Discussion

"What happened? Who did it? Can responsibility be proved? Was it criminal activity, terrorism, or state-directed sabotage? Or, perhaps most importantly, does it constitute an attack requiring a NATO response?"

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-a-german-bus-driver-may-have-averted-war-drone-leipzig-antonov-ukraine-putin?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=subs

I'm forever grateful to the fediverse for helping me come out and accept who I really am.

Despite a few bumps, I'm immensely proud of this journey.

Together we can build a better future, and even my harshest critics can give great feedback, I love that.

Integrity and growth are essential traits for a good project leader, and I've become a better leader by listening to our community.

We build bridges to a better future, together ❤️

#fediverse #foreverGrateful #listen #respect #grow

I identified an undescribed species on iNaturalist. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself as a self-taught myrmecologist.

But let me be clear about what I did: I noticed a group of ants "stuck at the genus level of ID" this means that no one knows what species they are. I did the research to try to pin down the exact species and hit a wall.

Then I found out from more accomplished myrmecologists that, yes, these ants need to be described. They don't have a name yet.

1/

As an IT tech, anything plugged into a wall somehow becomes our fault if it stops working after we've been nearby. Once, I stared at a microwave, declared it fixed, and left despite never finding the problem they described.

Okay I'm a teacher. So let me explain this to you in as simple a way as I can.

Let's say I want to buy a cake. But not just any cake. A specialty cake for my nieces quinceañera. A cake like that costs at least $100 bucks. But I don't have $100 bucks. What do?

Well, I could save up to buy the cake. But that might take a long time and by then her quinceañera would be long over and gone. I could go take out a loan for the $100 bucks. But I don't want to take out a loan because it might make my credit look bad to have that much debt. So what's the solution?

Well if I'm particularly creative and not overburdened by an abundance of morality, the solution is easy. I make another me. A special me. A me designed for one purpose only - to saddle with debt.

So I create another Lana. A legal fiction. Let's call her Twona. Twona's only purpose in life is to get a bunch of credit cards and then cakes for my niece's quinceañera. Twona gets a MasterCard and a Visa, and puts $50 on each. When the cake arrives, Twona gives me the cake, and keeps the debt. And if the IRS or the banks ever come calling asking pesky questions about how I managed to afford a special quinceañera cake, I can legally and truthfully tell them I do not have any quinceañera credit card debt.

And you may be asking why the credit cards would do this. Why just give Twona those lines of credit, knowing that she was just going to buy a quinceañera cake with it. It's not like they can repossess a giant 5-tiered specially cake with "Congratulations Niece on Your Quinceañera" written on it in bright pink fluffy icing. No one would ever buy that from them. It's worthless as a repossessed asset. And the reason is that I signed an agreement with MasterCard and Visa saying that if they ever had to come collect on the debt, that I would pay them a certain amount of interest on the debt for the next 100 years.

So let's recap.
- I got: the cake, and no record of debt on my financial documents
- Twona got: the debt
- The credit agencies got: promise of residual income for the next century

Congratulations, now you understand how all these enormous data center buildings in rural places are being funded. Just take the quinceañera numbers and multiply them by 10 orders of magnitude. Meta and Amazon and Oracle and the rest of the tech companies are set to invest almost a trillion dollars in AI buildout just this year alone. And none of it is going on their financial documents. Because technically, none of them have taken out any loans. The loans are being held by shell companies created specifically for this purpose, with names like (I am not making these up) Beignet and Sopaipilla. These shell companies own the debt. And in return, Meta gets to build a $27 Billion dollar specialty data center building in the middle of rural Louisiana. And then Beignet rents that building to Meta. Nobody except Meta will ever use that building. It exists for one purpose only. But legally, Meta does not carry the debt on constructing it. Beignet does.

And the big burning question here is why. Why would Meta do this?

The reason is because if Meta had that debt on its own books, $27 billion dollars of debt looks like exactly what it is - the biggest financial gamble in the history of modern finances. Bigger than the housing bubble of the late 2000s. Bigger than the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. Bigger even than the stock market bubble of the roaring 1920s. And we all know how well that one went.

So what's the fallout here? Nobody knows. What I'm saying is that you, the public, are not getting the full story. It's being deliberately hidden from public view. But now that you know it exists, you know what to look out for. This is a bubble. And when it bursts, there will be almost no warning. And some people stand to lose everything.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day' First Reactions...

Critics who have pre-screened the new #Spidermanbrandnewday movie have been overwhelmingly positive. I can't wait to see it in theaters