Programmer and sysadmin (DevOps?), wannabe polymath in tech, science and the mind. Neurodivergent, disabled, burned out, and close to throwing in the towel, but still liking ponies 🦄 and sometimes willing to discuss stuff.
Nothing new. Working for the UAE, Saudis, Kuwait, etc. has always been the same: they take your passport, and/or withhold payment, and/or you need to get your employer give you permission to leave the country.
Unless you’re wealthy enough to hire people to work for you, never ever go to work there.
Two papers I used to work for closed up shop, and I’d not done so.
Try the wayback machine, but put the URL with “http” instead of “https”. I’ve recently found a page of mine they archived in the early 2000s, with data from as far back as 1997.
IMHO Melinda changed Gates’s view on the world. As much as her desktop idea was nightmare fuel, they did create a foundation, had some kids together, and that let Gates grow as a person away from Ballmer’s “Developers, Developers, Developers!” culture.
Anyone who plays it right:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)
Bonus points for anyone with insider information.
Master class in how to antagonize the most pro-US European country.
Trump is playing “bully pocker”, his goal is to look good to his bases, whoever that might be at the moment. It’s the game that has worked for him his whole life, and he’s good at it.
What he doesn’t realize, is the world stage is an agreements game, based on trust and good faith, where others can join forces and render anyone at the table irrelevant. He’s trying to bully everyone into doing what he wants like he was in a single-country sandbox, by playing his strong economy and military “cards” in a carrot+stick teasing approach… without realizing those same “cards” are also based on trust and good faith. Both of which he’s been losing at an increasing rate.
I don’t think he will stop teasing and gaslighting everyone around, he doesn’t know how to do anything else. He will just run the US presidency into the ground, while everyone increasingly ignores him.
They don’t need them anymore.
EVs are a stepping stone towards getting rid of fossil fuels, which is another stepping stone towards “saving the Earth”. Going back, puts us farther away from the goal.
That wouldn’t protect him. Only 25% of world gold production has a practical use, the rest is turned into jewelry and bullion at a speculative value. Buying some is also not that straightforward, most is sold as an IOU, with the physical stuff remaining in the original owner’s vault.
We live in a world where fiat/credit rules everything; the moment trust is lost, there is no difference between Tesla shares, Zimbabwean dollars, $Trump, USD… or bullion IOUs.
For reference:
PS: this is also another step towards Network States.
Like every good billionaire, he’s been playing the stock game by taking on loans and exchanging stock, based on valuation (aka: hype). If the valuation plummets, then depending on his exposure, he could default on those loans and end up penniless.
We don’t know his exposure level, he’s been avoiding anything that would require disclosing all his assets and liabilities, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Dunno, seeing how DOGE/Musk have been shutting stuff down and firing people in bulk, then scrambling to restore those that/who turn out to be necessary, it seems like par for the course.
Relaxation of anti-cyberatrack measures, could also play a role.
This seems to be an interesting take on the interaction:
This was an AMBUSH at The White House
The mere presence of Vance, the TASS reporter who got expelled at the last moment, the stupid question about not wearing a suit, the comments about discussing stuff “behind closed doors” instead of “in front of the cameras”… they all make the interpretation plausible. It gets compounded by the latest draft of the agreement being nothing like what Trump had been screaming about.
IMHO, it looks like Trump wanted to reenact his interpretation of the negotiation process in front of the cameras to make himself look great, but Zelensky didn’t want to take part in the charade.
I’ve seen the technical discussions, it isn’t clear whether someone was:
When you become a citizen of a Network State, the dApp will automatically tax you on-chain according to what a majority of stakeholders agree to.
What? Not yet a citizen? Well… here’s a reason to pick one and give it everything you own. 👹
This article from before the elections, has some more graphics and information:
It gets more interesting with a map of the votes:
East Germany, vs. West Germany.
It’s been somewhat of a theme in countries that endured USSR influence, to run a “commie scare” and fall straight into the arms of a neo-lib alt-right.
He also met Spanish party leader Santiago Abascal. They all congratulated each other.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGa-FMAot00/?igsh=MW9zcDAydG9xenp2Nw==
Just putting on the jacket, could be seen the same way as a party costume, or a movie prop.
Wearing it with the express intent of instilling fear in people, could be seen as terrorism.
Wearing it to a mall and shouting “ICE is here!” so people run in fear, would be instant impersonation and terrorism.
…or it used to be.
If that’s the US… keep in mind that the distance between the US and Russia is… 53 miles. Excluding Alaska, the distance between Chukotka and Washington, is under 1100 miles.
The KGB became the FSB. Historically:
…and so on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin