Blake Lord

Sports, Longevity, Crypto, & Finance

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

The committee made it abundantly clear it’s not merit based. The playoffs is just the cool kids club and BYU isn’t perceived as a cool kid. ND and the SEC are the cool kids. The whole thing is a sham

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

Greed in tradfi is little different than greed in crypto

Greed is ever present... it's a derogatory term for profit maximizing, which all people engage in.

When you see a disparity such as this forex pair at the airport, it's not due to excess greed (indeed the greed of a competitor should've brought that price spread down), but due rather to inefficiencies, sometimes caused by the market, but usually caused by regulatory obstacles.

In this case, it's illegal for an app developer to offer frictionless forex trading on a mobile device, in which funds can be instantly paid also from the phone to any vendor.

It's not in your hands because of regulation.

Greed of the businessman takes the blame, but the culprit is the unseen folly of regulatory machinations. Or, perhaps you could call it the greed of the regulator in his pursuit of control.

Crypto solves this kind of problem not because its adherents are less greedy, but because the tech, at its best, can transcend such machinations, and obviates such control.

[Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11]

Mrs. Erika Kirk Addresses The Nation After Her Husband’s Assassination

@TPUSA @MrsErikaKirk

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

TO MY GREAT FELLOW AMERICANS…

[QuikTrip @QuikTrip]

500 retweets and I’ll reveal why we call ourselves QT

[Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social @TrumpDailyPosts]

I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross. The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!

Donald Trump Truth Social 07:00 PM EST 01/21/25

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

This is even more damning when one realizes this increase is occurring despite all technological innovations in production and distribution.

The price should be falling over time.

Your fiat money is being continually debased; its value syphoned at the margins to politically connected constituencies.

When done slowly enough, few perceive the fraud.

The Fed’s role is to ensure it’s done slowly enough.

[Blake Lord @blake_lord]

@lordandrew1 EVERY SEC GAME IS AN AMAZING GAME!

[Vincent Weisser @vincentweisser]

Peter Thiel making the case for open source, decentralized AI

"The real AI risk is a totalitarian world government... Global compute governance would be very heavy-handed, creating a dystopian one-world nanny-state government."

https://t.co/ZxXEAYwOD8

[Riley Gaines @Riley_Gaines_]

Obama last week: "How did things get so divisive?"

MSNBC last night:

[Sal the Agorist @SallyMayweather]

Probably the most important political discourse I’ve heard since Ron Paul’s “What If” speech…

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

IN THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM, THE WEST’S REAL ENEMY IS ITSELF

American politicians speak constantly about the indispensable role of the United States in leading the free world against authoritarianism. If that is true, why is the White House so silent in the face of new global threats to free speech?

In January, American citizen Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison for posting YouTube videos; the State Department didn’t lift a finger to help. Last week, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France for the crime of insufficient content moderation.

Now Brazil has banned X for resisting the diktats of a tyrannical judge, who salivates over the possibility of jailing @elonmusk. The EU is one step behind, with Eurocrat Thierry Breton pursuing a criminal investigation against Elon for “platforming disinformation,” which Breton defines to include a conversation with Donald Trump.

In the UK, the government of Keir Starmer imprisons critics of open borders with more zeal than it prosecutes violent crime. In Canada, Justin Trudeau crushed a trucker protest against vaccine mandates by asserting sweeping new powers to freeze bank accounts.

At no point has the White House expressed concern about this new iron curtain that seems to be descending across the West. Quite the contrary, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured Meta to censor during Covid. Worse, the FBI primed Facebook to censor true stories about Biden Family corruption by suggesting that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation (even though the FBI knew it was authentic).

Barring court intervention, TikTok will shut down in the U.S. on January 19, 2025 thanks to a new power authorized by Congress to ban websites and applications that the President determines are subject to the influence of a foreign adversary. X may not be far behind if liberal elites and deep state apparatchiks like Robert Reich and Alexander Vindman get their wish. They have called for the U.S. to adopt Brazil’s and the EU’s approach and “rein in” Elon Musk.

Hypocritically, the same voices demanding this crackdown are also the loudest in proclaiming the West to be engaged in a “war on authoritarianism” against countries like Russia and China. But whatever their other sins, Russia and China are in no position to deprive American citizens of their free speech rights; only our own government can do that.

Similarly, if Western leaders truly wanted to prevent authoritarianism, the easiest place to start would be at home, protecting the civil liberties of their own citizens. Instead they seem obsessed with deflecting the public’s attention onto foreign enemies, as Orwell depicted in the Two Minutes Hate in 1984.

As this battle over free speech heats up in an election year, where do the candidates stand? Donald Trump has declared his support for free speech whereas Kamala Harris has said nothing and can be expected to continue her administration’s policy of tacit approval of creeping censorship. In just two months, Americans will decide. Do we actually lead the free world in standing up for free speech, or do we accept the authoritarianism we claim to detest so much?

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Few policies are as ruinously destructive to society as those that reduce growth.

[Sean Linehan @seanlinehan]

Imagine you own a large apartment complex.

France says, "It is a legal requirement to put microphones in every room and let us listen."

You say, "No, people should be able to have private conversations."

They arrest you.

The digital equivalent just happened to Pavel Durov.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery

[Blake Lord @blake_lord]

@AskVenice MOR

[Blake Lord @blake_lord]

@ErikVoorhees Wonderful, as always. Keep on with the good fight for basic human rights

[Jake Chervinsky @jchervinsky]

Privacy is normal.

Living in a surveillance state in which the government demands to watch everything we do with our money at all times without obtaining a warrant is NOT normal.

Treating software developers who build privacy-preserving technology as criminals is reprehensible.