To be honest, after it's 80% decline, I thought Netflix wasn't a bad buy. I didn't at the time, because it just didn't drive with my strategy which avoids the US market for the most part, but at the time I think the PE ratio made it down to like 19 which was just about where Netflix should be.
I think it's safe to say that the phrase "this too shall pass" applies. No tyranny lasts forever.
Everything that you're seeing right now is happening in part because the powers that be aren't stupid, they know full well their days are numbered. I'm sure that they are well read on history and they have all read about what happened to the Jacobins at the end of the reign of terror, and the scale of what they've done this time is so much larger.
Everything that you're seeing right now is happening in part because the powers that be aren't stupid, they know full well their days are numbered. I'm sure that they are well read on history and they have all read about what happened to the Jacobins at the end of the reign of terror, and the scale of what they've done this time is so much larger.
At this point considering what they just did to him, I'm not entirely convinced any "slip" is freudian and not intentional.
If the UK ever banned twitter, it would be like all those celebrities who "Left Twitter" and "Joined Mastodon".
Which is to say it won't last a week.
Which is to say it won't last a week.
The fascists win, and make up the government of Spain until the 1970s when the fascist dictator died of old age and his successor decided he'd rather not be a fascist dictator, and instead helps to install a Democratic constitutional monarchy.
Ngl, I still need to play GTA 4 and 5. I've owned them forever but just haven't played them.
People aren't even going to believe that the housing market is crashing until long after it's already done crashing.
Should have been self-evident to anyone with half a brain that you can't have prices like that forever because nobody actually has that kind of money... I mean there might be a few thousand people on the planet Earth with enough money to buy a million dollar condo in toronto, but if you have that kind of money why are you buying a million dollar condo in Toronto? For that matter, a two million dollar condo in Vancouver!
Should have been self-evident to anyone with half a brain that you can't have prices like that forever because nobody actually has that kind of money... I mean there might be a few thousand people on the planet Earth with enough money to buy a million dollar condo in toronto, but if you have that kind of money why are you buying a million dollar condo in Toronto? For that matter, a two million dollar condo in Vancouver!
False DMCA claims should be treated the same as boxing up the latest season of a popular TV show and trying to sell it in Walmart. Essentially a corporate death sentence.
Sad thing about Winnipeg is the light pollution in the city is so bad you can't really see the sky.
There's somw truly incredible spots to watch the Northern lights in manitoba though.
There's somw truly incredible spots to watch the Northern lights in manitoba though.
My garden: everything dies.
A random block sidewalk in vietnam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYnUQ5CITs
A random block sidewalk in vietnam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYnUQ5CITs
Goddamnit Hitler you need to wash your dishes.
"Vould you like me to Conquer Europe?"
No, I want you to wash your dishes
"Do you vant me to kill ze jews?"
NO I WANT YOU TO CLEAN YOUR GODDAMNED DISHES
"Vould you like me to Conquer Europe?"
No, I want you to wash your dishes
"Do you vant me to kill ze jews?"
NO I WANT YOU TO CLEAN YOUR GODDAMNED DISHES
Leftists always talk about "I'm moving to Canada!", but Canada:
1. requires voter ID
2. knows who won the election the night of the eletion
1. requires voter ID
2. knows who won the election the night of the eletion
Follow enough people and it becomes common at certain times of the week.
That fact totally changed the way I look at social media -- do I really need millions seeing my posts when I see more than I can even do anything with and I get plenty of meaningful engagement with my posts?
That fact totally changed the way I look at social media -- do I really need millions seeing my posts when I see more than I can even do anything with and I get plenty of meaningful engagement with my posts?
This is the first episode that I've listened to, and I found it very interesting and entertaining. But man, if part of your religion is a list of your favorite anime, then you have achieved unlimited cringeworks.
Fact check: no, the Seine river is not dangerous
Article body: while it is true e coli levels are elevated and many swimmers in the Olympics were so sick they had to drop out [...]
Article body: while it is true e coli levels are elevated and many swimmers in the Olympics were so sick they had to drop out [...]
I'd say that the feedback from some of the first democrats in recorded history is awfully important, especially when it is so predictive.
Plato's Republic describes the forms of government. The initial aristocracy (defined as rule by the best people) is dominated by the most wise and just in a society. Eventually, the children of those wise men inherit power, but they are not necessarily wise and instead work to cultivate wealth rather than virtue, leading to a focus on values such as warfare and courage as those are perceived to be the virtues that lead to wealth. Eventually, the government is replaced with oligarchy, as the wealthy are the rulers. Eventually, the socioeconomic divide grows and those tensions result in demands that the majority get a stake in government, creating a democracy.
The time of democracy is a time of populism, and so the lower class looks at the upper class and a democrat will say "You have so much, we have less, surely you can share what you have?" and so the democrats will vote to take from some and give to others. Through this, the upper class will shrink, and the lower class will grow. Eventually, many of the wealthy will have hidden their wealth such that nobody can vote to take it from them, and there won't be any wealth left to take.
At that time, a demagogue will step in and promise the world, and the government will slip into tyranny.
Aristotle's "Politics" speaks of democracy, as well as oligarchy, monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, and polity. He argues that in a democracy, the poor, who are the majority, will pursue their own interests rather than the common good, leading to instability and injustice. This is in contrast to oligarchy, where he suggests the rich, who make up the powerful under such a system, will pursue *their* own interests rather than the common good, again leading to instability and injustice. He suggests that a form of democracy that helps curb the excesses of the rich and the poor by having a strong middle class. The fundamental problem to Aristotle is people voting in their own self-interest rather than in the common good.
Both Plato and Aristotle prefer the concept of aristocracy as defined as wisest and most just by the best of people for the common good, not the concept of hereditary nobility as we've seen through the ages.
Both writers saw the democracy to be dangerous and lead to tyranny.
As for what happened to Athenian Democracy, first they lost in the Peloponnesian war to Sparta leading to the installation of "the thirty tyrants" who ended the democracy. Later there was a short-lived democratic revival before Athens was taken over by the Macedonian monarchy, before eventually being conquered by Rome.
Interestingly, plays recovered from the time suggest that at least some wise Greeks knew full well that they were democratically marching off a cliff, but under democracy, a mob always has a greater weight than a few wise people.
Rome itself is also a cautionary tale -- while it was much different than liberal democracy, it was a republic with democratic elements that fell because after a bunch of different classes acting in self-interested ways to accumulate wealth and power, eventually the Rubicon was passed and Rome became an Empire under a tyrant for the rest of its existence.
Another example of tyranny arising out of democracy is Nazi Germany arising directly out of the Weimar republic, which was by far the most progressive democracy on the planet at the time, which is arguably one of the things that led to its downfall.
Having evolved from governments making up 10% of the economy to the current form of 50% of the economy, and a rising alienation between different groups of people, a declining standard of living, a shrinking middle class that's having its blood sucked out of it by both the poor and the rich, I think the warnings of both writers are prescient. Western democracy may in fact be in its late stages -- we may even already be past the breaking point, in a cryptotyranny that pretends it's still a democracy while happily eliminating the concept of liberty using near total control of the media to sell it as something else.
According to the Greeks including Plato, Aristotle, and Herodotus, one of the signs of a tyrant is a reliance on foreigners rather than the local population. It represents the increasing disconnect between the tyrant and the population they are supposed to rule. This isn't definitive, but it certainly is a sign that perhaps western society has transitioned into tyranny considering the most important issues are not really about the common person's problems but the problems of foreign countries and people who are specifically not representative of the typical people.
When discussing "Democracy", it's important to question whether the line we're walking is actually towards a better future, or if we're just digging deeper into our developing tyranny. I personally think that given the massive increase in the size of government and massive declines in the middle class and the grinding decline in quality of life that's led to a demographic cliff in front of us, and governments around the world slowly closing its hands around the throats of people including increasing attacks on fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech including Canada's intervention into the Internet with constantly increasing censorship such as bills C-11, C-18, and new bills incoming this year, there's a very real risk that we're living in tyranny already.
My country's leadership tripled the federal debt in 8 years. Increased taxes. Higher inflation than the US. Many scandals costing taxpayers billions of dollars in a country where a billion dollars actually matters, but all memory holed by a press that's been paid off (and our tyrant laughs about it). All that money spent, but rising homelessness has led to homeless encampments in every city, despite being a place where the weather here will kill you dead half the year. Have you ever felt -40C? I have, you can feel your body freezing to death, you can feel the fact you're going to die, but there's encampments of people living outside because they had nowhere else to go, despite a trillion dollars in new debt. Meanwhile the leadership focuses on things totally disconnected from the realities faced by those ruled, spending time and money on wars on the other side of the world. Feels like tyranny to me.
Arguably, one of the key things that matter a lot to having a democracy or a democratic republic that thrives is having a populace that is interested in the good of society as a whole and is willing to disregard their own interests, but has a good understanding of what constitutes the common good. How many people will ever have a conversation like ours, compared to the people regurgitating word for word what establishment media tells them? How many people vote but don't really think about it because they've got some simplistic heuristic to follow?
I recently went back to some of the establishment media I used to watch, and the way they uncritically presented government data in the way the government wants it presented. The big news story that day was that the jobs numbers were a huge hit, but the fact is that 11 of the past 12 numbers were revised way down afterwards wasn't mentioned. I used to rely on that media, until I realized my predictions were all wrong. After I dropped those sources and found more accurate ones, suddenly I found my predictions improving significantly.
Besides establishment media, we now have overwhelming proof that big tech social media was directly receiving marching orders from the government. Directly. One allegation is that there was a specific gateway so government agents could come in and silence dissenting posts. It isn't often in history the state has been able to interject in conversations between people like it can today. Unprecedented tyranny. Justified by democracy, even though it's totally undemocratic.
Plato's Republic describes the forms of government. The initial aristocracy (defined as rule by the best people) is dominated by the most wise and just in a society. Eventually, the children of those wise men inherit power, but they are not necessarily wise and instead work to cultivate wealth rather than virtue, leading to a focus on values such as warfare and courage as those are perceived to be the virtues that lead to wealth. Eventually, the government is replaced with oligarchy, as the wealthy are the rulers. Eventually, the socioeconomic divide grows and those tensions result in demands that the majority get a stake in government, creating a democracy.
The time of democracy is a time of populism, and so the lower class looks at the upper class and a democrat will say "You have so much, we have less, surely you can share what you have?" and so the democrats will vote to take from some and give to others. Through this, the upper class will shrink, and the lower class will grow. Eventually, many of the wealthy will have hidden their wealth such that nobody can vote to take it from them, and there won't be any wealth left to take.
At that time, a demagogue will step in and promise the world, and the government will slip into tyranny.
Aristotle's "Politics" speaks of democracy, as well as oligarchy, monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, and polity. He argues that in a democracy, the poor, who are the majority, will pursue their own interests rather than the common good, leading to instability and injustice. This is in contrast to oligarchy, where he suggests the rich, who make up the powerful under such a system, will pursue *their* own interests rather than the common good, again leading to instability and injustice. He suggests that a form of democracy that helps curb the excesses of the rich and the poor by having a strong middle class. The fundamental problem to Aristotle is people voting in their own self-interest rather than in the common good.
Both Plato and Aristotle prefer the concept of aristocracy as defined as wisest and most just by the best of people for the common good, not the concept of hereditary nobility as we've seen through the ages.
Both writers saw the democracy to be dangerous and lead to tyranny.
As for what happened to Athenian Democracy, first they lost in the Peloponnesian war to Sparta leading to the installation of "the thirty tyrants" who ended the democracy. Later there was a short-lived democratic revival before Athens was taken over by the Macedonian monarchy, before eventually being conquered by Rome.
Interestingly, plays recovered from the time suggest that at least some wise Greeks knew full well that they were democratically marching off a cliff, but under democracy, a mob always has a greater weight than a few wise people.
Rome itself is also a cautionary tale -- while it was much different than liberal democracy, it was a republic with democratic elements that fell because after a bunch of different classes acting in self-interested ways to accumulate wealth and power, eventually the Rubicon was passed and Rome became an Empire under a tyrant for the rest of its existence.
Another example of tyranny arising out of democracy is Nazi Germany arising directly out of the Weimar republic, which was by far the most progressive democracy on the planet at the time, which is arguably one of the things that led to its downfall.
Having evolved from governments making up 10% of the economy to the current form of 50% of the economy, and a rising alienation between different groups of people, a declining standard of living, a shrinking middle class that's having its blood sucked out of it by both the poor and the rich, I think the warnings of both writers are prescient. Western democracy may in fact be in its late stages -- we may even already be past the breaking point, in a cryptotyranny that pretends it's still a democracy while happily eliminating the concept of liberty using near total control of the media to sell it as something else.
According to the Greeks including Plato, Aristotle, and Herodotus, one of the signs of a tyrant is a reliance on foreigners rather than the local population. It represents the increasing disconnect between the tyrant and the population they are supposed to rule. This isn't definitive, but it certainly is a sign that perhaps western society has transitioned into tyranny considering the most important issues are not really about the common person's problems but the problems of foreign countries and people who are specifically not representative of the typical people.
When discussing "Democracy", it's important to question whether the line we're walking is actually towards a better future, or if we're just digging deeper into our developing tyranny. I personally think that given the massive increase in the size of government and massive declines in the middle class and the grinding decline in quality of life that's led to a demographic cliff in front of us, and governments around the world slowly closing its hands around the throats of people including increasing attacks on fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech including Canada's intervention into the Internet with constantly increasing censorship such as bills C-11, C-18, and new bills incoming this year, there's a very real risk that we're living in tyranny already.
My country's leadership tripled the federal debt in 8 years. Increased taxes. Higher inflation than the US. Many scandals costing taxpayers billions of dollars in a country where a billion dollars actually matters, but all memory holed by a press that's been paid off (and our tyrant laughs about it). All that money spent, but rising homelessness has led to homeless encampments in every city, despite being a place where the weather here will kill you dead half the year. Have you ever felt -40C? I have, you can feel your body freezing to death, you can feel the fact you're going to die, but there's encampments of people living outside because they had nowhere else to go, despite a trillion dollars in new debt. Meanwhile the leadership focuses on things totally disconnected from the realities faced by those ruled, spending time and money on wars on the other side of the world. Feels like tyranny to me.
Arguably, one of the key things that matter a lot to having a democracy or a democratic republic that thrives is having a populace that is interested in the good of society as a whole and is willing to disregard their own interests, but has a good understanding of what constitutes the common good. How many people will ever have a conversation like ours, compared to the people regurgitating word for word what establishment media tells them? How many people vote but don't really think about it because they've got some simplistic heuristic to follow?
I recently went back to some of the establishment media I used to watch, and the way they uncritically presented government data in the way the government wants it presented. The big news story that day was that the jobs numbers were a huge hit, but the fact is that 11 of the past 12 numbers were revised way down afterwards wasn't mentioned. I used to rely on that media, until I realized my predictions were all wrong. After I dropped those sources and found more accurate ones, suddenly I found my predictions improving significantly.
Besides establishment media, we now have overwhelming proof that big tech social media was directly receiving marching orders from the government. Directly. One allegation is that there was a specific gateway so government agents could come in and silence dissenting posts. It isn't often in history the state has been able to interject in conversations between people like it can today. Unprecedented tyranny. Justified by democracy, even though it's totally undemocratic.