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Cake day: February 24th, 2025

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  • He could be insane and doing it for graft. He obviously sees himself like a mobster and tries to operate like one. My theory is he wants to individually negotiate tariffs to solicit bribes from businesses and foreign countries. It’s not exactly 4d chess. He just knows he has the power to pressure the richest and most powerful people on the planet, so he’s going to use that power to enrich himself and family. I don’t think he actually understands much about tariffs or much of anything though.

    Also, the evidence of insider trading and market manipulation is pretty convincing to me. I don’t think that was the original intention, but Trump, or those around him saw the opportunity and took it.








  • Yeah, for all I know, GIMP is as intuitive and efficient as Photoshop. I.e. they’re both as un-intuitive to me, and I’m not efficient in either (I probably haven’t use PS in a decade). But, I guess being intuitive is a good “hook” in regards to market share. I am a software engineer, and do prefer (neo)vim, but I guess I started out on NetBeans. I kind of see that as a level-up in regards to efficiency; not sure if that exists in other industries.







  • Not sure if serious. Recession is almost certain, and the only fiscal “stimulus” that’s likely to come is tax cuts. Will probably turn into a depression. But even the Great Depression had a huge amount of fiscal stimulus and progressive reforms to help get out of it. Not to mention, the crashing of the economy appears to be purposeful:


  • There’s probably multiple motivations. He serves a motley-crew of white christian nationalists, oligarchs (many with very fascist ideologies themselves), and himself. I think he’s kinda acting like a power-broker/deal-maker for many different people (similar to his buddy Epstein). The numbers don’t make sense because they don’t really matter if the goals are to 1) cause the world to lose faith in the US 2) can be used to negotiate things like de-dollarization 3) can be used to solicit bribes from politicians and businesses. If they really want to bring manufacturing back to the US, the dollar must be unseated as the world’s reserve currency, and there must be very bad stagflation so that we get enough inflation and depressed wages so people are desperate enough to work for roughly the same real wages as Chinese factory workers. If the US is less dependent on other nations for things like manufacturing, the US can do things like invade countries, set up slave and death camps, etc, with less consequence. And the chosen oligarchs get to rule over their own fiefdoms of oppressed workers.



  • We live in a capitalist society (unfortunately). Rich people hoard their capital during recessions, which means fewer job openings. I graduated HS during the 2008 recession, and it took me 6 months of applying everywhere I could to get a temp job in a factory paying minimum wage (and no benefits or any job security at all, of course). It was literally hard to get a job at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. IIRC, it took nearly both of Obama’s two terms for the job market to recover to what it was. So yeah, you may be able to find a job after a lot of hunting, but everyone’s so desperate they’ll accept anything. The way things are going with deregulation and all that, I wouldn’t be surprised if company-towns make a comeback (which, incidentally, is kind of like the corporate city-states people like Peter Thiel, who worked with Musk and groomed JD Vance, openly talk about).