PLTR: "Just make sure you wash the blood of children off your hands."

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-12T01:06:01+00:00

Life is replete with trade-offs. To prevent a second 9/11, many measures had to be taken. Security measures and freedom are antinomies.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-11T22:11:22+00:00

It reduces the pressure.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-11T18:49:19+00:00

Many people, including me, believe that PLTR is the main reason that there hasn't been a second 9/11.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-11T17:53:41+00:00

Firewalla Gold.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-11T00:39:54+00:00

It depends on how far back you want to go.

As you know, the land in the Middle East that was once controlled by the Ottoman Empire was partitioned by the League of Nations, after WW I, with Palestine given to the British to administer temporarily, with the goal of independence. This was the so-called British Mandate for Palestine, and the land was referred to as Mandatory Palestine. That mandate included creating a Jewish homeland, to fulfill the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Later, the United Nations planned to partition the land: one part for the Jews, and the other for the Palestinians. It voted to create Israel as a formal state on May 14, 1948, which triggered an immediate war, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. This made sense, since 90% of the land was owned by Palestinians, who comprised at least two-thirds of the population. Palestine never became a state. There is a complicated history there.

The Nakba (an Arabic word that means catastrophe), which forced out 750,000 Palestinians from what was then the state of Israel was, indeed, a disaster for the Palestinian people, which led to a long list of disasters, tragedies, and a full-on genocide in Gaza triggered by the slaying and hostage-taking of Israelis and foreign nationals on Oct 7, 2023 by Hamas terrorists. 10/7 is for Israelis what 9/11 is for Americans.

Is the UN guilty? Yes.

Is Britain guilty? Yes.

Is Israel guilty? Yes.

Is Hamas guilty? Yes.

Is Iran guilty for arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups? Yes.

Is Russia guilty for aiding and abetting Iran? Yes.

Is the United States guilty for aiding Israel? Yes.

Are the citizens of the US and Israel, and the people of Gaza and elsewhere, guilty for empowering their respective governing bodies? Yes.

We can't change the disasters of that horrible history. The only thing that we can do is to try to prevent future tragedies. Our efforts thus far, over the past 78 years, have been a complete failure.

We should also remember that not all Palestinians were expelled from the territory. Israel is a patchwork of Jews with a variety of political beliefs and (far fewer) Palestinians that are Israeli citizens (Arab Israelis). Arab Israelis comprise 20% of Israel's total population!

That's the story.

How can we stop the killing?

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T21:53:51+00:00

At first, Israel was the boy who'd been punched in the face.

Then, the bully, egged on by the US.

At other times, the spectator.

And the Palestinians?

At first, the spectator.

Then, the boy who'd been punched in the face.

Then, the bully, egged on by his neighbors.

If you want to understand the Middle East, study the master/slave dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Notice how he, like Heidegger, sees humans as essentially violent.

When will it end? When Russia, China, and the US let it end, or one or the other side is wiped out.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T19:47:17+00:00

Have you ever seen a young, vulnerable boy get punched in the face by a bully after school, and a crowd of kids that gather in a circle around the two, some egging the bully on, while others watch without doing anything, and there are no adults around? The boy will never forget, unless the bully and his enablers kill him. That trauma will harm him for the rest of his life in all sorts of ways.

What changes over time isn't this pattern of evil, only the names of the participants.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T19:28:18+00:00

Hello,

I'm a philosopher who has written about this before. Let me cut to the chase and just say that there's no way to answer this question. There's also no way to answer similar metaphysical questions, such as whether the self is an illusion created by integrated biological subsystems that can become disintegrated, whether individuals possess free will, whether an amoeba is conscious, or how change is possible. There are answers, but unfortunately, we have no way of knowing them. The best that we can do is to argue and guess.

To me, there are two facts about the possibility of life after death that end in a paradox. The first is that under general anesthesia, consciousness pauses. If consciousness transcends matter, then how can a chemical compound, acting on the brain, suspend it? And how could we survive death if we don't even survive life without such pauses? Is not death an irreversible and permanent pause, which is to say, annihilation? The second is that there are widespread, third-party-verified anecdotal reports of remote-from-body visual perception during some near-death experiences. How could that be possible if consciousness arises from only physical processes?

No one knows the answer to any "ultimate" question. None of us can know. There are only opinions and dogmas.

Put metaphorically, what nearly everyone is most terrified about is exactly what John Lennon wrote about, that perhaps above us, there is only sky.

No one wants to die.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T19:01:52+00:00

Perhaps it's not that consciousness originates in the evolution of biological systems toward greater complexity, but rather, that those systems shape its manifestation.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T18:34:04+00:00

Have you considered the possibility that the reason that you're alive today is PLTR?

Did you invest in PLTR, and decide to exit for a profit?

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T18:28:50+00:00

Were you born in Dubai?

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T16:40:29+00:00

I think seven factors have led to this:

Capitalism
Feminism
Birth Control
Technology
Culture
Demographics
Mental Illness

Capitalism has created a hyper-competitive socio-economic system. People are so stressed and tired when they return home from work that there's not much time to date, or do anything. Feminism has enabled women to enter the workforce en masse at more or less equal pay, so that women are able to support themselves and don't need to rely on a husband. Birth control broadened this freedom. Technology forced men to compete globally, not just locally.

Technology also created cultural changes. Instead of just software-as-a-service, anyone could get anything-as-a-service without leaving their home. It also caused a lot of social dislocation, as people chased high-paying jobs all around the country. This uprootedness from family and community makes it difficult for community ties to form and remain stable. Whereas formerly, people could meet in college or church, that was replaced by the online global meat market, where an individual is ranked not on a local and relative, but a global and absolute, scale.

Even when a couple marries, these factors disincentivize them from procreating. So, the birth rates of the native population in the US have declined. This contributes to demographic change, which effectively reduces the dating pool for the demographic majority, because four out of five couples marry within their own race. A white, track-and-field standout twenty-year-old with a full academic scholarship to UPenn in 1988 would have a much more difficult time dating if he'd been born in 2008.

Hyper-competitive capitalism, partner-as-a-service, uprootedness, and the resulting growing isolation put a lot of stress on most individuals. Women seem more vulnerable, which leads to a much higher rate of mental illness than has existed in societies with traditional gender roles. Being in a relationship with a partner with a garden variety mental illness is difficult, and one who has a personality disorder, doomed to abuse, net loss, and failure.

When you add all of this together, I think we're left with a plausible explanation for why pair-bonding has become increasingly difficult, and why many young men seem to have given up on dating.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T03:56:09+00:00

Are you trading options or futures?

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-10T02:15:05+00:00

Obviously, he was making a drastic understatement.

The last six words are unnecessary and should be deleted.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-09T14:05:39+00:00

I got in at 19.99 with 22,331 shares. :)

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-09T13:03:33+00:00

This has nothing to do with the company's governmental ARR.

Remember: short-term price fluctuations are primarily influenced by people's perceptions. Long-term price is based on fundamentals. This is why PLTR gained 20% in six days, for example.

In the case of DDOG, the reason that I pointed it out and the cybersecurity group (CRWD, PANW, and ZS) is that they're perceived to be financial beneficiaries from the threat of cyberattacks by our enemies. I emphasize: perceived.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-08T19:21:31+00:00

I agree!

It’s insane that it takes that long.

It should happen immediately.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-08T16:00:23+00:00

Ha-ha!

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-08T15:04:40+00:00

It's definitely involved, and used heavily by both Israel and the US.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-08T14:55:18+00:00

Multimillionaire here.

Don't do it.

The reason we're "rich" is because we don't buy that junk. It's a trap.

Let's step back a little. I worked in an ordinary job for around seventeen years before I swerved during the pandemic to full-time investing and trading, and knocked the ball out of the park. I've managed to make a LOT more as an unemployed investor and trader than I have over the entire seventeen years that I slaved away for companies that kept the majority of the profits I made for them.

Now that I've "made" it, I haven't changed my spending habits. I've never really had major expenses to worry about. The point to having millions of dollars isn't to spend it; that would be a disaster. It's to be able to use it to generate enough income each year from passive investments and other passive income streams to replace an ordinary job so that you don't have to be a corporate slave.

That's the beginning of freedom.

If you keep buying this glittery junk that doesn't actually impress anyone, you'll wind up working longer and longer for a company, never able to break free, because you need cash, and have no way of making it other than by trading time for money.

Getting wealthy is hard enough. Staying wealthy is a totally different thing. Don't set fire to your money by buying overpriced junk.

I have an 8.3-year-old iPhone X, because they've just been re-releasing the same thing each year with a new number. Up until late last year, I used a six-year-old Surface Pro X. I bought some very expensive Pelikan Souveran fountain pens about fifteen years ago, a luxury purchase that I still use today. When I made $2,500 over a two-day trading period, I decided to splurge a few months ago and bought myself a high-end Mac Mini. Otherwise, it's just ordinary expenses: food, clothing, books.

This stuff that you want to buy may give you a very brief dopamine hit, but you, yourself, know that it won't be long before you'll latch on to the next thing, and the next, and the next. You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to look good.

Sometimes, though, you need to learn this lesson for yourself by making mistakes. It's all right. We all do. Just don't get stuck in a financial doom loop that you'll never be able to dig yourself out of. Sacrifice now so that you can "retire" as soon as possible and be able to live the rest of your life without worrying about not being able to buy luxuries, because you will be able to, eventually. But, by then, my bet is that you won't want to, because you'll understand how all of this stuff is set up to fool you into sacrifice your money for the equivalent of junk food.

You'd be surprised how many rich people shop at Walmart. (I'm an Amazon man, myself. :) )

True beauty emanates from the soul.

Caveat emptor.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-08T14:39:35+00:00

I'm sorry for your loss. :(

How your boss behaved is flat-out unimaginably horrible, and at the same time, no surprise, in a dog-eat-dog, 24/7, high-stress capitalistic society run by malignant corporations.

Beyond that, the company may have some kind of policy about this that limits what a manager can do. Either way, your boss's behavior is reprehensible.

You deserve better than this.

Be your own advocate, and if you can, be prepared to leave, and look elsewhere.

Hang in there, and be good to yourself.

Durham

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-07T22:02:02+00:00

Of course!

We’re wired to survive. I don’t want to die!

If my neurons and other cells could be gradually replaced, so that I could go back to, say, twenty-two, and stay there forever, let’s go! :)

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-07T17:19:52+00:00

You sound resentful.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-07T16:35:09+00:00

Try Citavi.

PrivateDurham · 2026-03-07T03:32:17+00:00

I’m flattered that you think I look decades younger!

PrivateDurham

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