I'm having trouble imagining a legal basis for this

#8 | Posted by et_al at 2026-01-08 12:53 AM | Reply | Flag:

National scale housing acquisition is interstate commerce. Sherman act, Clayton act. Congress could, theoretically, act.

Possible, simplified, constitutionally applicable laws:

"No entity or affiliated group may own more than X single-family residential properties in any metropolitan statistical area."
or
"No corporation, REIT, or investment fund may acquire single-family residential property unless it is sold within 24 months to an owner-occupant."

Putin's ghost fleet. If you don't like Russia's war in Ukraine, you should love this. That's where the money goes.

Here's how it went in Portugal:

#2 | Posted by snoofy at 2026-01-05 04:36 PM | Reply

That's only half the story. The full story is more enlightening.

They made zero dent in drug imports. Budget realities led to slashing funding 75%. Police stopped citing addicts to get them into treatment. The number of adults who reported prior drug use went from 7.8% to 12.8% in 20 years. Overdose rates are at a 12 year high. Sewage samples for coke & special k are some of the highest in all of Europe. Drug encampments appeared, and when they did, private security forces were created.

Seattle runs a continuous budget shortfall. Currently $250 million. The prior Mayor addressed the shortfall by hiring freezes and cutting services.

It's an idea that works, if you can pay for it. Seattle can't pay for it.

Regarding OPEC, Venezuela currently produces about 1.1 million barrels per day, only about 1% of global trade.

#1 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2026-01-04 01:45 AM | Reply | Flag:

That's $63 million a day.

What currently happens is the oil is sold way below market to Russian state owned firms, whom transport it on the shadow fleet which take it to China and India, dodging sanctions and pocketing the income to fund the war in Ukraine and keep Putin and involved oligarchs paid.

When you expand that list globally, it's weirdly impressive how powerful and busy we are.

Yeah, we can only take so much!

Mexico 1914 & 1916
Nicaragua 1912-1933
Haiti 1915-1934
Dominican Republic 1916-1924
Guatemala 1954
Cuba 1961
Dominican Republican 1965
Bolivia 1971
Chile 1973
Uruguay 1973
Argentina 1976
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Grenada 1983
Panama 1989
Venezuela 2002
Haiti 2004
Honduras 2009
Bolivia 2019
Venezula 2025

Some American oil companies and/or billionaires connected to Trump will get richer from this somehow. That's it.

#78 | Posted by JOE at 2026-01-04 11:09 AM | Reply |

Who was getting rich on Venezuelan oil before?

That was rhetorical. It's Putin.

I could be wrong about the order but the last dictator we overthrew for oil was --------- to death with a knife.

#58 power dynamics.

The real struggle is naming a S or C american govt we haven't couped in the last 50 years.

Shockingly honest moment for foreign policy. We are in it for the oil. No lies about it for once.

The President, not A President.

It has? You said it went well in Hawaii and PR and possibly Iraq.

#35 | Posted by snoofy at 2026-01-03 04:30 PM | Reply | Flag:

How could anybody make a successful regime change list and leave out Germany and Japan?

Zelensky went within 2 miles of an active frontline to take selfies, recently, in the era of fiber optic drones.

Green light to China and Russia.

#7 | Posted by YAV at 2026-01-03 07:30 AM | Reply | Flag:

lol. Russia has been trying to get Zelensky since 2014.

This demonstrated to Russia we can easily do what they cannot.

Qualcomm bought Arduino. I use that IDE, but mostly China made ESP32 modules. Cheap, fast enough, ble + wifi, good lower power capabilities. I'm bougie on breakout boards and use mostly Adafruit from New York. Relatively pricey but well engineered and supported.

Wont these centers be obsolete in 5 years or so? Seems like huge investments/evaluations for a fast moving industry.

#2 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-12-31 01:33 PM | Reply | Flag:

No. They're upgradable. Data centers everywhere is the byproduct of CDNs. Content Delivery Networks. Caching media locally to save bandwidth costs.

Printed Circuit Boards. When I submitted a design for manufacturing two weeks ago it was +45% for a bare board, +55% for assembled boards.

This board has 90 solder points, and I need 500 of them.

+45% to the bare pcb cost and do the 45,000 solder points myself.
or
+55% to the total assembly cost to have them do it.

All costs passed on to me until I can pass them to the consumers.

Meanwhile, I'm paying +55% for a simple PCB because there's no company in America that produces them at small business scales.

This sounds so implausible, BitCoin owners using some gas station ATM machine

#9 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-12-31 03:35 PM | Reply | Flag:

They're not bitcoin owners. They're people trying to own bitcoin.

No, that is not a typo. $2.9 billion to roughly $7,400. ...

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-12-31 02:04 PM | Reply | Flag:

Somewhere, a loan officer is being talked out of jumping.

The most simplified explanation I can come up with...

You're trading stuff. All the trades are kept in a notebook. The notebook is the blockchain. A block is a page in the notebook. The chain is the secret code on each page that links it to the next page. Everybody has the same notebook so cheating the notebook is instantly caught.

In this case, replace stuff being traded with digital coins. Now it's a race between "miners". Miners are trying to guess the page code to lock it to move on to the next one. The reward is coins for doing it. That prevents money printing and slows down the amount of coins introduced over time.

It's also a wild new frontier of social manipulation fraud.

For all the talk about US losses in a Taiwan conflict, the person with the shortest life expectancy is a Chinese sailor. US Jets come pouring out of Cebu and Mindanao and everything floating is dead.

Also, at this point in the conflict, anybody reasonable should question if a single fighter is a high value enough target for ATACMS. That fighter's theater impact is negligible compared to using them on command posts and force concentrations.

Those are missiles. FPV drones are for killing within 3-5 miles, maybe 10 on a great day. It's 160 miles to sevastopol. They fly over with more traditional fixed-wing drones and spot for missiles strikes.

" It's almost like rich people can hire an army of Danforth's that are experts in minimizing tax burden"
Sorry, I'm chuckling.
Most of my clients are starving artists.

#134 | Posted by Danforth at 2025-12-29 02:46 PM | Reply | Flag:

"Starving", lol. Starving people can't afford tax specialists.

It's almost like rich people can hire an army of Danforth's that are experts in minimizing tax burden, regardless of what rules the plebes want.