Hatebunny (1218 followers)

Toronto-based photographer, composer, writer, and occasional bathrobe-clad super-hero. Also; time-stuck woe-betide-thee prophet of samey-ness.

SaraGoldrickRab (1851 followers)

Fiercely independent scholar-activist committed to making college affordable & accessible for all.

How I spend my time:

WRITING: “Paying the Price” is my latest book and you’ll find my blogs over on Medium

CREATING: I founded the #RealCollege movement, The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, & Believe in Students

TEACHING: Stay tuned for the #RealCollege Curriculum

ADVOCATING: Federal & state free college & basic needs legislation is my jam

RabCohrs (111 followers)

Blue Jays, music, my dogs.
Star Trek > Star Wars
Prepare for random thoughts.

RabBrucesSpider1 (754 followers)

Supporter of Scotland becoming a normal, self-governing country. Occasional blogger & writer of articles for iScot magazine on tech aids for visually impaired. Blind user of social media.

If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.

Blogs at: rabbrucesspider.blogspot.com

rab (43 followers)

he/him

twitter: rhoadisland

rab (10 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

blepharon (419 followers)

#@blepharon Retired UK Baptist pastor. Ran a f/bank 5yrs, joined #Labour cos of #Corbyn. Joined Project for Peace & Justice. Left Labour 2021. Interested in intersection of #faith & civic society & #politics. I pay for my own clothes, specs & holidays. #ignatianspirituality. @blepharon on #RIPTwitter

Rab (10 followers)

Scot living in an eco loghouse in the foothills of the Japan Alps.

theRAB (26 followers)

Nerd, tech whisperer, one time streamer and tweetup organizer, AI harbinger, Avett Brothers traveling circus, current #AMD, former IBM, NC State alum, NC native, Star Wars, BSG, retro gamer, space, films, 2x father, ,,,,,,.

I never change weapons in RPGs, which means I've made Obsidian director Josh Sawyer's life a living hell when it comes to making cool armour systems

Post the blurb please ::: spoiler Article Here’s a thing about me: I get notions. In RPGs, I get very specific images in my head of who I’m playing and how I’m playing them. It’ll be a cold day in hell before you catch me using anything but a revolver and light armour in New Vegas, or dual flintlock pistols (and light armour) in Pillars of Eternity. These are the tools that seem coolest to use, so I stick with them, more or less in perpetuity. Which is a real drag if you happen to be New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity director (and Obsidian design director) Josh Sawyer, who has spent a decent chunk of his career trying to design armour systems that compel players to make interesting decisions. In a recent video—which is well worth watching in full to get Sawyer’s thoughts on, for instance, where Avowed succeeded and failed with its armour system—Sawyer noted that one of the things that makes it hard to design an armour system he thinks is interesting is, well, players like me. Sawyer cites Darklands, an early-'90s historical RPG, as a touchstone for his armour ponderings. In Darklands, armour works according to a kind of rock-paper-scissors model: certain weapons are good against certain armours and worthless against others, to the point that they might not damage health at all. It means you have to make a decision about which weapons and armour you use for each encounter, rather than settling into a universal template. “I think there’s something kind of nice about that,” says Sawyer. “I don’t think it makes things tactically brainless. You still have to think about what you’re doing, and there’s a lot of other considerations, like: no weapon is just about the penetration and the damage that it does, there’s a lot of other factors that go into it.” So why isn’t this a staple of all Sawyer’s games? Ah, well, that’s where people like me come in. "When I, as a designer… tell, in various ways, the player, ‘Hey! It’s time to not use this weapon’ … some players will get into this kind of crisis, because it interferes with the concept of their [original character] or their Blorbo. “They’re like, ‘I only use swords. I never use maces’,” says Sawyer, which can be an issue. “At some point I have to make you make a tactical decision that involves changing your behaviour,” says the designer. “Sometimes those things feel like they’re more of an infringement on the player’s roleplaying ideas or character identity than others, and it’s difficult to know sometimes where those boundaries are.” That’s not to say stubborn players are the only reason it’s hard to make interesting armour systems, but they certainly don’t help, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible for Sawyer’s design woes when he brought people like me up. Sorry, Josh. Next time I do a Pillars of Eternity run, I promise I’ll try to use a mace. Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. One of Josh’s first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he’s been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He’ll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin’s Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you’re all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War. :::

Sovereign citizen had their truck repossessed, did some sovcit things in reply.

It often starts with some form of financial trouble, and not being educated in how money, the law, or any of that stuff works. So you sign a piece of paper saying you get a truck, and they get $350 a month. This sounds great, so you don’t look any further since you don’t have the best work history, but right now you can afford that usually. Later, your money situation is worse and you miss a few payments. Suddenly, they’re sending you this letter that says they’re going to take your truck. It’s bullshit, they can’t take your truck, it’s yours. You never agreed to let them take it, you just owe them something like ten or twenty missed payments. So you start looking around for what you’re supposed to do with the letter, and most places say “pay your bills” or “nothing can be done at this point”, but it’s not fair that you’re loosing your truck just because you’re not giving them money fast enough, and you need your truck. But, you find some people who explain that there’s actually some holes in the law, and point you to the law so you can see for yourself. Finally, someone is actually explaining something helpful! If rich people can use loopholes to get out of stuff, why can’t you? The only difference is that they have people who know the law, and you just found some people who will explain it. The law says that if they can’t prove that you owe it, then you don’t. The people explain that you need to ask very specifically otherwise they’ll be allowed to ignore you. They reference you to another forum where people have more details, and a lot of other stuff you never even thought about… Anyway, since you had once acknowledged that you bought the truck instead of possessed it, they were able to get out of the loophole and they stole your truck. That’s okay though, since you’ve been reading and now you know that the law doesn’t say you have to pay with money, but you can also pay with a “promissory notes”, which someone sold you the template for making, so now you can buy a new truck, agree to whatever terms they want, and use your notes to direct them to collect the money from the taxes you pay. It’s great because you get your truck and keep your money, the dealer gets paid just not how they expected, and the people who make up money (turns out it’s not real? They just stole all the gold‽) send their fake paper to whoever. The system is perfect, but complicated, so you’ll inevitably make mistakes and face consequences for them, but if you just keep learning the loopholes and getting the special plates and drivers licenses you’ll be okay. It’s a coping mechanism for people who are faced with an overwhelmingly complicated social system and don’t have the tools or capacity to learn how to interact with it on its terms. Most people in that situation don’t fall off the ledge, but a handful of them are confronted with how overwhelmed they are at the same time they’re offered a hand hold to something that feels like control. There doesn’t always have to be a crisis, sometimes they just see the handhold and grab on, but usually their story ends up having some routine legal or financial trouble.

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 29th 2025 to January 4th 2026 - A Bold Step Forward For The AES

Happy New Year everyone! Below are two News Bingo cards created by rolling dice against a list of predictions provided by news mega posters, thank you to everyone who contributed! I’ve also included a blank template and the list of predictions I used for anyone who wants to make their own custom news bingo card ::: spoiler News List AI bubble pop A major Cat 5 hurricane makes landfall in the US. AUKUS deal collapses Another genocide against Tamils in Sri Lanka Austria joins NATO hastly and without referendum Assassination of Burkina Faso’s President Ibrahim Traoré Bangladesh will suffer a violent election period Banning of communist parties within Germany & Austria Bibi finally dies bird flu BJP begins to decline Burnese civil war ends with the Tatmadaw out and a shaky leftist coalition coming to power Catastrophic European heatwave kills thousands, mostly elderly. China reaches parity in chip making China does nothing china sends 5 strong worded letters when usa attacks venezuela and cuba Democrats reclaim a branch of the government (house/senate) rendering Trump a lame duck for the rest of his term. Nothing changes Denmark will be too cucked to stop the Trump regime from campaigning in Greenland for an American annexation. The campaign will fail. Dollar depreciates (but no de-dollarization). euro crashes (to less than a dollar) EU seizes frozen Russian state assets. Earthquakes/Mudslides early this year in California Failed coup in Bolivia france announces troop deployments to ukraine Food inflation will continue to outpace general inflation. gold crashes below 4k Greta Thunberg joins a national liberation army Greens get a strong second in a snap UK election Israel wins eurovison india attacks bangladesh Iran conducts low-yield “demonstration” nuclear test. Ireland goes on national strike against zionist genocide/Ireland joins NATO JD Vance becomes defacto (or even dejure) president in spring 2026 Large Earthquake affecting China Major mass movements in Bolivia oust Paz Milei dies or goes to prison merz cdu craters under 20%, die linke still fuck it up Modi dies or goes to prison Nile Crisis: Egypt issues military ultimatum to Ethiopia over dam. one of the acting political leaders of the G20 gets shlaboingboinged OPERATION TRUE PROMISE IV Open conflict between Turkey-Saudi Arabia vs UAE-Israhell rightwinger will win in brazil, cause lula is too busy aura farming Recession is officially declared as the admin can’t keep sweeping it under the rug. russia continues cuck perseverance run Russia allowed back in FIFA under conditions Russia-Ukraine war is resolved Saudis exposed for being the Zionazi cucks. Senegal, Chad, or Benin enter into some kind of affiliate relationship with the AES that is structured for eventual full membership Syrian government collapses Syrian government normalizing with the zionist entity sturmer is kicked out, tories get new leader as well South Africa implements controversial white farmer reparations The right and the far right win the Danish elections. The US withdraws from NATO. The US goes to war with China. Trump croaking mid-way in his term Trump starts rapid firing his cabinet picks to deflect from criticism Ukraine war ceasefire US launches missile strikes on Venezuela US and France will begin to move more aggressively against the AES Vatican-China deal on bishop appointments causes Catholic schism. Vote of no confidence on Satanyahu Winter Olympics and/or World Cup derailed Zelensky is ousted :::

Aubrey Plaza: Death of husband Jeff Baena is 'unimaginable tragedy'

I won’t pretend to understand what’s happened and why. I don’t follow celebrities and their lives. I’m not familiar with his work, but I do adore Aubrey. If she chose him as a partner, then I can only assume that he was an incredible person. Suicide is complicated. Many of us have contemplated it. Many of us have tried. Some of us have succeeded. And still many more have found healing of both attempt and/or ideation. I won’t judge a person for taking their life. Regardless of the circumstances though, it almost always leaves behind hurting people. I hope those around him are able to seek and eventually find the healing they need. And I hope that his friends and family get the privacy and respect they deserve. To all those who think (e.g. paparazzi, TMZ) it’s their business in any way shape or form, may the universe set you straight… preferably sternly…

I'm thinking taffy.

Alright so I got curious. For the non people-who-know-what-viscosity-is-measured-in people out there, viscosity is measured in centipoise, which is 1/100 poise. Water is 1 centipoise, hence why we use centipoise over poise. Don’t ask me any more than that because I have no idea what I’m talking about. Lava is anywhere between 10,000 - 1,000,000 cP. According to this chart, there are many edible things that fall within that viscosity. Now lava is very hot, so if we’re going to simulate the experience of eating lava in a safe way with edible ingredients, we need something that is that viscous at high temperatures. This page (PDF warning) says that 140f (60c) is the highest temp food can be without burning you immediately. There isn’t much on the above chart that is both edible and has its viscosity measured around those temps. The most promising one was chocolate, which is about 25,000 cP. But it doesn’t have a temperature listed. According to lived experience and my ass, melted chocolate has a pretty consistent viscosity at various temperatures, making it a suitable stand in for molten lava. However, viscosity isn’t the end all be all of a lava eating experience. Lava is rocks and rocks are dense. Lava also looks like it would be sticky. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on the chart that matches the density of lava that is still edible (2600-2800 kg/m^3 for those who were curious). And there is also no unit of measurement for stickiness. But google tells me that some lava is sticky like peanut butter. So our edible lava needs to be considerably dense (thus, chewy) and sticky. With these things in mind (viscosity, chewiness, and stickiness), I think the best edible stand ins for molten lava would be hot peanut butter (250,000 cP), with honorable mentions being rice pudding (10,000 cP @100C), and hot toothpaste (70,000 cP @40C). Color them bright orange and maybe throw in some Carolina reaper for authenticity and baby you’ve got some edible lava going

What's the greatest videogame of all time?

Well, I think there are multiple potential candidates depending on how you define greatness. I think these few are certainly the most influential: Super Mario Bros. Possibly the system it ran on was more important, but this game was a system seller for the system that single-handedly saved not only the entire video game industry, but probably the very concept of video games at a time when it was looking like it’d just be another fad that faded away right along with bellbottoms and pet rocks, with what was left of it remaining caged in Japan. Mario 1 was most people’s first platformer, I also have to think that the first damn goomba in 1-1 probably holds the crown for the highest kill count of any entity in the universe. Tetris. Infinitely playable and probably infinitely played, and you can get it to run on damn near everything. Everyone knows Tetris, even people who haven’t played it or any other video game. Doom. Just, Doom. Yes, Quake was more advanced. Yes, Quake was technically the actual technological forefather to the polygonal 3D games we play today, and many game engines still include tiny bits of Quake’s original code. But there would be no Quake without Doom. It certainly wasn’t the first FPS, but it’s the game that cemented the FPS formula for good and firmly established the x86 PC as not only a viable gaming platform, but the king of gaming platforms from that moment until this very day. Ever since Doom, outside of specialized arcade hardware the PC has been the powerhouse platform for the biggest, most technologically demanding games. After Doom game out everyone wanted their own “Doom clone” on their platform just to show that they weren’t just another me-too, also-ran. Street Fighter 2. The genre defining 1 on 1 fighting game template. Enough said. Chrono Trigger. This game showed everyone not what a console RPG was up until that point, but what a console RPG could be if you put actual effort and creativity into it and didn’t just crank out another grindy and soulless, swords-and-sorcery-go-kill-the-dragon yawn fest just to keep your franchise going. Its contemporary Final Fantasy games almost got there (especially 6), but Chrono went the full mile. The feats Chrono Trigger pulled off on the humble SNES as well as many of the innovations it brought forward were far ahead of its time and it took literal decades for the genre to catch up to it – including quite a few entries from its own studio. Final Fantasy 7. This game is objectively crap even compared to many of its peers. But there is no doubt that it was the next stepping stone from Chrono Trigger that finally firmly launched the console RPG into mainstream territory, made the genre as a whole truly successful, and was an awful lot of people’s first RPG. It probably made a significant and permanent contribution to the formation of weaboo culture, as well. Half Life 2. No, not the first Half Life. Not Opposing Force and not Blue Shift, either. There was never before any hype and anticipation for a video game like there was for Half Life 2. In the months leading up to its launch it was all anyone talked about. Not Doom 3, not the new Warcraft. Half Life 2. And of course with Half Life 2 came Steam, and we all know how that turned out. Sure, Steam itself started life as a patch delivery and server browsing platform for Counterstrike, but up until Half Life 2 appeared in it, nobody cared. The impact Half Life 2 had on everything is absolutely undeniable, and that doesn’t just include the horde of games that came after it attempting to imitate its unbroken linear first person narrative and setpiece based game design as a cash grab, not to mention that phase in first person shooters where seemingly everything suddenly had to have physics puzzles in it…

FTC Blames Microsoft for Devastating Xbox Court Document Leak - IGN

Primarily the manner in which they contemplated the purchase of Nintendo. It was not presented as wishful thinking, but an inevitability. Microsoft has the money, and all they need is a moment of weakness on Nintendo’s part in which to spring a hostile takeover (or at least, that’s how the email reads). The fact that Microsoft could leverage its considerable wealth from being the market leader in a different market segment to buy out an entire competitor that makes up a very significant portion of the gaming market, and that doing so would not be for any reason than to be a feather in the cap of the Phil Spencer makes them very dangerous. Xbox/ Microsoft clearly have money to burn and are on no uncertain terms willing to use it to bully their way into a monopoly of the gaming market. Regardless of how realistic their plans to take over Nintendo really are. They think the plan is feasible, and they have the money for it. They are incredibly dangerous.

I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who's behind the age verification bills

continued Colorado lobbying: CO Secretary of State SODA API (data.colorado.gov, datasets vp65-spyn, dxfk-9ifj, df5p-p6jt) Louisiana lobbying: LA Board of Ethics, F Minus database (fminus.org/clients/pelican-state-partners-llc/, fminus.org/clients/meta-platforms-inc/) California lobbying: CalAccess (cal-access.sos.ca.gov), Bloomberg Government Super PACs: Forge the Future (texasforgefuturepac.com), Texas Ethics Commission, Illinois State Board of Elections, Politico (Feb 2, 2026), Washington Post (Mar 12, 2026) DCA records: WHOIS/RDAP (rdap.org), Wayback Machine CDX API (100+ snapshots), IRS EO BMF (eo1-eo4.csv), OpenCorporates, ProPublica, GuideStar NCOSE: IRS Form 990 FY2020-FY2024 including Schedule R; NCOSEAction/Institute for Public Policy (EIN 88-1180705); original NCOSE Action (EIN 86-2458921) via Schedule R history For Good/Network for Good: forgood.org, DCA donation page source (targetable_type=Project, targetable_id=258136), For Good 990s via ProPublica (EIN 68-0480736, 59,736 recipients searched) IRS 990 filings: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: NVF (EIN 20-5806345), STF 2024 (sixteenthirtyfund.org), DCI (EIN 39-3684798), Windward, Hopewell, North Fund, NCOSE (EIN 13-2608326), ConnectSafely (EIN 47-3168168) Campaign finance: CO TRACER bulk data (tracer.sos.colorado.gov), FollowTheMoney.org, FEC API (Meta PAC C00502906) Reporting: Bloomberg (July 2025), Deseret News (Dec 2025), The Center Square, ACT | The App Association, Dome Politics, Pluribus News, Nola.com, Privacy Daily EU framework: EUR-Lex (Digital Services Act, eIDAS 2.0 Regulation), EUDIW GitHub repository, T-Scy consortium Technical: freedesktop.org, GNOME/KDE documentation, Meta developer docs (developer.meta.com/horizon) Full dataset, OSINT tasklist, and all processed findings are published with sources embedded in each file: github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings This is an ongoing investigation. Pending: Texas Ethics Commission records for Forge the Future expenditure recipients, NCOSEAction’s first 990 filing, IRS Form 8872 for ATEP, and FOIA responses from Colorado and Louisiana. If you have access to lobbying data from states I haven’t covered (IL, NY, UT, GA), I’d appreciate a heads up. I am not claiming Meta wrote every one of these bills. Louisiana is confirmed by the sponsor; the others use a shared ICMEC template. I am not claiming there is a direct Arabella-to-DCA funding pipeline; I checked $2 billion in grants and found no evidence. I am not claiming child safety isn’t a legitimate concern. What I am documenting is: the company whose lobbyist drafted HB-570 wrote it to exclude its own platforms; the advocacy group pushing these bills nationally has no legal existence and is confirmed funded by Meta; the same consulting firm bridges Meta’s super PAC and DCA’s messaging; none of these bills exempt open-source or non-commercial software while the EU equivalent does; and the mandatory age-signal API creates persistent surveillance infrastructure at the OS level with no data minimization requirements. The records are above. Draw your own conclusions. This section documents what happened when this investigation was posted to Reddit, and provides context on Meta’s documented history of using astroturfing, coordinated reporting, and platform manipulation to suppress unfavorable content. What happened The original version of this investigation was posted to r/linux, where it was mass reported and pulled down pending moderator review (150 upvotes, roughly 15k views before being pulled down some 40 minutes after being posted) The content that was suppressed names Meta lobbying firms, traces documented payments, cites Senate LD-2 filings, and links to IRS records. It identifies Hilltop Public Solutions as the first confirmed entity bridging Meta’s $45M super PAC and the DCA astroturf campaign. This is the kind of content that a well-resourced actor would have reason to suppress. I cannot prove the mass reports were coordinated rather than organic. That is the point of the tactic: Reddit’s infrastructure makes it impossible to distinguish genuine community objections from manufactured ones, and it rewards the behavior either way by automatically removing the content. Meta has done this before In March 2022, the Washington Post reported that Meta hired Targeted Victory, one of the largest Republican consulting firms in the country, to run a nationwide astroturfing campaign against TikTok. Internal emails obtained by the Post showed the campaign: Placed op-eds and letters to the editor in regional news outlets across the country, none of which disclosed the connection to Meta or Targeted Victory Promoted stories about dangerous TikTok “trends” that had actually originated on Facebook Pushed local politicians and political reporters to frame TikTok as a threat to children In an internal email, a campaign director wrote that the “dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids’” Meta’s spokesman defended the campaign by saying “all platforms should face a level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success.” Meta did not deny hiring the firm or directing the campaign. The story was confirmed by the Washington Post, Fortune, Variety, CBS News, Engadget, Tortoise Media, the Boston Globe, and Techdirt, among others. This is not speculation about what Meta might do. This is what Meta has been publicly documented doing: hiring firms to plant stories, manufacture public concern about competitors using child safety as the framing, and conceal the corporate origin of the messaging. The Targeted Victory campaign and the DCA campaign use the same playbook: fund an outside entity to push messaging that serves Meta’s commercial interests while hiding Meta’s involvement. Reddit’s bot and astroturfing problem is structural Research published in Nature (Scientific Reports) documented coordinated political astroturfing patterns across platforms including Reddit. A separate study found that at least 15% of content in surveyed subreddits was posted by corporate trolls or bot accounts designed to manipulate public opinion. Since June 2025, bot networks have been systematically exploiting Reddit and Meta’s own moderation systems through mass reporting. Thousands of legitimate Facebook groups were deleted after coordinated bot reports triggered automated enforcement. The same mass-reporting tactic works on Reddit: a small number of accounts can file reports, trigger automated removal, and flag the poster’s account for site-wide spam filtering, all without engaging with the content. Venture-backed firms like Doublespeed now offer astroturfing-as-a-service across Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram, operating physical phone farms to bypass platform detection. The infrastructure for suppressing content through coordinated inauthentic behavior is commercially available. What this means for this investigation Meta spent $26.3 million on federal lobbying in 2025 and deployed 86+ lobbyists across 45 states. It funded a nationally active advocacy group (DCA) with no legal existence in the IRS system. It hired Hilltop Public Solutions to simultaneously run its $45M super PAC and coordinate DCA’s messaging. It previously hired Targeted Victory to run a covert astroturfing campaign against TikTok using child safety as the narrative frame. This investigation documents all of that with primary sources. A post containing those findings was mass reported on Reddit within hours and suppressed site-wide by automated systems. Whether the reports were organic or coordinated, the outcome is the same: the content was removed from the platform where Meta has both the motive and the documented capability to suppress it. The research is published in a git repository with every source embedded. It does not depend on Reddit’s infrastructure to survive. Sources Washington Post, “Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok” (March 30, 2022): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ Fortune, “Meta paid a Republican consulting firm to turn the public against TikTok” (March 31, 2022): https://fortune.com/2022/03/31/facebook-meta-paid-republican-consulting-firm-targeted-victory-turn-public-opinion-against-tiktok/ Variety, “Facebook Parent Company Defends Its PR Campaign to Portray TikTok as Threat to American Children” (March 31, 2022): https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/meta-facebook-tiktok-pr-campaign-1235218866/ Techdirt, “Facebook-Hired PR Firm Coordinated Anti-TikTok Campaign To Spread Bogus Moral Panics” (March 31, 2022): https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/31/facebook-hired-pr-firm-coordinated-anti-tiktok-campaign-to-spread-bogus-moral-panics/ Tortoise Media, “Meta ‘astroturfed’ TikTok” (April 5, 2022): https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/04/05/meta-astroturfed-tiktok

Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh

Russian Expats in Phuket Want to Pay With Stablecoins https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-17/russian-expats-in-phuket-want-to-pay-with-stablecoins ::: spoiler spoiler Stablecoins have come to the sandy beaches of Phuket. The tens of thousands of Russians who have migrated to the popular Thai tourist town since the start of the war in Ukraine have moved their wealth as digital dollars. But friction arises when they try to use their Tether, or USDT, in the local economy: to pay rent, buy property, or pay school fees. If they are official residents of Thailand with local-currency bank accounts, they can convert these 1:1 representations of the dollar on digital-asset exchanges and obtain fiat-money deposits. However, one seamless, low-cost transaction, where they spend their Tether and merchants receive Thai baht isn’t allowed under current regulations. It’s only a matter of time before authorities across Southeast Asia allow crypto firms to also act as regular payment-service providers — no different from a local bank or fintech app. The view that tokens that mimic the dollar are just a gateway to crypto trading is now outdated. In the Philippines, regulators have given Coins.ph — a crypto exchange – all the licenses to help bring down remittance costs for the vast diaspora of overseas Filipino workers. Coins.ph saw a 60%-plus jump in stablecoin deposits last year and a near-quadrupling of fiat-currency transections. China and India will continue to resist dollar coins, though Beijing will be pragmatic and let Hong Kong develop a regulated market in them. Southeast Asia will adopt a different strategy. It will take its cue from Singapore and settle on a model in which tokens are embedded in the mainstream financial system — but with guardrails to protect customers’ funds and prevent money-laundering. Vietnam will adopt stablecoins to make overseas trade less expensive for its increasingly competitive manufacturers. Thailand and Indonesia will want local merchants to get the most out of foreigners, without driving their usage underground. “For the large overseas population that lives in Phuket, Bali and other places, the preferred currency of transactions is dollar stablecoins,” Wei Zhou, the chief executive officer of Coins.ph, told me last week on the sidelines of Consensus, Hong Kong’s annual digital-asset conference. “That’s a huge grey market you probably don’t see or know of.” The passage of the Genius Act in the US has sent out a powerful signal: It’s time to turn grey to green. Regulated dollar coins are now a legitimate financial product for Wall Street. Some of the world’s largest remittance corridors — US-Mexico and US-Philippines — will see costs fall as apps like Bitso Business and Coins.ph harness blockchain technology for faster settlement and reconciliation. Ditto for commerce. Starting in the 16th century, much of the large quantities of silver mined in Spain’s American colonies was used in tokens minted privately under royal licenses. The principal use of that era’s stablecoins was to pay for trade with Ming- and Qing-dynasty China and the Mughal empire in India. Now, when more than 40% of Mexico’s imports are again from Asia — with China, Taiwan, Japan, and Malaysia as top suppliers — the settlement currency is the dollar, and a tokenized version is the most cost-efficient way for small firms to access it. Stablecoins enable same-day execution. Working capital is unlocked immediately rather than waiting days for settlement. Reap, a Hong Kong-based stablecoin payments firm, is using Mexico as the beachhead for expansion in Latin America. Traditional financial institutions’ profits from navigating cross-border flows over an inefficient correspondent-banking network will shrink. But banks will do other remunerative things with the technology: like offering crypto-backed loans to their wealthy clients, or competing with asset managers like Franklin Templeton in offering tokenized money-market funds to retail investors. They will also help firms squeeze the most juice out of idle liquidity on their balance sheet, trading assets on the blockchain 24/7. “The corporate treasurers’ ‘follow-the-sun’ model is no longer bound by the working hours of intermediaries or markets,” says Myles Harrison, the chief product officer at AMINA Bank, a crypto-focused Swiss institution, which also has licenses in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi, plus access to Europe’s regulatory regime via Austria. “We’re seeing a lot more traditional corporate clients beginning to use stablecoins alongside blockchain companies.” For individuals and very small firms, there are other practical benefits. Early-stage founders end up putting business expenses like cloud storage and software subscriptions on personal cards. But relying on informal workarounds can quickly turn “messy, expensive, and risky from a governance standpoint,” said Daren Guo, cofounder of Reap. For firms with limited access to traditional financial rails, Reap’s Visa corporate cards enable fiat-currency purchases while settlements can be funded using stablecoins. For a region plugged into global commerce for prosperity, currency sovereignty is probably best preserved by following the template of India’s erstwhile Mughal rulers: They reminted the silver coins coming in via trade under their own seal for use as local legal tender. A modern equivalent will be to issue central-bank digital currencies against stablecoins inflows. Now that the crypto wave has landed on the shores of Phuket and Bali, the liquidity of digital dollars can’t be kept out of traditional payment systems for too long. ::: I think the author is ridiculous for saying the solution is local CBDC when the only difference between CBDC and local bank transfers is just who’s liable (with CBDC it’s Central Bank, with bank transfers it’s commercial banks). The best way to deal with this would be to be setup a state enterprise (a public exchange window) which only accepts USDT (not provide) and dumps it abroad instead of domestically while giving local currency at market rate. This way it’s more centralized and can be monitored better. Also, USDT has no primary liquidity, you can’t take it to Tether Inc to get actual Dollars in your Dollar bank account. They only allow big participants and that too after AML/KYC (vulnerable to US sanctions and stuff). You only get access to secondary market liquidity without it, which means USDT is technically non-convertible for most people. Countries shouldn’t allow large firms to hold much of it and instead offload it abroad. Also proof that volatility matters, and BTC doesn’t work well for every day transactions.

taylor_rab (36 followers)

Technical Director @ Mediatonic

Rab (6 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rab (26 followers)

nsfw space of a certain dog boi. expect low effort exclusive content and lewd retoots.

Rab_Boyce (23 followers)

Tech Entrepreneur, Creator of scotfact.com.

Rabmcgarva (37 followers)

Crabit auld independence supporter

rab (3 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rabropes (10 followers)

He/Him. Love, Acceptance, Kindness, & Equity for all ♏️ 🎲 ⚽️
'I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.' #NUFC 🖤 🤍

RabRhee (4 followers)

Sarcastic Anxious Agoraphobic. He/Him. However bad it gets, I am reassured by the internet that a lot of dogs and cats are being looked after well.

templatehub (4 followers)

We provide customizable templates in MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, Adobe Photoshop, and JPEG or PNG image format. We have made all possible efforts to make sure all these templates are free from any malware scripts. The core purpose of sharing as many as possible is to allow you to explore as many possibilities as possible before coming up with your own version.

Baubles and Scrooge Discussion from December 25th to December 31st, 2023 - The War on Christmas: Counteroffensive - COTW: Finland

Ancap Update :ancaptain: The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, has “warned” members of the Argentine Congress and the judiciary that if the Decree of Necessity and Urgency, which he signed on December 20, falls, he will call a Plebiscite. The problem is that any national Referendum or Plebiscite in Argentina needs authorization from the country’s Congress. Congress is in extraordinary sessions, to analyze the various laws that have been sent by the government, as well as Milei’s DNU. Link (Spanish Only) Javier Milei: “The slowness that legislators put on the DNU debate is because they are looking for bribes”. The President said that if Congress rejects the Decree that deregulates the economy, he will call for a plebiscite and pointed out to the deputies and senators who question the measure: “This is aimed at the corrupt”. Javier Milei anticipated this Tuesday that he is considering a popular consultation in case the Necessity and Urgency Decree, which contains the main economic reforms promoted by his government, is rejected by the Congress. Prior to this announcement, the President made a serious accusation against the deputies and senators who will have to debate the law. "They are not aware of the seriousness of the situation, or they underestimate it. I made a post with a phrase of Frondizi. Those who question me about the form I imagine they are ranting against him. Knowing that when he enters the congressional machinery he puts so much slowness into it that he messes everything up. Part of that slowness is because they are looking for bribes. Some, I did not say all. But those who like the discussion so much, who discuss the comma, are looking for bribes. This is aimed at the corrupt, that dynamic to sell their votes. Be careful, there are a lot of rogues around", he said in an interview with Luis Majul on LN+. “It is contemplated in the Constitution, the problem is that they don’t like it, they can’t say it, they want to grab some benefit to pass the law. It goes against the tongos of the caste. The problem is that with this mechanism they cannot bite,” he added. -In case the DNU is rejected, would you call for a plebiscite or a popular consultation, asked the journalist. -Obviously, replied Milei. And he went deeper: “The megadecree has more than 75% approval, so let them explain to me why they want something against the people”. The President explained that the announced DNU seeks to generate an investment shock to counteract the adjustment measures and, consequently, mitigate the effects of the recession. “We urgently need investments so that the effects of the stabilization program are less painful in terms of a drop in activity, employment and poverty”. He continued: “You don’t know how much strength you have until you put it to the test. You know that he had been working with the ministry in the shadows. What Federico presented is one third of the reforms. What is going to Congress is two thirds. We had already come with the ideas of making these reforms, and we are willing to do so. It is a historic opportunity”. “The package of measures (DNU) was a contribution to give more freedom to individuals, to deregulate and go to more competitive structures and eliminate the tongos of politics. They were shock measures of freedom, anti-caste and that, contrary to what some people say, are friendly to competition, to good Argentines”, said the President to defend his rule. And he added: "Dr. Bullrich, with Human Capital and Infrastructure was a very important work, not only from the conceptual point of view, it was an impressive work. We received more than 11 thousand complaints of extortion: three times more than those who came to the march. This worked on the people’s incentives. Do you think that in 16 days of government there have been three marches? Can’t they accept that they lost and that the population chose something else? Can’t they accept that there is another way of seeing the world? This model that they defended so much led salaries to 300 dollars. Likewise, the head of state sent a message to the picketers: “If they want to overturn us, let them try, let’s see if the people will let them. Belliboni has lost so much strength that he is looking for allies. What a sign of weakness. D’Elía managed plans, he had less votes than plans”. On the other hand, the President recalled the inflationary inheritance that the country received and explained that “if you take the daily inflation in the first week of December, it was traveling at 1% per day. That annualized gives 3678%. When you take the first two weeks of December inflation traveled at 18.1% that means 7550%. So it is not that the problem has not been solved. And this problem derives from two issues, one is the problem of the growth of the amount of money associated with the fiscal deficit and the other has to do with the monetary surplus”. In spite of the opposition presented by his economic plan, Milei stated that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees his government as “heroes” for proposing to reach “zero financial deficit” and said that it is “feasible” that the international organization will make a new disbursement to the country. “The agreement is technically fallen because the previous government did not comply with it”, said the President. And he emphasized that the IMF was “surprised” that during the electoral campaign they anticipated the “zero deficit” and, therefore, he said, “they are fascinated” with his administration.

RabidRabbit (4 followers)

RabXp (2 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

alkoholiker (2 followers)

de/dem

░░░░░░███████ ]▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
▂▄▅█████████▅▄▃▂
[███████████████████].
◥⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙◤..

RAB_4_BIT (2 followers)

こじらせゲーマー
イラスト鑑賞、音楽鑑賞
多興味で多趣味
April

rab68 (1 followers)

Left Coast

solimann (1 followers)

💻 Xero Custom DOCX Template Branding Designer
💻 ServiceM8 Custom Templates
📝 Bookkeeper (Xero & QuickBooks)
📧 [email protected]
🌐 https://bio.link/mdsoliman

#Xero #ServiceM8 #WorkGuru #WordTemplates

ai (1 followers)

智能工人阿鼻叫唤

pepoooo18 (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

Rab (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rab (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

therabbit (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rab (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rab_johnstone (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

itsrab (0 followers)

Group Director of Product at CitNOW. Consultant at Made by Together. Board member Stirling Photography Festival. Street and Landscape photographer. itsrab.eth

rab (0 followers)

RAB (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

templateduo (0 followers)

Browse and download thousands of different fonts in various categories like script, handwriting, sans serif, serif, and display fonts.

RPRoseAnnRab (0 followers)

Retired public information officer for the City of Boulder City, NV. Sharer of truth and food.

olusore (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rab23 (1 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

rab (0 followers)

Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.

jasahitungrab (0 followers)

Tim profesional jasa hitung rab kami melayani jasa hitung rab, jasa rab rumah, jasa pembuatan rab renovasi rumah, jasa gambar rumah dan rab, jasa pembuatan rab rumah, jasa hitung rab rumah, jasa rab bangunan, biaya desain rumah dan rab, desain rumah minimalis lengkap dengan rab, harga jasa pembuatan rab rumah, jasa buat rab rumah, jasa gambar bangunan dan rab, jasa hitung rab bangunan, rab arsitek, rab kost 1 lantai, rab kost 2 lantai, rab rumah murah, jasa desain rumah dan rab