MacGyver

It would be interesting - and I don't have time to do it this afternoon - to post a chart of GDP or the S&P500 or whatever metric you want against control of the government. I expect what it would show is that the economy is largely going to economy and doesn't particularly favor unified government. The 4 biggest drops of any of our lifetimes (1929 crash, S&L bust, dotcom bubble, and the 2008 recession) have all officially occurred on Republican watches - but that's kind of disingenuous to make that argument. Just like the economy under Trump has benefited from some of Obama's policies - Bush too took the hit from some of the rails coming off during Clinton. Etc. Standard disclaimer - The stock market is not the economy - please don't take investing advice from me or anyone else on the internet - unless it's about Bitcoin in which case I know what I'm talking about - consult your financial professional.

You should check out the 111th Congress - where both the House and the Senate were under Democratic control for the first part of Obama's first term - including for a short time with a filibuster proof majority. You might also remember the 103rd Congress where Bill Clinton also had Democratic control in both houses. Carter had both houses his whole time in office. Kennedy and Johnson both did too. Roosevelt had a Democratic majority from 1933 that lasted until Truman lost it in 1947. Herbert Hoover was president in 1929. He was a Republican. So too were both chambers of Congress. In fact, from 1921 when Warren Harding had a majority - through Calvin Coolidge - all the way to 1931 when Herbert Hoover lost the Republican majority - that was the longest stretch in which the Republican Party would have unified control until George W. Bush (who had it in part of 2001, then from 2003 through 2007). Eisenhower had unified control from 1953-55. edit: here's the sourcing on that with a nice chart - history is cool.

If the fluctuation of pricing on Bitcoin doesn't scare someone off, the fact that it really only exists at this point to launder money for organized crime should. We deal with a lot of ransomware/cryptolocker cases, and I can say that all the lawyers involved are growing increasingly concerned with RICO/trafficking/money laundering/OFAC stuff - since you basically know that you're sending large sums of money to criminals as a ransom payment. Then, you can add to that the "days since a cryptocurrency exchange lost more than $100M" sign hasn't reached triple digits yet. If you can get past all that, then I might suggest that in any legitimate market, you need both a party and counterparty to transactions. We have a ton of people putting money into the "market." But, when we examine the blockchain registers, we don't really see any of that money moving out. We don't have counterparties. This could legit turn into a case where you have millions on paper, but couldn't cash out if your life depended on it. Stay away from it.

Please - for the love of all that's good - don't "invest" and tell the people you love not to "invest" in Bitcoin. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Your intuition is the right one. We can always open something back up later if we decide to.

I know someone who got it twice. Mild case in March. It killed him the second time.

Will do. Thanks for letting us know.

Go figure, right?

You saying’ you’d turn on us?

One of the fatalities last week literally died of a heart attack after accidentally tasing himself in the nuts. Don’t be that guy that makes your family answer to that for generations to come.

Dave Troy explains a lot of the questions well in this thread if you’re interested:

You know why this is such a common playbook? Because it almost always works. In this particular iteration, her name is Alina Mukhutdinova. Notice a resemblance? I mean, at least she was upfront about it...

If I was only going to own one axe - that would hands down be it. Each of their axes comes with a book detailing the different use cases for each of their axes. It’s an education by itself: https://www.gransforsbruk.com/en/axe-knowledge/using-an-axe/different-axe-models/

I should have also added to the above, there *is* a new administration about to start - and all the tech companies are going to bend over backwards without any prompting to look like they're playing nice for a while to avoid regulation.

There are probably two ways to think about them: 1. It looks like they've gotten a few hundred thousand overall downloads. That's not quite to the point where they need to think about scale like Facebook - but it's quickly approaching where they need an actual business model that lets them make money. To my knowledge they haven't received VC funding, so that cliff is going to come sooner rather than later. Especially now that downloads seem to be slowing - it'll be hard to fundraise if your subscribers aren't going "up and to the right." 2. Probably more relevant right now in that people are looking for a place to go since Parler shut down is the conversation that practically every corporate attorney in America is having today. That is, how do you define "providing material support" to an insurrection? That's what has caused Apple, Google, and Amazon to remove Parler. It's what's caused 14 of the biggest tech companies on the planet to deplatform the most powerful man in the world. It's what's caused companies like DOW and Ford to immediately suspend all donations to members of Congress who supported overturning the results of AZ, GA, and PA - https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/01/11/ford-dow-suspend-political-donations-capitol-riot/6623557002/ It's what caused Cumulus Media to tell hosts like Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and Dan Bongino to stop talking about the election being stolen at risk of having their contracts terminated: https://www.ajc.com/life/radiotvtalk-blog/cumulus-media-tells-its-conservative-talk-show-hosts-to-stop-talking-about-a-stolen-election/PE2VM6SQKBFBZBULQTFZLQUV7A/ Y'all can form your own opinion on whether you think this is justified or not - but I expect you'll see more examples in coming days. This is just to give an idea of the conversations management teams are having with counsel behind the scenes.

In a move that I expect you'll see more of in coming days: The Michigan Capitol Commission voted unanimously (every Republican and Democrat) to ban open carry in the statehouse. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/01/11/michigan-capitol-open-carry-gun-ban/6623331002/

It’s hard to say - but I doubt it. Frankly, most of the cases I’ve been in over the years with stuff like this have been brought by private action. I guess Parler would have some remedies available to them. That’s assuming they’ve got the money/desire to go to court. I doubt they do.

All of the above - plus Amazon is almost certainly in receipt of a preservation order.

Unfortunately, we’ve known them to be susceptible to stuff like this for a while. They built their site on a platform (Wordpress) that had some known vulnerabilities. When Twilio (their authentication provider) booted them, they still wanted people to be able to login - so they basically set the site to “fail open.” The combination of these things is what’s letting people mine the data. The fact that they failed to take basic precautions like removing EXIF (location metadata) is so comical that it’s either extremely incompetent or by design. Or maybe both. We’ve been warning about the fact that a hostile foreign intelligence service is almost certainly involved for a while. They’ll have access to all that data. Now “hacktavists” will to. If you know people who this applies to, I’d certainly plan accordingly.

I'm locking this thread for now. It's not because I don't think that the new administration/congress will be anti-gun. It's because there's nothing but Facebook fear mongering in the posts above. The "13 page app" that was posted was the ATF Form 1 application to make a firearm. Post the text of a bill from the current Congress. Even the text of the platform of the incoming administration. But do some research - we have to do better with actual facts.

I spoke a little bit earlier about Parler having no meaningful information security protections in place. It gets worse (better?) It seems that their lack of forward planning is now having the entire site mined of data - and that even when users deleted stuff - they didn't actually get rid of it. So, now you have users who uploaded their actual drivers license being added to no fly lists in realtime. We've had questions about who's behind Parler for months now. I mean, their founder went to Russia, met a girl, got married in a government facility, and came back and developed the app with no apparent source of funding other than Dan Bongino (who doesn't have anywhere close to the funding it would take to scale something like this.) I want to say this clearly to anyone here who might have uploaded their license data to be a "verified citizen." Make sure you've invested in good identity theft protection from a provider who knows what they're doing. You're likely to need it in the coming months. Forget the fact that you uploaded your ID to a foreign intelligence service. Since all of this data is about to be publicly available - there are going to be plenty of folks who will be quite willing to misuse that data to purchase cars, open credit accounts, traffic in stolen goods...you get the idea.

You might check out some Hultafors axes. This Ekeland Hunting Ax has been in continuous production since the 1870s. https://www.hultafors.com/products/axes/H0292-ekelund-hunting-axe/160443

I own three Gransfors Bruks axes. They’re handmade Swedish purpose built axes. They come shaving sharp - which can be strange/dangerous for anyone who’s only ever used cast hardware store axes. Not only are they perfect tools, they’re works of art. I’ve got a large splitting axe, a small forest axe, and a wildlife hatchet. They’re more expensive than a Fiskars (which is actually a completely fine axe for everyday needs) - but your kids will fight over them.

Congrats. I’ve never seen anything like that in middle Tennessee. Or anywhere that’s not behind a fence for that matter.

Glory. How’d you get that thing in the truck?