BQof02

[Holden Culotta @Holden_Culotta]

Dave Smith: “My grandfather literally worked at a factory and could buy a house on a year’s salary.”

“His wife was a housewife.”

“That has absolutely been robbed from you.”

“And you should be furious.”

“A 25-year-old today might have $100,000 in debt from college.”

“Making $40,000 a year.”

“And the average house is going for $700,000.”

“It’s fucking wrong.”

“It’s because George W. Bush had a bunch of neocons who needed a war for Israel.”

“There’s no reason other than artificial government policy.”

“A giant welfare state.”

“And warfare state.”

“We can’t afford any of it.”

“So we’ve just been printing the money in order to try to pretend we can.”

“That’s the reason we have this economy where you have to depend on your dad until you’re 40.”

@ComicDaveSmith @jackneel

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@MilesFuzzyBear @FurkanGozukara Let me guess, this agenda included getting his companies funded by the gubmint.

Govt contracts are less than 10% of SpaceX revenue. If that was his goal, he needs better goals...

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@DustinH1130 @FurkanGozukara By himself? K.

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@FireAmericaLast @FurkanGozukara "He's a traitor hamas funded socialist!"

-retards on the internet

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@KerryCIsBack @XN05645691 @VigilantFox Gubmint cheese > gubmint peanut butter

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@Aaaaarrrrgggggh @XN05645691 @VigilantFox Because it was awesome. There's a mexican food joint in town that still serves that kind of cheese and it's fantastic. No idea where they get it from now.

[Garbage Deplorable Roberto @Roberto1974]

@VigilantFox EBT pays for sugary food and drinks.
Then medicaid pays for insuline and other medicine.
Our tax dollars pay to get you sick, and then pays for a lifetime of medicine.
Who profits?
Food and Drug companies.
Does it take an expert to see the scheme?

[Tom Elliott @tomselliott]

BREAKING: The Constitutionality Index has now scored every law in the history of the United States. 48,000 laws dating back to 1789.

So far as I'm aware, I'm the first one to ever attempt such a thing.

And we've now ranked every president based on the percentage of laws they enacted were constitutional. The results largely track the overall historical trend: As we move from the founding to the modern era, the percentage of unconstitutional legislation increases.

In fact, 1937 is the tipping point. Pre-FDR's New Deal, every president — Federalist, Whig, Republican, Democrat — scores 98 to 100%. After the New Deal, the average percentage of constitutional laws (by page) drops to 31 percent.

As a result, presidents of the last few decades find themselves at the bottom of the rankings. @JoeBiden is officially the least constitutional president, although Trump isn't far behind. Only Thomas Jefferson scored a perfect 100 percent.

I've also scored congresses, & @SpeakerJohnson's current Congress is, from the perspective of the Constitution, the worst Congress in American history. Constitutional legislation stands at 56.3 by total count, & just 4.3% by total legislative pages.

Another important finding: The largest laws in American history are, every one of them, unconstitutional.

Check it out & let me know what you think. (Links below)

[Kat Timpf @KatTimpf]

On the receiving end of some pretty wild verbal abuse for these comments simply acknowledging affordability IS an issue for many Americans, and buying a home IS harder for younger Americans than it used to be.

Socialism isn’t the answer. But if Republicans keep denying that these issues are real, they will keep losing… particularly with younger voters.

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@Eppsorn @michaelmalice @elonmusk No.

[Michael Malice @michaelmalice]

The anarchist view is that the two political parties are literally rival gangs
The fact that the Dems are explicitly saying theyre going to target @elonmusk and his companies bc he crossed them is a good example of this

[Dave Smith @ComicDaveSmith]

Your terms are acceptable

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

Terrible legislation, but I don't see how this guy can bring up "the thought police" when he supported similar legislation that sought to limit the way in which citizens are allowed to discuss Israel. (New Jersey Assembly Bill 3558.)

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

I’m sorry that I said neurodivergence isn’t real. I meant to say more specifically that it’s an incoherent, ridiculous term invented by activists 45 seconds ago and I lose respect for anyone who uses it. Also it isn’t real.

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@TimUnderhay @FinFreedom414 Ah. I didn't hear the burger king bit at the beginning.

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

Anthropic is about to sell the public a trillion-dollar company controlled by 2 shares worth less than a penny.

And the people buying it will have almost no way to change anything that happens next.

I read the voting section of Anthropic's IPO filing, and I think it's the most one-sided deal ever offered to regular investors at this size:

There is exactly ONE Class F share. It belongs to an LLC owned by 7 of Anthropic's co-founders, and it carries 50.1% of all the votes.

There is exactly ONE Class T share. It belongs to Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust, and it elects a majority of the board.

If Anthropic were ever liquidated, each of those 2 shares would get its par value of $0.00001.

The public gets Class A shares instead. And Anthropic's own filing says this structure may effectively eliminate their ability to influence important decisions, including a sale of the company.

So here's what that means for anyone who buys:

- They can't replace the board if the company stumbles, because the trust picks the majority and the founders hold half the vote.
- They can't push for a sale, even if someone offers a huge premium.
- They can't stop the board from putting the mission ahead of their money. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, so the board has to weigh shareholders against the long-term benefit of humanity.
- And they can't easily sue over it. Delaware law requires at least 2% of the shares or $2 million worth of stock to bring that kind of claim.

This isn't some far-off hypothetical either.

The filing warns that slowing AI development for safety may not maximize stockholder value. It also says Anthropic recently paused training a next-generation model for more than a month over safety and security concerns.

A public shareholder would've had zero say in that pause.

And here's the part I can't get past:

Each co-founder has pledged to give 80% of their Anthropic equity to charity. The Class F vote stays at 50.1% no matter how much stock they still own.

So the founders can give away most of their money and keep all of their control.

Dario Amodei told 60 Minutes last year that he's deeply uncomfortable with AI decisions being made by a few companies and a few people. When he was asked who elected him, he said no one.

Now his company's IPO hands 50.1% of the votes to 7 people, and he's one of them.

And guess who's being lined up to buy it?

Anthropic has weighed reserving 15% to 20% of the IPO for individual investors, according to Bloomberg. JPMorgan is leading the US retail push, and Citigroup is handling retail buyers in places like Japan, Britain and Canada.

The same filing warns that AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.

So regular people are being asked to buy a company that says its product could threaten humanity, with no real vote on how it's run.

Anthropic's answer is that this is the whole point. The structure is built to keep Wall Street from pressuring it into cutting corners on safety. The trustees have no financial stake in the company. Google and Meta gave their founders control and still made shareholders rich. And every buyer gets all of this in writing before they buy.

But Zuckerberg's control comes from shares he owns, so when Meta's stock falls, he loses money too. Anthropic's 2 control shares can't lose anything.

Anyone buying this IPO is paying full price to hand control to 7 founders and 5 trustees.

They're desperate for money and they don't care about your money.

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

@KeeperOTForest @ComicDaveSmith Israel is a socialist society. Funded by the US taxpayer at that. You are aware of that right?

[BQof02 @RealAaron2002]

This is it. But people still insist on voting "the lesser evil". Until we realize that is the reason they have us by the balls and reject it outright and reject those who espouse this sentiment, we are doomed to communist leadership and weak, half-assed "opposition".

There should be open opposition and calls for rectification of this wrong immediately. The Republican party should be made to realize that until Thune and his ilk are spewed from the party like so much raw sewage, they will not be elected. No one can drain the swamp except those of us who put them there in the hopes that they suddenly find a moral compass and a sack. They never do.

The Democrats must do the same for their own party if they hope to reclaim it from the communists. I doubt they will though. They have the same "lesser evil" mindset.

[Leo @Leonajardinho]

Biggest "the kids are fucked" moment I've had recently was dealing with home insurance.

Bought a starter home, paid my monthly premium every single month for 4 years straight without missing a dime.

A severe storm knocked tree branches through the roof. I called to file a claim for $3,500 in repairs.

Insurance adjuster walked out, wrote a check for $1,200 after my deductible, then sent a non-renewal notice two weeks later saying I was now "high risk."

Got me curious, so I looked into how property insurance models operate today.

Turns out insurance companies literally drop customers for using the exact service they paid thousands to hold, while raising rates across the board to protect corporate profit margins.

I was naive enough to think insurance was protection against emergencies.

In reality, you're just paying a mandatory subscription fee for a service you're penalized for ever using.

[Captain Ⓐncapistan @CptAncapistan]

This is one of my favorite @ComicDaveSmith clips in a long time, and it's something we should absolutely be talking about more:

Academia is a Ponzi scheme and a gov't welfare program that primarily serves to start kids' adult lives off in debt.

"If Thomas Sowell's or FA Hayek's economics were followed, all of academia is put out of business. So, shocking that academia hasn't valued them as being really intelligent thinkers. It's directly against their incentives."

"Academia is entirely a government program. It's completely artificial. There's no market demand for it...Student loans is a government program....Pick an 18 year-old and walk into a bank and say, 'I want a $200,000 loan,' but for a business, for a house...you'll get laughed out of the bank."

"It's unbelievable there's not one college professor who feels a moral obligation on day one to go, 'Hey, I'm teaching you environmental studies, and they're charging you 200 grand for this degree; you should really think about whether this is worth it.'"

"College is a multi-trillion dollar program. Where did we take that from? Who did we take that from? What else might we have had if we hadn't done this?"

"You've got your kids all going into debt on essentially a welfare program, but who gets the welfare? Not even the kids. The kids just get the debt."

On a personal note, I spent six years in higher education. I got a Masters in Computer Science (CS) from one of the best CS schools in the country. It did not take long once I got out into the real world to see how much more impressive programmers are just in the games industry than in academia. All of CS is just chasing private industry and trying to teach their students what those people accomplished.

• Unix and C++ were invented at Bell Labs
• Java was invented at Sun Microsystems
• The GUI was developed at Xerox and put into mass production by Apple
• Every single tier 1 ISP that laid the cables to make the internet as you know it possible are private sector businesses

I was even studying AI in grad school, and of course the AI breakthrough came out of the private sector when academia was busy fiddling around with dead-end tech demos that would never pass the Turing Test.

College is an outdated model from time when that was where you went to find all the books. Government student loan programs need to be ended NOW, and if you're someone who takes part in the hiring process at your company, do what I did and encourage your company to remove college degrees as a prerequisite for applying. This madness must stop. It's turning all of our kids into socialists because they blame the failures of this system on capitalism because that's what their Marxist college professors who've never worked in the real world told them to blame it on.