genxlib
genxlib's JournalWhat does Musk get out of all of this? I think I figured it out.
In a nut shell, it is all one giant crypto price manipulation scheme. And its working.
In order to understand this all, it is important to understand the meaning of the term DOGE. At first it was an incredibly popular meme. Then someone created a cryptocurrency called DOGECoin as a joke. But the internet has a fascination with both stupid memes and crypto so that "joke" caught on and became a run away success in the crypto marketplace. And since Musk sits at the center of the dude-bro internet world, he thinks DOGECoin is great and has been pumping it up for years.
And thus begins a whole series of Musk actions that elevated the Crypto currency. He is so tied into this currency that every single spike in its value can be traced to him. https://www.google.com/finance/quote/DOGE-USD?window=5Y
-Musk tweets about Dogecoin causing it to spike https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/if-you-invested-$100-in-dogecoin-when-elon-musk-first-tweeted-about-the-crypto-heres-how
-Twitter changes it's logo to the DOGE logo https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/03/dogecoin-jumps-over-30percent-after-twitter-changes-logo-to-doges-symbol.html
-Rumors on Twitter trading crypto https://www.the-independent.com/tech/dogecoin-price-x-elon-musk-crypto-b2518052.html
Musk was sued about it https://www.reuters.com/legal/lawsuit-claiming-elon-musk-rigged-dogecoin-ends-2024-11-15/ but was unsuccessful because... reasons. It finally got dropped from appeal just this week because I guess the writing was on the wall.
All of which leads to his current assignment. Naming the committee DOGE was a huge boost to the attention of DOGEcoin. Not to mention the fact that he has been undermining the US currency by warning of US bankruptcy that can only be rescued by DOGE. As you can imagine, DOGECoin spiked about 400% in the last month.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/11/06/100000-by-2025-donald-trump-and-elon-musk-fuel-huge-bitcoin-price-predictions-as-dogecoin-soars/
Musk has acknowledged that he owns some DOGECoin but no one knows how much. There is speculation that he owns Billions.
So just imagine if the real value behind Twitter was the ability to manipulate markets. Stock market manipulation for percentage points is for suckers. Why bother when you can toy with crypto for exponential gains by directly manipulating the people most dedicated to you.
One phrase I have barely seen mentioned this week is COVID 19
Personally, I think we were fucked from the day COVID stepped into our lives.
Even at the simplest level, it was directly responsible for the inflation that ended up being the biggest head wind that we could not overcome.
But even beyond that, I think we massively underestimated the impacts that this period has caused. Like all large traumas, there are lingering after affects that will infect our psyche for years.
In my opinion, the MAGA movement was waning until COVID happened and it found new life in the resistance to COVID policies. The whole "bootstraps" crowd was perfectly happy to endanger entire communities as long as their personal "freedoms" were not hampered. They got new energy, new talking points and an economic environment to use a bludgeon for recruiting.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is how it all aligned with the rise of the RW media machine and radicalizing algorithms in social media. Entire segments of the internet became untethered from reality just when people were cooped up in their homes with little more than the internet to keep them occupied. To say they took advantage of it is an understatement.
So here is the controversial part that you aren't going to like. In my darkest hours over the last few days I have had two thoughts that keep coming back to me.
1.) Sometimes the right policy isn't a winning policy. In my heart, I know we did our best to protect our society from a deadly disease. But our efforts demanded a level of public cooperation and mutual concern that does not exist in this Country. We tried anyway. I think most people held on through the first year. But going into the second summer and fall, I think we lost people. The Country had covid fatigue and we were the ones talking about vaccine mandates and closing another year of school. Right or not, it was not popular and fed many of the narratives that MAGA have been driving ever since. Meanwhile, deSantis opened back up early during his campaign and got re-elected Governor easily. I am afraid that we ended up taking all of the lingering resentment and fueled the populist revolt in the process.
2.) I wonder if it would not have been better to lose in 2020. I always worried that it would be a difficult time to govern. It was pretty easy to see that things were going to be challenging. In the stock world, they call it "catching a falling knife". We inherited a Presidency that had at least 2 years of pain built into it. Even at the time, I figured that it might very well be so painful that re-election would be near impossible. It was a thankless job. If Trump had won, he would have been damaged and dealing with the economy that we got stuck with. It would have sucked for us. But in the end, it would have sucked less than the Trump 2.0 version that we are about to see now with no guardrails.
Just my two cents.
Latest scam at the gas pump
Stopping to get gas at the gas station closest to work this morning, I noted the price at $3.49. this was already about $.15 higher than a similar cluster of stations less than a mile down the road but convenience has its price.
But I pull up to the pump and there seems to be an error. The pump is showing $4.39 for regular. Assuming a mistake, I go insideto report what seems to be an error.
Nope. 90c price difference for credit. Of course they didn't have the decency to post that on the road side sign. Just hoping to fool some people who don't notice.
I called the clerk out on it but he was just mortified. Said he agreed. It wasn't him. It was the company.
I bailed and went to the cheaper station down the street and paid $3.25
I rarely use cash for anything but gas is probably the most obvious choice for credit to me. Primarily so I don't have to go inside. I like to fill up my tank to limit stops so it prevents two trips inside. I don't mind paying a small premium to cover the fees but this is just a scam.
I hope this station enjoys its little windfall. I have spent hundreds of dollars a year at that station which I will never use again. Screw 'em
Missing the Point on Stormy
Amidst all of the lurid details and hopefulness that TFG will get his due, I fear that people are missing the significant underlying point.
Yes, he is a scumbag. We know that.
Yes, he manipulated the system to try and buy silence to effect an election. We know that.
But the underlying problem here is far more fundamental than that.
He had something to hide. Something that was worth a lot to hide. People with secrets are compromised and can be extorted .
She could have asked him for anything...state secrets, pardons, a high ranking position, green cards. She had him by the ballsack and could have demanded things a lot more damaging than money.
People who have secrets are dangerous because they will do unethical things to keep them a secret.
To be honest, I was pissed at Bill Clinton for this too. I didn't care that he was getting blown in the Oval Office. I cared that he was compromising himself in ways that made him vulnerable to extortion.
Congratulations for a bright young progressive
I am very proud of my daughter.
She graduates this week with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering with Honors Research Distinction from Ohio State.
Academic accomplishments aside, she is a great person through and through. Proud progressive, votes like there is no tomorrow and even leads an organization committed to LBGTQ+ equality. I have always prided myself on my liberal street cred but she has taught me a few things over the years.
Such a proud Daddy of a great young adult.
She is still looking for her real career opportunity so if you happen to know anyone in the industry or have any recommendations, please give me a shout. The front doors of these industries are guarded by AI driven resume filters and sometimes you just have to find the right people on the inside.
The deSantis behavior really speaks volumes
Biden is coming to Florida and deSantis is avoiding meeting with him.
Yes, deSantis is a sniveling coward with a petty streak. But we all knew that already.
What it really says to me is that he knows that the GOP is a pit of vipers and he can't trust them to be honorable.
Under the circumstances, any reasonable political party would let him meet with Biden in a time of crisis because it is what is traditional and what is good for the state.
But he knows that his party is a sludge pit and his political opposition will use a harmless photo op against him as campaign fodder.
Of course it is ridiculous that such a thing would be seen in a negative light in the first place but even more ridiculous that it would be weaponized against him.
It is an indictment of the entire party.
Important read about history and the Jacksonville killings
This thread from Michael Harriot goes back in time and creates context for 150 years of history that led us up to this point.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1696489770527207589.html
It is a weird feeling to be both shocked and unsurprised. Of course the killings are shocking. Even now, I have trouble wrapping my head around that level of hatred.
But then at the same time, I am completely unsurprised. In the larger sense, these things have happened all over the Country. But as a native Jacksonvillian, I am not in the least bit surprised. I could see this undercurrent of racial resentment my entire life. I left for college but I still go back to visit family. Parts of Jacksonville modernized but in many ways, it is a deep south culture with all of the history that goes with that.
I have personal connections to this tragedy because I was raised within a few miles of this shooting. Until the age of 13, I lived in one of those redlined neighborhoods even though I was a lower middle class white kid. I was a part integration because I was bussed across town to elementary school. I had no understanding of this at the time.
Of course none of this was taught to me in Florida schools. It is only now with time and the help of many of you at DU that I can reflect on my childhood with any sense of history.
I have learned more in the last decade than in the first 45 years of my life. Of course that is progress on one front. But it has come at the cost of a backlash where acknowledgement of history is seen as a greater problem than the history itself.
Three steps forward, two steps back. Onward still.
For me, this Titanic Sub thing is a cautionary tail about Climate Change
We are fragile creatures. We live in an environment that has vary specific characteristics that we need to survive.
We can only comfortably exist within a narrow layer of atmosphere a few miles thick around our home planet.
Everywhere else in the universe is trying to kill us. Everywhere. Always. Usually in horrible ways.
We can sometimes venture into those hostile environments with a substantial amount of technology. But when we do, we live on a razor's edge where death is one mistake away.
In a way it reminds me of the movie "The Martian". Great movie, well acted and relatively true to the science. I know I am supposed to be warmed by the storyline and the triumph of the human spirit. But I just came away thinking..."Holy Shit, that place is horrible and it took the collective capabilities of two Countries to keep one man alive."
In both cases, it just makes me realize how lucky we are to live in the Goldilocks zone. This is a reminder to how unforgiving those hostile environments out there really are.
We need to work harder to keep what we have so that we don't find ourselves needing that Planet B that doesn't exist.
WTF AT&T
Somebody decided to run a test on the Emergency Broadcast System and my cell phone started blaring a fog horn alarm at top volume at 4:45am !!!!
What the ever living hell!!??!!
Mind you, those of you who remember me may recall that I do rescue work with FEMA USAR. So I am on call for disasters. When an alarm goes off in the middle of the night, it generally means that something has gone terribly wrong. My adrenaline kicks in wondering whether there has been an earthquake or tornado somewhere. My system gets so flooded with energy, I had no shot of going back to sleep.
So thanks a bunch AT&T and whoever decided to pull the cord on that particular alarm.
On edit, it looks like it was state wide across multiple carriers. https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2023/04/20/florida-emergency-alert-test-today-why-did-you-get-an-alert-how-to-view-it-should-you-turn-it-off/70133335007/
So I blame DeSantis now. Why the hell not.
Big Basketball Day for me Today!
I have two basketball teams to root for today in the Final Four today.
I am an alumnus of University of Miami and have followed the team closely since the program was re-started in 1985. I even had season tickets for a decade when I lived closer. Go Canes!
And...
I live just a few miles from Florida Atlantic University. It's an exciting time for the plucky little local team. Go Owls!
I love a good Cinderella story. Today there are two.
Wish me luck!
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