People are just monkeys. Monkeys do what they see because they’re stupid and a product of their environment. Billionaires now control everything in that environment, so US monkies mostly see what those billionaires want.

FOX NEWS. Paid for by billionaires so USA Monkies want Citizens United, No child Left Behind, the Patriot act, and Trillions in the national debt for the first time in 200 years of being a nation. Bush W is now okay despite being an idiot because he’s surrounded by smart people. But smart people are definitley bad.

FACEBOOK ADS. Paid for by billionaires so USA monkies will vote against Healthcare, their own taxes, and educatiom to fight made up enemies like “libs” and “illegals”. Local elections are now won by the dumbest people imaginable that believe these enemies are real. Actual Proffesionals are now suspicious.

TWITTER. Now just owned by a billionaire so USA monkies think Trump is a genius, Fascism is good, and it’s totally okay more Americans died from COVID than anywhere else in the world, a death toll higher than all the wars America ever fought in combined. Trump is great because he punishes smart people, and people that point out his COVID bullshit, as those smart people are now your enemy.

This makes Elon wealthy. Zuckerberg Wealthy. And the Murdochs wealthy.

They covered the US in news that it was on fire and keep profiting off of selling fire extinguishers.

There is no fire. (Illegal immigrants, libs, trans, caravans, wmds in Iraq, war on drugs, war on terror, etc) But now half the country votes like there is because that keeps billionaires wealthy instead of actually taxed to benefit society. They are the problem. They know they are the problem. So they purchase as many media outlets as they can, like Bezos, to normalize their greed and it’s affects on our country. Just about to the point we don’t have one anymore.

Who do you think was responsible for convincing the middle class to vote against their own best interests?

It was the people who didn’t have to pay taxes after Reagonomics. They used their money to fill television, print, and eventually social media with propaganda. Propaganda that taxes were too high (for them) despite our entire social safety net outgrowing it’s sustainability.

And this form of propaganda was SO effective, the Russians figured they would do the same. Then the Chinese. Now the Saudis. So now we have just about every country in the world that hates America purchasing every second of entertainment they can to make sure we’re always voting against our best interests to the point we just about don’t have a country.

You are correct! And it’s crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.

Weird how everything’s turning to shit now that corporations don’t pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.

“Too big to fail” was actually just “too big to stop.” So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.

The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people’s bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.

Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.

Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.

Same argument as holocaust deniers. Good point.

I appreciate the clarification. But let’s give the dead the benefit of the doubt before it becomes another COVID that kills everyone’s grandparents. People like you desire to see death first hand before believing it only because you likely have not seen it yet yourself, so through sheer inexperience doubt such loss can be on such a large scale. It is. Whether these stats line up perfectly yet or not. It’s still happening.

And to be clear. This isn’t the first time Trump has killed this many people through sheer negligence.

He does not have the benefit of the doubt here. Nor deserves it. So you should not be giving it. Don’t be the guy that looks the other way from the mountains of dead until someone you know is in the pile. Looking the other way is how they get there.

Agreed.

Here’s a way to use crypto to buy from pretty much any major online merchant anonymously without them tracking your user data:

https://paywithmoon.com/merchants

Its a card that acts as an intermediary for crypto.

It let’s you buy from these merchants without giving away your private data or buying habits.

This is a valuable use for crypto for many people. This is a site that let’s them use their crypto basically anywhere without getting spied on.

This fundamentally disproves his first core statments about crypto not having a use case and not being usable at most merchants.

Basically, he immediately reveals he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The end of your previous post:

Yes, it’s better than other vanity projects, but it is still a wasteful vanity project.

The literal definition of a vanity project:

https://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/vanity+project

project undertaken for self-satisfaction.

Each one of the examples I provided shows very clearly this yacht was NOT made for HIS self-satisfaction. Rather, it was literally made to the satisfaction of the research team that uses the yacht.

Specifically:

“His” yacht being used to better the scientific community instead of just him.

1. Made quite literally for a large team of scientists as he is the second largest contributor to deep sea research on the planet. Nearly the exact opposite of being for vanity.

“His” yacht made to have the least environmental impact from noise or oil pollution.

2. Made for the environment. Not Gabe. So not for vanity.

Huge efforts were made to reduce noise and vibration, thereby creating a pleasant onboard environment.

3. Made for sensative aquatic life that engine noises can disturb and affect the research of. Not for Gabe. So not for vanity.

“His” yacht made to have little maintenance requirements so the crew can focus on science and research.

4. Made to be easy to work on for the hundreds of crew that maintain it. Not for Gabe. So not for vanity.

Every point of my last comment was proving your statement about this being a vanity project completely and unquestionably wrong. But I guess I just understand your last sentence better than you.

You are shitting on the best deep sea scientific research vessel in existence while implying you have the moral high ground. There’s nothing immoral about scientific research just because it happens on a yacht.

You are literally using the same logic as a cop saying a person with dark skin is a criminal. This yacht clearly isn’t a vanity project. It is for Inksea, and being used to help fight climate change and the affect that has on deep sea ocean currents.

But to you this yacht is just as criminal as a dark skinned person is to a cop. No exceptions.

Please understand: the point you are making is not incorrect. But the way you are making it very much is.

I completely agree that Billionaires shouldn’t exist, and in general most yachts are unquestionably vanity projects. But this one clearly isn’t.

So if you want to make your point heard, going about it through uncompromising bigotry is just about the worst way to make it.

It’s his vessel because he paid for it. That’s how money works. There’s no other pronoun that is appropriate.

Here’s the rest of the article that completely unwinds how far you want to stretch that term:

“His” yacht made through collaboration:

“Not only have we designed a very unusual yacht that leans into Oceanco’s strengths of innovation and design, but the team has also been willing to collaborate with us on evolving the process.”

“His” yacht made to have the least environmental impact from noise or oil polution (Diesel hybrid electric engine):

Huge efforts were made to reduce noise and vibration, thereby creating a pleasant onboard environment. The hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system is whisper-quiet, and the engine room is positioned further forward to reduce noise. The built-in battery bank also allows for silent nighttime operation.

“His” yacht made to have little maintenance requirements so the crew can focus on science and research:

Leviathan is also incredibly low-maintenance. The off-white exterior and synthetic handrails require less cleaning, for example. That means the crew can spend less time on routine maintenance and more time on more important tasks. “We adopted a crew-centric approach that really digs into how Leviathan is operated and maintained,” explains Newell.

“His” thoughts on “His” yacht being used to better the scientific community instead of just him.

“Yachts have great potential to serve as platforms for scientific research,” adds Newell. “It’s about recognizing that you’re part of a broader community and ensuring the yacht’s presence adds value to the communities around it.”

How about you ask yourself how many scientists and engineers HE paid to have a job to work on this?

How about you ask how much he pays their research salaries still and provided them a better vessel to do their job on than anyone else?

Why do you insist that you know how to better spend his money when it’s already going to people that need it for a cause that’s needed?

Just because you want to claim his money could be used better doesn’t mean it currently isn’t being used well.

You just see a yacht and think the worse. Worlds far less black and white.

Like the 3000 scientists, engineers, and designers that helped him build that yacht for research?

That collaboration started with the design and build. Newell joined forces with YTMC, Y.CO, the Oceanco Design team, Lateral Naval Architects, Mark Berryman Design, and thousands of designers, engineers, and other experts to bring his dream vessel to fruition. The names of the nearly 3,000 contributors are listed near the main staircase, in fact. “It is this level of collaboration that sets Leviathan apart from anything we’ve built before,” Oceanco CEO Marcel Onkenhout said in a statement.

Is there more efficient ways to spend this money on research? Sure. But don’t equate this effort as meaningless just because it’s not perfect. It’s a great place to be a researcher, but it’s still for research.

Your assumption all his yachts were for pleasure has already been proven wrong. Now you’re just moving the goal posts.

As I said, he’s the second largest doner to marine research on the entire planet, and the burden of proof for proving his yachts are ALL for personal use is something you’ve never provided, only assumed.

I’ve proved 1/3 were for scientific research. I’m not going to do the other 2/3 just for you to ignore and move the goal posts elsewhere.

Prove your point, and I’ll believe it.

Until then, he’s still a billionaire instead of the trillionaire he could be, so I’m not going to think poorly of him just because he’s not fitting some arbitrary number of currency tied to his worth that magically makes you think he’s moral.

Instead I will judge him based on his actions. The ones that I have detailed have unquestionably made the world a better place for many more people than him.

How about you actually tell me something he’s done wrong that’s worth your judgement, instead of basing it entirely on yachts you won’t research?

What have I said that isn’t true?

https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/billionaire-gabe-newell-oceanco-gigayacht-leviathan-1237360429/

The 364-foot Leviathan was designed for billionaire gaming visionary Gabe Newell, who acquired the Dutch shipyard this past April.

Leviathan is the latest addition to Newell’s Inkfish fleet and will be used to further scientific research in the marine sector. Occupying the place of the standard beach club is a fully equipped dive center, laboratory, and a hospital. There’s even a 3-D printing workshop where the crew can create spare or replacement parts. “Yachts have great potential to serve as platforms for scientific research,” adds Newell. “It’s about recognizing that you’re part of a broader community and ensuring the yacht’s presence adds value to the communities around it.”

You are just continuing to make assumptions based entirely on the assets he owns instead of his behaviour.

Something I keep pointing out, and is why I have also been responding.

I am completely on your side and feel that anyone with over a billion is an ethical and moral burden. However, I’m also wise enough to recognize that as a goal to strive towards not a destination to judge against. So I’m not going to chastise those actively working towards that goal, even if they are a billionaire.

I see granting access for anyone to make games for Steam as a good cause.

The opportunity cost for what profit could be made by closing that is multitudes of yachts worth.

Just because you do not value this as a good cause does not mean it is not.

Does Gabe have more yachts than are needed? Yes. But again, you can’t just say he’s greedy because he has them. That’s being incredibly biased.

Instead, how about you tell me what actions of his has made him greedy that don’t involve his assets?

I can name hundreds of ways Musk should be drawn and quartered based on his actions that have nothing to do with his wealth, but rather his actual documented choices.

What choices / actions / or anything of actual greed has Gabe done that you can point to?

It’s like saying anything with a swastika on it is for Nazis without realizing Hindus have been using a right oriented Swastika to represent good fortune for hundreds of years.

Gabe Newall has done the following with his 11 Billion fortune:

• Co-founded “The Heart of Racing” car racing team that raises money for Children’s charity.

• Donates heavily to the Seattle Children’s Hospital and several others around the world.

• Founded Foundry10, a non profit education company that helps neuro divergent kids learn through new methods of education

• Started InkFish to expand the scientific study of our oceans and is now the second highest individual donor towards marine research on the planet.

https://80.lv/articles/gabe-newell-reportedly-plans-to-invest-usd300-million-to-marine-research

That’s why he has those yachts.

Same reason Hindus have their swastikas.

Their actions speak louder than the symbols they use suggest. Even when those symbols are Yachts.

He has 11 Billion. Everyone else even close to his level of market control has several magnitudes more. Why does he have so little when he owns a virtual monopoly on digital distribution?

Because he’s not in it for maximizing his bank account.

The dispicableness of billionaires is measured by their actions not their worth. And despite being of high worth, Gabes actions are unquestionably not greedy. He’s doing almost everything he can to minimize his wealth in favor of equality to access Steam as a game dev.

If he wanted to, he could charge far more than $100 to develop for them, and buy several more yachts.

But he hasn’t.

Which makes his platform more popular. And in turn brings him even more cash to buy more yachts.

His yachts aren’t indicative of his greed, but his benevolence in the face of it.

Show me a single other company the size of Valve that has chosen to forgo profit over access to something like Steam to make money yourself. That’s basically non existent in the year 2025 aside from Valve. I’m not going to judge Gabe as a bad person for profiting from that. He could be profiting much much more and is choosing access for nearly everyone else instead.

I agree with this sentiment, but given a choice, I believe Gabe would make the right one and spend his wealth to lose billionaire status.

His supposed exploitation was not by his own design, but rather by luck - the sheer benefit of riding a privately owned and benevelontly steered surfboard on top of the waves of a collapsing capitalist society.

Basically, there’s a meme about all other companies shooting themselves in the foot so Gabe always benefits, and part of that is in the way those companies fucked and manipulated their control of capital and markets. Gabe benefits just by being one of the few that can afford to participate in that system others rigged.

So he simply rigs it the least, and wins by providing the platform with the least greedy problems. Far far less than he could given his position.

IMHO, despite all controversies, Steams cut of profits from providing equal access to game visibility despite creator, nationality, background, etc, has legitimately opened the door for nearly anyone to be successful on their platform. For all the tools and services they provide, they ask for literally the smallest cut compared to any other publishing platform.

Gabe could destroy that to his benefit on a whim, and instead he over designs it to make it possible for nearly anyone to try game dev if they do the work needed to develop for them.

To hold so much capital simply for providing some form of equality to access the same in a system that overwhelming benefits others with more resources is in no way greedy imo. It’s being the person with the only fire extinguisher who knows how to use it in a burning building: popular.

You’re not making a bad argument. Just the wrong one.

The system we have is now whatever Trump wants it to be. Going back to the system we had previously would now be just as radical as changing it into one that actually benefits us.

The system we had lead to Trump. Period. Why would you want that again?

Ask yourself: when should we go back to exactly?

Back to before the Patriot Act robbed us of our constitutional right to privacy?

Back before no child left behind made our graduating high schoolers functionally illeterate?

Back before Citizens United allowed corpate power to influence every single election for decades denying you minimum wage, universal Healthcare, or literally anything that would detract from corporate profits over public welfare?

Back before Reaganomics then?

Maybe further back before the business plot of 1933 to overthrow the government in place of business nepotism?

Or maybe before all the Tariffs we passed in the 1920’s that accelerated the great depression?

100 years later we literally have the same problems. Just without the benefit of actually stopping them from destroying our government.

Half the white house is missing. An elected congress person isn’t being sworn in. Our own military is in our cities and it’s to protect masked police deporting some citizens with no due prosses.

This is not a future we reached by mistake. It is a future that was inevitable given the limitations of our existing system, combined with the centuries sociopaths have had to game it. We should not go back to it. It will just lead us here again.

It would be far better to use as a model for a better system. Certainly many other countries already have. But do not let nostalgia blind you to the fact that the problems in the system we have are inherent, and they are not fixable from within using the systems tools. They allow for exploits to grow, and after a hundred years, fail entirely in containing them effectively.

During WW2, a very difficult decision was made to use nuclear weapons. Killing hundreds of thousands to stop millions from dying. If they were not dropped the losses in the south pacific would be well over 8 million dead.

The argument you are currently making, given the WW2 context, is for us not to drop the bomb. Despite us already being at a point where Orange Hitler is about to destroy Snap benefits killing millions more than USAID closing and COVID already have.

There is no more normal course of action given the current situation. And there hasn’t been for quite some time. Just because Democrats haven’t noticed that in decades, doesn’t mean they ever will. This article confirms they won’t, and was written as PR for people like you to believe otherwise.

Just following up from my previous answer: MOST officers only need to pass training on use of firearms once a year. It does vary per department, and some officers use their access to training and ranges to hone their skills. But MOST of them only follow the guidelines, and most guidelines only require recertifying firearm use once a year.

By policy, it’s different per police organization. But overwhelmingly the biggest orgs only force training once a year. And the metrics they use to pass for accuracy and use are lower than most concealed carry courses.

As someone who used to create judgemental use of force firearm training simulators for law enforcement, I can tell you right now you’re likely a better shot than 90% of our police force too.

The problem with that strategy, was that Republicans were not doing that.

So it was a bad strategy. End of argument.

If you are actively strategizing, planning around what your enemies are NOT doing isn’t strategy, it’s stupidity. And it is what Dems have been doing for decades. They just want to blame Republicans for their complete lack of foresight rather than ever be accountable for letting the GOP cuck every single policy of theirs. Now to the point of undoing hundreds of years of legal precedent and progress.

The time for integrity and thoroughness had long since passed before Biden took office, so using it to defeat Trump was about as effective as using a fax machine to share memes. Being anything but aggressive after an active coup attempt that miraculously failed is astronomically naive at best.

But Biden was handed a literal democracy destroying shotgun with one barrel labeled “complete legal immunity” and the other “infinite executive authority” and he looked at that gift from the Supreme Court and decided it was best left to the next president to use. Oops wasnt Kamala. So now instead of Biden expanding the executive branch to control congressional decisions such as how many members of the Supreme Court there are, Trump is doing it to consolidate complete power and authority.

Our Supreme Court built a political Nuclear Bomb, that was 100% going to be used by Trump to destroy this country, and they gifted it to Biden first. His decision to not benevolently use it to destroy the holes in our Democracy MAGA has infested doomed us to be a corpse eaten by those MAGAT’s.

This article is PR for those who failed to protect our country to feel better about it. They failed. They sucked at their job by using clearly outdated strategies, and they did it despite our literal democracy being on the line. I do not blame the unstoppable force that is the MAGA GOP, I blame the Democrats who acted as tin cans for decades when they swore they could be immovable objects. Glad this article clears up the fact they literally never could be.

They reviewed our Indie game as “too woke” 6 days before I even had keys to send out. They literally don’t even play the games, just knee jerk to their audience 😂

I know you’re saying this as a joke, but art theft and related crime has been on the rise since the pandemic. And there has been quite a lot of art recovered from dying old mobsters and conmen.

Here’s the current FBI case list, and it’s WILD:

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/violent-crime/art-crime/art-crime-news

More Than 50 Years After Theft, Stolen John Opie Painting Recovered and Returned to Rightful Owner

The FBI was contacted in December 2021 by a Washington County, Utah, accounting firm acting as a trustee for a client who died in 2020. [An old mobster] The client had hired the firm to liquidate his residences and personal property. While appraising the painting for auction, it was discovered to likely be an original Opie stolen in 1969 from a private residence of the Wood family in New Jersey.

From a case in February of this year:

According to Acting United States Attorney John C. Gurganus, Dombek, Boland, and Joseph Atsus were part of a larger nine-person conspiracy which lasted over 20 years and whose goal was to break into multiple museums and other institutions and steal priceless works of art, sports memorabilia, and other objects.