I’ve seen black, grizzly, and polar bears in the wild.

The only ones who don’t terrify me (at any distance where I’m in line of sight) are the black bears. I’ll still treat them with intense respect … from a distance. But they’re nowhere near as hostile as grizzlies and polars.

That aside yes, I agree that the issue is patriarchy. But until it’s dismantled, just straight pragmatism wins: man or (black) bear: I’ll take bear.

我该如何用ASCII写这个句子？

Never underestimate the power of backing up a dump truck filled with cash and tipping it onto the front yard of someone you’re trying to buy.

Oh. Pity. The whisky/akvavit war was one of the more charming things in world politics.

Splitting it is OK, I guess, but … WHERE WILL THE CF’s PEOPLE GET THEIR AKVAVIT FROM NOW!?

WAY more than enough.

A sudden sale of 1% of the T-Bills in circulation would be devastating.

Japan owns 4.3% of them. (The UK has 3.1% and China 2.9%.)

Japan alone could make the US squeal like a piggy. If they coordinate with China (possible) and/or the UK (far less likely), it’s an economic nuke.

Supply and demand answers the question. When there is a large supply with no change in demand, prices drop. When there is a short supply with no change in demand, prices rise.

There’s not going to be any reason for a sudden rise in demand for US Treasury Bills, likely, at the same moment that Japan dumps its 4.3% of the US Treasury bills on the open market. And a sudden sale of 4.3% is going to cause a precipitous drop in the value of the bills. (This is going to be even worse if China takes that opportunity to dump its own 2.9%.)

And then comes the free-fall.

Because if T-bills drop suddenly in value, other holders (like the UK, with 3.1%) will sell off quickly to avoid taking a bath. Which will make the value drop more quickly causing other people to sell off etc. etc. etc. To make up for this, the US is going to have to do some serious work. With a free fall in price, the US Treasury is going to have to boost interest rates a lot to make up for it. This makes it more expensive for the USA to borrow money to finance its government operations. Interest bills on the national debt go up. (So does the deficit budget, probably, or the US starts killing its citizens instead the Trump way).

Oh, and that’s just governmental cost. Private borrowing starts getting more expensive too. Loans have higher interest rates, which will negatively impact all businesses big and small. Which will eventually negatively impact everybody.

But … this will hurt Japan (and China, say) as well, right? I mean selling off the T-bills will raise the Yen/Yuan and hurt the Japanese/Chinese economy, right?

Traditionally, yes, that would be true. But, see, the USA’s idiot of a president now has tariffs greater than 100% on China and is threatening 35% even on Japan. The damage on exporting is already done!. Because a bumped up currency hurts exports, but if exports have already been virtually eliminated, there’s nothing that a bit of a currency rise is going to really do anymore. Trump’s “beautiful” tariffs have made the sudden sell-off of T-bills more likely and given foreign debt owners (Japan, the UK, and China in decreasing order of proportion) a more powerful weapon as a result.

Combine this with the retaliatory tariffs and the US economy is being ass-fucked sideways with a rusting spiked dildo if Japan (and probably China) suddenly drop their T-bill load.

We don’t add that same [intersectional] nuance.

Because if we get it wrong WE GET HURT. WE DIE.

Is it fair? No. No it isn’t. But it’s real. And if you can’t understand that I value my life more than your feelings, men, you’re not an ally.

This isn’t about “all men” or even “most men”. Most men are great! Really! I have had many close relationships (physical or otherwise) with men!

But enough men are dangerous predators that all men have to be treated, at least initially, with suspicion.

There are some persistent, no-taste losers here in China who buy Buick (and sometimes even Caddilac). Most people won’t touch 'em any longer, though.

I’ve been trying. I like it better than “MAGAt”.

What happens, do you think, to the value of US Treasury Bills on the market if Japan just dumps what they have in a massive sale?

They’re advertising Alligator Auschwitz this way? Or is it Swamp Sobibor? DeSantis Dachau? Whichever one of the Gator Gulags.

Take your upvote, you horrible bastard!

I’ve moved a WHOLE LOT in my life, so most things that I’d collected at any stage got left behind (or in the case of my European playing cards of various sorts, mysteriously vanished) over the years.

Now that I’m in a stable place for over two decades, the things I collect are weirder, like Daoist charms and the like.

If I’d had a normal life, I’d probably still have stuffed animals from my childhood, though. I get very sentimental over things, especially gifts.

Open misogyny has been rare among coworkers. Even though I worked in tech (in marketing, not the actual tech side), most of the guys in tech were socially awkward nerds that held a certain charm for me. The closest I got to an open misogynist was from that sector of the tech types (this predates the modern day techbrodude thing) who were day traders and convinced they were going to strike it rich. You know the kind: buy (second hand) sports cars, dress in flashy clothes, etc. and think they’re God’s Gift to Women because they flash around a few bills (though it’s funny when you observe that most of the bills in their wad are blue fivers, with just a small sandwiching of twenties on each side). They tended to have regressive, but not openly misogynistic, attitudes toward women.

No, what I tended to encounter was far more subtle and thus harder to fight. An open misogynist I can cut apart verbally like I’m a surgery professor teaching anatomy by cutting open a cadaver to show what’s inside. And if it comes to an HR intervention, I’ll have plenty of people (plus my own recording) of the incident to show that I was not the aggressor. What’s harder to fight is the little microaggressions. (And for the record I don’t consider holding the door open a microaggression.) Things like the “of course” when first introduced to a new employee as being in marketing. Or how the women techies tended to get relegated to testing. Or the “jokes” about how they’d have a joke to tell, but they’re in mixed company. That sort of thing. That’s far more difficult to fight without coming across as shrill.

I feel surprised he has one.

It’s like people don’t understand what a spectrum is, whether that spectrum is gender, orientation, autism, etc.

There are two types of “strong female characters” in Hollywood and thus in popular culture.

1. The “man with tits” (most common portrayal). Think Ripley in Aliens. Or Sarah Conner in Terminator 2.
2. The genuinely strong feminine character (far rarer). Like Ripley in Alien. Or Rhonda Lebeck in Tremors.

Mark Zuckerberg has said AI companions are a potential fix for the “loneliness epidemic.”

Uh… Zuck? The fuck?!

Your services are the fucking cause of the “loneliness epidemic”. The cure is to destroy your services entirely, burning them to the ground, then salting the earth.

Aren’t they big enough to just buy Second Life and have a full, already-working “metaverse” waiting for them?

Felt that way to me as far back as 1999.