Travelling commodities researcher. Ex computer science and web dev.

Joined January 2024
Benjamin retweeted
Brutal chart. France and UK vs. Communist countries at their peak. UK public spending as % of GDP is currently above Romania, Venezuela and China. And France is a lost cause. (HM Treasury/Rand Research)
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Benjamin retweeted
Replying to @The_Airmass
Even if btc itself is unhackable, if all the flaky ecosystem around it gets decimated then btc will loose all its network effects and become much less valuable, probably only changing hands among the few nerds able to use it without a cute exchange interface
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Yet another example of how Bitcoin or any supposed replacement for the entire global monetary system based on access via no more than a seed phrase is insecure. Hacking doesn’t necessarily require breaking the cryptography. Any intermediary can be compromising, including a screen upon which a seed phrase appears, or even a camera that catches you writing it down, or a microphone that catches you saying it out loud while memorizing it.
If you ever took a photo of your seed phrase and deleted it later, the thumbnail might still be hiding in an old iPhone backup on your laptop. NEVER TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR SEED PHRASE.
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A system designed to replace all money can’t rely on everyone being highly technically literate and responsible for keeping up its network effects.
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This is actually one of the most frightening things to consider right now. Compromised servers, leaked documentation, weak government systems, generative deep fakes, and legal frameworks that aren’t designed to cope. If we can’t prove things beyond reasonable doubt any more, the entire legal system breaks. This also affects the integrity of nation-states, assuming migration systems can’t keep up. Eventually, systems should catch up, but that assumes we survive a long and chaotic interim. Should we anticipate a total freeze on travel and legal trials?
New: someone made a CashApp account in her name. She spent 3 nights in jail and now faces up to 6 years in prison Amanda Smith was arrested because a scam led to a CashApp account in her name. But she says she didn't make it, and the data doesn't line up 404media.co/amanda-smith-ope…
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Because it’s not good marketing for the Omnicause like Free Palestine™ is
Why the hell is no one talking about the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria? More than 3,000 members of one pastor’s congregation have been brutally murdered. Where’s the media coverage?
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Seldon had time to do some due diligence and it looks like the gold FUD is yet considerably worse than my initial reaction. I should study more but rather than spook the gold market, this absolutely should trigger the opposite: a crazy science experiment demonstrating how unviable lab-grown gold is. Was there some drive behind so many reposting the story?
I've looked at this again and it is a LOT worse than is being presented. This is not the philosopher's stone, this is a Superfund site waiting to happen. What they are creating here is not economically recoverable gold but a flammable toxic sludge that *might* have a few grams of stable gold in it. The proposal is quite simple, it's just using an ongoing D-T fusion reaction, which spits out most of its energy as fast neutrons, to breed gold (Au-197) from mercury-198. This is not the main objective, but a side reaction of a process designed to increase the production of tritium from lithium-6. Neutrons produced by D-T have a high kinetic energy, which is bad for tritium breeding as these tend to pass right through. So the fast neutron hits an atom of Hg-198 instead, which dislodges two neutrons instead of one, i.e. it is a neutron multiplier. Because the mercury atom is heavy, the resulting neutrons are much slower, ("thermal") which greatly aids in their capture by Li-6. Overall this process is designed to manufacture a lot more tritium, which is currently expensive and extremely scarce, being ~250x as valuable as gold. In theory, that's beneficial because it's used as a medical tracer, as a boosting gas in nuclear warheads, and would be essential to a power-generating fusion fuel cycle. The problem is the mercury. More specifically, the lithium amalgam created from it, but even unalloyed mercury is bad enough. Mercury is a poison for most structural alloys as it turns them brittle. Aluminum, copper, nickel, and zinc are particularly susceptible, as are any alloys of titanium or steel that incorporate these metals. This is of concern because the mercury-lithium blanket being used is a molten metal, held under pressure at hundreds of degrees °C right next to a fusing plasma operating at millions of degrees. The ACTIVE NUCLEAR REACTION is belching out ungodly quantities of highly penetrating neutrons which cause another type of metal embrittlement which even affects the kinds of alloys immune to mercury contamination. On top of that, it is mixed with lithium, which is itself highly corrosive and flammable. Aluminum amalgams formed by liquid metal embrittlement are basically thermite. So when it ruptures and explodes, what you get is a RADIOACTIVE METAL FIRE spewing mercury vapor and other contaminants like fluoride, beryllium, and lead into the surrounding area, plus unknown isotopic byproducts of neutron capture which make it high-level nuclear waste. Even under "safe" operation or safer operating configurations, the gold and other residuals that would get continuously filtered out of the Li-Hg blanket would have to be treated like nuclear waste before yielding anything of value. Because that's what it is. It's the precious metal equivalent of a shit sandwich. If this ever rolls out, it's guaranteed to cause an major environmental disaster. The risk of mercury contamination is bad enough. Using industrial quantities of it together with all sorts of radioactive and toxic metals is like Minamata and Chernobyl combined. It would kill fusion power forever.
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Game changer: 🤖 I connected IBKR to Grok Bot and trained it to be my investment and trading partner. I asked Grok Bot for scheduled commodity briefings around the market opens and closes. I connected my broker through a read-only reporting token, so it can see my positions but can't trade. It now maps each market move to what I actually own. It can also understand my convictions while calling me out if I get too aggressive or miss something important. I don't burn out reading financial publications or digging for info on X. Comment below if you're interested in a full tutorial using Interactive Brokers. Not financial advice. AI briefings are a research tool, not a substitute for your own judgment. #Investing #Commodities #AI #GrokBot
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Gold printer go bzzzzt!!
🤖 Made with AI
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Gold printer go burrr!!
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France is a Thermonuclear Democracy with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. As is the UK. Think. Do the math. The pathological weakness of France must always be very much our business. I am sorry to say this. I wish it were otherwise.
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GOLD IS GOING TO ZERO! It’s funny watching so many FUD posts about “lab-grown gold, believing we just invented alchemy. Some of these accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers but don’t do even the most basic research before they post. Unlike lab diamonds which only rearrange existing carbon atoms, creating gold means producing a noble element via nuclear transmutation. This has been possible since 1941 with particle accelerators, but it costs over a quadrillion dollars per ounce because overcoming the strong nuclear force requires colossal energy far beyond chemical processes. Marathon Fusion’s claim still needs commercial fusion (not here yet), yields radioactive gold needing 15+ years to cool, and produces tiny amounts. If this ever scales, we could transmute almost any element into any other, so energy and materials abundance would make gold prices the last thing anyone cares about. If anything, it ratifies how unviable lab-grown gold is as a threat to mined gold.
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