

🚨 MILTON FRIEDMAN (1978): Young lawyer asked Milton about when it is okay for a Govt to force a free citizen to act.

Did you get the nuance in Milton's question about the difference between "society" and "govt"...

Do you think a man should be free to sin?

[Sunny Long @real_sunny_long]

$RKLB

The main problem with this stock is that it ran hard (10x) in the past couple of years and now new investors are fearful that it will not run again so fast.

And this is where they make the huge mistake. The first 10x was from a very undervalued position.

The stock will 10x again, because the market is huge, and anything under one trillion market cap for a profitable full-stack space company will look cheap in the future.

[Public Lands Nationalist @PblcLndNtnlst]

It’s a good reminder that you can just do stuff. How many positions of power in your community go by default to boomer libs because others don’t go for them?

One of my local national forests was advertising for board seats to vote on and direct rural funds within the forest. I emailed the FS and got a prompt reply. I was the only one who had reached out about the position. Previously, the board had mostly been retired hippies from the Bay Area who lived hours away. But because the law favors locals, come 2027, a local right wing conservation chud will be voting on directing those funds. It’s a very small amount of power. But it will only cost me 8 hours a year.

Find something to do. It’s easy to blackpill and feel demoralized when you focus on national level issues you have little influence over as a regular person. But what influence can you have locally? Even if it’s symbolic. Hell, my local water board hates our liberal state government so much they voted to secede. 😂 All momentum starts with a small movement. Find yours, American. 🇺🇸

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

We asked AI to show that Sydney Sweeney would be just as attractive if she dressed more modestly.

[Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA @DrDiGiorgio]

Imagine a chef employed at a restaurant that charges $100 for a hamburger.

One day he gets sick of his institution ripping off customers, so he goes across the street and opens a shop with $5 hamburgers.

Now the hamburger loving people are better off. Competition drives down prices and increases quality.

The original restaurant, angry over the lost business, gets a law passed that bans chefs from owning restaurants.

Everyone would recognize this as a corrupt, protectionist law.

And yet, in healthcare, with skyrocketing costs, we still outlaw physician owned hospitals.

[Cam ⊙ @cam182411]

Elon: declining birth rates will end civilization

Also Elon: here’s a 5-seat sedan, a 5-seat crossover, a pickup, and a 2-seat robotaxi

Walk the talk, @elonmusk. Build the damn family car!

[pravijn ⚫️ @pravijn]

StarCraft should only be an RTS

[Angel @AngelStudiosInc]

A king. A prophecy. A child who will change the world.

Official Trailer for ZERO A.D.: The Birth of Christ.
In theaters December 11, 2026. Pre-order tickets at https://t.co/GzI5hBd2tJ

[Department Of Deportations @DoDeportations]

The Indians have tried to build a bridge and its collapsed three times already.

These are the supposed “tech geniuses” we need to “maintain our infrastructure”.

[Mark McEathron @Mark_McEathron]

Look, instead of making mothers dependents on the Federal Government, how about the Government get out of the way and liberate the family institution.

No property taxes for families with 4 or more kids

Or

25% Federal Income tax break per child. 4 or more, you pay no Federal Income taxes.

Play around with those kind of incentives rather than making mothers dependent on a tyrannical institution like the Federal Government.

Conservatism 101.

Less Gov, not more.

[Race 🕊️ @multiplanet1]

Elon Musk was once asked why SpaceX builds 80% of its components in house when it would be cheaper and faster to buy them from existing suppliers. His answer reveals the philosophy that separates SpaceX from every aerospace company on earth.

He said the suppliers were the problem, not the solution.

The aerospace supply chain is built on a pricing structure that has existed for 50 years. Every supplier knows every other supplier's price. Nobody undercuts because the margins are comfortable and the contracts are long. The result is an industry where a valve that costs $3 in raw materials sells for $30,000 because that's what valves cost in aerospace. Nobody asks why. The price is the price.

Elon asked why.

He had SpaceX engineers reverse engineer the valve. The materials cost $3. The manufacturing at SpaceX's own factory cost $600. The same valve that the supplier sold for $30,000 was built in house for $600. A 98% cost reduction on a single part.

He did this with everything. Avionics, flight computers, turbo pumps, fairings, heat shields. Part by part, SpaceX dismantled the supply chain that the entire industry accepted without question and rebuilt it inside one factory.

This is why a Falcon 9 launch costs $67 million while a comparable ULA launch costs $350 million. Not because SpaceX has better technology. Because SpaceX asked a question that nobody in the industry had asked in 50 years: why does this part cost this much?

The answer was always the same. It costs this much because it's always cost this much. That answer is sufficient for an industry that doesn't question its suppliers. It is not sufficient for a man who taught himself rocket science from borrowed textbooks and asks why about everything.

[We are all Trolling 🤨 @WeR_allTrolling]

I am sick and tired of the federal government requiring TAXPAYERS to PAY FOR OTHER PEOPLE’s SHIT.

[Mrs. Gore @MrsGoresDiary]

We DO NOT want the government’s money. We just want them to stop taking ours.