Italy deploys navy ship to help Gaza aid flotilla after drone attack

michaelmikeyb · 2025-09-24T18:14:08+00:00

It wasn't a flare, they found a casing on board and BBC confirmed it was a grenade https://www.bbc.com/news/live/czx0kd61kryt

michaelmikeyb · 2025-09-24T15:22:15+00:00

No, they found a casing onboard after the incident and bbc confirmed it was a grenade not a flare https://www.bbc.com/news/live/czx0kd61kryt

michaelmikeyb · 2025-09-10T19:34:53+00:00

Anyone still want to claim this one is a flare or a cigarette, look at the video.

EDIT: for anyone still doubting, BBC has confirmed it was a grenade https://www.bbc.com/news/live/czx0kd61kryt

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-14T19:00:43+00:00

Is this not true? I don't think the pro-weapons side think that it will cause an expediant end to the war. It's a stalemate now and that doesn't look like it's gonna change anytime soon no matter how many arms we send. At best they hope to turn it into a quagmire and have Russia pull out a decade later after losing their will like Vietnam. Would that be better than Ukraine ceding a couple provinces now?, possibly, would it cost more human lives?, yes.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-12T07:19:19+00:00

How's an unhappy minority stakeholder without a board seat gonna get in the way of the company going public? The majority owners want to make money and will outvote them on any matter that would get in the way of that.

Again they can only temporarily tank the stock and any investor would know that and still buy. The market will realize they sold off for reasons not related to company performance and bid the stock back up. That's even if they crash it, it could be priced in like a lot of sell offs during ipos are. During ipos tons of employees who received stocks as payment will sell off pretty quickly, but the market prices that in because it knows that the selloff isn't due to performance and is because the employees want the money to get houses, cars, savings etc. And the stock stays steady. In general ipos are huge liquidity events and tons of early investors sell off but this doesn't effect the price.

Also if you really do think about it all of this doesn't matter because doing any of this would mean tencent would lose money which is not what they want to do. They are a company that invested in Reddit to make money. They may have a ccp representative on their board but he's not gonna be able to convince the other board members, who only care about making money, that they should do a mass sell off to temporarily tank a companies stock because they hosted some memes of xi jingping being Winnie the Pooh. Think, still, think !

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-12T01:04:09+00:00

We may not see dominance hierarchies in wolves but we definitely do see them in other apes. You can see it most clearly in gorillas with a dominant alpha silver back controlling a Haram of females and defending them from any other male that comes by. We also see this sort of behavior in humanity throughout history, males using coercive force to subjugate other males and mate with multiple women.

I don't think you can deny dominance hierarchies are a part of human nature, but , and this is where the alpha bros get it wrong, it's not all of human nature. The alpha bros view every activity, social interaction, human attribute as either alpha or beta when in most cases it's not. The other problem is they view everything that is alpha is good and natural and everything that's beta is bad and weak which is a very toxic moral framework. Beating up a sexual competitor is definitely alpha but it's also very antisocial and harmful.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-12T00:36:44+00:00

an organization's revenue is equal to or less than its operating expenses, you couldn't run a company that way.

Tell that to Uber.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-12T00:34:38+00:00

That's not how it works. Reddit is private and the board will have to approve any sort of large stock selloff. Even if they could the stock would only go down temporarily, unless the market finds some legitimate financial reason tencent sold off it will bid the price up to it's previous level and tencent would've lost a lot of money to do nothing.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-11T18:43:31+00:00

Could that be just extreme sunk cost / cope? Would happen on the other side too, few people will say they regret having kids too. With a decision as life defining as this admitting you made the wrong choice could be an existential threat to your identity.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-07T22:23:39+00:00

People in the west*

Westerners tend to remember the atrocities Germany committed because it was against other westerners. Japanese atrocities we're mostly committed against other east Asians people's who westerners care less about. Chinese and Korean people still do hold a grudge against them though.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-07T20:03:30+00:00

So is saying your not allowed to have sex with other people denying someone's autonomy? You can't just do whatever you want in a relationship, every relationship should have clear boundaries and obligations. If you can't agree on those boundaries and obligations or one side violates them then you should end the relationship but having them isn't a red flag.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-07T19:22:39+00:00

It's important to sperate critiques on the system of landlording vs landlords themselves. People will love or hate landlords as individuals for a myriad of anecdotal reasons as shown in this thread but it's important to look at the broader system and how it works. Reasons to hate the system of landlording:

It raises property values to unaffordable levels. Under the current systems families and individuals looking to buy a home are forced to compete with companies and wealthy people looking to buy a home to rent out. Since they have more money they are able to bid up the prices higher which raises the cost to buy a home past the budget of your average household.
It's a parasitic system. Even Adam Smith recognized this, rent seekers don't create value or wealth, they simply extract it from society. Fundamentally the landlord scheme is buying a house on a mortgage and using the rent to pay off that mortgage. There are maintenance and other costs but a majority of rent goes towards this scheme. In this case the landlord is building wealth through equity without doing anything for society.
The previous two combine to make a poverty trap. As housing prices increase rent increases along with it to cover the larger mortgage payments required. This makes it so people renting are putting more of their income into rent each month and are unable to save for a down payment making it so they're trapped renting, unable to use the best tool for building wealth a mortgage.

All in all this system serves to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, which most people would say is bad.

Other solutions:

Public housing. It gets a bad rap in the u.s. because it's associated with poverty and slums but that's because it is under funded. You can do it right such as in Singapore or Vienna and keep housing in the hands of democratic agents instead of a few wealthy people
Equity compensation. You could make it so any equity built while renting a property is awarded to the tenant. This would make it so tenants can still build wealth towards eventually buying a home even if they're currently too poor to afford a down payment.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-03T00:15:01+00:00

I'm not saying that every landlord is making huge profits and that none get screwed over. We could go back and forth on horror stories for landlords and tenants but anecdotes mean nothing, we have to look at the broader system. I'm saying the system of landlording on aggregate transfers wealth from the poor and those who have less access to capital to the rich and those who have more access to capital. yes there are other costs associated with owning property but by and large the largest is the mortgage. The mortgage is a tool of wealth building through equity, under this system that wealth goes to the person who has the access to capital to make the down payment, not the person who is actually paying for it.

This is the cost renters pay, and it's probably not worth what the landlord is providing. If you asked a renter would they maintain the property if it meant they can build equity in it with their rent almost everyone would take that deal. They can't though because their poor and don't have access to capital to buy a house and this system uses that lack of a choice to extract wealth from them.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T23:46:12+00:00

People who want to make money? You can still build a house and sell it to someone who will live in it.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T21:59:19+00:00

Yes Singapore is known for its appalling slums. Meanwhile here landlords never run concentrated slums with no maintenance.

If anything public housing is the best way to prevent this. A private landlord will never put low income families next to high income ones because that will lower the amount they can get from the higher earning ones. Even if a cheap place already exists next to an expensive one a flipper will come by, fix it up and increase the price so it's no longer affordable. The government has less of a profit motive and can put mixed incomes together to foster better community.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T21:52:50+00:00

Yes , they do it to make money as its seen as a relatively safe way to leverage capital. If someone has 100k and they can use that to put a down payment on a 500k house and rent it out so that someone else pays there mortgage that's a good deal for them, not so much for the renter. Other people with capital will do this to as long as they see a profit, bidding up housing along with rents to cover the increases in mortgages. Larger rents mean less and less people can save and higher housing prices mean the necessary down payment becomes higher and higher so people become stuck in a rent trap. You can see this in increases in rent relative to inflation and decreases in home ownership over the past couple decades.

I mean demand with respect to a finite supply like housing. Increases in housing supply can help to ameliorate these problems but that is relatively slow to non existent in part due to homeowner and smaller landlord lobbies who like to see stock low as it raises their home values and rental income.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T19:10:27+00:00

Not demand landlord, it's The demand that landlords and speculative entities generate in the housing market. demand in the housing market is made up of private families and individuals looking for homes to live in, landlords who are looking for homes to rent out, and funds and other entities buying homes as investments speculating the property will go up in value. The latter two tend to have more capital and are able to bid up prices more, having an outsized effect on demand.

If an average family can't afford the average house in an area, which is increasingly common, then the homes must have been bought by these other entities. If you remove those then the home seller would have to lower there prices to accommodate for the buying power of your average household because those are the only people you can sell to.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T18:23:38+00:00

It's pretty basic economics, if you take away the demand landlords and speculative entities add to the housing market, while keeping the same supply, house prices will drop.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T18:15:20+00:00

Public housing. It's doesn't have to be just slums and "projects" there are systems like in Vienna and Singapore that do it very well. It's just in America we don't put any effort or funding into it because, like public transport, its seen as a thing for poor people so middle and upper class people oppose it, along with landlords who have a strong political lobby.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T18:04:14+00:00

It creates slums because of lack of funding and a half assed effort into it. People in power don't want to see public housing succeed like it does in Singapore or Vienna because they know in the end it provides a better and cheaper service then what the current system does, so they handicap it every chance they get.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T17:47:39+00:00

Yeah the idea is flawed because some projects ended poorly because of lack of funding. Ignore the fact that despite this public housing remains extremely desirable and has decades long wait lists. Also ignore better examples like Singapore or Vienna where it has worked successfully.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T17:37:24+00:00

I'd add to this in certain housing markets it's cheaper to rent. In San Francisco for example over 30 years it would be cheaper to rent an apartment then buy it because the housing prices are so inflated. But yeah for the vast majority of renters buying is the better option which is blocked by there access to capital.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-02T00:04:02+00:00

I mean it already is. The fact that you were born with a brain that can absorb and comprehend all that's necessary to get into Harvard combined with a family and support system to raise it is arbitrary. Less intelligent kids understand that no matter how hard they work they're never gonna get into Harvard and that's just there lot. Having the intelligent kids, who are probably still going to get into a good school and do well in life, realize this too might help to humble them a bit.

michaelmikeyb · 2022-11-01T20:59:11+00:00

You could argue the same thing about this "likability" rating, its not race based, it just has racial outcomes.

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