The problem is that "making money" is littered with principal/agent problems, which are exacerbated when "Hollywood accounting" is a shorthand for "ha ha yeah we've been structuring fraud and money laundering thru film production for >100 years"
It is notoriously possible to make back a film's budget thru local tax rebates and grants. Distribution as a separate service makes it extremely possible that the one-off production co is "losing money", the distributor "making money", and everyone nonetheless getting paid
May 8, 2023 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
It's not just that individual houses are strongpoints - the entire layout of the suburbs functions as a defense-in-depth. 🧵
In the city, one can build or buy an apartment block containing hundreds of units, destroying neighborhood demography at a stroke. In neighborhoods of single family housing, 99% of units aren't even on the market, making neighborhood takeover a process that takes minimally months
Apr 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's farcical to claim that they cannot get an injunction against wish et al to clean up their listings, or get the apps delisted. So I conclude they want this situation to continue and escalate.
Deshtwaun in Chicago does not have A Guy in Shenzhen he's siphoning monero to, afaict all this is thru commerical channels with huge identifiable chokepoints
Nov 21, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The idea that the constitution requires a state to be prevented from responding to a British invasion in 1812 or a Mexican invasion in 1845 is farcical.
You're not talking about states closing federal ports of entry, which would be unconstitutional - they're responding to an illegal infiltration by amongst other things armed foreign paramilitary forces
Oct 30, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Just in time for Halloween, All Quiet is basically shot as a horror movie. It's a little bit of a shame that it leans into all the "charging into machine gun nests" tropes, which gives an inaccurate view of the real horror and pointlessness of the war.
I'm not a big FACT CHECK guy if the aesthetics pan out and the thematic elements line up, but in this case the "charging into mg nests" trope leans into the "war is pointless, man, why don't they just, like, stop" memeplex. The actual horror is you *can't* stop.
Oct 29, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
There's a temptation, bc US losses in WWII were relatively low, to diminish the impact of the war on American psyche as merely the effects of propaganda. This is not accurate.
Firstly, US overall losses were low bc US civilian areas were not targeted and US was not involved in heavy ground combat until late in the game. Where US was involved in combat (not just post Normandy but merchant marine, air force etc), losses were horrific.
Oct 10, 2022 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
Columbus thread time.
Columbus was not an idiot. He spent his life since the age of 14 at sea or engaged in nautical trade, and had extensive experience with navigation and cartography. He was deeply embedded in the merchant class at the time.
When you're a sea captain, you're responsible for a huge amount of capital - every voyage was essentially a fairly large funded startup. Investors do *not* entrust such money to someone prone to flights of fancy, mental instability, or unwillingness to listen to reason.
Oct 8, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Controlling women's bodies (in a sexy way)
Dear @GOP there's still time to hire me as a consultant for your political messaging
Sep 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is the sort of game theoretical "shoot the hostage" alignment of incentives that happens when your spooks have essentially free reign. I wouldn't place the blame entirely on the USA either, there's a strong possibility of collusion with various EU deep staters.
This is why Biden is kept out of the loop on most important USG activities - if you brief him, there's a pretty strong possibility he'll just blurt it out at a press conference before his minders can call a time out
What happened here is that 28yo dogmom staffers are in charge of Biden's speeches and schedule and can thus "set policy" in the sense of setting public macro level agendas to coordinate on, despite having effectively no operational control of actual departmental infrastructure.
This is kind of a weird mirror of the Trump admin, which for different reasons also lacked control of its own executive departments.
Aug 31, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The "weapons are necessary for security of groups not extended state protection" analysis isn't exactly wrong but libertarian gunbros' political understanding goes from there to pure lib dogma. "Oh, oppressed minorities, like blacks and jews. Gotta prevent another Holocaust!"
You can just stop at the beginning. There are infinite striking examples of the state being unable or unwilling to protect people under all kinds of circumstances. Many of those are concretely applicable to muh women muh minorities, like the need to ventilate a burglar at 2am.
Aug 31, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
God bless the horny middle managers who keep falling for the same bit
Libs see a pair of C cups and immediately be like "so I look up their parents political donations and the Republican ones I just pretend they did a hate crime and have em expelled unless they join the gay club. Been doing it since 2010. How about desert?"
Aug 30, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
The idea of the national guard as some kind of "oh shit dad's home" totem of Now We're Serious is just fake. If you're not willing to have your local police use sufficient force to restore order, deploying a mass of untrained guardsmen to stand around isn't going to do it either
In context of civil disorder, National Guard is equipped to do exactly one job: "block this street, don't let anyone through without a pass". That can be *useful*, but it doesn't solve your problem.
Aug 19, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The Boys, Invincible etc have now ran basically the same trope - "what if the hero representing unlimited American power was e v i l and the deep state had to fight him". This is more concerning when you realize it's a projection of paranoia about the American population itself.
The Superman comics they are drawing from were quite explicit about identifying Superman with the spirit of the American population - a pilgrim sent from an alien continent who finds his unlimited personal capacity in service of truth, justice, and the American way
Apr 19, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I think I know which side of that they plan on crushing
My personal inflation hedges: 1) Debt. Not paying off anything under 2%, which means exploiting credit card promos, car loans, mortgage tax implications etc
Apr 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The idea that myths were *developed to explain*, eg, why the peacock has many eyes on its tail, or why a cave echoes, is a complete inversion of the actual purpose of such correspondences.
Myths are designed to *tell a truth*, and the correspondence to physical trivia like the arrangement of constellations is meant as a reminder of that truth, not other way around.
Mar 20, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Nuclear weapons are real, but what's more interesting is speculation about whether the actual ones we have still work. We have many empirical examples of extremely complex aerospace engineering lore being lost outright.
What tended to happen is that the absolute sharpest knife in the drawer would build something at just about the limits of his comprehension, because the budget was effectively unlimited as long as you could produce a set of capabilities. Then he retires.
Feb 27, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
My meta level read of the propaganda situation is that Russia is trying to conceal the actual cost from its people for as long as possible, and Ukraine is wall-spaghetti-ing memes designed entirely for a western audience who they wish to provide them with unlimited support.
I'm concerned that the "Ukrainian" propaganda arm appears to be increasingly dominated by western spooks with an interest in escalation, unlimited access to western media time, and apparently wide bipartisan support in the US public.
Feb 26, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Did a bunch of driving today and listened to a bunch of NPR and BBC today. The "Ukrainian civilians taking up arms" story was pushed heavily. The two examples they gave:
1) Russian cossack woman who moved to Ukraine in '13, discovered it "wasn't what they said", and fought in '14 for UKR. She's fleeing reserve duty to take care of her son, the AK is presumably in case someone breaks into the apartment.
Jan 17, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
MLK Day means we can take stock of the mythology over 50 years on from his work and death.
MLK is an important mythological figure in the US due to the civil rights era being the foundation of America's current order. America beat the Nazis and came home to scourge the traces of similar behavior from its shores. His death is perfect martyrdom for the religion.
Feb 25, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
American media firms are aware of the success of anime, manga, foreign cartoons and assorted non-Hollywood content. They will not create the same content for Americans because the power of social engineering > profit
American comics circle the drain as manga holds steady. I’m sure a making Batman black, Wonder Woman an open borders advocate or Superman gay will solve the sales problem.
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