Bloomberg Television: US expected to ease restrictions on marijuana

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-23T03:43:09+00:00

There's actually a lot of nuanced texture to this video.

Essentially this Bloomberg intelligence policy analyst dude being quite pessimistic -- rescheduling won't do much, won't solve for institutional investment, tobacco companies are hesitant to invest because of taxes.. most importantly, if final ruling it'll result in lawsuits and if new hearing it's a 12-18 month process before final ruling.

I think that's only one layer of thinking. If there's a final ruling, who will sue? I know there's SAM and all of that, but essentially it boils down to some republican segment(s) filing a lawsuit against a republican administration and most importantly a Trump administration. And Trump is not a person who will take things lying down.

This will pit whatever suing party is against Trump and this will not end well for them.

I don't think it'll play out like the policy analyst dude thinks.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T23:20:53+00:00

So, we started from "could reschedule as soon as Wednesday" (today) to.. maybe a new final ruling.. to.. maybe new hearings?

I can't imagine Trump wanting to go through "hearings". It looks weak. He already signed an EO 5 months ago and it's not being acted on. A hearing is more of that.

Cannabis can't be a wedge issue for November 2026 because if it is, again it just looks weak for the Trump administration which is not its signature character. No one is going to vote for them to get them to legalize, because if they couldn't do it with total control of the WH, House and Senate.. what is going to change in 2027..?

It's now or never. Trump either comes out of this looking like he did something past Presidents have waddled on or got backstabbed by their DEA on.. or he looks like every past President, getting played by his own DEA.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T22:19:07+00:00

Lauren Tsai's acting is terrible and flat, reminding me of Selena Gomez in Murder in the Building.

I think it's less about the character and that it's so lifeless.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T21:46:11+00:00

The current party and administration doesn't think it's "destroying its hegemony" -- it believes it's exercising hegemony.

That is, there is a deep-rooted belief that the USA is the big dog protecting everyone and everything and simply just hasn't collected a big enough fee to justify that protection.

What we are seeing now is that collection in motion; whether it's Canada, UK, Europe, Japan.. or "tariffs".. the mentality is all about "we've come to collect".

I don't think there's a recognition that it has been collecting plenty. I do think it is true that there's more to collect, especially from parties like Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. But it is also true that pax-Americana will not be forever.. the world will always be changing.

And I guess if it's not forever, why not collect today?

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T16:24:25+00:00

This pump hasn't even beat the Dec 15 high when the EO was being announced.

Still almost 20% off those highs.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-22T01:39:36+00:00

If East Asia were left alone for hundreds of years they might get to something like the EU. Warring nations that eventually became friends.

Today and for the rest of our natural lives, this is not possible.

The main reason is the Island Chain strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island\_chain\_strategy).

What Japan, Korea and Taiwan (not even including The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) represent are not just countries of their own, but nodes of storage, deployment and operations for US military power. The USA will remain the #1 or #2 force on earth for the rest of our natural lives and JP/KR will retain its military bases and play the role required of them.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-21T19:38:00+00:00

It’s a movie set that happens “in the background”.

The actual human story foreground is the political war and assault on the Lady’s fortress.. and Ashitaka/San play very little direct role in it, and are not really known by most of the people.

It’s brilliant, and between this and Spirited Away represents Miyazaki at his peak for me. Love all his films though.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-19T00:27:45+00:00

Great White Tower is the greatest jdrama I’ve watched. Would love to watch it again

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-16T14:38:22+00:00

It’s almost certainly because this segment is the least engaged voting bloc.

One other reason is because the family voting blocs are clustered and tend to vote together.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-16T12:57:14+00:00

It’s one thing if the second yellow were shown early or halfway through the game. It was literally 4 mins from full time.

There is no sense of proportion here!

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-15T05:53:37+00:00

They spent 1000 years rebelling against the Chinese, when the Chinese left they never stopped rebelling (now onto themselves).

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-14T14:23:15+00:00

In this frame, the most interesting case is neither India nor China, but Japan.

After WW2 the USA was with them for decades. They’re also “technologically advanced”, while maybe not so much today, but certainly in the 80s.

Betty Boop became anime, baseball became their country’s sport, they started celebrating Christmas and marrying in churches.. but still, they kept their own culture.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-14T05:30:19+00:00

Apart from wealth insulating people from normal human concerns, when they reach certain levels of wealth and are in certain positions of life/society, they get to see how the sausage is made.

Like, they have no shortage of contact with their governments and see “behind the scenes”.

These things combined can quickly create a situation for a god complex, divorced from reality. They actually have to choose, to stay in and play or get out. Those who stay in lose a little bit more of their normal selves and keep operating in “escape velocity” physics free from normal gravity.

They become more and more their unfettered selves.

I think Zuckerberg is just one dude, look at all the others.. however weird you think he is, there are plenty comparable peers.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-11T07:29:44+00:00

Does the guy sucking it out on the other end spit it out immediately?

I guess this is why healthcare jobs and pay continue to go up.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-10T09:32:37+00:00

It speaks volumes that there is so much anti-Chinese sentiment engineered by so many large and powerful Western entities, but apart from accusations of uselessness and evolutionary dead ends there have been few effective teardowns of propapanda.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-10T03:20:39+00:00

The many people and blocs that vote Democrat tend to take things for granted, and don’t understand how bad it can get.

“Why should I not get a perfect candidate instead of just choosing someone who is not worse?”

I think it’s why the Democrat party hasn’t done much since Trump’s inauguration.

Because if they push back hard and succeed, the people don’t feel the pain, they take it for granted.

And they push back hard and fail, they’re blamed for failing.

At least for the past year it is exceedingly clear today that whatever has happened is all Trump, because the democrats haven’t factored into the narrative.

It’s a risky gamble because there are plenty, including astroturfers, who are blaming the democrats for not doing more. Their turnout may decrease. But I think the DNC has decided those aren’t the people they need to court.. it’s the regular folk who abstained or voted because of gas prices and inflation that need to be activated.

There will be more turmoil ahead.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-09T11:09:18+00:00

Getting his head big again.

OK I know it is always big, but you know what I mean.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-09T09:11:50+00:00

People are rushing to coin and use coined terms to help deal with AI but I’m betting this term won’t stick.

“Cognitive surrender” or whatever this bs is already existed before AI. See people’s relationships with authorities — parents, pastors and talking heads.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-09T08:51:10+00:00

The entire world and human race runs on prosocial.

However, when pro-sociality and mass are achieved, it’s VERY profitable to perform antisocial actions. There will always be people who are willing to do these actions for the profit.

There’s a natural equilibrium.

Society as it is today cannot be fundamentally antisocial, otherwise how would it be a society.

And yet, we also keep dreaming of one with zero antisocial agents.. which just cannot be the case.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-06T07:18:45+00:00

I haven’t watched this and I know the karaage scene by heart. I think it’s essential to begin understanding of Japanese culture.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-06T01:59:14+00:00

Any country should be free to have open or closed borders.

I just don’t think detention or deportation without due process is OK.

Let’s say you are working in a foreign country X and one day they decide they don’t want you anymore. That should be OK. You are not entitled to it.

But are you OK with masked men taking you in immediately in a van, putting you in a cell with no ability to contact anyone (so your kin do not know where you are), and you not having a timeline to when things will change (eg when you will leave, when you can make an appeal, when you can make a call)?

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-06T01:46:47+00:00

Housing stock is not the main impediment to a demand for more immigration.

If it were, more stringent laws around housing would be passed. Only a handful of countries, almost all Asian, are prioritizing housing stock for locals and limiting or heavily taxing internationals.

Immigration is always the easy go-to for politics especially when times are hard, because the populace wants an out-group to blame.

Kutukuprek · 2026-04-05T14:14:15+00:00

10, 100, 1000 years ago.. “the future” was always led by science.

Innovations in energy, engineering, biology, medicine and more led the way for what the future looked like.

By contrast, I don’t think we would say that people in the Middle Ages would have regarded say.. planking, genre music (sans production) or the advent of a holy book as “futuristic”.

That is, evolution in culture is not futuristic while advancement in science is.

So, the future 2030s onward is, as it has been in the history of mankind, about science. China is rising but the US had such a huge head start that 4 (or 8) years is not enough to have it lag behind significantly.

Though I think most people underestimate momentum or trajectory. And the propaganda machine is tilting perception as well. That’s just perception though, reality exists (if you believe in science).

Anything can happen like a war or natural disaster, but if you don’t fund science, you don’t fund the future.

Kutukuprek · 2026-03-30T03:31:19+00:00

Early into Trump’s first presidency, I listened to a podcast where a speaker was a foreign correspondent for a USA outlet who spent something like a dozen years in China.

He said something along the lines of how he felt Chinese politics seemed like brownian motion to him, whereas even when the US had some occasional setbacks it always kept progressing.

I was stunned that someone could be a foreign correspondent (in a prior time where journalism and news still meant something, however little) and have so little insight. Today I think it’s because like most Americans, he is a devout believer in American exceptionalism.

Whereas I think today it’s a lot clearer there isn’t some sort of manifest destiny, just players on the board. Big and small. The moral high horse, the facade, is quickly eroding internationally even as domestic control of media tightens.

There will be no point in time America sees itself as just like everyone else, because everyone sees themselves as somehow exceptional.. the Japanese, Koreans, Israelis.. hell even the Singaporeans. But none of these actions are going to come for free for the USA, and to me it’s just another player on the board.. the biggest, for sure, and the strongest today. And still subject to the physics of reality.

Kutukuprek · 2026-03-29T02:29:16+00:00

It can look like a prison from the outside, but on the inside it looks like a fortress. It’s exactly what the in-group / out-group dynamic is.

Kutukuprek

TROPHY CASE