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Fate Loves Irony

Fate Loves Irony

Submitted by Jack Raines via Young Money,

Last February, a TMZ video of Elon Musk talking about "Doge Coin" went viral.

 While…

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Fate Loves Irony

Submitted by Jack Raines via Young Money,

Last February, a TMZ video of Elon Musk talking about "Doge Coin" went viral.

 While talking to fans about his beloved Shiba Inu-based cryptocurrency, Elon Musk gave us this gem of a quote:

"I think there's an argument that fate loves irony... the most entertaining outcome often becomes the most likely one. What would be the most ironic outcome?"

At the time, Musk was referring to the fact that Doge Coin, a joke cryptocurrency that was literally created to make fun of cryptocurrencies, had become one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world.

"Fate loves irony" is an all-time quote, and this video has since been viewed millions of times. However, this wasn't the first time that Musk said those words. In fact, he has tweeted that phrase 14 times going back to January of 2012.

In 2012, Musk tweeted a link to an article about an Assistant DA from Boston attempting to subpoena Twitter for information about an anonymous user. Elon warned that liberty was being threatened by this overreach for personal information from a government official.

A decade later, this same Elon Musk acquired Twitter itself in the name of preserving free speech. Fate certainly has a sense of irony.

Adam Smith used the term "the invisible hand" to explain how unseen forces move the free market economy. Through individual self-interest and freedom of production and consumption, the best interests of society, as a whole, are fulfilled.

However, our world is driven by more than the free market's invisible hand. Fate has an invisible hand of its own, operating like a puppet master constantly pulling the strings of reality.

As Musk says, "Fate loves irony." Here are a few examples.

*  *  *
An Exhibit of Irony and Fate

In March 2020, a virus-induced pandemic brought global travel to a screeching halt for almost two years. Many people were holed up in their homes for months on end, white collar jobs went virtual indefinitely, and the world stopped spinning. Yet two years later, a new trend has appeared. These remote work tools that emerged as a necessity during lockdowns have now empowered workers to uproot, relocate, and live nomadic lifestyles more than ever before.

The great relocation never would have happened without a pandemic first bringing travel to a screeching halt.

*  *  *

Donald Trump and CNN beefed during his presidency, and the news organization regularly claimed that Trump wasn't fit for office. Yet once Biden was elected as president, CNN's rating took a nose dive.

Financial Times

While CNN took an anti-Trump stance, the former president was crucial for CNN's ratings. Conflict sells, and the absence of conflict led to the disappearance of viewers.

Do you think CNN's viewership would be higher or lower if Trump had won?

*  *  *

The US government has taken a strong anti-monopoly stance against big tech companies, namely Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is regularly called to testify in front of Congress, and the company has been walking on egg shells for years when dealing with our DC representatives. While the government was worried about domestic tech companies like Facebook growing too large, a Chinese social media company called TikTok quietly overtook Instagram as one of the largest platforms in the US.

Efforts to prevent a potential monopoly issue with Facebook have created a very real security risk with China.

*  *  *

The biggest deterrent of nuclear war in the modern era is the vast number of nuclear weapons present around the world today. If one country has nukes, they may feel inclined to use them during conflict. When nine countries have nukes, they keep each other in check. The threat of nuclear war declines as the number of countries with nuclear warheads increases.

Our most dangerous weapon is our greatest catalyst for peace.

*  *  *

 Kudzu is a vine native to Asia that can grow up to one foot per day in the summer. In the 1930s, The Soil Erosion Service was charged to reduce soil erosion caused by poor farming practices in the South. About 85 million kudzu plants were given to southern landowners for land revitalization and to reduce soil erosion and add nitrogen to the soil.

Ironically, kudzu became a problem of its own.

The absence of disease and insect predators in the US led to kudzu quickly growing out of control, and the vine was reclassified as a weed by the Department of Agriculture. Kudzu has grown largely uncontested in the Southeastern United States, crowding out other native plants along the way.

Spread of kudzu across the US

*  *  *

Bill Gates, one of the world's leading climate change activists, has a $500M short position on Tesla, the company leading the charge against climate change.

*  *  *

Crypto and "Web3" enthusiasts advocate for decentralization, saying we need new social platforms that aren't owned and controlled by individual corporations. Ironically, the internet's oldest communication network has been decentralized all along. Email has a million different service providers with no central platform.

*  *  *

Christopher Columbus believed that he could reach Asia by sailing westward from Europe, because he drastically underestimated the size of the planet. The actual dimensions of the planet were already common knowledge, and most Europeans thought that he was embarking on a fool's errand.

They were right, he didn't stand a chance of reaching Asia by sailing west. Luckily, he stumbled upon the Americas.

*  *  *

In theory, winning the lottery is a one-way ticket to escape from poverty and distress and achieve stability and happiness. Yet lottery winners are more likely than average Americans to declare bankruptcy within three to five years of winning, and many "winners" struggle with depression, divorce, and suicide in the aftermath.

*  *  *

A pandemic caused the fastest market decline in history, which prompted the most aggressive Federal Reserve action in history, which led to the fastest recovery to all-time highs in history.

Do you think the market would have been higher without the pandemic?

*  *  *

GameStop and AMC were on life support in 2019, and Covid-19 should have been the nail in the coffin as in-person activities came to a standstill. However, these pandemic lockdowns led to an influx of new money entering the stock market, as millions of retail traders grew bored of working from home. Social media forums populated by these new traders pumped GameStop and AMC so much that the companies were able to raise billions in new equity, effectively saving their businesses.

*  *  *

Covid benefactors such as Netflix, Zoom, Peloton, and Shopify are all trading below their February 2020 valuations. This is despite each company materially benefiting from Covid, and all of them now generate exponentially higher revenues than they did in 2019.

*  *  *

I could go on and on with examples from financial markets and history, but you get the idea. As humans, we love to make forecasts and extrapolate results. But future outcomes are often affected by variables that have not yet emerged and individuals' decisions that can't be predicted.

To quote Morgan Housel's most recent piece:

The Economist – a magazine I admire – publishes a forecast of the year ahead each January. Its January 2020 issue does not mention a single word about Covid. Its January 2022 issue does not mention a single word about Russia invading Ukraine. That’s not a criticism – both events were impossible to know when the magazines were likely planned in November and written in December each year. But that’s the point: The biggest news, the biggest risks, the most consequential events, are always what you don’t see coming.

Morgan Housel

Irony can't be predicted, it can only be observed in hindsight. It is a series of steps connecting two seemingly unrelated points over time. Irony is only visible after the fact, when we sit back and think, "Would you look at that?"

In 2018, Elon Musk tweeted that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420, creating the most expensive marijuana joke in history after he received a $20M fine from the SEC.

 

Four years later, he secured funding to buy Twitter itself. Can you think of a more ironic outcome?

Well-meaning actions can have disastrous results, small decisions can permanently alter our lives, stupid ideas can make us rich, and great ideas can leave us destitute. That's just the nature of irony.

When you think you have it all figured out, remember that the range of possible outcomes is wider than you can possibly imagine. Life is full of ironic plot twists, isn't it Mr. Musk?

- Jack

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Tyler Durden Wed, 05/04/2022 - 18:20

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Government

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary…

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Mike Pompeo Doesn't Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a new interview that he’s not ruling out accepting a White House position if former President Donald Trump is reelected in November.

“If I get a chance to serve and think that I can make a difference ... I’m almost certainly going to say yes to that opportunity to try and deliver on behalf of the American people,” he told Fox News, when asked during a interview if he would work for President Trump again.

I’m confident President Trump will be looking for people who will faithfully execute what it is he asked them to do,” Mr. Pompeo said during the interview, which aired on March 8. “I think as a president, you should always want that from everyone.”

Then-President Donald Trump (C), then- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L), and then-Vice President Mike Pence, take a question during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus at the White House in Washington on April 8, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

He said that as a former secretary of state, “I certainly wanted my team to do what I was asking them to do and was enormously frustrated when I found that I couldn’t get them to do that.”

Mr. Pompeo, a former U.S. representative from Kansas, served as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018 before he was secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. After he left office, there was speculation that he could mount a Republican presidential bid in 2024, but announced that he wouldn’t be running.

President Trump hasn’t publicly commented about Mr. Pompeo’s remarks.

In 2023, amid speculation that he would make a run for the White House, Mr. Pompeo took a swipe at his former boss, telling Fox News at the time that “the Trump administration spent $6 trillion more than it took in, adding to the deficit.”

“That’s never the right direction for the country,” he said.

In a public appearance last year, Mr. Pompeo also appeared to take a shot at the 45th president by criticizing “celebrity leaders” when urging GOP voters to choose ahead of the 2024 election.

2024 Race

Mr. Pompeo’s interview comes as the former president was named the “presumptive nominee” by the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week after his last major Republican challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, dropped out of the 2024 race after failing to secure enough delegates. President Trump won 14 out of 15 states on Super Tuesday, with only Vermont—which notably has an open primary—going for Ms. Haley, who served as President Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

On March 8, the RNC held a meeting in Houston during which committee members voted in favor of President Trump’s nomination.

“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump on his huge primary victory!” the organization said in a statement last week. “I’d also like to congratulate Nikki Haley for running a hard-fought campaign and becoming the first woman to win a Republican presidential contest.”

Earlier this year, the former president criticized the idea of being named the presumptive nominee after reports suggested that the RNC would do so before the Super Tuesday contests and while Ms. Haley was still in the race.

Also on March 8, the RNC voted to name Trump-endorsed officials to head the organization. Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote in Houston, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th President of the United States,” Mr. Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected, replacing former chair Ronna McDaniel. Ms. Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

President Trump hasn’t signaled whom he would appoint to various federal agencies if he’s reelected in November. He also hasn’t said who his pick for a running mate would be, but has offered several suggestions in recent interviews.

In various interviews, the former president has mentioned Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, among others.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:00

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International

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and…

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women's Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and bewildering tunnel of social justice cultism?  Global events have been so frenetic that many people might not remember, but only a couple years ago Big Tech companies and numerous governments were openly aligned in favor of mass censorship.  Not just to prevent the public from investigating the facts surrounding the pandemic farce, but to silence anyone questioning the validity of woke concepts like trans ideology. 

From 2020-2022 was the closest the west has come in a long time to a complete erasure of freedom of speech.  Even today there are still countries and Europe and places like Canada or Australia that are charging forward with draconian speech laws.  The phrase "radical speech" is starting to circulate within pro-censorship circles in reference to any platform where people are allowed to talk critically.  What is radical speech?  Basically, it's any discussion that runs contrary to the beliefs of the political left.

Open hatred of moderate or conservative ideals is perfectly acceptable, but don't ever shine a negative light on woke activism, or you might be a terrorist.

Riley Gaines has experienced this double standard first hand.  She was even assaulted and taken hostage at an event in 2023 at San Francisco State University when leftists protester tried to trap her in a room and demanded she "pay them to let her go."  Campus police allegedly witnessed the incident but charges were never filed and surveillance footage from the college was never released.  

It's probably the last thing a champion female swimmer ever expects, but her head-on collision with the trans movement and the institutional conspiracy to push it on the public forced her to become a counter-culture voice of reason rather than just an athlete.

For years the independent media argued that no matter how much we expose the insanity of men posing as women to compete and dominate women's sports, nothing will really change until the real female athletes speak up and fight back.  Riley Gaines and those like her represent that necessary rebellion and a desperately needed return to common sense and reason.

In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Gaines related some interesting information on the inner workings of the NCAA and the subversive schemes surrounding trans athletes.  Not only were women participants essentially strong-armed by colleges and officials into quietly going along with the program, there was also a concerted propaganda effort.  Competition ceremonies were rigged as vehicles for promoting trans athletes over everyone else. 

The bottom line?  The competitions didn't matter.  The real women and their achievements didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered to officials were the photo ops; dudes pretending to be chicks posing with awards for the gushing corporate media.  The agenda took precedence.

Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, was more than an activist invading female sports, he was also apparently a science project fostered and protected by the athletic establishment.  It's important to understand that the political left does not care about female athletes.  They do not care about women's sports.  They don't care about the integrity of the environments they co-opt.  Their only goal is to identify viable platforms with social impact and take control of them.  Women's sports are seen as a vehicle for public indoctrination, nothing more.

The reasons why they covet women's sports are varied, but a primary motive is the desire to assert the fallacy that men and women are "the same" psychologically as well as physically.  They want the deconstruction of biological sex and identity as nothing more than "social constructs" subject to personal preference.  If they can destroy what it means to be a man or a woman, they can destroy the very foundations of relationships, families and even procreation.  

For now it seems as though the trans agenda is hitting a wall with much of the public aware of it and less afraid to criticize it.  Social media companies might be able to silence some people, but they can't silence everyone.  However, there is still a significant threat as the movement continues to target children through the public education system and women's sports are not out of the woods yet.   

The ultimate solution is for women athletes around the world to organize and widely refuse to participate in any competitions in which biological men are allowed.  The only way to save women's sports is for women to be willing to end them, at least until institutions that put doctrine ahead of logic are made irrelevant.          

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:20

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Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024
A brief excerpt: This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

I always like to star…

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Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024

A brief excerpt:
This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

I always like to start with inventory, since inventory usually tells the tale!
...
Here is a graph of new listing from Realtor.com’s February 2024 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report showing new listings were up 11.3% year-over-year in February. This is still well below pre-pandemic levels. From Realtor.com:

However, providing a boost to overall inventory, sellers turned out in higher numbers this February as newly listed homes were 11.3% above last year’s levels. This marked the fourth month of increasing listing activity after a 17-month streak of decline.
Note the seasonality for new listings. December and January are seasonally the weakest months of the year for new listings, followed by February and November. New listings will be up year-over-year in 2024, but we will have to wait for the March and April data to see how close new listings are to normal levels.

There are always people that need to sell due to the so-called 3 D’s: Death, Divorce, and Disease. Also, in certain times, some homeowners will need to sell due to unemployment or excessive debt (neither is much of an issue right now).

And there are homeowners who want to sell for a number of reasons: upsizing (more babies), downsizing, moving for a new job, or moving to a nicer home or location (move-up buyers). It is some of the “want to sell” group that has been locked in with the golden handcuffs over the last couple of years, since it is financially difficult to move when your current mortgage rate is around 3%, and your new mortgage rate will be in the 6 1/2% to 7% range.

But time is a factor for this “want to sell” group, and eventually some of them will take the plunge. That is probably why we are seeing more new listings now.
There is much more in the article.

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