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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 28m

Tengri works in mysterious ways.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 48m

Breaking banks, breaking scales, breaking hearts. Big Pappa P for president.

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 2h

Fortune favors him; we cannot know why. www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

Gov. JB Pritzker won $1.4 million in Vegas playing blackjack

The billionaire Illinois governor, who is on the 2028 presidential short list, reported the earnings in his latest tax filings after playing blackjack at a Las Vegas casino.

www.nbcnews.com

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 16h

The problem with bears is that they are extremely friend shaped, but also extremely uncertain as to whether to be friends. It makes for a real gamble.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

I think the biggest disconnect between Orwell and Kipling was that Kipling identified himself first and foremost with long service British officials in India, while Orwell was very much of the "do a tour in India to build up some cash and a lifestyle" official class.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

I adore Orwell's essay writing and: "The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions." is such a useful quote today.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

E.g. why his writing about peoples who defeat the British isn't "we must get revenge on these savages" so much as "good show lads."

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

IMO what kills this is that the boom in available consumer data reveals just how inefficient pricing was for a lot of things, particularly in-person experiences, resulting in the shift towards maximizing up-market revenue.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

Beyond just long term calculations on economic mobility, I'd argue that there was a genuine emphasis (and even pride) among even higher end American companies towards serving a wide vertical swathe of the consumer base until within fairly recent memory.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

I do think this underrates non-economic factors, though. As a good comparison, the whole rise of the corporate raiders in the 1980's was fueled by the fact that the corporate culture at the time still viewed companies as quasi-state actors within their communities.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

Most likely outcome, IMO, is Markey appointing Pressley as his heir apparent.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

Did you ask anyone at Rheinmetall about what the hell that stupid GI Joe truck was for?

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

While WWE was publicly traded before, prior ownership, particularly the McMahons (bastards as they are) still believed that deliberately inefficient pricing (not capturing every last cent fans are willing to pay today) was worth it over the long term from a company image and fanbase perfective.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

You actually see this happening right now in WWE, following its takeover by TKO group. Ticket prices have spiked enormously and you've seen the wipeout of "house shows" - non-canon, for lack of a better word, shows in smaller towns on weekdays in between televised larger ones.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1d

I do think there was some limiting factors in place before. From a cultural standpoint, the US consumer economy was pretty heavily proletarianized at least the early 2000's. A place like Disney genuinely did pride itself on the idea that its parks saw a cross section of the US.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

A surprisingly common type! Easily more than half of the French colonial officer corps wanted political integration of France's West African colonies post-WWI in part because they empathized and identified more with their colonial troops than metropolitan Frenchmen.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

You could absolutely do a great sitcom with them, especially with Oshoma as the only one who actually grew up nomadic.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

The flying bullet down the pass,
That whistles clear, "All flesh is grass."

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

I feel like this is a reassuring fantasy, given that Mamdani is unlikely to crack 50% in NYC (while still almost guaranteed to win the mayoral election).

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

Very much in line with the "conservative author whose conservatism makes their writing more interesting" that the Bsky tweetchains seek out every could of weeks.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

Arguably his imperialism is what makes his writing so interesting to engage with. There's an intense unguarded honesty to his poetry, that the frontier is where we kill them and they kill us, that is genuinely fascinating.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

Lets not even get into how the uniformed, but not armed, services (USPHS and commissioned NOAA) get treated.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

There was a reason why the Biden admin felt trapped in 23-24, it's because it was! The Trump admin's current position is the product of the defeat of Iran, Israel's gamble on Trump, and the outside context issue that Israel knows Qatar has, not ownership, but at least a time share of the Trump clan.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

Iran is still a US enemy. Israel is still a quasi-aligned partner. There was no chance in hell that we were going to pull assets out in the middle of a state level conflict between the two, both on a purely practical level and on a moral level.

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 2d

I get the impulse, but I want everyone to please seriously consider the chances of Biden actually being able to cut US support for Israeli anti-ballistic missile defense right at the peak of the Israel-Iran war of the cities.

He would have faced a revolt both within DoD and the Democratic party.

LOWρUF🐸 🇵🇦🇬🇱🇨🇦🇲🇽 @lowrhoufo.bsky.social · 3d

There are literally hundreds of clearly labeled levers to pull, they exist on a spectrum and the State Department's job is to keep lists of them in filing cabinets. Not only did Biden fail to impose consequences, he was actively giving them scarce assets like THAAD

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 3d

Reagan could constrain Begin in Lebanon because US aid to Israel was 6-10% of Israeli GDP. HW Bush had a ton of leverage because Israel was in dire need of US loans while processing the intake of close to a million ex-Soviet jews. That's just not the case anymore.

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