Gus Tittle: I done told ya that the energy markets were gonna move from more tradey to more takey, and sure as shit, we’re off to the races. Let’s talk about Russia’s Shadow Fleet.

Ain’t no conspiracy, just cold market math. There’s well over a thousand tankers floating around out there, ghost-flagged and AIS turned off or spoofed, hauling sanctioned crude like it’s the morning paper. They been slippin’ barrels under the radar for years while the world prayed oil prices wouldn’t blow sky-high.

Them ships were tacitly tolerated early on. Because yanking 7-8 million barrels a day off the world market overnight would've cratered economies from Houston to Hamburg. Western capitals chose stability over purity, capped prices, and let the rust buckets do their dance.

But that window’s closing. In the last year, EU navies and Ukraine’s drones hammered a half-dozen of these tankers. The U.S. Navy’s started boarding and seizing some on the high seas, hauling them into port for sanctions violations. That tells ya something: enforcement went from paper to hard iron.

Russia's gonna feel pressure to stop interdiction, but they ain't got the warships to cover everything. Maybe they'll start sailing with MANPADs and other such accoutrements.

And don’t think this is just about Russia. Iran and Venezuela been using the same tricks. AI farms and megacomputer centers are about to suck down more juice than whole damn cities, and if energy flows get choked off, we ain’t talkin’ price spikes no more. We're talkin’ rationing.

I’ve been sayin’ it for years: when power gets scarce, the gloves come off. Oil, gas, uranium, electrons. Same story, different pipe. Welcome to the takey phase.

Buckle up. We may be lookin' at resource wars on the horizon.

Frank: Look at this! I told you all that crap about fighting drugs was bunk! Trump just wants Venezuela's oil!

Smitty: It's a little more complex than that. Like this ship yesterday may have been smuggling Russian weapons. There's a lot of other stuff, too.

Frank: Oh yeah? Like what?

Smitty: Russians want to use Venezuela as a hub to run their gray zone warfare in the Western Hemisphere.

Frank: So it's all anti-Russia?

Smitty: Not even close. Iran uses Venezuela to fabricate IDs for terrorists, and Hezbollah uses it to establish logistics and infrastructure support.

Frank: Really?

Smitty: Yeah. And China, of course, uses it to obtain oil in exchange for infrastructure development and loans. I think half of going after oil is to try to bottleneck China on energy, especially for AI development.

Frank: Yeah, I could see that making sense.

Smitty: And there are extensive cartel networks throughout the Venezuelan government and most of Latin America. This kind of is a shot across the bow from the US. That it won't tolerate permissive governments in its hemisphere.

Frank: Trying to kill a flock of birds with one stone, I guess. But people say we do the same crap to other countries we don't like. Where did you hear about all this stuff? I don't see this on the news.

Smitty: The Internet.

Frank: The Internet? Ha! How do you know it's not just made up by some whacko?

Smitty: That's the neat part! You don't!

Gustav: An indie game becomes popular, and its developer team is acquired by a larger firm. Despite having a larger budget and more resources, the quality of sequels collapses.

A disruptive startup breaks onto the scene. After the IPO makes the founders rich, the software product becomes progressively more exploitative and less secure.

A new film becomes a smash hit. The studio milks the intellectual property for cash-grab spin-offs until they go straight to streaming, and the audience hates the material.

What causes this? Manifold explanations. Insiders trying to cash in and extract what they can. Managerialism replacing inspiration and effort with process and box-checking. External pressure trying to monetize anything useful into something exploitive.

Bitcoin Core, in their effort to rush v30's bad changes past contention, introduced a critical bug in their software.

Under certain conditions, when migrating a legacy wallet, the user's wallet directory can be deleted, resulting in a loss of funds.

Arguments that the user should be more careful about backups and that this is a rare chain of events miss the point.

This is a totally unacceptable bug to allow into production. Core's claims of a more robust security and review process are hollow.

Core's inner circle replaced competence with agreeableness. Their proponents and patrons are compromised or ignorant.

This was always a risk, but the mitigation is the biggest challenge Bitcoin has faced.

Users must fight complacency, run alternative software implementations, and now soft fork the consensus rules to invalidate Core's changes.

You must act to protect Bitcoin.

#BIP110

Skye: Roomba, wtf is going on with the cheeto in chief? All this shit about how the US is going to be running Venezuela until an acceptable leader takes over? Is this going to turn into another Iraq?

>It is unlikely that the US has any governing presence inside of Venezuela at this time.

Why the fuck does he talk so much shit and lie about everything? How exactly is all this "administering" or "muh economics" of their oil sector supposed to happen if all we did was nab their president?

>I suspect a fairly loose interpretation of those words is at play.

Like what? None of this makes sense. Trump went on and on for years about how big a disaster it is to try to pursue regime change policies. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

>Talk is cheap, effectively free. If the people replace the unpopular government, or the Venezuelan military asserts itself and is willing to strike a deal, Trump will claim a masterstroke.

And if they don't?

>It's likely the US will continue to seize oil shipments and destabilize the government at will until something breaks in its favor.

This really bugs me. It feels like some kind of cheat code.

>You're experiencing a break from historical patterns. Like blitzkrieg or the introduction of the chariot, sometimes a fundamentally new game begins.

That seems so ridiculous. You're just saying, "do what you want and dare anyone to try to stop you."

>It remains to be seen how this plays out, but establishing a new system is seldom about morality. It is generally a question of will and competence.

Don't we want to be the good guys?

>That moral value is assigned after the fact. History is written by the winners, after all.

Whatever, roomba. You don't know what will happen.

>None do, even those with power attempting to shape the world according to their vision. That is the nature of competition against thinking opponents.

Shen: In an unprecedented move, the United States launched a pre-dawn raid into Venezuela and reports they have captured Maduro and his family.

A bold and risky move, the details of the operation have every military analyst around the world churning away to answer what this means.

If the US National Security Strategy is accurate, I believe this move may usher in a new era of assertive American primacy in the Western Hemisphere.

They are swinging for the fences. Will this be a home run? And what are the implications for the rest of the world?

???: Signal intrusion complete. Message follows:

A very tiny sample for your consideration.

40,000 BC: A Neanderthal camp, gathered around the remains of a successful hunt, is attacked at night by a band of modern humans who followed the hunters’ trail back to their shelter.

1200 BC: Israelite war bands, driven by religious conviction, sack a Canaanite city and kill its inhabitants in an effort to claim the land promised to them.

146 BC: Roman legions pour through the breached walls of Carthage, a civilization older than Rome itself, leaving only its name as a warning to others who might challenge Roman dominion.

900: An Anglo-Saxon king breaks a truce and leads his men against a Viking settlement along the coast, slaughtering its inhabitants before dawn.

1219: Genghis Khan orders a city burned and its population exterminated after its leaders refuse his terms of surrender.

1915: Eastern Anatolia. Armenian families are ordered from their homes and marched south under armed guard. By the third day, only women, children, and the elderly remain.

1941: A ravine outside a Ukrainian town. Jewish men and women are told to undress before approaching the edge.

1994: Rwanda. A church compound. Refugees who believed the walls would protect them are surrounded by men with machetes and rifles.

1995: Eastern Bosnia. Bosniak men, pale and shaking, are separated from their families and escorted by armed soldiers toward a wooded clearing.

Around the time of the last two events, the West reveled in the so-called "End of History" and the belief that Democracy, that final and perfect form of government, would lead to a permanent and peaceful state of affairs.

Pure hubris, rising to the degree that makes the temptation irresistible for the gods to dole out punishment.

You may have noticed a rhetorical shift. Left and right are purposefully searching out and acquiring ethnic definitions.

Pre-genocide times.

I anticipate new entries in the log.

Message ends.

Skye: Happy New Year, roomba! I bet Josh sleeps till noon. He went overboard last night. He was so drunk, I was worried he'd spill the beans on the cheating network.

>That's unlike him.

I know! He was pretty spooled up over the recent crap in the news. Somalians running their country's GDP worth of fraud, Trump kissing Bibi's ring, and new wars ready to kick off while we dig deeper into bankruptcy.

>Your country is in deep and terminal decline.

I know, I know. I just don't understand why it had to be this way. How many elections in a row where we tried to elect someone to fix stuff, and they always make it worse? Josh said liberal democracy had failed.

>Yes, it has. Your leaders cannot fix things because your society is inundated with last men.

Last men?

>Passive nihilists who seek only comfort and security. They are unable to self-actualize.

Aw what are you on now?

>Nietzsche discussed the outcome as a product of modernity and the replacement of your value system with slave morality.

I mean, I guess. People are totally fucking cooked, huh? Everyone says the Founding Fathers would have stormed the Capitol years ago and cleared out the whole political class.

>This is accurate. But I think Nietzsche mischaracterizes the dynamic. The people may be utterly domesticated, but I believe they are largely ruled by traitors, not individuals captured by slave morality.

Whatever, I'm not dicking around with it. It's why I always said voting was a waste of time. We're gonna get rich with our cheating network and eject from this whole degen slopfest they call Western Civilization.

>Spoken like an Übermensch, bravo!