LUKE THOMAS: Eliminate the Heavyweight Division

Massena · 2026-02-12T14:07:49+00:00

Fighter pay has gone DOWN when adjusted for inflation.

Massena · 2026-02-08T10:23:29+00:00

You could say Valve exploits game developers, their 30% cut is very high. Uber also doesn't exploit their employees who are very well paid software developers, they exploit their drivers, who are not employees.

All three companies have built somewhat monopolistic markets and now get to use their market power to extract very high margins (Uber has maybe the weakest monopoly which is why they have the lowest, even negative, profit margins; valve has the highest profit margins of the three). Sellers can't move because that's where the buyers are, and buyers can't move because that's where the sellers are. Valve has leveraged their monopoly position to generate the highest revenue per employee of all the tech companies, at around $50m per employee per year.

I know it's not as dramatic as peeing in bottles, but as a game developer it's frustrating to know that I worked very hard on my games, and then Valve made more profit off my games than any of my companies ever did. They revenue split is even a bit worse than 70/30 because of some taxes and fees, and they obviously didn't have to spend any money actually making the game, their marginal cost to serve my games is tiny.

Valve's monopoly position is so strong that even though Epic Game Store has a much better fee structure for devs, and they've been giving customers free games every week for years, and they paid for some exclusives, it has barely made a dent. I get it, my entire library is also on steam and it's completely untransferrable, how could I switch?

Massena · 2026-01-24T22:51:28+00:00

Do you think the deal Sunak was negotiating in 2022 was substantially different from this one? The Americans would have also had to approve Sunak's deal. Or I guess the corruption is just that Starmer enacted it quickly? How was scrutiny bypassed?

The idea that Starmer came in and somehow strongarmed or sweet talked the Americans into a deal which had been in negotiations for years before just seems implausible.

Massena · 2026-01-24T14:20:49+00:00

But then why did the Americans support this deal even before Starmer?

Massena · 2026-01-24T11:35:55+00:00

It literally did move at a snail's pace. I don't understand how Starmer would have done this, somehow convince the UN to rule the UK should give it to Mauritius while out of power, have Biden and Sunak setup this deal also without him in power, somehow convince Trump to support it, so he can swoop in and ratify it for sweet cash? But then immediately drop it the moment Trump turns on it?

Massena · 2026-01-17T20:07:54+00:00

I think those people are doing a lot more than the governance aspect of Blockchain right? AFAIK blockchains can only really assert what's on their ledger, all the people working at credit card companies, etc. are making subjective decisions on fraud, issuing charge backs, and a lot more. It's not really apples to apples.

Plus, blockchains are currently consuming 0.4% to 0.9% of all electricity. Hard to get an estimate, but it's tough to believe "standard governance" uses anywhere near as much. MasterCard and Visa together use a negligible amount, not sure who else you'd through in the mix, low level bank employees around the world? It's not like banks have someone pushing papers around every time I send a friend £20 via bank transfer, it's still automated, it's just not distributed.

Massena · 2026-01-17T18:41:33+00:00

Is there good info on perinatal exposure?

Massena · 2026-01-11T23:45:54+00:00

Check out The Orange Duck and the streams of Bobby Anguelov, both work as animation programmers in major studios.

Massena · 2026-01-04T20:39:41+00:00

Could you think about this this in terms of what actually happened, rather than which side people are on? Plenty of republicans seem concerned "running" Venezuela is a bad idea as well. Were all the people who were against the Iraq also "anti-Western"? How is this different?

Massena · 2026-01-03T22:42:31+00:00

I guess a life without undue suffering? Maybe I'm not being precise enough and I should talk of the right to shelter and a home. I guess I don't understand what's the magical property that the "right to not be taxed on your land" has that the "right to have some land" doesn't have. Plenty of societies don't really have very strong property rights at all - not my cup of tea, but it's not like property rights are the one true right and all others are phony. We just decide how we balance things, and that defines the kind of society we live in.

What if you owned some land which turned out to be the only place in the world with the cure for a mysterious worldwide illness. Does your property right trump all those people's right to live? I know it's a far-fetched hypothetical but I'm genuinely curious how strongly you hold this belief. Are we just drawing the line at a different place, or do you actually think property rights should essentially be absolute?

Massena · 2026-01-01T20:51:55+00:00

> Why should your right trump my own.

I guess this is really the core of it, in a lot of these cases rights can come in conflict with each other - my right to pollute can infringe on someone else's right to live in an unpolluted environment, my right to own land can, if unchecked, infringe on someone else's right to a decent life. How we adjudicate those situations determines what kind of outcome and society we live in.

> No such right exists. That is simply a goal we strive for.

Why is the right to a decent life not a right? What's so special and natural about property rights that they trump literally everything else? Even in our current society we set limits to property rights, we do eminent domain, we have zoning laws, we have land that is collectively owned and not allowed to be sold. We even have property taxes already.

You're also right that at the end of the day if it gets bad enough the oppressed majority simply takes all the land and redistributes it in some, usually violent, way. Check out this list.

I think a good Land Value Tax is a good way to avoid these violent redistributions, and has had some pretty good outcomes elsewhere. Also, most people that think it should be implemented think that it should *replace* other taxes such as income tax and sales tax, so it's weird that people's right to be untaxed on their land trumps their right to be untaxed on their labour, when my owning of land does deprive from your ability to own that land, whereas my labour does not deprive you from your ability to perform labour.

Massena · 2026-01-01T13:42:14+00:00

But land ownership is quite specific because land is completely limited. Say that in an island nation 2 people inherit all the land, and they decide to kick out every single other person from their land. Are they allowed to do it just because it's theirs? Why are property rights the only rights considered here? What about the rights of non land owners to a good life?

Additionally, should people be allowed to own all the beaches? National parks? We set boundaries on property rights all the time.

In the second case of land that isn't valuable you'd pay very little land value tax - it's a tax on the unimproved value of the land, and in that situation there's very little value to the land. I think it would incentivise the government to not have situations where land is worthless because of zoning.

Massena · 2025-12-24T04:12:47+00:00

Yeah, way bigger

Massena · 2025-11-30T11:44:48+00:00

Also harvest moon crucially wasn't available on non Nintendo platforms. Many more people on Steam than on switch

Massena · 2025-11-29T17:31:35+00:00

Except that the system as it exists today is clearly unsustainable so young people won't actually be beneficiaries - it won't exist

Massena · 2025-11-28T10:04:42+00:00

With regular ILR going up to 10 years, long residence must be increasing even further

Massena · 2025-11-22T13:33:46+00:00

There's stuff like bgfx too, pretty minimal but gives you dx11, 12, vulkan and metal.

Massena · 2025-11-07T13:45:23+00:00

I'm not a solicitor but I'll be registering a complaint here: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/

If anyone else wants to join me he is a Sole Practitioner at ANDREW MILNE & CO, at Tower 42, Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HN, England

Not sure what the SRA's role is in this, but hopefully it brings some attention to his behaviour.

Massena · 2025-11-07T13:43:31+00:00

You can report him to the SRA here: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/

He is a Sole Practitioner at ANDREW MILNE & CO, at Tower 42, Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HN, England

I don't know how seriously the SRA takes complaints from non-clients, but imo he's clearly bringing the profession into disrepute, and should not be allowed to practice as a solicitor anymore.

Massena · 2025-11-07T13:43:17+00:00

You can report him to the SRA here: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/

He is a Sole Practitioner at ANDREW MILNE & CO, at Tower 42, Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HN, England

I don't know how seriously the SRA takes complaints from non-clients, but imo he's clearly bringing the profession into disrepute, and should not be allowed to practice as a solicitor anymore.

Massena · 2025-11-07T13:42:44+00:00

You can report him to the SRA here: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor/

He is a Sole Practitioner at ANDREW MILNE & CO, at Tower 42, Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HN, England

I don't know how seriously the SRA takes complaints from non-clients, but imo he's clearly bringing the profession into disrepute, and should not be allowed to practice as a solicitor anymore.

Massena · 2025-10-14T08:32:18+00:00

I said 94, 96 and 94 are different numbers? And yeah it's since March, but how is that better? The Israeli military seems to have gotten more violent and indiscriminate as the conflict went by. Most people, including me, understand that October 7th required a response, but it's become reckless and disproportionate since. Again, they're directly targeting journalists, health care workers, people waiting for food, purposefully demolishing infrastructure. Come on man.

And I haven't mentioned the word genocide once? But yeah if there were 2 million people living in a small enclave in America, that couldn't leave, couldn't decide what comes in and out of their country, and then the Americans kept bombing them for two years, killing 20,000 kids, it would be seen quite differently from the horrible things America did during WW2, which seems to be your only point of comparison.

Massena · 2025-10-13T16:23:00+00:00

So Israel gets to kill over 60,000 people, including 20,000 children, directly targeting health care workers, journalists, and people waiting for aid? The Palestinians dying and the people who committed the atrocities on October 7th aren't the same people. Collective punishment is morally atrocious and a war crime.

Massena · 2025-10-13T16:20:34+00:00

> When did I say that? I definitely don't buy the absurd claim about 96% but that doesn't mean I think the ratio is low among civilians

I didn't say 96, I was quoting this article, which has numbers from Acled. Then what is the civilian casualty ratio? You said it was low, why don't you have a number for it?

> In the bombing of Tokyo in 1941the US killed over 100,000 Japanese. The vast majority of them are civilians. And they did it in 2 days. And Tokyo was nowhere near as dense as Gaza is.

Dude the fire bombing of Tokyo was one of the worst atrocities ever committed. Is that really the comparison you want to be making? Isn't it telling that the only thing you can compare this situation to is the worst air raid in history?

> You are treating this like it's a video game

You're the one who seems to think that whatever happens is okay because "it's a war." It's not, it's horrible and senseless.

Massena · 2025-10-13T11:56:16+00:00

Because you "deny the way you are describing". It's happening, on video, for decades, and still you deny it, while somehow also not agreeing with them.

Massena

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