GhostOnTheHalfShell

opinionated lurker of the intarwebs.

Used to write code, still do. c/c++, java, php, js, c#, gdscript, gnawed on sql, sparql, unix/windows etc etc billions of years ago.

tech, graphics, anything STEM
anything anthropology, history, linguistics
anything blender, gimp (although i scream using it), audacity
prefers not to be run over by cars

I drink Philz.

I do a (non-monetized) video or so a week on yt.

Tyranny and poverty are everywhere a mainstream economics phenomenon.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GhostOnTheHalfShell

Public Key

npub1z3lxxu5tmqxp8vhd3tny9f0nqp5dljpynh9j6gzgeyes2ukmz0kq0rtxvc

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ghostonthehalfshell_at_masto.ai@momostr.pink

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Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1z3lxxu5tmqxp8vhd3tny9f0nqp5dljpynh9j6gzgeyes2ukmz0kq0rtxvc

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Last Notes

2026-06-29 20:40:37 UTC

if people never have discovered freesound dot org
try it
https://freesound.org/people/szegvari/sounds/639262/

2026-06-15 15:25:01 UTC

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Even though if you take out a £1000 loan and default, you’re in a lot of trouble. If you take out £100 million loan and default, the bank is in a lot of trouble.
Patrick Boyle’s most recent excellent video on SpaceX IPO pointed out how much financial giants have debased themselves in order to be part of the IPO.
It really is the billionaire now nearly trillionaire at least on paper, wagging financial dog.

2026-06-15 14:08:37 UTC

@npub13uj…dfjl
The very wealthiest people never spend their net worth or do so only minimally. In order to cover their daily expenses, they use their net worth as collateral to take out extremely inexpensive. Loans with the banks are happy to do because of the amount of money they take out wondering like that loans are not subject tax. How much of a total national private debt is long as these jokers take out they never pay off

2026-06-11 03:36:48 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.green/@gerrymcgovern/116727272706475039
@npub13uj…dfjl
This is our world on AI.
Any questions?
#note1g5v…zk6y

2026-06-09 10:19:35 UTC

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@patrickcmiller/116719610820334252
@npub1cqw…xeeq
[@davidgerard](https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard )
Welp, i’ve seen everything now. Game writing has won and there’s nothing else to achieve. It’s all done and wrapped up.
#note14sr…d48r

2026-06-06 17:26:21 UTC

@npub1q0j…x3m8
There goes the neighborhood, right?
https://www.thenerdreich.com/ai-argentina-and-the-antichrist-thiels-vision-blooms/?ref=the-nerd-reich-newsletter

2026-06-02 18:51:32 UTC

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In a related topic regarding the stock market in gold prices surrounding the oil shocks of the 70s, I see a lot of very reductionist commentary.
The analytical commentary on that period is quite clear that the oil crisis, stock, market and gold price prices were product of multiple factors.
In particular, the claim that gold rose 2000% over the decade is at nonsensical at the very least because of the Nixon shock
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/oil-embargo-and-energy-crises-1973-and-1979

2026-06-02 18:47:59 UTC

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I’ve been diving through this very topic, specifically about the predictions of a stock, market crash, and a spike in gold prices.
And what’s notable in January, prices slid off of their peak, but also in the end of March. The cell off has been motivated by a concern of over subscription in a single asset. In March, there were changes to the amount of assets needed for margin trading.
So far the price seems to be settling somewhere mid 4000’s.
https://www.kitco.com/charts/gold
2/2

2026-06-02 18:45:12 UTC

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Everything I’ve read on the topic so far has pointed out that the long-term trend to build up gold reserves is at the very least the consequence of the US freezing Russia’s assets. For central banks that sort of risk exposure is on intolerable.
Digital assets are seen as potentially risky because of the technological supply chain exposure.
The price of gold over the last six months and it is actually slipped off peak of somewhere around $5500
1/2

2026-05-31 23:10:08 UTC

I don’t know if we really want to cut turkeys in a slack around Thanksgiving
https://youtu.be/8t3F7cREeQA

2026-05-29 19:08:45 UTC

RE: https://syzito.xyz/@selzero/116658736608865343
this
👇
#note16df…6j7q

2026-05-25 03:56:08 UTC

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🔥

2026-05-24 14:05:10 UTC

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I haven’t finished the video, but I am gonna ding you for not really revealing the true challenge of cycling in Holland:
The freaking winds man.
A long time ago, I think I made some smart ass remark about that Dutch professional cyclists are at a disadvantage for hill climbing. The tart reply was we have headwinds

2026-05-24 02:00:09 UTC

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The correct reply to “ taxing billionaires is equal to hate speech” is to double the tax every time they open their mouths. We can do this all day until we get to a 90 or 95% marginal tax rate for people like him.

2026-04-21 05:43:46 UTC

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Business people are quite good at getting financing. I’d like to see people thinking of government expenditure, and of course, the currency sovereign expenditure specifically as kind of like watering and fertilizing a garden.
If a gardener ignored the majority of his plot and constantly cut down whatever did grow and lavish detention on a tiny little corner, letting whatever grew there grow without control, that’s the picture I want people to have in their heads

2026-04-21 05:29:37 UTC

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Oh yeah, it is corporate welfare. But the other aspect of this is austerity is deliberate damage to the broad population by cutting off from the flow of money creation, intrinsic to government spending… it’s just like commercial bank financing puts money into the economy, but unlike a commercial loan you don’t want it all paid back plus interest.
The people that don’t need the money have their hands on the magic money machine while everybody else faces destitution

2026-04-21 05:24:42 UTC

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My motivation is to find the MMT compliant version of taxpayer money, because it is the most powerful rhetorical bludgeon available for public policy.
Anyone, regardless of political alignment brings out that phrase to evoke anger, and outrage. Unfortunately, it’s getting angry over the wrong thing and to the wrong degree and in the wrong way.
MMT has never found an equivalent cudgel and it needs it and I think it has it if it tries

2026-04-21 05:15:53 UTC

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That means that where government spending ends up, which is in the pockets of billionaires and what parts of the economy it’s choked from like austerity and who is and is not taxed determines the fate of different segments of the population.
People really do need to understand taxpayer dollars goes into an incinerator so they are angry about the right thing
2/2

2026-04-21 05:14:20 UTC

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Yeah, so from my latest rant, where I seek to recast taxpayer dollars into a framework that makes sense from an MMT perspective, because taxes, incinerate wealth, and it is the working people who are made to incinerate their wealth while the rich benefit the most from public spending both directly in indirectly by exploitation, we can look at the trade war as a deliberate act to destroy the American public’s wealth.
Government spending creates money. Taxes incinerate wealth. 1/2

2026-04-20 21:07:45 UTC

RE: https://toad.social/@wdlindsy/116438926067928322
I just want to keep reminding people this is terrifying and its own right for a lot of different reasons.
He’s unhinged and unstable, but decisions are being made without him.
We don’t know who’s making the majority of operational decisions.

2026-04-20 15:17:01 UTC

RE: https://flipboard.com/@thenewrepublic/breaking-news-9mhchbihz/-/a-XXr5mJclSkmR_uww0ssJsw%3Aa%3A436232176-%2F0
Does the media even understand what this is saying? The president of the United States is not involved in war plans because he’s too insane.
Who was supposed to be the Commander and chief again?
#note17nh…d8vw

2026-04-20 02:36:03 UTC

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There’s two things counting against the article. It’s on Substack and maybe the artwork is generated.
That’s the only image in the entire article, though as part as a part of header to it

2026-04-20 01:58:55 UTC

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Washington pointed out in his farewell address that the constitution was poorly designed to deal with the effects of party politics. They defeated the checks and balances and you were marked that that should be addressed.. their original idea was that the constitution should be remade periodically

2026-04-20 00:02:13 UTC

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One of the more relevant articles I can think of. The level of the deprogramming is probably on the same scale needed for Germans after the Nazi defeat.
https://complexsimplicity.substack.com/p/ten-years-of-religious-hypocrisy

2026-04-19 01:02:14 UTC

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That kind of water shortage also suggest that the Mississippi will again become unnavigable for some part of this year.
The Mississippi is a very important transport waterway. You can’t replace it with rail you can’t replace it with especially with pros because it’s so inexpensive and has so much capacity.

2026-04-18 00:58:38 UTC

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Hyper loop 2.0

2026-04-17 22:11:27 UTC

[@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works )
1 hr 22 min
Simon Michaux 2024 with an update to his discussion on the realities, completely transitioning, an oil-based economy to alternative energy and how the world does not have the mineral resources nor does the global economy have the time or capacity to convert oil becomes too expensive in time and energy to be worthwhile to extract. Oil and mineral deposits are depleted. Governments don’t know how to deal with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbnXMv19Hck

2026-04-16 00:53:22 UTC

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This is why I am mocking tax as national wealth incineration day. Any money paid to the treasury simply undoes the money the treasury payment to us creates.
So when I say the federal government stuffs the super rich full of money that’s never taxed but the few pennies we get is, I am being very precise. Our wealth is incinerated while theirs grows exponentially.

2026-04-16 00:51:36 UTC

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A nation that issues and spends in its own currency, does not finance itself with taxation or debt. Government spending prints money, because by law, the federal reserve honors every single check written by the treasury. Funds are simply added to the party being paid while the amount is subtracted from the treasury bank account.
The negative balance of the federal government represents the record of account of the money supply. It is the money in our (Musk/Bezos) bank accounts

2026-04-16 00:40:50 UTC

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BEEAK THEM UP. BREAK THEM UP

2026-04-15 22:24:01 UTC

[@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works )
Happy wealth incineration day for all who celebrate. DC continues to top off the net worth of people with 7 to 9 digits in their net worth, who pay no tax.. Their wealth grows while ours is sent to the incinerator
Our assigned lot is the janitorial task diminishing with our few pennies the great Niagara of money spent into the pockets of people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Can you feel the waves of emotion for this very special day?
#mmt #economics

2026-04-15 02:21:30 UTC

Do not vote for anybody who gets money or support from Silicon Valley billionaires and especially Trump supporters
It’s bad enough that the nerd Reich wants the Presidio for one of their special economic zones, which is to say one of their totalitarian fantasy cities.
But we also have Safeway bulldozing ahead with a 25 story apartment building on its Marina District store property.
We don’t have a choice in the matter. This is not a democracy
https://missionlocal.org/2026/04/sf-jan-koum-daniel-lurie-campaign-finance/
#sanfrancisco #sfba

2026-04-14 04:05:08 UTC

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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-6q186hNkc8

2026-04-13 02:49:17 UTC

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I haven’t been able to locate the freeze dried water that I saw a read about many years ago.. he only need one ingredient to rehydrate it

2026-04-12 21:00:44 UTC

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We are the ones barely able to afford the necessities of life thanks to the super rich having so much control over any income we can have or even whether we have a job and because they control so much of the economy that they keep raising prices.
We are being squeezed both ways and whatever is left over and maybe more is sent to the incinerator because they want us destitute they want us in debt. They make money if we are in debt.
3/n

2026-04-12 20:37:49 UTC

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RE: https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/116382527232157424
Who the federal government spends money on either Trump/Elon Musk or you and me is the relevant issue in public policy.
The federal government spends most of its money on the super rich, who are never asked to diminish their wealth by sending it to the treasury for destruction.
We are the ones who are obligated to destroy our wealth by paying taxes from the few pennies out of millions that come our way.
2/n
#note100d…agyq

2026-04-12 20:34:36 UTC

RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116393061646472848
I want to drop on y’all the MMT version of this because taxpayer money doesn’t finance anything. It goes straight into an incinerator, not because it’s wasted, but because putting money into the treasury diminishes its negative balance and its negative balance represents the money supply.
The government creates money by spending it. This is because the Fed by law honors all checks written by the federal government.
1/n
#note1pex…vysu

2026-04-12 12:05:56 UTC

11 min
In the last third of his monologue, here he describes the first crack in Orban’s power, when public outrage over learning that the close political ally of Orban covered up child abuse and I think a judge was also involved.
Where are we in America when public outrage doesn’t exist enough to knock Republicans completely out of power?
From all appearances, they are a child abuse ring, inclusive of Christian nationalism. Our outrage where is it?
https://youtu.be/8gPk9dBeL9c

2026-04-11 20:10:54 UTC

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Poor New York it suffers so much from communism now.
🤪

2026-04-10 21:27:13 UTC

[@economics_that_works](https://fedigroups.social/@economics_that_works )
Apr 10
11 min
Nailing a couple of theses on MMT's door. MMT suffers from bad messaging.
https://youtu.be/uJNr3y2fQsY
#mmt #economics

2026-04-10 18:54:56 UTC

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tax wealth not work

2026-04-10 05:49:32 UTC

RE: https://mstdn.social/@990000/116378528942839842
The thing about Nazis and totalitarian despots is they never back down, they only double down
#note1hu2…q679

2026-04-09 19:56:22 UTC

Best journalism in the US
https://theonion.com/swollen-rfk-jr-warns-americans-not-eating-enough-bees/

2026-04-09 13:33:46 UTC

Has anyone noticed that China has just stayed out of everything going on in the Middle East? They haven’t certainly haven’t been vocal in a way they could have chosen and I think it’s interesting because they are letting the relative weakness of the US position just play itself out and at the same time they aren’t or they’ve made a choice not to insert themselves

2026-04-09 12:03:24 UTC

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I guess I thought she had would have a heavy flow

2026-04-07 20:43:09 UTC

The terrible irony of Donald Trump saying that a civilization will end, is that he’s absolutely correct
Just not the way he means.
The change is what looks to be the final nail in the coffin with respect to our nation’s civilization.
This is going to rewrite global relations.
For those of us in the US, the task of rebuilding something completely different while freeing ourselves from billionaire extinction cult despotism will be the work of generations

2026-04-07 16:11:52 UTC

People may have not seen the news that AP, associated Press is transitioning away from news syndication to focus on AI and predictive markets.
We are down to Reuters now.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/physical-oil-prices-hit-record-highs-near-150-barrel-hormuz-crisis-worsens-2026-04-07/

2026-04-05 00:29:02 UTC

Yuk CPB hiring ad in YT

2026-04-04 22:02:16 UTC

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It is the unconscious desire of the entire nation, if not the world, that this guy simply stopped being president

2026-04-04 04:02:13 UTC

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In other words, it is fractaly bad, where the self similarity is a maze of twisty passages all different; the Fuckery is uniformly fucked up in different at all scales.

2026-04-01 19:51:30 UTC

@npub12pw…zvxn
4 min
For those of us across the pond who enjoyed these classics thanks to PBS
https://youtu.be/aJ0nFQgRApY

2026-04-01 01:14:29 UTC

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funny when I told him that a car free and re-localized farming was actually better economically he started shouting louder about me being apocalyptic.
Not to counting for a significant risk factor is not rational. Pie in the sky solutions 7 to 10 years out that are dependent on the very thing at risk is really something

2026-04-01 00:52:48 UTC

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I’m not gonna buy that line of thinking.
I’ve listened to not just bikes quite a lot. He is a ex-pat Canadian and has into great detail about who votes people like Ford. That would be your professional friends in suburbia and by all measures people like you. The kind of people who vote for creatures like Ford or Poilievre.
Next time I suggest you try to pick a less educated target
@npub1ekj…wjxt

2026-04-01 00:05:33 UTC

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So on top of everything else, your professional friends are mooching off of city centers and the urban poor. They are not paying their way. The cost of infrastructure, the cost of cars and the cost of everything else is only going to go up and supply chain constraints bite.
But you want to keep being subsidized.
@npub1ekj…wjxt

2026-04-01 00:04:26 UTC

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Also, the pushback about why mixed use is impossible and it will harm our car eccentric utopia, is very common to Canadians. Bluntly you all in Canada most of the United States as well is brainwashed.
On the other hand, many small towns in the United States, and probably some in Canada have begun to realize the financial insolvency of suburbia.
Suburban home taxes do not cover the cost of infrastructure and are subsidized by city centers and poor neighborhoods.
@npub1ekj…wjxt

2026-04-01 00:01:30 UTC

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I think it’s really funny that you’ve taken walkable cities and localized farming which are factually beneficial economically and transform it into medieval living.
That’s on you. I’ve been to Amsterdam twice. It’s a car free city, not a medieval village. Paris is aggressively pursuing walkable and localized farming. It’s air quality has improved, injury, and death from cars has plummeted, it is quieter, the city saves money while commerce is up
@npub1ekj…wjxt

2026-03-31 23:37:05 UTC

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I have to remark that you’re taking on an increasingly defensive posture and all of this. It’s a whole because when people commit themselves to driving long distances, they don’t really think about the total cost it’s going to have on them.
Cy is not wrong to call it a hole.
The global economy is facing poly crisis. Climate debt overhangs, AI bubble housing bubbles in some areas, private equity and private banking over leveraging, wild speculation everywhere
@npub1ekj…wjxt

2026-03-31 23:34:30 UTC

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For many years, I got myself into the rat race of commuting long distances. At some point I chose to stop doing that. I stopped losing 2.5 hours of my life every day and I stopped wearing out my car and spending money filling the tank and on maintenance. a train doesn’t get your time back either.
The time pissed away commuting is gone forever. The average cost of a car in the US $11.5k per year.
@npub1ekj…wjxt

2026-03-31 21:53:13 UTC

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We are in a situation of poly crisis.
1) instability in property insurance due to climate change
2) housing bubbles because of private equity
3) financial stability because of PE and private banking, which has taken out huge chunks of leverage from the commercial banking sector
4) a large amount of CDS
5) AI bubble
6) fragile supply chains. Nobody learned from Fukushima.
7) and now large chunk of existing productive capacity to torn out from ME.

2026-03-31 21:47:04 UTC

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This has been my exact point. When I was a teenager and learning to drive a stick shift, my father presented me with the curious notion that in order to slow down the car one could take one’s foot off the gas pedal instead of slamming on the brakes. If you wanted to get fancy, you could downshift.
There are an incredible number of people who respond to the suggestion of why don’t we put the things we need next to us (walkable) by screaming medieval village.

2026-03-31 20:52:59 UTC

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You’ve establish you need a remedial reading class and an absurdist.
Amsterdam is carfree. Paris agressively pursuing it along with relocalizing farming.
I don’t think I am the one flying I to wild speculation

2026-03-31 20:44:11 UTC

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Energy inflation affects all cost structures.
I can recommend reading about 1929.

2026-03-31 20:30:04 UTC

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People really thing 1929 can’t happen again and that physics and debt obligations don’t matter.
Yup should spend some time understanding where all the manufacturing equipment comes from and which nation refines and manufactures basic inputs.

2026-03-31 17:38:12 UTC

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In which this war is making abruptly much scarcer , who is trying to think how to deal with these realities and what kind of things we can do given that modernity unraveling.
You and atom keep saying well we can just build renewables and in seven years will have EVs and public transportation, and everything will be bunnies and butterflies because the global economy will make these products .
What I see happening is that you and atom are in denial

2026-03-31 17:35:25 UTC

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OK, let’s play this game. If the world‘s factory otherwise known as Asia basically shuts down and you can’t buy tractors and cars and solar panels and turbines and all the raw materials for them are no longer available because there’s not any energy to mine them or process them and there isn’t any chemicals to do it either, just as manufacturing engineers have been warning about as the world’s resources become increasingly expensive to extract..

2026-03-31 12:13:29 UTC

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Your idea that car free means no convenient way to travel is 100% wrong.. the entire freakin point of walkable cities is to put the things you need next to you under a 15 minute walk and otherwise make cars unnecessary to conveniently travel anywhere
North America is brainwashed to think cars are the only way to get anything. (I grew up in suburbia) Before cars cities used to put things next to people. It was the definition of civilization
n/n

2026-03-31 11:56:14 UTC

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I don’t think you have much of an idea of how severe the problem is going to be.
The economic dynamics of this is going to be the following:
A period of intense inflation, and then a depression as in a great global depression.
If you don’t have some idea of economic history, I can understand why you think that inflation will just be a hassle for people.
Poverty or bankruptcy are very effective methods of persuasion
1/n

2026-03-31 04:07:08 UTC

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You all don’t seem to understand that all this machinery comes from raw materials that are refined and extracted using fossil fuel and other feed stock products.
Transitioning to walkable lifestyles in relocating agriculture next to the communities that it feeds doesn’t require a lot of money it will employ people what it needs is the proper design systems and sweat equity in simple tools.
The global economy strips wealth from communities

2026-03-31 04:00:36 UTC

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Also, you keep skipping over the problem:
The global supply chain is being destroyed and the manufacturing base required to make all of this equipment is losing a gigantic chunk of its resource supply.
What you are showing me is that you want to keep the planet killing economy going the one that destroys the planet for all the manufacturing resources to create the planet, destroying economy.
It isn’t just oil

2026-03-31 03:58:57 UTC

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The point that I’ve heard about electric tractors is they weigh a lot more now this might have changed, but you have to understand that the weight of the machine machinery on the soil compacted, which destroys it.
The battery is the source of weight that kills the soil. On the other hand, there are farming methods that do not require tractors. This would be advantage of moving farms and farming and food production close to people again.

2026-03-31 02:24:00 UTC

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There’s so much garbage involved in this, especially the idea that poverty is a moral failing, or homelessness. It’s an issue that touches on racism but the big chunk of this is class warfare, pure and simple.
There was some dude you know 2000 years ago or something who talked about this topic or so I hear

2026-03-31 02:18:34 UTC

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I agree what people need is housing first which is proven to be completely successful at eliminating homelessness.
Oddly enough, putting people into housing fixes homelessness.

2026-03-31 01:31:54 UTC

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12 min
This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about. Not only have factories that produce helium, which is an essential material for producing chips? You have other processing capacity being destroyed.
How exactly are you going to have your Evie’s or any other alternative energy product that needs aluminum or steel, which is produced with nickel that also needs to be refined by feed stocks coming out of the Middle East.
https://youtu.be/POuKamK2QD4

2026-03-31 01:20:35 UTC

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There’s a difference between low speed, high torque and high speed high torque.
The other factor is weight. Unless you’re planning to run powerlines over thousands of acres of cornfields the weight of batteries needed to run these things, will compact the soil even more severely.
Soil compaction destroys the soil fertility. This is one reason why diesel remains so prominent.

2026-03-31 00:37:32 UTC

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I think we see the urgency of the situation a little bit differently. Stuff is already becoming scarce. Asia, the world’s factory, will shut down without adequate energy and feed stock inputs.
Furthermore, the raw materials that or that needs to be extracted and processed by compounds produced from those feed stocks also need energy.
And what are you going to build all this infrastructure from?
This is a fundamental disconnect. It’s Covid lockdowns on steroids.

2026-03-30 23:20:28 UTC

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It’s so fucking stupid because housing is the basis of mental health and safety.
Housing first is public safety first.

2026-03-30 23:13:42 UTC

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Good luck electrifying farming. Diesel engines can produce a great deal of torque for relatively low weight. good luck pulling all the copper out into rural areas to support non existent electrified farm equipment. Copper is processed with oil derived feed stock.
There is a very inexpensive and direct solution: make communities car free and re-localized farming, add community gardens.
In this crisis, victory gardens are a good idea.

2026-03-30 22:38:20 UTC

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But it’s more than that. Fossil fuels produce feed stocks for all sorts of other industrial processes, including fertilizer, but also chips and metals necessary for alternative energy and the grid that needs to go with it..
The most important thing communities can focus on is eliminating the need for cars and re-localizing food production.
If necessary, the concept of victory gardens. Communities should think of Covid lockdowns on steroids.

2026-03-30 16:47:46 UTC

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So you need the next terminator movie to be the one where Skynet wins, and it is treated as glorious

2026-03-30 06:32:17 UTC

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I’m pretty negative on the various organizations involved in global trade.
When countries are made to dismember their own economic, sovereignty and dumb, allow themselves to be disassembled and turned into cogs it has never really worked out well.
Countries like China I don’t think ever lost control of their own country

2026-03-30 05:30:42 UTC

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Well, it may be that other institutions comment to being to negotiate trade internationally and the WTO, which is still largely an animal of the US and the west will lose influence

2026-03-29 18:57:26 UTC

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Sounds like you’re in the camp that believes Russia was attacked.
Ukraine was supposed to crumble in a few days under the vastly superior Russian military strength. It did not indefinitely. It needs resources, externally, but anyone who’s arguing that Russia did anything but the thing Russia normally does doesn’t have much credibility with me.
Iran is very different in the sense they’ve been preparing for a US invasion for decades. 1/n

2026-03-29 17:54:36 UTC

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I can think of a number of reasons why China is restraining overt support.
The foremost reason is to allow/watch how well the United States and Israel can project force. What we are seeing here is the limit of hegemonic technology based military action primarily from the air.
Like Ukraine, Iran is holding its own and bloodying the nose of the financial and industrial core, while the US particularly drives even more nails into the coffin of its super status power

2026-03-29 00:04:58 UTC

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I’m tempted to think of a smoky the bear style poster saying only you can prevent normalizing domestic violence. The messaging is not quite correct, but it is in the direction I think would be most helpful
In other words, rally men as the manly thing to do. This is what the pillar of a community does. This is the thing men do.

2026-03-27 22:33:04 UTC

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We too

2026-03-27 18:05:09 UTC

RE: https://mas.to/@therightarticle/116300144161152058
@npub12pw…zvxn
:(
#note1jec…9zvt

2026-03-27 01:11:26 UTC

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RE: https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/116298111430075237
@npub1xjw…3c9q
The huge spike and deficit spending which might have something to do with $2 billion a day being burned in Middle Eastern shaped incinerator is bringing out the deficit hawks again to pass laws for austerity. A balanced budget is a stupid idea. What is a good idea is gutting the Niagara of money being fed to billionaires while the rest of us barely get anything
#note1zs2…dy4u

2026-03-27 00:58:31 UTC

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Yeah, there’s some bizarre history that I used to know about how liberal and conservative got inverted in the United States but it’s probably not that interesting to learn about. It does create enormous headaches, parsing political alignment from across the pond.
That’s why behavioral definition of left/right to me so helpful because it’s based on behavior: pro equal decision-making power equals left, pro, giving all the power to the rich equals right

2026-03-26 23:40:45 UTC

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the old definition of liberal I take

2026-03-26 23:39:10 UTC

mar 26
4 min
budgets are moral statements
https://youtu.be/V8T51_DZYc4
#mmt

2026-03-26 23:19:44 UTC

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Let me guess this is the right wing asshat

2026-03-26 21:11:56 UTC

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RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116296802515390419
@npub12pw…zvxn
More than a few people have remarked on the rather interesting timing of a bunch of futures trading. This kind of remarkable timing as seemingly become quite common for some reason in the last year or two
#note1x85…tyu4

2026-03-26 20:29:39 UTC

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The seller’s interest is to extract as much money as they can

2026-03-26 04:36:13 UTC

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The functional definition of left wing is a a government that works to confer equal decision-making power to everyone.
The functional definition of right wing is a government that works to confer every greater absolute power of the few over the many.
It has nothing to do with anything they say and everything to do with what government does

2026-03-22 09:29:03 UTC

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The tech guys from Silicon Valley bankrolled the GOP’s total control of the federal government they are the people who wrote project 2025 and the guys from Silicon Valley have their dark enlightenment movement, which is basically a human extinction movement.
These people have prepared safe houses in bunkers with the full expectation of civilization collapsing it’s something they are deliberately working towards because they have their own crazy flavor of essentially the second coming.

2026-03-22 08:42:15 UTC

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Unfortunately that work is unavailable. It would’ve taken funding and a couple of other people working with them to keep the stuff going, which is a tremendous used to municipalities, but it’s just something he couldn’t sustain by himself.
In discussion, he said he would do it very differently now.

2026-03-22 04:49:27 UTC

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There’s been a packed field for Darwin awards for some years now

2026-03-22 04:47:14 UTC

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The Koch brothers. The same damn rich people who funded cigarette misinformation, climate misinformation, and science skepticism.
These people hate public health, because they have the pesky habit of identifying their deadly products.
The very worst of them are a freaking extinction cult. What do you think AI in robots replacing everybody is for, or more practically what all the surveillance in population control surveillance awards is for?
These guys hate everyone

2026-03-22 04:44:42 UTC

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I keep thinking of that quote from Larry Niven in one of his essays in “all the myriad ways”
Think of it as evolution in action.
It’s not pretty and it’s not nice but it’s hard to avoid the truth of it

2026-03-22 00:49:12 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@realTuckFrumper/116270028406652899
I won’t be surprised if Iran responds by taking out a few more oil refineries.
#note1zp9…xnrg