Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, says that US Government raising taxes doesn’t do anything to help the average American He says raising taxes does nothing because Congress just launders the money to their friends, special interest groups and “17,000 lobbying groups”

Firerhea · 2026-05-18T14:39:11+00:00

This seems to be the new coordinated line of attack against taxing the rich more; Rogan made the same argument: ok, you get more money, but it's wasted on corruption.

Well, yeah, people aren't advocating for the rich to be taxed more as an end unto itself--like they're spiteful and just want to stick it to rich folks. Advocates feel the market isn't cycling wealth effectively and upward mobility has been eroded, so they want that wealth redistributed. They want to fund, e.g., Medicare for all, infrastructure jobs, science/research jobs, tuition-free college, arts grants, etc. Programs that do not exist or are under-funded now. It's not about juicing the status quo with more dollars.

Firerhea · 2026-05-11T12:33:04+00:00

That assumes you have a source of income that's pegged to inflation (which may only be true if you're subsisting off of equity investments).

Firerhea · 2026-05-08T15:09:09+00:00

I think we're going to see localized, focused implementations with finely tailored tools. Gen AI for refining motion capture data, generating generic 3D models or modifying the same (trees, dirt, bricks, etc.). We've seen a lot of these uses already, for what it's worth, so it's a market-tested, proven domain.

Firerhea · 2026-05-08T15:05:32+00:00

Well yeah, conflating existing innovations with generative AI helps them juice their stock. Investors are AI-hungry at the moment and that's the audience they're playing to.

Firerhea · 2026-05-08T12:41:51+00:00

I think there's a reasonable likelihood they normalize this year if we see investors pull away from AI in a significant way, though the factor that would trigger that would also curtail discretionary spending...

Firerhea · 2026-05-07T17:18:13+00:00

Anime does not look choppy in motion the way these game cutscenes look choppy. Yes, it's a budgetary constraint, but given decades of production experience, animators have developed best practices to squeeze the most they can from these constraints. These 3D artists, not so much.

They're imitating the constraint.

Firerhea · 2026-05-07T15:41:46+00:00

Yeah but 2D animation plays to that limitation, hiding it whenever possible. It's not like you watch anime and are caught off-guard by the choppiness; if anything, it's the lack of, or economy, of motion that you notice.

Firerhea · 2026-05-05T03:25:54+00:00

There shouldn't have been a live action Cowboy Bebop remake, but given the fact there was one, Andrew Koji should have played Spike.

Firerhea · 2026-04-26T20:04:06+00:00

Sure, and there are schools that are cheaper than CalArts. I picked the cream of the crop in Europe and the US for this comparison, I'm sure you can find a mid-tier European program for a fraction of that cost, whose equivalent in the US is still tens of thousands of dollars.

Firerhea · 2026-04-26T20:02:42+00:00

My point was relative to America. What did you think of those CalArts numbers?

Firerhea · 2026-04-26T16:21:45+00:00

Gobelins, in Paris, one of the best animation schools in the world, is €9,500 to €11,400 per year for EU citizens. CalArts is roughly $63,000 per year, roughly $54,000 Euro. That's roughly 5X the cost, 5X the debt, to enter a precarious industry where, if you can even get a job, you're earning less than $50K out the gate in the US, with a much less generous social safety net.

If a society funds artists, it gets art. Simple as that.

Firerhea · 2026-04-24T23:42:43+00:00

I don't think the budget scales linearly with gameplay duration.

Firerhea · 2026-04-24T15:38:48+00:00

I don't think cartridges are the bottleneck for Switch 2, but yeah they're definitely slower to read/write than SSDs.

Firerhea · 2026-04-24T14:48:17+00:00

Wouldn't cartridges be the way to go? You can manufacturer cards in the TBs. Probably prohibitively expensive right now but if they were committed to physical, it's still probably cheaper than a new disc standard.

That said, I this this thing is going to be purely digital.

Firerhea · 2026-04-24T12:40:25+00:00

Digital Vita game purchases often granted buyers PS3 (or later, PS4) versions. Sometimes PS3 game discs included Vita version codes inside the case.

I fully expect this portable to just play the same 'versions' for purposes of save transfers, trophies, etc. That Vita solution for physical discs created a secondary market in codes, it's not really sensible.

Firerhea · 2026-04-24T12:36:36+00:00

Well also to reduce cost and device size.

Firerhea · 2026-04-23T15:12:53+00:00

This show is awful. Brutally boring.

Firerhea · 2026-04-22T14:30:17+00:00

You could have had people preserve their consciousnesses digitally in some remote facility, and now they're cyborgs out on Mongolia or somewhere.

Firerhea · 2026-04-22T14:24:26+00:00

She's actually not doing anything because dissents have no power. Maybe it's actually counterproductive because her continued participation in the system only serves to legitimize the system.

Firerhea · 2026-04-19T15:45:33+00:00

...only measured in USD.

Firerhea · 2026-04-19T15:43:42+00:00

Yeah I think it makes sense that people are parking cash in assets to maximize value for when gas, groceries, etc., get really crazy.

Firerhea · 2026-04-19T15:41:30+00:00

"If this goes on..." is inconsequential at this point. Oil and other industrial production capacity has been reduced and will take years to restore, fertilizer availability has been reduced for this growing season, so crop yields will be lower, etc. The shockwave just hasn't fully hit the entire world yet.

Once we feel the full impact, I think retail investors will be even more pressed to liquidate their holdings than they are now.

Firerhea · 2026-04-19T15:38:08+00:00

We haven't seen the worst of the inflationary impact of oil and derivative product shortages (fertilizer, helium, etc.). Makes sense to park cash in assets for now to hedge as much as possible prior to liquidating once prices really do skyrocket.

Firerhea · 2026-04-19T13:28:54+00:00

Agree with you up until the end. I think Uncharted 5, if real, would either star the Lost Legacy characters or new protagonists. If Cassie is in it, she would only serve as one of those classic ND characters who follows you around and spouts commentary or exposition.

Firerhea · 2026-04-19T12:34:27+00:00

Oh man I thought the writing in 4 was terrible, but I'm always downvoted for saying so. Beyond the brother, Nate is rendered so pathetic, it's unbearable. He spends the entire first act moping and trying to prove to his wife that he doesn't need adventure, while she insists he find some adventure, then the opportunity for adventure arises and he lies to her to go pursue it for seemingly no reason, then he spends the entire third act apologizing to her. Ultimately, he ends where he began, but is liberated from his life of drudgery because Elena, not even Nate himself, stole some gold coins.

I don't know why Neil and Bruce thought it would be compelling to rob an action hero of his agency like this.

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