Beefalo @ jayrodtheoldbod @midwest.social

Posts

10

Comments

268

Joined

2 yr. ago

Foftware Os Sa Service

Ah, the YouTube experience. Jeez, you guys are still talking about this? Wait, no, no you're not.

Reddit was getting pretty bad about surfacing ancient threads there, for a while. I thought they were back on their bullshit about Gamestop but no, three year old thread.

The whole point of calling somebody "middle-aged" is that they're in that indeterminate space where they definitely aren't young anymore, but they aren't like, old, old, yet, basically they're still able-bodied enough to hold down a job.

Not one. Not the other. Somewhere in the middle. Middle-aged.

30 isn't so old, but it depends hard on the person in question, some are still in great shape, but many 30-year-olds have been nursing a back problem and/or jacked knees for years by the time the birthday comes, they sure as hell don't feel young. Some 30s haven't had kids yet, some of them have kids in middle school. So that averages out, and we onboard you to this shitty party at 30. If you can still rock the swimwear at 30, do it, and don't take it for granted.

For the record, we don't care what children think old is. Children are insane.

I've been using the desktop stock app, which lets you follow tags. It's pretty unintuitive, though, and they just redesigned the interface so I'm not sure I know how to do it.

My biggest problem with tag-following has always been actually finding the tags.

But yeah, I always forget everyone else is phone phone phone all the time. So of course they're using a bunch of different apps.

"Yeah, you be shamin yourself"

"What?"

"It's a white woman thing, you be shaming yourself, you have to stop that, and now you have to replace your whole lawn with clover"

"Fuck all that"

"Take it up with the white women, don't shoot the messenger"

Iraqui flag, its more like a kilt, as in kilt your fuckin police dogs now what?

Aw man, now I miss mushrooms.

Aw fuck do we need to have a talk about what Piped is?

He was a youthful 40, 8 years ago, I wonder how his Mastodon account is doing.

Furiously scanning through the "LGBT flags" results from DuckDuckGo like it's an Audubon Bird Guide trying to nail down the "ABisexual Meg White Transwoman" thing she's got going on. You'd think the flag colors would be a gimme, but noo, trolls be trolling.

Too cute, with her studded leather jacket shoulders. She knows too much. Namechecking Warhammer like she's been on 4Chan recently. Sus. Saw her vent. Possible girldick. Missing top for 196. Her people need her.

The move by Fitch makes sense.

No, it does not help that the US has a very high level of national debt, but here comes somebody to scold me about how debt is different when you're the government and yadda yadda, so never mind that angle.

No, this is a direct reaction to yet another game of fucking chicken with the debt ceiling. The finance world moves both fast and slow, second by second but also quarter by quarter; for every day trade where microseconds count, there is another action where it takes, oh, 3 months for the relevant body to react to what just happened. This is one of those actions. They've spent the last couple of months running their numbers, and now here we are. They have delivered their verdict for the current fiscal quarter, after much deliberation.

It does not make any sense at all to go around talking about US Fed bonds as if they are "zero risk", or even "effectively zero risk", if every 8 years there will come a game of chicken slash pissing contest where the hostages are everyone who has been foolish enough to buy US Federal debt under the expectation that the interest rate will be paid on time. If somebody in the US government does not blink in this game of chicken, then fuck you, the US will default on its "zero risk" debt.

And so here is Fitch quite reasonably questioning that status quo, that US debt is "zero risk".

Keep in mind that the entire damn globe is holding US Treasury Bonds, the debt in question. Just as importantly, the biggest holder of US debt is US citizens. You, somehow. That's where the yields on a CD come from, and your money market account. US Bonds.

Typically, 10 year US Treasury Bonds provide the highest guaranteed interest rate -ignoring recent rate inversions because COVID black swan shitshow- because obviously if you are going to lock up your money for a decade, you would expect the best return at maturity.

But this debt ceiling BS happens every 8 years. This means that every truly serious investor who holds a 10-year T-Bill, from Wall Street funds to the Chinese government, is heavily exposed to the threat of complete default on this debt thanks to that entire debt ceiling thing, to say absolutely nothing about the solvency of the US government, in general.

That's not fucking zero risk. And Fitch is tired of pretending that it is.

Fuck sake, they aren't even trying to have a debate upon whether the US can sustain its frankly obscene debt level. No, it's just that AAA rating means "zero effective risk, barring nuclear war or alien invasion or some unforeseeable shit" and all that clownfuckery with the debt ceiling is NOT "zero risk", nor is it unforeseeable.

Is that zero risk? When the person who owes you money can watch the due date tick down from 5 years out and wait until the last fucking minute of the last damn day to decide they're going to pass the law that will allow them to pay you? No, the fuck it ain't.

Did they appear to care about the creditors? The bondholders who they owed interest to? No, that whole song and dance was about, I don't know, probably abortion. The Republicans have been using the debt ceiling as a hostage for a decade or more, so if you're the French government, for example, and hold a bunch of US Treasury bills, you can't call that shit zero risk with a straight face, come on. It doesn't even matter if the US can pay the debt, the question is, will they?

I need you to understand that literally everyone in the world is investing in US Federal debt, it's not just you, US person. It's kind of frightening how US Federal debt is the cinder blocks that many other nations are building their economic foundation on. That's what being the reserve currency is about.

Fitch knows that, and they know it back to front, so when they issue a rating, the weight of it is upon them. Can we call it zero risk? Like zero, zero??

If you have any money in your brokerage money market account, or a CD, anywhere, you're in this boat, wondering if US Bonds are zero risk. The whole world is in this boat, wondering if US Treasury Bonds, especially the 10-year ones, are really zero risk guaranteed money on maturity. Like, really really, tho? Maybe there's a smidge of risk? Even the 30 year bonds??? 30 fuckin years on the bond, my dude, zero risk on that?

We've all been on American social media, they all talk like they're going to have another Civil War; probably not, but still. Zero risk on the 30-year US Treasury Bond? That's a long time. Shit can go nuclear. Zero risk?

Could you look your best fucking friend in the face and say, "oh, yeah, buy a US 30 year Treasury Bond, there is absolutely no risk of any sort on that, you will get your interest even if Florida slips under the sea, taking Disney World with it." Could you? No.

So pretend that there you are, some team of analysts at Fitch, knowing all of this, knowing more than I do because it's your job, and looking at each other like, "Can we call this zero risk? Because that's what AAA means. We all know that. So can we?" And nobody wants to, because it isn't, and we're all tired of pretending like it is.

And Fitch looks at the obvious, it downgrades US Treasury debt from AAA - perfect, the best possible - to AA+ - still near perfect, but room for improvement.

Fitch is right. Fitch is right to shoot up the warning flare. We're lucky that China's situation is still a bit of a mess, and the United States Federal Reserve needed the wakeup call, not that they want it. We're lucky that buying a bond from the Chinese Federal Government doesn't quite make sense, because if the state owns all things, then what is a bond? It doesn't matter what the answer is, it only matters that we have to discuss it. We all know what a US Treasury Bond is, that's beyond debate. That certainty elevates it.

It's not like Fitch are acting up to get attention, fuck that. Every other respectable bond rating house should have done this first. It's not fair that Fitch has to be the odd ones to call the obvious. Fitch is right. The US needs to get its shit together.

At this point I'm afraid to update anything because it will turn into a debilitating subscription fee. One is whatever, but 50 of them is insane, and that's kinda where it's going. Monthly fee for breathing next.

Texas Roadhouse and whatever is in the gas station cooler do not count.

In case anyone needs it, Texas Roadhouse serves proper sweet tea, brewed hot, put over ice, all that. It's kinda their gimmick.

We got Union as hell on this post, didn't we. Every time I come back it has more comments.

I'm still mad as fuck that I can't get my precious Lipton Instant Tea at Walmart, because I really was raised in a trailer park, so maybe that's why I had to delete my own giant shitty comment about this.

That is a "meth as a career" 36.

That was Swedish Chef from the Muppets Swedish. Not actual Swedish.

Kinda disappoint, some of these guys will legit go multilingual on you, I think (Dammit, can't remember his name, of course it vanished from my memory, he's invisible, no not Kurt Angle, brain, stop saying that) legitimately speaks Chinese, so I was all, oh, of course The Rock speaks Swedish, why wouldn't he? He's the fuckin Rock. But nah.

I've come back to look at this thing like three times now, and I'm dyin every time. Shit is cleansing my spirit.

I suggest that patient gamers put Aliens: Dark Descent onto their wishlist and wait for a good sale. It already had a small sale but the game only came out in June.

They really nailed the vibe, just all around, check out some Youtube plays of it to see if you like the gameplay. It looks like XCOM in screenshots but plays in real-time. The story takes place in a Weiland-Yutani mining base, of course isolated in an unwanted corner of the universe. A mysterious infection has appeared on the planet! I wonder what it could be? Better send some soldiers from your crashed ship to check out the situation and look for survivors. The characters are all new.

I'd say that the game benefits from all the comics and other less-known canon that fleshes out the world, and has the flavor down pat. They haven't forgotten that the original movie was about a conflict between two powerful women, one of whom really doesn't want to fuckin be here, and the gameplay does a great job of being a balancing act between making you fuckin sweat at the mercy of xenomorphs while also feeling like a badass. It's a lot of people's Game of the Year already, so I'd look into it, even though it's gotten kinda lost in the shuffle.

I haven't used Facebook for years. It bored me after 20 minutes, I wasn't sure what else to do there, I closed the tab, I went away. I never made a post about how I'm packing up my little hobo bags and leaving forever, you'll all be sorry!! I just went, quietly, and never came back.

I lie, every three months I poke my head in there, and then once I actually sold something on Marketplace, for $80, so FB is the only fucking social website that has ever made me money despite being the one I never use. One of these days I'll get on there and try to find out my brother's current address, but he doesn't respond to messages anymore, either.

LIkewise, I quit Twitter, shorty before the Elonpocalypse, because it just sucked. I didn't like being there, and wasn't having any fun. So I just stopped going there, quietly, telling nobody, I left. Now you have to login to even see it, and yeah, haven't logged in there in forever. I hear they changed the name.

That's how it looks when you actually quit a place. You just quietly disappear one day, like a fish slipping under the waves. Who knows, maybe you'll find a reason to come back, you know? And it would look stupid as hell if you made some big fucking scene about leaving and then had to crawl back in, WOULDN'T IT?

Maybe you want to sell an old drumset, or ask a question, you never know. So you slip quietly out the side door, you don't even slam it, and then you forget to show up again for months at a time, or never again. When was the last time you logged into MySpace?

You? You look like you're going to found a subreddit called r/ExRedditors. Move on, already. The future beckons.

One of the more interesting facts that came out as they were arrested was that the bulk of attendees there that day were wealthy white men, usually business owners, lawyers, that sort, who all came from Blue cities where the demographics had been getting a LOT browner in the last ten years.

So when they chant about "Take OUR country back," guess who they're taking it back from? Hm?

Let me re-iterate, most of the group were from Blue states, not Red. There were quite a few Californians.

Of course, being quite literally the idle wealthy, they were able to fly to DC, no big deal, and then hang out there for a while, no big deal, because they didn't have to hold down jobs, other people were stuck back home making their money for them. They had plenty of cash for the excursion and all their toys. I'm sure they were staying in nice hotel rooms.

Here's a source for all that