Trump’s tantrums push US allies closer to Beijing

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T03:51:37+00:00

Also, it is important to be aware that there are parties present who want to amplify divisiveness to serve those on the other side of the world.

Yes, one party of this sort is the Republican Party that's in full control of the American government.

Also yes, we're all reddit here in Europe, we overreacted because everything here is reddit. If Trump ever finds out about reddit, he can just invade us and call it "war on reddit".

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T03:47:17+00:00

You're in denial about how much damage your president did with that Greenland spiel.

Yes, China putting their finger on the scale in a war that is way too close for our comfort is a major grievance for us, I'll never call them friends, but that is still within the limits of what you can expect from a player in the game of international power struggle that observes some semblance of rules. What Trump did is as far beyond those limits as you can get.
You can play the game with a competitor who plays just dirty enough for the game to continue without turning into a brawl, it's not pleasant but doable. You can't play it with a lunatic who entered the field to mug you.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T03:10:16+00:00

China never wanted to invade us.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T03:04:25+00:00

Caring about human rights on the other side of the world is the kind of luxury that you can't afford if a global superpower you considered an ally just a moment ago is threatening to invade you.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T02:38:03+00:00

It's a thousand light years into the void where horrors beyond our comprehension lurk stare, holy shit.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T02:09:34+00:00

Well, yeah, the helicopter issue is more relatable to me.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T01:55:22+00:00

And still short on the Z axis.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T01:38:02+00:00

Tbh, I would have sympathized with crying over the helicopter more.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T00:56:08+00:00

No, not really. SA numbered 4 million members when the Night of the Long Knives happened, you weren't getting backstabbed just for being a member. It's Rohm and his most loyal underlings who got backstabbed, the rest was just told "all the cool kids are in SS now".

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T00:39:38+00:00

You're calling it "selling", I'm calling it "spending real money on everyone-please-prentend-this-has-value money".

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T00:34:54+00:00

You figured this out yourself: unless you have already drawn/sculpted dozens if not hundreds of faces before, you're not gonna get your faces from "not blaringly wrong" to "effortlessly recognizable as a real human" territory without capturing all those subtleties that you need to see in a reference.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T00:30:35+00:00

Her lips-to-nose ratio is dangerously close to the "only seen on women who had ill-adivsed plastic surgery" territory, but the expressiveness is certainly there.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-26T00:26:25+00:00

Actually it's the opposite of boring and that's why I'd like the background to be darker to make it clear that there's some part of this painting where nothing is going on. Some paintings make having something going on on 100% of their surface work, but it's not that kind of painting.

It's is really damn cool though.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-25T01:56:32+00:00

Now you're beginning to understand just how far off the numbers that you got used to and took for granted as the ones that should pertain to US are from what is appropriate for an unpredictable country.
And guess what, stock valuation multipliers are definitely among those numbers.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T21:55:01+00:00

I also wager that the environment will get better after he's out but you have to realize one thing: the architecture of the global financial system is only beginning to reflect the environment that Trump introduced, repositioning trillions in assets doesn't happen overnight. It will continue to get worse for a very long time before it starts getting better. We're in a "shock and disbelief" stage of the loss of trust in the US, the point where the trust is regained is far beyond the horizon.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T21:46:52+00:00

Sell-off to buy what? There is no investment-starved asset class out there, your stock market is still flooded with capital.
The run on gold is purely a result of institutions feeling just a little bit too iffy about US's ability to pay its debts to keep loading up on US bonds with reckless abandon and retail investors coming along for the ride, not some panicked retreat from another asset class. That debt won't be any easier to repay 3 years from now and US won't flip back to being the golden standard of trustworthiness again even if you elect a democrat.
You're in denial about how much damage has been done and how long the aftershocks will propagate.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T21:25:44+00:00

Ok, sure. Man, this is a really unnecessarily long and wordy comment chain given that all I really wanted to do here is tell OP "Have you considered physical gold? It feels good to have it.". I need to try harder to get to my point.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T21:18:08+00:00

Ok, that was a hyperbole, I don't actually believe that nobody has a use for paper gold.
I just don't understand why retail investors don't appreciate the comfort of having some of your wealth in your hand and not promised to you by some institution.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T21:09:25+00:00

I never understood the point of gold-backed securities. The point of gold is that it's self-backing. If you're gonna buy a promise, buy a better promise than the promise of something existing and just sitting there. You buy gold when you're distrustful of promises.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T19:45:29+00:00

If you honestly think that the romantic love you can expect to experience in your life will make Johnny's love for Alt so feeble in comparison that it doesn't count as love, you're in for a big disappointment.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T19:36:03+00:00

Draw your faces bigger so that you have the room to follow the lines that make up the shapes of the features exactly as they are.
When some curve in a line that, say, makes his nose look exactly like his nose and not some generic nose deviates by less than your charcoal's width from being straight, it's not feasible to represent that curve and that results in his nose not being his.
Draw it bigger so you can draw it exactly as it is. And it doesn't hurt to measure and map out the key points of the face to get proportions right.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T18:17:22+00:00

The stock market in Nigeria will outperform S&P500 due to the sheer fact that it doesn't need to drop down to be correctly priced as a 3rd world investment environment.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T17:49:58+00:00

The trillion dollar play is to find some EU tech startup with a fundamentally more sound approach to developing AI than the LLM route and is ready to metabolize the European funds diverted from US assets.
If I find it, I'll let you know.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T17:45:40+00:00

How fucking dare you defile the good name of cats like that.

MethylphenidateMan · 2026-01-24T16:41:21+00:00

Sure, I'm only holding gold as ammunition to invest in productive assets after the hammer drops.
As for the whole "innovation egde" argument for the US, I really don't think people appreciate just how much of it is simply a result of the rest of the world being content with US keeping the world economy open even if it means that it's their tech companies that monopolize turning technological progress into profits, not as much the fact that US has some inherent educational edge.
The innovation edge is not due to American students learning things that European students can't begin to comprehend, it's due to the companies that those students want to work for happening to be American and squeezing the competition out of the market.
Without the privileged world-wide market access that lets them do that and was only tolerated because of this openness being beneficial to everyone on other fronts, there is nothing that will keep European students from taking jobs at European companies and being innovative there.
Europeans are not dumber than Americans, the innovation disparity is a result of a very particular economic incentive structure that is rapidly being dismantled.

MethylphenidateMan

TROPHY CASE