The AI plan is to suck a trillion or two out of YOUR RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS before the crash comes.

In an effort to be more responsive and faster moving for these demanding times, the NASDAQ and NYSE stock exchanges — especially the former — are shortening the delay times before newly IPO’d stocks get added to official indexes. S&P is also looking at shortening its index entry time. This means that if a new IPO can avoid crashing for just its first three weeks (if it’s on NASDAQ), then millions and millions of mutual funds that people use for their retirement savings buy into these stocks automatically, with no explicit choice to do so on the part of the person the money belongs to! This means the losses from the coming crash of companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and SpaceX are taken out of people’s retirement accounts, but the cash from buying in is kept by Altman and Musk and Amodei, who get to hang onto it or use it as they see fit while riding out the downturn.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/nasdaq-ai-fast-track-reshape-132454956.html

This is a direct transfer of wealth from people who never opted in to the transaction, into the hands of billionaire scam artists. This innocent-sounding policy change might actually be the most corrupt thing NASDAQ has ever done. They’re not counting on flimflamming suckers who think AI is the next industrial revolution; they’ll avoid all that difficult sales-pitch work by just going directly to automated index funds, which are now as big a part of the market as any other kind of investment, forcing them to buy in.

SpaceX, which is the most bogus of these IPOs because their AI tech is just Twatter’s “mecha-hitler” abomination that nobody is ever going to take seriously as an alternative to ChatGPT or Claude, has already been approved for this fast track. Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to get it soon.

And Google, which is already in all the indexes, is selling a new round of stock which will be bought automatically by every index fund. They also get a direct transfer of wealth. And they’ll probably hang onto it. The others, I suspect, are likely to squander it as they flail their way through the collapse of the bubble, so at least a fair amount of it might eventually get back into circulation. But Gloogle will probably come out just fine, and keep the money.

longshot prediction: the AI bubble gets popped this month by the SpaceX IPO, so get out NOW

When SpaceX asks for $1.75 trillion and doesn't get it, that might be the moment that the AI stock market bubble stops inflating and starts tipping into a crash. I'm leaving this here just on the off chance that I get to say "called it" later.

But seriously, it's time get out of the stock market. Especially index funds and anything large-cap. My hunch is that this danger has gone from looming to urgent. Start the process of getting out TODAY, if you haven't acted yet.

Every time they say he's failing, he comes back.

I've said all along that those who call him crazy or deluded or demented are not giving enough credit. He sounds crazy or deluded or demented because he lies so much. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he is very aware of the difference between what he says in public and what he tells those near him in private, that it's highly intentional and conscious, and that even at his most incoherent and irrelevant he is not unmoored, but following a chosen strategy. Wandering off topic into random bullshit is a personal technique he calls "the weave".

That said, his health clearly isn't great, and there are reports of him having some bad days. Maybe he'll be gone by spring, or maybe not. But bad health does not explain the nonsensical way he communicates — that's something he does on his good days.

It's also clear that when he isn't actively steering policy, and the Chief of Staff is sending out orders on his behalf, that Miller is every bit as vicious and cruel as his master, perhaps even more so.

This authoritarian crackdown is what the GOP has been working toward the whole time.

They were working toward this in his first term, they were working toward it in Dubya's administration, they were absolutely working toward this when Reagan was alive, and some of them date back all the way to Nixon. The big donors, the foundations, the think tanks, the publishing houses, the talk shows and news channels — the whole machine of right wing policy and propaganda. This was their end goal the whole time.

We know this because of how they have focused on the Supreme Court for that entire history. For decade after decade they have pushed forward a particular kind of justice, sometimes cultivating candidates practically back to their school days, like Kavanaugh. And now that the court is packed with that particular kind of justice, and Trump has arrived to spearhead that push to authoritarian rule, they are finally cashing their investment, and look at the rulings the Supreme Court is now handing them.

As I've said before, the push to fascism is not coming from Trump. It is coming from the Republican Party. (Trump doesn't really want to be a fascist dictator — what he wants to be is a medieval king.)

I'm confident they are discussing the 25th amendment in there.

A lot of GOP insiders have probably been itching to ditch Trump since before he was sworn in. They want a more sensible and common-sense single-party dictatorship without all the chaos and mess and financial ruin. But they're still scared of the rabid base, and the base follows him and no one else. They're desperately trying to balance the equation of whether their gains from tossing him into the Mt. Epstein volcano can balance their losses from having no one who they can depend on to rally the maga morons to support the new administration.

Trump has pushed other republicans into this same kind of dilemma many times before, and every time they've ended up concluding that they're stuck riding the Trump train all the way to the end of the line. But now, with his health failing. the track may finally be running out. And though they're very tempted, I doubt they'll change their ways... they probably won't make a move until he's actually in the hospital with a fair chance of never coming out.

Trump isn't the fascist here.

There are lots of fascists in the Trump administration: proudly obvious cases like Noem and Miller, quieter ones like Hegseth, and probably stealth ones — maybe Vance, we can't tell because he isn't really showing his cards yet. And there are tons of obvious fascists in Congress, like MTG and Mike Lee. And there are tons of fascist Trump backers of the Musk and Thiel stripe. But Trump himself isn't the fascist. To be a fascist would require him to plan and believe in some sort of fascist system, and the only thing he plans or believes in is just "People should all treat Trump better." He's not a fascist, he's just a narcissist. He gives no shits whatever about what happens to the rest of the party, or even the country as a whole, without him. If he has a political philosophy, it's monarchist: he thinks he should be our king.

But the Republican Party as a whole is galloping toward fascism. They didn't get their fascism from Trump — they took advantage of Trump to seize the chance to implement fascism. They jumped at the chance because, without really quite letting themselves know it, it was exactly what they had been waiting for all along. It was what Dubya's crew wanted, it was what the Newt Gingrich congress wanted, it was what a lot of Reagan backers wanted, it was what Nixon's people wanted.... all the way back to Hoover, maybe even Harding, the Republican Party has been groping in this exact direction, and now they've finally seen a clear path to get there. They are often monumentally embarrassed by Trump's messy and chaotic leadership, yet most of them can't turn it down, because it's giving them exactly what they've been wanting all along. And it's what their voting base has been wanting too: for decades, all of the candidates that have brought out real enthusiasm in elections have been the ones most similar to Trump.

Trump isn't the fascist. The fascists are the rest of the Republican Party.

all right wing movements, in the end, believe in violence as their fallback strategy

Marines and Guards face a choice

The Marines are being deployed. We know that Californians will protest and resist, and we know that Тяцмр and his pet fascists will push for a full-throttle brutal crackdown. The unknown — the choice — is now with the Marine and Guard units being asked to suppress the protests. Will they obey their oaths, or obey the White House? So much depends on their consciences.

If they do choose brutality, I hope it's just because they picked volunteers who wanted such a mission, i.e. kept the ones with consciences out of the group. If that's the approach they are taking, it could mean they will have short term success with it, but it won't scale when the resistance gets broader and they need more men to violate people's rights.

To anyone being asked to make that choice, remember that history will, in the end, be written by those who Trump no longer has any power or influence over, and will judge him and his collaborators by the standards of human rights and constitutional law, not by the demands of any supposed emergency he wants to concoct. Your descendants and your future self will also know that this is the true standard of judgment, and may be unforgiving of those who acquiesced to the push for brutality. So please, don't do something today what you will grieve later — remember your oath to the Constitution, and do the correct thing from the start.

"AI" is not just another Silicon Valley gold rush Ponzi-oid investment bubble...

...but it is mostly that in the short term.

Long term, it actually is a legitimate threat to human survival, just like in crappy B science fiction.

Even longer term, it may be the key to a posthuman super-civilization as far beyond Star Trek as that is beyond bronze age war bands pillaging early farmers.

Both the perils and the opportunities are far beyond anything you'd think possible from today's bumbling artificial idiots. Unfortunately its progress is being guided by some of the most irresponsible assholes alive.

The other Republicans are waiting for Trump to die.

Conservative base voters mostly think Dфидld Тяцмр is the most perfect president possible, but the Republican Party establishment is embarrassed by him. He's useless at policy, chaotic at leadership, and destructive to their interests as often as he's helpful. They like the deregulation but hate the tariffs, they like the easy corruption but hate the constant exposed scandal, they like the belligerence but hate the economic losses, they like his team's racism but hate the constant display of moronic ignorance. They really wish they could get rid of Trump and all his messy nonsense.

Which they easily could, of course. A minority of them could remove him from office, with Democratic help. But they won't... as long as Trump is succeeding at gaining authoritarian power. Because they're afraid of that power? No, because for them, that power justifies everything he's doing wrong!

What the GOP really wants is for Trump to establish single party rule, and then retire or die, leaving them to inherit that authoritarian power. Authoritarian systems don't actually invest total power in an individual — that's petty warlord shit, it ain't a system. A proper system has something more permanent, like a College of Cardinals or the Holy Roman Empire's Prince-Electors. A traditional monarchy invests power in a family line, and a fascist or communist regime invests its power into a political party. When a strongman can no longer continue, the party goes on.

They know Trump is destroying everything he rubs up against, but as long as it looks like he might turn his allies into such a ruling party, they are unwilling to stop the destruction of liberty and democracy. Because they were already fascists before he showed them how to seize control.