I tend to shitpost a bit on TwitX as a way of letting the negativity out of my system. I drag people occasionally, but before I do I almost always look at their profiles, previous posts, who they follow, who follows them, etc., because I'm curious. Who are these people? What makes them tick? What is their community?
I tend to dig deeper, but I've found that even a cursory glance at a profile looking at number of people they follow, how many follow them, and how many posts they've made, lets you categorize them reasonably well.
And I've found something interesting. The majority of the people I have negative interactions with generally have huge numbers of posts and replies, few followers that aren't bots or people who automatically follow-back ("true followers" are often a single- or double-digit number), and little to no positive interactions on their posts. Essentially, they're just screaming into the void.
It finally ocurred to me that these interactions are really no different than what you have with a seriously mentally-ill homeless person you walk by on the street that starts screaming crazy stuff at you. These people have homes and WiFi and whatnot, but they're not right in the head. They're homeless people who have found enough of a productive niche in society to allow them to stay in homes. They just scream at you online instead.
At this point, it's just an observation. I'm not sure what the implications of this are yet.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
