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Thetexashammer

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Thetexashammer

  1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you want to convince me the IDF are targeting civilians, I think it would be stupid, for lots of reasons even down to the point of its just a waste of ammo. However, I am sure there is some of that. I understand the logic, there are Israelis who have a burning hate for Palestinians. I would not be surprised or shocked. If you think Israelis have a burning hate for aid convoys and want to destroy them, and they have no idea of the strategic implications of said targeting, then you've lost the plot. Or more accurately, you are probably an antisemite. I just rewatched the scene from Band of Brothers where Mularkey meets a Nazi soldier who grew up near him in Washington. They're shooting the shit, Mularkey leaves, next thing you hear is automatic gunfire (killing the unarmed German prisoners). We were still the good guys.
  2. 1.6 trillion in interest by the end of the year. Buckle your seat belt Dorothy.
  3. The first time I went, I was like "so when do we get there" LOL.
  4. TIL something very strange happened in the UK. Conjoined twin Abby Hensel from Abby & Brittany secretly ties the knot | World News | Metro News
  5. It looks like Monex has some pretty tight spreads around the 1oz American Eagle gold coin. I will probably buy a couple soon just for fun.
  6. Same principle with skyscrapers. You have to stop and concentrate, but it's wild when you can feel the sway.
  7. It's not really my argument. I am probably 80% on it. There are some underlying assumptions, some have great evidence, others not so much. The basic point seems true, insofar as it's better than gold surely. Better than bonds? Almost 100%. Stocks? I am not even sure there is a real bubble. I made some decent money on an E&P stock trading at 3x earnings. Meta trades around 25x current earnings. Not insane to me. I was really referring to physical gold, which is the best analogue to bitcoin in a wallet. You can buy gold stocks, which are a proxy. Or you can do futures, which are basically frictionless, however, that probably requires active management and some financial sophistication. I think you can still take physical delivery of a gold contract. However, you have to store it and you have to get a metallurgist if you want to sell your brick. I am not a gold bug, but if you know how I could buy (and sell) coins without a huge markup I would probably be into that. Having some gold in the safe would be cool. But I feel like buying gold is like buying a car, meaning you lose 30% when you drive off the lot.
  8. Consider all the various asset classes. Stocks and bonds and the largest classes of investments. In a place where the government goes into a financial crisis, which class outperforms? The Federal Reserve is engaged in financial repression, you will have a negative real return on bonds. Stocks will suffer because the economy will be crushed, growth will die. Cash, it needs little explanation. If you wish to hold cash while the Fed prints a trillion in fiat every couple months, good on you. Levered real estate is not a bad option. Debt values are fixed, rents depend mostly on nominal dollar salaries. Real estate will perform well, but you have to be levered before interest rates rise. It's a dicey proposition, but not bad at all. Gold has storage costs but it is a decent inflation hedge. But you are likely paying a 20% premium up front and you can't do much with it. Overall, I don't like it, but I understand it for purposes of diversification, it has a negative correlation with financial assets. Bitcoin, however, is fixed in supply. You can buy stuff with it. There is no significant cost to buying or selling, and no storage cost. Maybe later we can get some interest. There is limited ability to pay for retail purchases, but that will change very shortly (at the very least, there will be a "Bitcoin" credit card where you pay the bill in Bitcoin). And it is new, people are buying it for the first time every day. It is the best asset class to buy and hold for the reasons I gave above. And the best thing is, a lot of people haven't figured that out yet.
  9. I hear the British are taking over the UN High Commission for Better BBQ.
  10. You can pry those salt and vinegar chips from my cold dead hands.
  11. I did this bridge in the Dolomiti. Val di Rabbi. There are lots of bridges around Trentino on the trails.
  12. Yes, absolutely. Not sure why Vince after all his troubles with alcohol in the past is still going out to these places that are just a haven for him to get sucked back into that life. He should stay home and get drunk in his garage like a normal dude.
  13. Haidt says in this video: the world tells you "you are a balloon full of feelings and the world is full of pins". His ideas overlap 99% with Shrier, however, Shrier is much much hotter. Both are extremely evidence based. Haidt also says in the video, about a dangerous playground: "This is good, because kids can get hurt. And that's crucial. Because if you can get hurt, then you learn how not to get hurt."
  14. So in your mind, Israel has the option to engage in a war of self defense, killing all the Hamas members, without killing the human shield Hamas interposed between their fighters and Israel's. Please share these tactics that nobody else has been able to identify. You will win a Nobel Peace Prize and I will be your biggest supporter. Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand.
  15. So no comment or disagreement on the substance of what I said. You posted a piece of Hamas propaganda and then described it in a completely inaccurate manner.
  16. We have discussed, in this thread, examples of how civilians die in war. This an ordinary and normal part of war. It is expected. In ODS, half our casualties were friendly fire. I gave many examples of how the US targeted civilians, how schools were bombed, and there was no war crime, it was just war. During war, bombs go astray. Soldiers might take a captive and decide to kill the unarmed captive because that guy killed his or her best friend. Controllers might receive incorrect coordinates. Intelligence can be wrong. There are a million reasons. However, Israel is engaged in a moral and legal war of self defense. Our killing of civilians in WW2 didn't change the moral or legal argument. There is no conceivable way to frame this as terrorism. Terrorism is the opposite of a war of self defense. We will call the PROBLEM NUMBER TWO. My question is, do you even understand what I am saying?
  17. There was discussion on earlier pages of this thread about how Hamas lies constantly. For example, the report where Israel supposedly bombed a hospital, but actually bombed a parking lot, and even then I don't think it ended being an Israeli bomb. The fake report was picked up by Reuters, NPR, NY Times, Washington Post etc. And of course it was all a lie. These are the same team of guys who save up women and chidren's bodies in the freezer, put them out of the street and then blow up a bomb and say Israel did it. Now you post a video from them and say "See - TERRORISM". Do you not understand what you did wrong? We'll call this PROBLEM NUMBER ONE.
  18. I can explain your multiple errors in drawing that conclusion. But I would like to give you a shot at figuring them out yourself.
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