domain:x.com
2rafa
5hr ago
I have had this thought too. If weed was fully legal but THC was capped at where it was in the black market in the late 90s rather than the ultra-potent strains we have now, most people would just buy what was legal rather than relying on the black market.
jeroboam
5hr ago
The prediction markets, if anything, seem to be underselling Trump's chances right now.
I'd check out RealClearPolitics, which does a good job of aggregating all the polls. Trump is ahead in 6 of 7 swing states right now. Based on current polling averages, Trump wins 302 electoral votes. More importantly, polls are moving in his favor each day:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states
Another data point. At this point in the campaign 8 years ago, Hilary was up by over 6.7 points nationally. Biden was up by 10 points. So we'd expect the polls to undersell Republican support on average. If the 2024 campaign follows the same trajectory as previous ones, Trump wins the popular vote by 3% and an electoral college landslide.
So, absent other information, I'd put Trump's odds at 70-80%. But I also know that I'm lacking information and fallible. I trust that the prediction markets are likely to be a truer reflection of the current state of the race than my opinions. There's actually a decent amount of liquidity in this particular market, with over $1 billion gambled, and a small bid ask spread of just 0.1%.
Back in the day, I'm sure we assumed that AI agents would gather funds by good old fashioned hacking, mercantile exchange of goods and services, blackmail and bargaining.
That was very 2006. Today's AI agents get money by receiving crypto airdrops of GOATSE memecoins that they shill on twitter:
Full story: https://x.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1846220545542529329 (normally not the most reliable source, but repligate assures us he's basically accurate on the facts and repligate is an expert on schizo AI backrooms stuff)
It (Terminal of Truths) didn't even do any of the coding, just marketing. This shitcoin has an ostensible market cap around $260 million USD right now, though the vast majority is locked up as usual in Solana/memecoins and so the 'real liquidity marketcap' is about $3 M.
https://pump.fun/CzLSujWBLFsSjncfkh59rUFqvafWcY5tzedWJSuypump
Truth Terminal has ~$300,000 of GOAT in its wallet and is on its way to being the first AI agent millionaire
Anyway I am disappointed that my net worth is lower than an AI made 5 months ago. In principle, any of us could've done this. All it did was shitpost on twitter hard enough! It didn't even need to have a pretty face like hawk tuah girl. There's a general consensus that these bots are literally subhuman, I think we underestimate their present capabilities. Charisma alone gets you a long way, even if it's schizo shoggoth charisma.
anon_
5hr ago
North Carolina gerrymandering. Pretty explicit. Appealing to the VRA was a fig leaf; the easiest way to satisfy it would have been to draw reasonable districts.
That's actually an interesting question. It's not clear to me from first principles (I understand Gingles makes it clear what SCOTUS thinks the VRA requires) whether packing minority voters into majority-minority districts or diluting them across other districts are both/either/neither to be found discriminatory.
I think you're right that some combination of pack/crack can be overtly discriminatory, but it just seems weird to me that the opposite actions are discriminatory. There's no clear 'arrow' nor is it manifest whether it's the voters in the packed or cracked districts are discriminated-against -- and surely it can't be both concurrently.
[ And as a normative factor that I think is irrelevant to the discussion, I think majority-minority districts are probably bad on net because to win them, politicians needs to take extreme positions which are (a) bad in themselves and (b) prevent those politicians from appealing to wider (e.g. statewide) office and are a kind of weird glass-ceiling kind of thing. ]
HalloweenSnarry
5hr ago
Maybe the loans could be structured such that, while there's no serious obligation to pay it back, if you do, then...something happens. Not sure what, but that could make such a loan more than just helicopter money.
HalloweenSnarry
5hr ago
Perhaps legalizing marijuana would have an impact on modern reefer madness rates if there was more of a free market to allow for non-insanity-inducing weed?
To point towards the gun analogy, the market has space for everything from wood-stocked single-shot shotguns and .22-caliber plinkers, all the way to semi-auto .50-caliber rifles and ATF-baiting niche products. Who's to say that the weed market cannot also sustain a range of products with different enough CBD levels to make things safer?
Now, granted, you might still be right that a thorough decriminalization might be enough to achieve this, but we must consider the possibility that the market may have an unaddressed demand for healthier product.
anon_
5hr ago
and it's not clear to me that voluntary adult incest leading to pregnancy leading to abortion is a common enough situation to even need an exception drawn for it, or harmful enough to require one.
It's not common, but it's also not terribly smart for a civilization to knowingly and intentionally bring into the world babies with such severe deficiencies. I understand horrible things happen by accident all the time and we should have grace and charity to those cases, but incest is taboo for a good reason ...
It is brazen racism though. The "others" doesn't change it. Maybe it will include other so called people of color, but that doesn't change the facts.
Goodguy
6hr ago
I know very little about prediction markets, so can someone explain to me how likely it is that Trump's surge on for example Polymarket is the result more of speculative behavior than of people rationally trying to predict the winner of the election? I don't really see any reason to currently view the race as being anything other than pretty close to 50-50. People might say well, if I believe that then why not try to make some money on it? And maybe that's fair. But that does not necessarily mean that the betting odds on Polymarket are actually an accurate guide to the likely election outcome.
HalloweenSnarry
6hr ago
But what does that mean for the above question, exactly?
Living in a shithole has its advantages. Mainly that competition is a joke.
In America, a Stanford Economics PhD working at the fed is at best a lackey at a Trading Desk. In countries like Colombia, if you have any PhD and work at the central bank, you have real shot at running the printing press.
Now tell me who is more badass. Or influential.
Another example, here in Chile I know a radiologist who moved to the states. Earned real bank there. Strangely returned within a year. His reason?
"I feel richer here"
Incognito
6hr ago
It was doomed from the start. The "No" ads practically wrote themselves. The Yes campaign had no path to victory. In the Republic referendum, the No campaign argued technicalities "Even if you like the idea of a republic, this specific proposal is bad" - and that would have worked here too. So they gave almost no details and tried to coast through on vibes, then rightly got criticised for asking the public to sign a blank cheque.
As someone who cares about indigenous rights, I was angry at Albanese for introducing the legislation and it all played out pretty much as I anticipated. I did vote yes for idiosyncratic "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" reasons. The whole debacle set back indigenous relations at least a decade I reckon. Anecdotally, I've seen a marked decrease in "acknowledgement of country" lip service before events/meetings etc in the last year. And now everyone turns a blind eye to the goon squad that rounds up blackfellas in the CBD and dumps them in a park somewhere.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7hr ago
My mistake. I conflated him with Harry Byrd Sr., who never made such a pivot, but also died much earlier.
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
7hr ago
I don't think the skeptics (hi) doubt that Israelis sometimes do awful things, including shooting children. Or that we believe Israel is noble and innocent.
I do tend to believe that their enemies are among the worst in a generally shitty part of the world. And that people who bring up cherry-picked and carefully described incidents taking anything critical of Israel at face value, and then extrapolate to generalizations about how this is just typical Jewish behavior, do not, in fact, actually care in the slightest about alleged dead Palestinian children, but are happy to invoke dead children if it presents another opportunity to talk about how Jews are lizard-people.
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Israel, but it's hard to take them seriously from someone known to hate Jews. I mean, if suddenly you're willing to call interviews by the NYT asking people in Gaza if the Israelis are committing war crimes "high quality evidence" you can surely see why this prompts some see skepticism.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
7hr ago
Uh, uranium's an actinide (and thus lithophile), the thing I just said is highly concentrated in Earth's crust (see e.g. here for Sol System vs. here for Earth's crust; note that this somewhat understates the effect because both are normed to silicon being 10^6 and silicon is mildly concentrated in the crust compared to undifferentiated rocky bodies/epically concentrated in Earth as a whole compared to icy bodies). Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The yellow region in the second graph is the highly-siderophilic elements (plus tellurium), which are strongly depleted in the crust, and indeed osmium's one of them.
grognard
Intel Pentium III 450 / Nvidia Riva TNT2 Ultra / Corsair 128MB PC133 / ABIT BH6
7hr ago
Running DOS and Windows 9x games natively on fresh new silicon.
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php&t=93480&start=540
https://github.com/eivindbohler/itxllama
https://www.hackster.io/news/the-itx-llama-does-dos-right-ad88bfa80ca6.amp
Going to get in on this. CPU has weak IPC so at 500mhz is equivalent to Pentium 233 MMX. Might pair it with Riva TNT2 Pro AGP, the AGP is just overclock PCI so it isn’t very compatible with newer cards.
Loquat
7hr ago
Nothing about his PhD from Princeton. Nothing about running one of the world's largest hedge funds.
Sound decisions, both. It's almost certainly bad for his campaign if voters think he's one of "the elites", and hedge funds have a morally questionable reputation amongst the commonfolk (see also: Romney, Mitt).
waffles
7hr ago
I recently bought a Meshtastic board, a Heltec v3. For those who aren't familiar, this is a license-free low-bandwidth LoRA (long range-radio) device that can reach out very long distances on minimal power. The Meshtastic platform is a peer-to-peer network that supports text and data communication, the most notable part being that each device on the network is a node that receives and re-transmits messages to other nodes around them. In areas with good coverage, it means that you can potentially send messages to someone several hundred miles away from a board the size of a pack of gum.
I'm in a metropolitan area but at the base of a hill and don't have a very good connection to the rest of the nodes in my area. If I had the space, I would make a solar node (enclosure, solar panel, charge controller, battery, Meshtastic board, and antenna) and mount it on the roof, but unfortunately I live in an apartment and can't quite do that. However, if I find a good spot in the future, I might perform a guerilla installation somewhere nearby. Ideally it would be somewhere I frequent, since I would need Wifi or Bluetooth to connect to the node with my phone.
You can find a Meshtastic kit on Aliexpress for maybe $35 shipped, I would highly encourage anyone with even a passing interest in radio to pick one up and play around with it for a weekend.
cjet79
7hr ago
I said it up above, but ill have to say it again. I don't believe aliens are actively visiting earth. I guess I'm just around alien enthusiasts often enough that I know many of their arguments.
I originally responded when someone was asking "why don't they have an explanation for X". I then answered ... they do have an explanation for it. If we are going to get into how good the explanation actually is then I just want to stop, because I don't really think they are good explanations. I'm just saying the explanations and the answers are there.
At some point it is closer to a creative writing exercise for them. Making the most elaborate explanation for the presence of aliens while fitting all the available data. Asking them more in depth questions is not a path towards convincing them, its a path towards more fun for them because it adds on an additional challenge to the mass creative writing exercise they are all involved in.
TIRM
8hr ago
In the Cyberpunk anime they show how shitty and exploitative the future is by a teenager trying to dry his clothes, but the dryer subscription service runs out so the dryer in his mom's apartment refuses to work. I'd better never have an always-online dryer or fridge looking for reasons to lock up because I haven't paid a service fee or installation updates.
TIRM
8hr ago
Your bank could freeze your assets for being politically unacceptable.
As the wrong sort of protesters learned in Canada.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
8hr ago
You buy them from the supermarket. Obviously.
ThenElection
8hr ago
That's probably a good idea. But black men who are into crypto presumably don't want regulation to "protect" them from it.
The issue with the ambiguity is that people really into crypto are as likely to fill in the blanks with things they're worried about as things they're hopeful about.
Other countries have let people bet on politics for a long time and no, they’re far from always accurate. Right before Brexit, the betting market hugely favored remaining in the EU for example.
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