Tag: Peter Thiel

Bring on the Geniuses.  Bring on the Future.

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Today I had to get in the asset statement for my business.  The government gets to tax the assets of a business.  Now if your business is selling books and photographs what are the assets of that business?  I would have said my brilliant mind.  There was no column on the form for that.  So, I put down the computer I type the words out on and the camera and lenses that I take the pictures with.

When I brought in the form the town official who looked it over asked me how much the desk and chair cost that I sit at and on.  She had me there.  Those things are so old that I really didn’t know how much they cost.  And by now the depreciation must have whittled them down to pennies.  So, we settled on a guestimate.

The fact that I’d waited until the last day is a feature of my psychology.  It’s one of the reasons I have been acclaimed as possibly the laziest man who ever lived.  It is also true that it sometimes makes my life rather difficult.  But having accomplished the task it renders me almost euphoric for having overcome the unimaginable gravity of sloth.

Here we are only a week out from the election.  I think the pundits and readers are almost beyond caring.  Fetterman, Oz?  Warnock, Walker?  Mastro, Laxalt?  Who are these strange people haunting our waking hours and promising to be able to solve all our problems?  To be fair, if the three Republicans listed are elected then suddenly Creepy Uncle Joe won’t be able to inflict anymore horrible judges on us.  We won’t have to pay even more trillions of dollars to Democrat friends selling windmills and solar panels.  So, I guess there is some reason to play this game.  But it does seem like a carnival act we’re exposed to every two years.

I just wish we had our own party and didn’t have to depend on Mitch McConnell and the other clowns like Mitt Romney that parade around and sell us out for graft and power.  But I guess we know that over time the next party will fill with rats just like the old one.  But even if we don’t replace the party, we should have a “sub-party” that allows just the normal people to get together and thrash out our thoughts on what needs to be done and decide who we want and don’t want to represent us.  And now that Elon Musk paid 44 billion dollars to liberate Twitter maybe he’ll be smart enough to build it into something that organizers can use to communicate with those people.

I mean if this social media is supposed to be good for anything it’s to allow tech geniuses to figure out what people want to buy and then put it in front of them to buy with the click of a mouse.  So come on Elon.  Sit down with your old PayPal buddy Peter Thiel and build an app that let’s non-progressives build a virtual town square where they can decide what they want in the real world and then make it happen.

I’m pretty sure we’d all pay five bucks a month for Twitter if it had some of the features of LinkedIn and Facebook.  Maybe it could have a movie feature like Netflix where premium entertainment could be ala carte.

And when you get around to it add our own PayPal and GoFundMe and while you’re at it our own Amazon.  We don’t care if you cheat us just a little just as long as we don’t have to hear the word “your pronouns” ever again.

Elon Musk and Twitter

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Everyone’s heard that Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter and convert it into a privately held company.  And if you asked me my opinion about this situation I’d have to say, “What the hell is Twitter and why should I care?”  I looked up Twitter and what I learned is that it’s a social media website that allows any idiot to post a message up to a maximum of 288 characters long (but somehow this doesn’t count any enormously larger attached video clip).

But the proviso is that the poster has to be a brain-dead doofus.  For non-doofuses your every utterance will be scrutinized by uber-leftist social justice warriors who will report any violations against Democrat party talking points to the commissars at Twitter’s Ministry of Truth where you will be suspended either temporarily or permanently and then cast into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So, the supposedly smartest and richest man in the world wants to buy this company.  Why?  What will be accomplished if he owns this weird network?  Will he somehow level the playing field?  Will his employees allow this to happen?  Will the government allow this to happen or will they instead administer a death by a thousand paper cuts?  And is Twitter really of any value to the world?  Does it have an impact?

I have to confess I’ve never really understood the allure of a 288-character snippet of information.  That’s like forty, fifty words.  So far, this post is about 250 words and I haven’t really finished the initial idea.  If a tweet is really just a headline for an attached normal sized post, I guess that would make sense.  Is it just that Twitter has such a large user base that it acts as a global bulletin board?

Okay, but if you were the richest man in the world and also supposedly one of the most technologically savvy individuals couldn’t you just build something better from the ground up?    And you wouldn’t even have to do it alone.  Peter Thiel is another tech billionaire who is interested in free speech concerns with the social media platforms.  Couldn’t these two titans of industry capitalize on the demand of a public that is hungry for a level political playing field and build something much, much better than Twitter, YouTube or Facebook?  After all, much less savvy people have begun to create alternates to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

Surely the financial and intellectual resources that an Elon Musk or a Peter Thiel can bring to bear on this kind of opportunity must be considerable.  And if Musk is seriously considering buying Twitter, then he has identified it as a viable business opportunity.  He doesn’t need to spend tens of billions of dollars to create an exciting and profitable business that already has a large population of people who would make up its user base.  Probably one billion dollars would get the job done.  And what’s one crummy billion dollars to Elon Musk?

I hold out the possibility that Musk is hoping that Twitter rejects his offer and that he plans to build his own platform.  Maybe this whole bid is a publicity stunt to advertise his own entry into the social media business.  I hope it is.  Places like Gab and Truth don’t have the clout needed to compete with the established social media platforms.  And, honestly, it’s not enough to just provide a similar product.  Twitter and Facebook aren’t providing a satisfying product.  They thrive merely because they currently enjoy a monopolistic stranglehold on the niches they created.  What’s needed is something that provides a healthier environment for people on-line.  A truly honest marketplace of ideas would be that healthier environment.

So, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and any other entrepreneurs out there who see an opportunity in Twitter’s partisan methods; don’t try to fix Twitter.  Instead, bury it with a superior platform.  And make obscene amounts of money doing it.

Peter Thiel is Buying Gold Bar

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Here’s an interesting tidbit of information, Peter Thiel’s software corporation Palantir Technologies Inc. is hedging it’s other equity positions with gold bullion.  It’s one thing when Alex Jones tells you to buy gold.  It’s another when a really smart guy starts buying precious metals.  I shudder to think what these guys believe the inflation situation might be a few years down the road.

Isn’t it a great thing to be basking in the glow of Joe Biden’s post America?

Peter Thiel Turns on Shatner!

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The Fat Man who is a hyper-vigilant researcher of all things Shatner sent this in to me.  Imagine his horror when another of his idols, Peter Thiel, mocks the great one!  Watch starting at 10:00.

Oh the horror.  Utter blasphemy.

Landreau, coordinate!

 

Peter Thiel Says CIA and FBI Should Probe Google

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It seems they may be getting a little too chummy with the Chinese military intelligence.

https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should-probe-google-9846a042-e689-49bc-bdc7-595988ce5d8c.html

But they hold the US intelligence agencies at arms length for some reason.  Interesting.

 

After you’ve read enough sexbot articles on Drudge maybe switch to something interesting

Trump vs Independence Day Redux – Part 4

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Trump vs Independence Day Redux – Part 3

 

Scene 1 – Bridge of the USS Ronald Reagan off the shore from Washington D.C., Thursday 1155 hours.  Present on the bridge are crew of the USSRR and President Trump (PT), General Adam Baldwin (GAD), Secretary Mattis (SM), Melania Trump (MT), Peter Thiel (PTh)

PT- General Baldwin, are we ready to implement the Musk protocol?

GAD – On your command, sir.

PT – Go!

(General Baldwin flips three switches on a panel on his desk console)

GAD – Cruise missile with explosive warhead will impact in twenty seconds.  Cruise missile with tantalum slug will impact 3 seconds after.  One megaton thermonuclear device is awaiting your command.

PT – Go!

(Baldwin flips a fourth switch)

GAD – Nuke will detonate in two minutes.  Flash guards are in place.  Prepare for turbulence.

(two minutes later the aircraft carrier is buffeted by a shock wave that knocks several of those standing to the floor)

PT – General, what is the status of the target?

(several service personnel cluster in front of an instrument panel attempting to restore the main console to life.  Slowly an image appears as the mushroom cloud clears away.  the ship remains in place)

GAD – Negative result.  The target remains.

PT – Mattis, where is Musk?

SM – As you anticipated, he escaped on his private aircraft shortly after your … erm … morale boosting speech.  His aircraft was admitted to the alien space ship a little while before the launch of your attack.

PT – What is the status of the space ship?

GAD – Radar shows the ship is in motion on a heading that will put it above us in five minutes.

PT – Put in a call to the “negotiations team”

(on the main console can be seen Obama, Gore and Musk seated and surrounded by several of the aliens.  the humans are all obviously pleased and quite relaxed)

BO – Well Donald, who could have imagined your presidency ending like this?  Elon said it was easy convincing you that tantalum was the answer.  Sorry it didn’t work out.

PT – So what does the future hold for you three?  Surely your new masters will dispose of you once they finish off the rest of our military.

EM – Far from it.  We have convinced them that we can provide information that will allow them to effectively harness a valuable natural resource, namely a large intelligent slave labor force.  Also, as it turns out, they like to eat meat.

PT – How delightful.  Thiel do your stuff.

Peter Thiel moves over to the main console and the screen splits between the image of the conspirators and a telephoto view of the approaching space craft.  Thiel presses several buttons and throws a switch.  The audio from inside the ship registers a high pitched squeal and the video from that half of the screen goes black.  At the same time on the other half of the screen the ship ceases forward motion and falls out of the sky like a stone.

PTh – Mr. President, the device has successfully disrupted their drive.

PT – General what is the current situation of the space ship?

GAD – Mr. President, the ship is falling at terminal velocity and will strike the Atlantic Ocean surface in a little over two minutes.

PT – Thiel, what do your bright boys think will happen when it hits.  Will the occupants survive?

PTh – Doubtful sir.  Without anti-gravity they will experience an instantaneous  stop from about 100 miles per hour.  And since the ship is not built to support its own weight against gravity it will fracture and sink to the bottom immediately.  Also the contact between the warp drive and sea water will be explosive.  Basically a total loss.

PT – Too bad.  I guess we’ll have to try to save one of the other ships when we take them down.

SM – But Mr. President, we can’t hope to gain admittance to a ship a second time.  They’ll immediately begin to destroy our cities.  And after the failure of the tantalum to disrupt their shield we are helpless to stop them.

PT – Yeah, about that.  Thiel, do the exposition.

PTh – Certainly Mr. President.  Elon was the only traitor on his team.  Tantalum does perform as he said it would.  But Mr Musk substituted another material for tantalum in the slugs he provided us.  Luckily the only other slugs he had were depleted uranium and the low-level radiation was detected and tipped us off to the deception.  When we figured out what was intended we switched Elon’s cell phone with one that would spray molten tantalum all around the control room of the alien spacecraft once triggered.

SM – So we can proceed to attack the other space ships with the tantalum sandwich approach.

PT – Yes.  Hey I like that phrase, tantalum sandwich.  Let’s say I thought it up.

SM – Sure …, …  sir.

PT – Good.  So, here’s the plan.  Get a team together at the Area 51 producing the tantalum tipped cruise missile payloads.  Work out a schedule for taking down the local ships but prioritize taking down the mother ship.  Get it to crash on the moon.  That’s our best hope of providing intact equipment to reverse engineer.  Thiel will tag along with the research team that Musk had and it will be his job to shepherd all this technology so it stays in American hands only.

GAD – But why weren’t they aware of how dangerous tantalum is to their systems and why didn’t they have counter measures?

PTh – The only thing we’ve thought of so far is that the star system these aliens came from did not have all the elements we have here on earth.  Tantalum is a fairly heavy element.  These elements are produced in fairly rare stellar events and they are not equally distributed around the cosmos.  I guess you could say it’s just blind luck.

PT – Alright, Carl Sagan, that’s enough.  Now get to work.

PTh – Yes Mr. President.  (under his breath) (what a jerk).

MT – Oh Schmoopy, you are the action hero.  Like Bruce Willis.

PT – But with better hair!

MT – Ahhh … …, sure.  But Schmoopy, how will we fix all the things the bad aliens have broken?

PT – Don’t worry Schmoopy, with the technology we’ll get from the aliens and my leadership we can make this a better and happier world.  As long as the democrats don’t screw it up again.

MT – So true Schmoopy, so true.  You are the wise man.

PT – And you are a wise woman for knowing it, Schmoopy.

PTh – Now I remember why I’m gay.

PT – Shaddap Thiel.

Trump vs Reality

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Donald Trump (DT) – Hey Pence!

Mike Pence (MP) – Yes Mr. Trump.

DT – Hey, why don’t you call me Mr. President?

MP – Because you’re not president yet Mr. Trump.

DT – Well then, why is Schumer calling me president?

MP – He’s trying to tie your hands by blaming you for things that happen before you get into the White House.

DT – What a weasel!  That’s it!  I’ll make sure his Aunt get’s thrown out of that rent-controlled apartment in Trump Village.  Fine.  But remember in a couple of weeks you’re gonna have to call me Mr. President.

MP – Yes, Mr. Trump.

DT – Hey, anyway, the reason I called you is I need to start figuring out what this government business does.

MP – Well, it runs the country.

DT – No I don’t mean what it says it does.  I mean what it actually does.

MP – I’m not sure I see the distinction.

DT – Sure you do.  You are the governor of a state.  You know where the bodies are buried.  You know which are the sacred cows that don’t do anything but can’t be touched because they have juice.

MP – Oh, I think I see.  You want to know where the fat is and why.

DT – Exactly.  I want to know where the pork is and more importantly, who are the rabbis.

MP – The rabbis?

DT – Rabbis, godfathers, whatever you want to call them.  The guys who know where the bodies are buried and who collect the fees.

MP – Yes, I see.  Mr. Trump that is a very big job.  You’ll need your cabinet working for months to just begin to understand where the waste and featherbedding is.

DT – That’s what you think.  I’ve been talking with the Thiel guy.  He may be a little light in the loafers but he’s plenty smart.  He’s working on an algorithm to find this stuff.  I’ll bet he gets it done in days or weeks.

MP – Mr. Trump, that sounds like science fiction.  I hardly think you’ll be able to streamline the US Government in a few weeks.  You’ve got to be realistic.  If we can slow down the growth a little while we’re in office it will be a great achievement.

DT – Now that’s exactly what’s wrong with this country.  You want to drain the swamp with an eyedropper.  I want to use an atom bomb.  Look, Mike we only have about a hundred days to build up some momentum.  After that we’re dead meat.  So, look alive.  You know the saying, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”  Well, I’m leading so that just leaves you two options, and there’s no way to get out of my way so hurry up and follow.  And bring along a crow bar ‘cause we’ve got a lotta demo to do.

MP – Okay Mr. Trump I’ll do my best.

DT – Look, Mike.  You’ve gotta start thinking on your feet.  I’m gonna hand this show over to someone in four years.  If you wanna be that guy you better wake up.

MP – Well when you put it that way, lead on.  I think there are a couple of agencies that haven’t produced anything but pensions in the thirty years I’ve been around and I can tell you who to start firing right now.

DT – That’s better.  I knew there was a reason I didn’t go with Christie.  Besides his taste in suits.