Looks like we found one of the ECB's assets at the FT.
Or maybe Mdme Lagarde is writing under a pen name for it.

I'm so happy 'cause today I found my friends
They're in my head

- Lithium by Nirvana

If you look at old pictures of NYC and other cities you see almost all men wearing suits.

With regards to this: I'm pretty sure it started in courts and some British (I think?) guy named Beau Brummell had some style(s) tailored that made it more mainstream over time.

All fair points. My disdain may well be over the top.

I have grown that during my earlier working years when I was placed as code monkey ("tech consultant") at investment banks throughout Europe. I hated wearing formal attire too which likely made it worse.

More psychology than game theory.

Suits used to be very exclusive and custom-tailored only. So wearing one was a sign of wealth, success and displayed confidence. This evoked feelings of respect, reliability and by extension trust.

Because it worked so well in commanding "prepaid" respect and trust, it became a tool for professionals who could afford it. With more demand came the cheaper, off-the-rack suits and it lost some of its power over time, but certainly not all.

Among the upper levels of suitwearery (yes, I made that up) these days, you're expected to instantly spot if someone is wearing tailor-made with bonus points if you can name the tailor. Same goes for designer ties obv.
You wouldn't want to be seen as an off-the-rack wearer after all.

I extend that distrust to any person wearing a suit.

The suit was literally created to evoke a higher sense of trust towards the person wearing it. And it works.

I'd love the outcome to point towards a future as described in Ian M Banks' Culture series which would be more trust fund baby-esque.
However, I'm afraid the future as described by James SA Corey's The Expanse series is more likely. In particular the population on Earth and their reliance on "Basic Assistance."

he works for fiat at a bitcoin company

A bitcoiner accepting fiat as compensation from a bitcoin company? Does not compute.

Snark aside, good on you for experiencing a hint of the independence bitcoin could buy you.

I only have one quip: Your first option should've have been to pay in bitcoin directly rather than exchanging it for even more fiat.

Sure, we can call it something else then.

Not sure about you, but I have seen first hand how the "accepted range" of opinions on covid changed with time. So did the range on illegal immigration more recently. So that range does change. I don't care what term we want to use to describe that.

Also, I hardly ever listen to podcasts as they're mostly just fluff anyway. So our overlords have gotten me to use that term in some other way then. I guess we're all compromised by being online in any shape or form.

Did Joe get captured, or did the Overton window shift far enough so his views are no longer as edgy as they used to seem?

Or the other way around: Did he ever follow guests down a similar rabbit hole before but stopped doing that only recently?

Maybe I'd employ an LLM in that to flag up things on big diffs.

One good practice I had for big diffs, also prior to sloppage, was insisting on smaller, stacked PRs. Of course tests must pass for each one.

Mobile phone data and breakfast at a cafe.

Yep, kyc required. At least through the normal channels. As foreigners, we needed to show our passports.

I wouldn't be surprised, though, if South Africans, crafty as they are, have their ways to get one without.

Museveni added that Uganda would allow Starlink if it lowers costs while UCC officials stressed that discussions are ongoing but remain at an exploratory stage, with no licence yet issued.
[..]
While these [incumbent] operators dominate the market, critics argue they have struggled to extend affordable, reliable internet deep into rural Uganda.

I'm confused.

Is Starlink too expensive to get licensed, or are the current incumbents unable to provide it at the same cost vs quality?
Or is this just a good, old fashioned regulatory moat being protected?

Obviously bad content is bad.

It's primarily this for me. Some of it happens to be slop.

I doubt I'm able to reliably identify slop to begin with.

This week: only mobile phone data for both of us.

I understand that sentiment.

All I hope for the people is more freedom so you can rebuild and protect yourselves individually before the shackles of the IMF, as preferable as they may be compared to what you had, get put on too tightly over time.

How is removing Maduro different?

It's certainly not frictionless, but not too much work, either.

I keep a sheet where I manually enter the tracked purchases as I make them, like this:

(A lookup table of the items I'm tracking autofills unit names given an item's name)

Another pivot table then helps aggregate monthly average sats/unit prices and change values per item.

Takes a few minutes for each purchase because we usually buy more than just the tracked item(s) with sats. So I break out the fraction for each tracked item from the total price.
But since I pay the full bill in sats, that's an easy calculation.

Twelve years of this conditioning produces adults who cannot conceive of alternatives. The inability to imagine building roads privately, educating children at home, trading without state approval, or securing wealth outside banking systems is not evidence these things are impossible. It is evidence the indoctrination succeeded.

This rings true.

It's like we're all living in that scene of the Truman Show where the travel agency has a big poster of an airplane struck by lightning captioned "It could happen to you" to dissuade Truman from buying a ticket.
Nudge theory. With a spiked bat.

Don't we generally think people owe restitution for the harms they cause?

Well, we also generally think people get punished after being found guilty for a crime, but Mdme La Garde gets promoted to head of ECB instead.