Mas

Loving football, hockey and MMA. Science, technology and a bit of poetry too.

[Mike and Jeff show @AgrisAcademy @AgrisAcademy]

My Venezuela experience as head of trading in the region for Cargill.

Cargill was/is the leading producer of critical staple ingredients such as flour, pasta, vegetable oil, and rice in VZ. I am not saying I agree with grabbing the dictator, but I did have a front row seat to the damage a kleptocracy did to innocent people.
1. The government took over our "minute rice" facility at gunpoint because we were "gouging" the nation's poor. The government was never able to run the plant. It never ran again. It was returned years later with no equipment inside
2. There are 1000's of generals in the army. They are each given a slice of the economy to loot. The large number of generals made it difficult to organize a coup against the regime.
3. The government opened grocery stores and sold staples below the cost we sold them to the government. In theory they used petro oil money to lower grocery prices. Our regular grocery outlets were forced out of business. When the government demanded we sell them products below cost we simply had to shut down. The populous became ever more dependent on the government handouts. (PS this is the mayor of New York City's proposal.
4. Dollars- We needed dollars to go buy raw materials like wheat from places like the US and Canada. The government would periodically allocate us some dollars that could only be spent for raw materials and freight. Eventually only the local companies that can and would pay bribes got dollar allocations. We had several facilities closed for lack of raw material
5. My employees liked working for Cargill. The office was an armed compound with access to a gym, high speed internet, global communications, and a weekly box of basic staples. Cargill provided a safe and secure environment if only for the working hours.
6. Employees became very close to others inside the apartment building. Going out on the street with a desperate population was not advisable.
7. I needed wood pallets for feed. We tried to export wood pallets to swap for grain. We refused to pay the bribes it would take to export the pallets
8. I once tried to set up a closed loop wheat planting to flour mill supply chain. A. They came and stole all the seed wheat for food. When we tried to ship in seed wheat in containers via US donors there was no way to get it out of the port without it being stolen
9. Livestock- Our feed business completely collapsed. Even if you could raise a pig, you couldn't defend it from being stolen. People with guns were hungry.
10. Employees- In the end my highly skilled team alone with other highly educated people chose to leave. Cargill often found jobs for them in other Latin countries. The regime was more than happy to see the well-educated leave the country. Setting these employees up with high quality stable jobs after fleeing remains one of the best things I ever did in my career. No one remembers millions in trading earnings.

This is a short list. In my opinion the first money spent needs to happen now and it needs to be food. The US is already on the clock. The current regime does not care if it starves the population. The orgy of theft will actually accelerate if they believe their days are numbered. VZ should be an outstanding customer of US grown ag products. Rice, bread wheat, veg oil ect. Feed the people first.

Jeff Kazin
Former head trading Cargill

[Dear Self. @Dearme2_]

Neverrrrrrrrr

[Andy Kong @oldestasian]

However big you think an ostrich egg is, it’s bigger

[FIFA Club Football @FIFACF]

CHELSEA ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS. 🏆

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

FIFA CLUB WORLD CUP WINNERS!!! 🏆

[stepfanie tyler @stepfanie]

“abolish capitalism!”

cool. who grows the food???

no seriously—who’s out there at dawn breaking their back in the dirt, fixing broken irrigation lines, replacing a tractor axle in 110° heat—for free? because you think profit is mean?

who mines the lithium for your laptop, the cobalt for your EV battery, the iron for your train rails? who refines it? who ships it? who builds the ships? who insures them when they catch fire in the middle of the ocean?

who unloads the containers at the port? who drives the truck across 4 states? who services the diesel engine at the roadside stop in Nebraska when it breaks at 3am?

who keeps track of inventory, repairs the refrigeration system, updates the software, cleans the floors, builds the shelves, trains the workers, manages the risk, pays the legal fees, replaces the lightbulbs, handles the theft, the overtime, the breakdowns, the lawsuits?

who coordinates all of this across time zones and continents without profit?

you think the whole supply chain is just gonna keep running because everyone suddenly caught a case of the warm fuzzies???

you think people are going to wake up and go do hard, thankless, physical labor for vibes?

capitalism doesn’t work because people are good. it works because people are selfish and it figured out how to harness that into infrastructure. it’s the only system that survives human nature without needing to rewrite it

you kill profit, you kill production. you kill production, you kill logistics. you kill logistics, and suddenly it’s day four of your anti-capitalist utopia and the shelves are empty, the power’s out, the pharmacy’s closed, and nobody knows how to fix a fucking thing

anti-capitalism isn’t a philosophy. it’s a death wish dressed up as a virtue signal

it’s the aesthetic of rebellion powered by an iPhone, subsidized by Uber Eats, and resting on 400 years of industrial infrastructure you take for granted because you’ve never built a single useful thing in your life

you’re not oppressed. you’re just ungrateful

and the second you get your little no-profit revolution, you’ll find out exactly how long society runs on vibes: about three days, give or take—then the generators fail and you’re boiling rainwater so you can heat up your shitty powdered food

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Happy birthday to our all-time leading goalscorer and legendary midfielder, Frank Lampard! 💙🎂

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

It's happened again. 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

[Premier League @premierleague]

Set complete ✅

Chelsea are the first club to win every European major honour 👏

[Mas @masjk229]

@FIFAWorldCup Ronaldinho

Lampard

Hazard

[le bosch 🍂 @leonymusbosch]

My favorite fact about Bosnia is that they're not allowed in Eurovision because they owe them money and it's the most bosnian thing ever

[Actual Ballers @ActualBallers]

Mario Mandzukic

[Troll Football @TrollFootball]

RT if you knew Núñez would miss his penalty.

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Today marks 120 years of Chelsea Football Club.  

This game is what we make it. 💙🥹

[Raphael Barberi📷 @itsrapha83]

If you tap, hold and load in 4k, you’ll be able to count every single pebble in that street ;)

[anna 🏹 @myelessar]

i love lord of the rings because everyone is appreciated. bill the pony who left at moria? fan favourite. a literal siege weapon? fan favourite. middle management orc who lectures saruman? fan favourite. ent on fire who puts itself out in the flood? fan favourite.

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden.

Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.

Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.

A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.

Ebba Busch added that Germany's decision to dismantle its nuclear power plants has also other detrimental effects for Europe:

"I'm furious with the Germans. They have made a decision for their country, which they have the right to make; it's their right to decide. But it has had very serious consequences, also for the EU's competitiveness because we see that German competitiveness has dropped significantly."

She said that Germany's actions have also reduced its ability to help Ukraine.

- “After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they still chose to dismantle their nuclear power plants... I respect that people can have different opinions about nuclear power plants, but we could have kept it. They are important because they are baseload power plants.

Having access to such baseload power plants would have increased the transmission capacity from Germany to other electricity price areas in Europe, driving down prices for all of us"

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

For my British and European friends who are "shocked" and "surprised", here are 10 reasons you didn't see this coming.

Read this short post and then read the replies from our American friends who will confirm what I'm saying.

1. Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world. America is a nation of people who conquered a continent. They love strength. They love winning. Any leader who appeals to that has an automatic advantage.

2. Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline. They don't have Net Zero here, they believe in producing their own energy and making it as cheap as possible because they know that their prosperity depends on it.

3. Prices for most basic goods in the US have increased rapidly and are sky high. What the official statistics say about inflation and the reality of people's lives are not the same.

4. Unlike you, Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don't care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don't resent success, they celebrate it.

5. Americans are the most pro-immigration people in the world. Read that again. Seriously, read it again. Americans love an immigrant success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming illegally. They believe in having a border.

6. Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country's imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.

7. Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left's reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.

8. Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump's rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.

9. Americans are deeply optimistic people. They hate negativity. The woke view of American history as a series of evils for which they must eternally apologise is utterly abhorrent to them. They believe in moving forward together, not endlessly obsessing about the past.

10. America is a country whose founding story is one of resistance to government overreach. They loathe unnecessary restrictions, regulations and control. They understand that freedom comes with the price of self-reliance and they pay it gladly.

[FuckCars @FuckCarsReddit]

Post your favorite "Desire Paths".

These are paths that naturally form as a result of bad planning.