GhostOnTheHalfShell

opinionated lurker of the intarwebs.

Used to write code, still do. c/c++, java, php, js, c#, gdscript, gnawed on sql, sparql, unix/windows etc etc billions of years ago.

tech, graphics, anything STEM
anything anthropology, history, linguistics
anything blender, gimp (although i scream using it), audacity
prefers not to be run over by cars

I drink Philz.

I do a (non-monetized) video or so a week on yt.

Tyranny and poverty are everywhere a mainstream economics phenomenon.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GhostOnTheHalfShell

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nos.lol

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Last Notes

2024-07-08 03:51:48

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If only they’d find another way to collareralize debt, but I don’t think they can. There’s a much more worrisome risk on the horizon.
https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/112725589036266393

2024-07-07 13:24:36

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Anti trust, revolution, disaster.
Right now, it looks like the last option.

2024-06-22 21:04:27

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I would correct Sanders.
Their intention for a half century has been to end democracy. They embrace the Mudsill theory and view a middle class as a menace to civilization.
So they have systematically dismantled the republic brick by brick.

2024-06-11 15:22:28

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Sinclair has skirted antitrust laws in order to own local tv and radio stations all over America. Absolutely just as influential as Fox.
He dictates what can be said, what cannot and what MUST be said. It’s tyranny. There is no “free press”.

2024-05-31 22:08:19

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The ruling faction insists all Palestinians are Hamas.
This war won't stop until Israel runs out of steam, the radicals fall, or their victims are all dead. It's that simple.

2024-05-30 14:30:48

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That’s terrible lol.

2024-05-30 06:38:39

@npub1xh2…u80r
@npub1wwm…z5vx
18 min
https://youtu.be/uq39i84l8MU

2024-05-29 17:52:26

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the latter.
As a convict, his ability to run is ruined. Also, specifically, it’s important to reflect that by focusing on the relevant.
It will also enrage 45.

2024-05-26 04:47:32

#askfedi #animatedMovies
There’s an Italian(?) animated short involving mosquitoes living off a sleeping human, as an allegory for modern dependence on oil.
I don’t remember the name. Anyone?

2024-05-24 04:22:33

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“ Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense) (p. 14).”
People willing to embrace this statement have willingly surrendered their critical faculties to a conman. This is what “capitalists” embrace, at least in the US.

2024-05-23 22:44:20

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I think it’d be funny to have a demonstration, “Insurrection is an assault on the Constitution” defend the Constituency or resign.
something like that

2024-05-21 19:26:59

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Yes we can thank Friedman for advancing that false dichotomy as well as false equivalence (ie that capitalism = freedom and prosperity). Since picking over some of the classic interviews of him (Phil Donanhue'79) and being much more aware of logical fallacies, his methods glaringly mendacious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in_Positive_Economics
🧵

2024-05-21 17:44:22

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Well, it *wasn't* at one point. Shit like this going down today would have seen a CEO drop kicked out.
Today's landscape is very different. CEOs don't stay for very long anyway. But failure is rewarded with fat parachutes.

2024-05-21 07:45:05

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Boeing isn’t run like a business, it’s being strip mined. Investment practice is distinct from manufacturing practice, but the former has come to dominate in the US, UK and is creeping through Canada, despite it’s unique talent for destroying everything it touches.
Consider that very capitalist Singapore ditched neoliberalism when it blew up in their face. Their outlook is result orient, not ideological.
https://youtu.be/SSBsW3Qzqjs

2024-05-20 15:41:01

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They are indoctrinated over a style of success: big corporations.
It’s no less a cultural phenomena than the peer contests of the French Aristocracy in opulence and glory in war. That’s the standard set.
Of course telling them they aren’t innovators but fanbois upsets that apple cart.

2024-05-20 15:00:06

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Nationalizing mortgages doesn’t do so much, I think. Banks *sell* the loans they make off to the secondary market. They are packaged up into securities and peddled off to insurance, hedge and pension funds. The mortgage has spent itself on an existing product, a cookie cutter house.
Financing needs to fund new construction, community urban needs and greening. That direction will spawn an different kind of cosntruction sector.

2024-05-20 14:47:29

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From what I understand (StrongTown’s explanation), city level is best placed to extend credit. The money needs to go to small projects in order to fund the kind of construction *needed*.
The level of coordination is at the city level. Cities themselves need to act to build resilience; secure food, water, energy, housing (urban design), unique to them. It’s at that level. Communities need to secure themselves.

2024-05-20 14:29:40

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We should grasp that the home loan market (big chunk of US economy) was engineered to subsidize suburbia. It was made to power the transformation of the US economy from a war footing. It succeeded wildly for a few decades, but painted the economy into a dysfunctional corner. It will never fund enormous unmet needs.
A new system of finance must be engineered. Cities in the US are in a position to finance; globally something is needed.

2024-05-20 14:17:16

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but for local finance, they are stuck.
But in rich or poor world, credit is desperately needed to restore ecology regionally and green towns/cities, but also local self sufficiency is *necessary* for supply chain disruption resilience. Permaculture elements address this.
Finance is obsessed with energy transition, big expensive, industrial scale development; that’s its design. It is unfit for purpose. We need ground level transformation.

2024-05-20 14:08:26

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In the US, cities have begun to change zoning laws, legalizing the flexibility the US had before the 50s, but there’s one more needed ingredient: finance. The mortgage business was engineered to subsidize suburban housing. It’s not capable of financing the unmet demands for housing rework and until finance is available, the rework will never evolve, the business can’t without $$.
The problems for the global poor are similar.
🧵

2024-05-20 13:57:49

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The economic pathway we’re on needs to go for more than one reason. The common pattern is everywhere. In the US, we face a housing crisis after so many decades of the suburban experiment, but this is with the coupled urgency of adaptation to the warmer atmosphere. In poorer regions of the world they face existential crises of subsistence (food, water, housing) because of development, and climate adaptation is need is dire
🧵

2024-05-17 02:17:32

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I put it under the differences of financialization (stock placement) priorities over capital investment priorities. The are at odds with each other. It’s reminiscent of hardware vs software engineer differences. The sorts of things to prioritize between the two disciplines are conflicting.
Financial business practice prolly knows they can milk the stock market with greater certainty.
Financialziation has come to dominate US business practice.

2024-05-16 02:45:36

#climatechange #DownToEarth
3 min
:/
https://youtu.be/bA_gM04kU_c

2024-05-13 20:15:19

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Investing and managing stock investments carry different priorities than investing and managing production.
The priorities are at odds with each other. Tangible failure shambles on because financial engineering is succeeding.
Because of this, the assertions of Friedman, that the market culls failure, isn't operative at least for actual output.
https://youtu.be/SSBsW3Qzqjs

2024-05-09 01:27:31

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The class of wealth they have created for themselves is truly daunting, and it’s why I think it essential to name them. The Koch Network stands supreme in this regard. The most recent and public project 2025 demonstrates why.
It’s also why I am not adverse to naming them traitors (because they seek to overthrow the US) or global genocidal mafia.
https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/110148122777590567

2024-05-08 21:45:41

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my very first reaction is, how is that title justified?
What is the criteria for better?
Read and bookmark. Return to it when claims like that are made.
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

2024-05-03 20:14:52

@npub1xh2…u80r
#SteveKeen #mmt #economics
"Before I show why he fails, I want to clarify what it means to say that banks create money “out of nothing” (Schumpeter 1934, p. 73). It definitely does not mean that banks create money via magic. What it means instead is that there is no other account from which a bank loan is financed, whereas there is such an account for a non-bank loan."
🧵
https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/selgins-hot-air-on-bank-money-creation

2024-05-01 19:06:35

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As BeauOfTheFifth says, call a cop, call a gun.

2024-05-01 01:04:12

#climatechange #mars
Let me disabuse you of the idea that a Martian colony is the way to save mankind.
Survival on Mars is 1000x more difficult with no free flowing water, no atmosphere, no ozone, no magnetosphere, much less solar radiation to power anything including biological life.
Choosing Mars is picking the absolute worst probability to beat gambler's ruin.
Even a 3' warmer Earth is better.
🧵

2024-04-30 23:44:40

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Generally, your rant applies to the toxic effects of commercializing higher education and students funding it by debt. I have a video in the pipeline about it, because academic understand it because they live it; administrators are capitalists and academics and grads are (slave) labor to a commodified research industry. The effect is to ruin basic research and splooge money doing so.

2024-04-29 19:53:23

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which we? I’d go with Roger Hallam on this, a specific set of people keep us in a trajectory of mass death. Treat it as a murder project, no different than the mass killings of Lebensraum.

2024-04-26 15:17:23

#mmt #economics #ukpol
Dirk is a heterodox economist. I find it refreshing to see one consulted in the UK. This is a succinct, human readable set of replies to questions regarding UK gov / public finance.
(you may need to fiddle language settings)
https://www.dirk-ehnts.de/l/how-sustainable-is-our-national-debt/

2024-04-23 21:53:16

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:ablobgrin: I think if I suggested you were mainstream, you’d mute, then block me and rightly.
I think you’re safe, because they prolly all on Twitter.
Also Keen comes with touches of snarl here and there, all entirely needed. His latest serial post for his book (chap 9) mentions other names. Mike Radzicki is a regular on the stream. The weekly stream resumes soon and it’s a good place to learn more faces. The list I have is gleaned from past guests.

2024-04-23 20:38:12

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I fly Keen's flag here as one of the most well known.
Keen is vocal on YT, where his talks and the weekly live stream with guests is a good introduction to more dissidents. ;)
There are others lurking here, like [@DirkEhnts](https://mastodon.social/@DirkEhnts) (over in the EU),
[@BillMitchell](https://mastodon.world/@BillMitchell) (who posts from his blog but not active) and [@blair_fix](https://mastodon.online/@blair_fix) (naughty statistics)
and [@FantasticalEconomics](https://geekdom.social/@FantasticalEconomics)

2024-04-23 20:26:39

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Yes, and image flat earthers, anti vaxxers or neoliberals in charge of public policy for 50 years.
👀 :ablobcatcoffee:
It's motivation to raise awareness that heterodox economists exist.

2024-04-23 20:00:13

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I'm in chapter 3. It's good (pleasure to read), Graziani describes the various economic schools' theory of economy. It offers a survey of the assumptions/assertions they make. I'll always get mental over neoclassical stuff, which is described, because garbage.
I agree with MMT's description of fiat monetary systems, so I am not rebuking it, but lord help me, the crutch of origins gives me hives.

2024-04-23 19:39:50

#mmt
I have one big critique of economists: it's the absurdity and questionable analytical results arrived upon _depending_ on where analysis starts in the system.
What ecologist demands a description of a bug's life cycle _must_ begin at one stage of their life cycle, and that the model constructed *depends on that choice*? Which comes first, the aphid or its egg?
🧵
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/monetary-theory-of-production/A813BE586E79CDF0DE7C3D930DBF632F

2024-04-22 22:38:32

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oh damn Kuznet’s? something else to look up.

2024-04-20 20:05:35

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send me the lyrics… and the track (i live under a rock)

2024-04-18 15:14:32

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If property falls apart due to circumstances every 5-10 years, some arrangement is needed. Buying or selling owned land becomes meaningless because its value falls apart or a river runs over it, which also makes “new” patches not too far away. So at a county level (to use a rough analogy) something different needs to be sorted.

2024-04-18 03:49:08

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A commons is more apt. Habitation has to be thought of as temporary, shifting every dew years and along with it the means to produce as productive areas and habitation shift.
If it sounds nomadic well..

2024-04-18 03:23:57

I don’t know if the following topic fits in your bailiwick, but a channel I follow has been covering the ever shift circumstances of certain regions in India. DownToEarth is produced in India, and the topic they covered is the plight of rural farmers as rivers change course much more frequently. People flee and rebuild only to have the river shift its course yet again.
In a world where this becomes normal, existing ideas over property become unfit for purpose.
🧵

2024-04-17 08:09:42

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Jesus.. if there’s a systemic ecological crash in the oceans, it would be very bad, like *poof* mass extinction bad. Anoxic air masses and leech from water bodies, killing anything they drift through.

2024-04-03 14:50:34

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This needs to grow every where. Bricks, rocks.
During college one crew mate (rowing team), had to cross campus in the wee hours. Her chosen safety measures was to walk, quite jauntingly, with a baseball bat and whistle.