Sander

'k ga dat toch nooit kunnen' is de meest onaantrekkelijke zin ter wereld

[Sander @putterdeput]

We onderschatten hoe hard de mensen met wie we omgaan onze toekomst bepalen

[Lode Cossaer @LodeCossaer]

Om dezelfde (gelijkaardige) redenen moeten sociale woningen eindigen.

[Matthias Dobbelaere-Welvaert @DOBBELAEREW]

Het debat moet fundamenteler: waarom wil deze Europese Unie, zogenaamd het laatste baken van democratische rechten en vrijheden, de toer op van dictatoriale staten, die alles weten, alles horen en alles zien van hun burgers?

Privacy is meer waard dan deze schertsvertoning.

[Lode Cossaer @LodeCossaer]

Wouter Beke: ‘de Europese consument armer maken en de overheid meer macht en controle geven is goed en we hebben hier meer van nodig’.

Jonathan Holsslag is akkoord met het verder beperken van onze welvaart.

[Balaji @balajis]

THE GOLDEN AGE
The fiat crisis has begun. So what wins in the end: gold, digital gold, or some other kind of precious metal or cryptocurrency? Only time will tell, and different assets have different failure modes, but here are some thoughts.

(1) First: remember that Bitcoin's value proposition is seizure resistance. Not your keys, not your coins.

(2) To explain what that means, think through the mechanics of physical gold. It's great...if you can buy it, transport it, secure it, and sell it safely. But it's much easier to do that when you live in a highly organized state, like China. However, such a state can also track you to your doorstep to seize the gold, once it runs up in price. That's what FDR did in the 1930s and what China is fully capable of doing in the 2020s:

(3) So when you think through the game theory, as the price of gold rises, the cries to tax (or seize!) the physical gold will also rise. Note: we need not even mention paper gold here. In a true crisis, such claims are not worth the paper they're printed on. That's why many countries are repatriating their gold. Not your bricks, not your gold!

(4) By contrast to physical gold, digital gold (and cryptocurrency more generally) can be securely bought, sold, sent, and received at any time, in any amount, and in any location. It is invisible, international, instantaneous, and internet-native. And it is transportable, programmable, and easily verifiable in a way gold bricks simply aren't.

(5) In particular, digital gold is seizure-resistant in a way that physical gold is not. The same holds true for cryptocurrency as a class. Go back to the fundamentals: seizure resistance is part of why cryptocurrency was invented as an alternative to precious metals.

(6) This is not to say that physical gold won't have its day. If you live in a safe, small country like the United Arab Emirates, you may be able to buy your gold and eat it too. They probably won't expropriate property there.

(7) Moreover, it is quite likely that many countries (particularly in the East) will soon re-standardize their currencies on gold, or digital gold, or some mixture of precious metals and digital assets. As I've been noting for years, BRICs has been stacking gold bricks:

(8) However, don't overreact towards gold. The successors to the American Empire are China and the Internet. You should think of this as the past and the future replacing the present. China will replace the dollar with gold, along with physical commodities that it can touch, feel, and control. Meanwhile, the Internet will replace the dollar with digital gold, along with digital assets that it can encrypt, script, and verify.

(9) So: feel free to hedge as you see fit between the physical past and the digital future, with just one caveat: namely, you may not want to buy physical precious metals unless you're in a financially and physically secure region of the world. That probably means being outside North America and Western Europe. Because those countries are in the midst of sovereign debt crisis. And as that crisis deepens, both their failing states and their angry mobs are going to be hunting for whatever they can steal.

(10) In other words, what's much more important than allocation is location. Ray Dalio expressed this obliquely in one of his earlier interviews, where he said that "location" is a risk:

What Ray actually meant is: if you live in a jurisdiction that heavily depends on the dollar (which includes the entire G7), you want to get out. Because the total pauperization that follows the end of the dollar may mean that angry mobs (or government agents, or both) may come to your home, steal your assets, and perhaps rip you limb-from-limb in the process.

A cheery thought...yet also historically precedented. That's what came to Eastern Europe and Asia in the 20th century during the rise of communism. And that's what may come to North America and Western Europe after the end of Keynesianism.

Prior to such a situation, you really do not want to buy gold bricks, which you can't transport through an airport. You want to hit the bricks. You want to move faster, escape things. Get as far away from the dollar zone as you can...but physically first, rather than financially.

After all, "staying and fighting" a sovereign debt crisis caused by decades of money printing is like staying and fighting a volcanic eruption caused by decades of earth moving. You didn't cause it, and you can't stop it, but you can easily be wrecked by it. So emigrate just as the early Americans emigrated from Europe. Unless you believe the Irish Americans "betrayed" Ireland by leaving, unless you really want to spend the rest of your life paying down welfare and warfare debts you didn't incur, you should change your location out of the G7. And then do whatever allocation you like.

Or just ignore this analysis and do what you see fit. Your call, of course. If so, I really do hope my MAGA friends are right that "The Golden Age of America Begins Right Now." Because I also think we are on the verge of a type of Golden Age, and a Bitcoin Age...but in a very different way.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Don't throw out the baby (a federal European union) with the bath water (the corrupt and undemocratic European Commission)

[Sander @putterdeput]

We need our unity. We need Europe. We need a globally oriented, powerful European Union.

Just not in the current format with the current people.

[@levelsio @levelsio]

Because the EU is a good thing if it'd be democratic

The US is also a federal union of states and seems to work fine

Europe is much better if it's not fragmented in lots of separate countries

There's little difference between me a Dutch person or German or Spanish in modern identity, we should keep our traditions though, just like Texas has its traditions while having a federal union called the United States of America

But right now the European Union obviously does NOT function and is NOT democratic, because it's been taken over by an unelected authoritarian group of career politician cronies called the European Commission

They stole the power from the people and we have to reform the EU to take it back

Long term a federal European union of states is preferable

Especially if you want to compete with China

[Sander @putterdeput]

@levelsio Hi Pieter, toevallig Chongqing in Januari? Achtergrond is agriculture, zeer geïnteresseerd in de cross-over met AI voor deze old-school sector

[AA @measure_plan]

There's a poem by Charles Bukowski which is semi-relevant to this

TLDR: @levelsio is right, you can always find time to ship regardless of your life situation.

-----

"you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,

something has always been in the

way

but now

I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this

place, a large studio, you should see the space and

the light.

for the first time in my life I’m going to have

a place and the time to

create."

no baby, if you’re going to create

you’re going to create whether you work

16 hours a day in a coal mine

or

you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children

while you’re on

welfare,

you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown

away,

you’re going to create blind

crippled

demented,

you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your

back while

the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,

flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space

have nothing to do with it

and don’t create anything

except maybe a longer life to find

new excuses

for.

[Lode Cossaer @LodeCossaer]

Dit is waarom onze overheid zo arm is, lijkt me.

Onze koopkracht wordt artificieel hoog gehouden.

[Sander @putterdeput]

@CollinRugg Did nobody actually listen to the video? He says he don't know what was offered, he says he can't confirm what Elon says is true. Wtf?

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

go to bed
right now
it can wait until tomorrow
yes you do need more than 6 hr
you are not fine
you do have a lot going on
and why you need sleep
I know your friend only sleeps 4 hrs
he also frequently melts down
off you go

[Lorenzo 🕊️ @LVTornh]

Omdat het me na aan het hart ligt

[Lode Cossaer @LodeCossaer]

Het is gewoon dezelfde naïeve redenering als al die andere socialistische voorstellen: als we gewoon gedrag dat we niet willen, verbieden, dan zal dat alleen maar goede gevolgen hebben. Het is naïef, het is vervelend, dus ha, het is exact wat ge van politici verwacht. 12/12

[Sander @putterdeput]

💯💯💯

[A.I.Warper @AIWarper]

TENCENT casually dropping a 13bn parameter open sourced video model WITH weights 🩵

Looks unreal and can't wait to test it

[Sander @putterdeput]

Omdat liberalisme de échte weg vooruit is, maar de weg nog zeer lang is. Een excellent draadje ⬇️

[Lode Cossaer @LodeCossaer]

Vanavond is er partijraad van Open VLD. Ik kan er helaas niet bij zijn, maar als ik er wél zou zijn, dan zou ik - mocht het onderwerp naar boven komen - het volgende punt maken:

Cfr: @openvld , @EvaDeBleeker

(Sharing is caring als je bezorgd bent om liberalisme in VL.)

[Stanley Pignal @spignal]

It's a rainy, miserable day in Brussels, the kind of weather that makes you want to snuggle up in front of a fire and read a 400-page report on the future of European competitiveness.

[Sander @putterdeput]

@martheisdenaam Weet niet wat er gebeurd is maar Twitter algoritme heeft precies iets gekregen laatste dagen

[Lode Cossaer @LodeCossaer]

Zoals ik gisteren had gehint, sta ik vandaag in @demorgen met een stuk over de richting van een vernieuwde @openvld .

Ik neem je even mee doorheen de redenering.

Retweeten is geapprecieerd, zoals altijd. (Zelfs met feedback/kritiek. ;))
https://t.co/Gx9mHkBPku
/1

[Qatar Airways @qatarairways]

Qatar Airways raises in-flight experience to new heights!

We are proud to be the largest global airline and the first in the MENA region to collaborate with @SpaceX @Starlink

This complimentary, ground-breaking service will enhance our passengers' onboard experience with boundless entertainment and information options.

[Flint @flintstoon]

Update: 5 mannen gesignaleerd in Malmö die zeggen Joost Klein te komen helpen

#Eurovision2024 #Eurovision