Key takeaways:
- Speaker Johnson lost the confidence of Trump and house Republicans
- A government shutdown will likely happen. Again.
- Trump doesn't need to worry about more debts
- Jeffries blamed the house republicans, not trump, for this, which is a political maneuver that I'm both surprised at and see as quite a good bit of gamesmanship.
The shutdown itself? Largely insignificant, save highlighting that too much is done by a federal government that doesn't need to be done.
I am suspicious of the numbers in use as there are a lot of meme in them:
- 90210 - zip code for Beverly hills and famous TV show in 90s
- 42069 - if you don't know this, get out from under the rock. Weed possession code + 69 which again, get out from under the rock
- 6969 - obvious troll
- 80085 - the "boobs" calculator number
- 9000 - dragon ball z meme. "it's over 9000?!"
It looks to me like the data on this "map" is suspect at best
His substack contains why he left openai: https://archive.is/Wk324 which also I think whistle lows on AGI readiness (tldr - we're not ready yet)
Archive link: https://archive.is/7v9OX
Gets around paywall.
Think markets.
What happens to a commodity when large volumes of it are found? Price falls.
Why would someone want gold prices to fall? When they know they are on thin ice for over selling gold shares (paper gold)? When they know they need to cover a loss in a shorting of gold?
The commodities markets are hyper corrupt. At least 72x paper stocks for silver than actual ounces. The price is untenable for gold and silver right now, as there is a bit of a silver purchasing shortage these days, especially outside America. Gold was looking to have the same problems.
This is unsurprising for soooo many reasons. My expectation is a lot of the corruption going on was facilitated by the fact the systems in place are all unable to talk to each other at all to keep track of the money.
The fixing of that problem however is a "douse in gas and set it on fire, then build over the ashes" job. I've seen legacy systems like that, and trying to keep them on life support costs more than scrapping the work and rebuilding a better solution that works across the board.
Like a freakshow soap opera... Still dunno if the phone had some kind of compromising pics of the daughter with the judge, or if the girl answered the judge's phone and not her dad's, or what. But that sounds like a trigger to me.
Yes it is an ugly world, Paul, but more so because people like you are in it. Your greatest claim to fame so far truly is how wrong you are about trends (Mr "the Internet is a fad"), how wrong you are about economics, and soon will include how wrong you are as a human being.
Only shaved headed 4B lefties women will believe your latest lies. When the true wins out, you go out as ignominously as your legacy will.
Yes Minister was not just comedy. It was satire based on the actual way Britain's goverment worked.
It is all kabuki in the political theatre. Has been for a very long time. There are three effective groups in goverment:
- The opposition (political party), which is the opposition in exile
- The ruling party (political party), which is the opposition to the government
- The civil service, which is the actual government in control.
Most MPs, and all ministers, are captured by their civil servants. Like Hacker, they have at least one private secretary who will be in government far longer than the elected official. Those civil servants determine what the politicians see in their red boxes (unless like Hacker they dig, which almost none do), advise them on the best way forward, and drive the rest of the civil service to enact policies as they (not the politician or the people) see fit.
This is largely why implementing brexit was a farce, why immigration is out of control, why the farmers are being persecuted, and why nothing positive seems to ever move forward for the UK citizenry. The people implementing the policies want to subvert them. The politicians are "a pleasure to work with" for the civil service, which is perhaps the most vile accusation from Yes Minister a politician can receive.
And why do the civil servants do this? Well, most of them get to sit on boards of big companies after they retire. They benefit from a nearly impossible to lose job, get to claim knighthood and various honors from the Royal family for their "dedication to the nation", and have all the real power in the government. Not bad if all that's really required is to be part of the oxbridge old boys club.
The objectives of the civil service is to increase the budgets they get to play with, and by extension their power. Why do you think the NHS tax and money keeps going up? It isn't inflation,. It is the increase in administrative costs (or in other words more civil servants), and wasteful spending on things like their infamous IT project (which is a lesson for product managers on what not to do in university in Britain if you take a comp Sci or computing degree). Yes minister brought this issue to light dedicating a whole episode with the compassionate society (https://youtu.be/x-5zEb1oS9A?si=5rLQvybx_YZk_Mih)
It is my humble opinion that Yes minister and yes prime minister should be made mandatory for all children to watch as a part of a required civic class in Britain. This way we can show the children of that nation who is to blame for all the problems in government. It covers:
- What the rules of government are according to the civil service: https://youtu.be/cIYfiRyPi3o?si=9HH0wsqe7q0VS5zy
- How the government excuses it's actions: https://youtu.be/6Y4PEqvk0Jg?si=8v3CtEAvfNjt5LIu
- How the civil service stalls / blocks policies: https://youtu.be/PcghKtd-yP0?si=2n8Gipu0oip1PCcs
- The role of the civil service: https://youtu.be/wKDdLWAdcbM?si=o3g6I0NqmiIifW5R
- Why the UK was/is is in the EU: https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE?si=KlK-VcRryKkPhIbC
- Why local government in Britain is hamstrung: https://youtu.be/gmOvEwtDycs?si=_JnS1_WvMqkvEpmP
- The various key honors, and how the civil service view them: https://youtube.com/shorts/O8qmmp5E2So?si=VEOKTFMIme2KErei
- The various newspapers and who reads them: https://youtube.com/shorts/RmUy8Y521jc?si=68d2Ls_nbHcmnF_s
- How surveys work in Britain to shape opinions: https://youtu.be/ahgjEjJkZks?si=4s_CSaWPuwwY4Hev
- How to pass the buck and avoid dealing with a hard problem: https://youtu.be/pGJH_-S_MGs?si=zAtk3Hwk9ddKZIMl
- How the BBC is controlled media: https://youtu.be/B9tzoGFszog?si=j_eAGb5ZjaGiGQmQ
- How the civil service considers a minister who looks for their own data in their department, and how the civil service control their own: https://youtu.be/wW-iC1FLqFQ?si=NInpdHEDn2DKE4tP
- How a minister should handle a civil servant (but nowadays never do): https://youtu.be/komfL1cipXo?si=Zd4BHTnZQZ7f-C_S
- What civil servants care about - pensions & honors: https://youtu.be/c2IcYqTkBBQ?si=NAzlpZhUmcUHXjrF
- How a civil servant can bamboozle a prime minister with explosive verbosity, and how prime ministers are kept in the dark on activities being taken in their name, and the semantics of "needing to know": https://youtu.be/NX45hc0aZt0?si=B4ecFgWZIZJr1e54
There are more nuggets out there, but you get the jist.
Intelligence service = civil servants. They want to keep the power base they have in Britain.
To understand British politics it is best to look at it this way:
- the opposition party is the opposition in exile
- the ruling party is the opposition party
- the civil service is the actual ruling party.
The government (political) debates law based on their advisers' (civil servants) recommendations. The civil service then executes that policy how they see fit, and if they don't like the policies they will forcibly stonewall, leak, and do anything they can to make that policy fail.
British politics is by far one of the most sordid and disgusting systems of government anyone has ever seen, and the fact it hasn't collapsed due to its own incompetence is purely due to the fact the corruption runs so deep that all institutions in the country are too invested in it to allow the people to see the flaws.
"reduce red tape" - anyone who watched yes minister or yes prime minister would know that supposition was unfounded. It was obvious that the regulatory burden the EU introduced would add red tape to everything, as would the lack of democratic oversight of its legal system. The parliamentary process of the EU is a joke, basically a case of "you will vote until the result our civil servants want is reached", and the president is far too unaccountable.
I thought Peter was a black hat...