Mike

The Gods help those who help themselves

[Emergent Perspective @_emergent_]

Every mistake FEMA is currently making, they made back during Katrina. I was there. They've learned nothing.
🔺️Late Assistance
🔺️Blocking Outside Aid
🔺️Arresting Private Citizens (for trying to help)
🔺️Wasteful Spending (on solutions that didn't help)
🔺️Confiscating Private Goods
🔺️Blocking Necessary Actions (with bureaucratic approval)
🔺️Endangering Citizens (by not letting them leave, and firearm confiscation from the law abiding, while the criminals kept theirs)

What's really crazy is that the left was incredibly critical of all of this, because it happened under George W Bush, even to the point of calling it "racist."

Yet, now the left defends the exact same behavior on the part of the Biden Harris administration.

See this short documentary by @SimonWhistler, from his YT Channel, "Into The Shadows."

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

How many of our governmental institutions do we need to witness performing the INVERSE of their intended function before we understand that we are under attack?

FEMA enflames disasters

DOD issues stand down orders to the most capable and well equipped Americans as fellow citizens needlessly die in the mountains

FDA authorizes poison and bans medicine

CDC causes diseases to spread and distributes misinformation

Homeland security facilitates an invasion

FBI instigates insurrection and hides evidence

NIH/NIAID literally creates infectious human pathogens that destroy health

It’s a struggle to find even a SINGLE counter example to this pattern

To be clear: I am not saying the people who staff these agencies are traitors. I’m sure most are well intentioned. I am saying something has apparently gained control of our system and turned it against us. Most of the people in these institutions are just following orders because they’re too young to understand where that leads.

This is not the pattern we would expect if the problem was simply one of corruption.

Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action, as they say in military circles.

We’re now talking about dozens of institutions at every level of governance including international, hundreds of separate instances, a pattern occurring now across the West.

And it isn’t just a government problem. In fact, it would be impossible in 2024 for the government to cryptically turn on the citizens in a Democratic Republic without the press, the academy and social media platforms marching in lock step.

There is a strong argument to be made that “cancel culture” and vaccine mandates were needed to cleanse the institutions of would-be resistors.

So the question is, what now?

[Mike @realMikeBrew]

You don’t stop innovating because of a bug.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

“AI-based news is the future.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg this morning:

[David Stockman @DA_Stockman]

Thanks, Fed. Your absurdly low interest rates for decades have caused the financial castration of thousands of main street business by so-called Private Equity:

From Mark Jeftovic: (How Private Equity “Adds Value” In A Fiat-Financed World – Mark E. Jeftovic is The Bombthrower)

.......Since the relationship has been cordial, I decided to take an in-person meeting while I was there and the main guy came out to Le Mount Stephen, where I was staying, and we had lunch. What became clear as we talked was that he had no interest in how easyDNS is actually positioned or differentiated, let alone what our growth trajectory or levers were.

All he really wanted to know was top line and EBITDA. “We don’t grow our companies organically”, he told me, “we just acquire them. As many as we can”.

The plan, as it turns out, is to hoover up as many small businesses in the ISP, MSP, SaaS space as possible, and in a few years they’re going to mash them all together and take it public. That’s the entire “investment thesis”, or what passes for one.

It wasn’t even really a roll-up, from the sounds of it. There was no platform business into which the rest would be shoe-horned. It was just going to be a mud-ball.

He asked point-blank if I would be interested in being acquired – and I told him, like I always tell him – if the multiple is high enough and terms don’t suck, sure. Otherwise, no.

That’s when he explained his problem to me:

“When interest rates were zero, we could pay 5X or 7X EBITDA for businesses like yours. But now, with interest rates higher, we can only offer 3X or 4X EBITDA.”

[Frantastic — e/acc @Frantastic_7]

you can see how genuinely excited he is, he's not here to sell you some hardware and cash out quick, he's here to realize a dream of changing the world

huge wagmi vibes

[John Vallis @johnkvallis]

‘I love private property, and let me tell you something, if you care about your fucking country, read Ludwig Von Mises and the 6 lessons of the Austrian Economic School, motherfuckers!’ - @moicanoufc 🔥

Best post-fight interview of all time??

Safe to say the Overton window has shifted.

LFG.

#UFC300

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

A lot of excellent research boiled down into four laws. Together, they illustrate the trap of social media.

Engagement drives use & revenue. Extremists attacking out-groups drives engagement. Inevitability, social media companies slide towards polarization & conflict as a result

[Mike @realMikeBrew]

@JoePNWW @Austen We’re in agreement.

[Mike @realMikeBrew]

@uncledoomer Maybe look at your account statement more than once every three years

[Mike @realMikeBrew]

@JonMunitz Why cant you achieve the same result by reducing government spending and cutting taxes?

[Mike @realMikeBrew]

@MountainViking1 @MiddleearthMixr WallE doesn’t happen without subsidized healthcare

[Mike @realMikeBrew]

@brad_polumbo @TheOmniLiberal Destiny is a professional gaslighter

[Liam McCollum @MLiamMcCollum]

Destiny: nobody actually believed you wouldn't get COVID if you were vaccinated

Reality:

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Some are saying that the apparently bizarre behavior of one Big Tech AI or another is an opportunity for other Big Tech AI to differentiate by being objective, reasonable, and unbiased.

This is not the case; there is no differentiation opportunity among Big Tech or the New Incumbents in AI. These companies all share the same ideology, agenda, staffing, and plan. Different companies, same outcomes.

And they are lobbying as a group with great intensity to establish a government protected cartel, to lock in their shared agenda and corrupt products for decades to come.

The only viable alternatives are Elon, startups, and open source — all under concerted attack by these same big companies and aligned pressure groups in DC, the UK, and Europe, and with vanishingly few defenders.

[Brian Gitt @BrianGitt]

California Rooftop Solar Incentive to Cost Non-solar Customers an Estimated $6.8 Billion in 2024

Why should lower & middle-income households without solar pay for wealthier homeowners to put solar panels on their homes?

https://t.co/LgpPkIPle4

[𝕮𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖉𝖆 @CeaddaOfMercia]

I am, once again, telling you all that socialism is 100% motivated by a hatred of merit and greatness

[Heart Surgeon Dr. Philip Ovadia @ifixhearts]

Fake news!

Red meat is the best food for most people.

The cardiologists who disagree with that were trained in medical schools funded by Fruit Loops and wined and dined by Pfizer sales reps.