Rakeau retweeted
The elite won’t suffer but everyone else will- that’s 100% guaranteed. Worth a very short read.
YIMBY-ism. Wanting to redevelop desirable areas, without understanding why they’re desirable + that the proposed redevelopment would kill that desirability.
He bought a barren island for $11,000, planted 16,000 trees by hand, and brought the wildlife back. People are offering him $50 million for it, he said no.
In 1962, Brendon Grimshaw, a British newspaper editor, was on holiday in the Seychelles when he was offered a small, abandoned island called Moyenne. It was overgrown, nearly lifeless, and had only a handful of trees left. He paid roughly $11,000 and moved there.
For the next several decades he and a local friend cleared scrub, cut paths, and planted tree after tree around 16,000 in total. Birds returned. Giant tortoises were reintroduced and thrived. What had been a neglected rock slowly became a living forest.
As the island flourished, developers and wealthy buyers started showing up with big offers. One was reportedly $50 million. Grimshaw turned every single one down. He had not spent his life restoring the place just to watch it become another private resort.
In 2009 Moyenne was declared a national park the smallest in the world. Grimshaw died in 2012 knowing the island would stay protected.
This is the sort of thing Australia should be doing.
ok this might be the most aggressively american startup i’ve ever seen 🇺🇸
> they’re trying to build nuclear reactors 100x faster than the nuclear industry ever has
> the founder isaiah taylor grew up on food stamps + dropped out of high school at 16
> his great-grandfather literally worked on the manhattan project
> generations later isaiah built a working nuclear reactor before turning 28 and named it “ward” after him
> the pentagon used 3 military c-17s to airlift the reactor 700 miles from california to utah in a first-of-its-kind mission
> the company culture is hardcore americana
> they hold bible studies, offer raw milk, love fast cars + have a cigar lounge
> plus 4 gigantic patriotic paintings of columbus discovering america, the pilgrims arriving on the mayflower, the signing of the declaration + the constitutional convention
> they sued the nuclear regulatory commission for slowing them down
> valar's end goal is to build the same reactor thousands of times across nuclear “gigasites” to make energy 10x cheaper
> then they'll use that energy to pull carbon out of thin air and turn it into oil and gas for supreme energy abundance
> just raised $1b at a $6b valuation to scale it
> if valar pulls it off, isaiah’s family will have helped usher in both of america’s atomic ages
yeah this gets my vote for most badass startup of the year
Rakeau retweeted
If I could see into the future and knew my share portfolio was going to make exactly a 15% gain next year I still have absolutely no idea what my tax liability will be if I sold those shares.
Under the new CGT my effective tax rate could be 50%. Could be 80%. There is no way of knowing. Everybody with a 15% return will have their own unique tax rate depending on the distribution of returns within their portfolio. This is a completely unworkable system.
“We need to tax the rich because they have an unfair advantage”
I still can’t believe these words were written unironically:
“I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally.”
– Adam Swift, University of Warwick, England, May 2015
Rakeau retweeted
If my neighbour increases the productivity of their vegetable garden and doubles their tomato crop, this does not subtract from the number of tomatoes I was able to produce in *my* vegetable garden. You are now more economically literate than all of leftist Twitter.
The collectivist left, always accusing others of doing what they alone are doing.
A PM that says capital gains tax will be unchanged while working on a secret plan to do the opposite #auspol teapawt.net/elizaborrello/status/7…
Rakeau retweeted
The world spent 30 years calling Japan 'behind.'
Still uses cash.
Still uses fax.
Still has tiny shops run by one old couple.
Then the world got 'ahead' —
and ended up lonely, rushed,
and scrolling at 2 AM.
Now the same people are flying to Japan
just to feel something they can't name.
A meal made by hand.
A street that's quiet.
A stranger who's kind for no reason.
Turns out Japan wasn't behind.
It just refused to trade away
the things that actually make a life.
The funny thing is, the people who advocate for, say, 75% taxation, ie where other people get minimum renumeration for their work. are the same ones who proclaim support for higher pay and union protections to maximise what they get themselves. This is a complete contradiction.
Rakeau retweeted
Dear small percentage of Boomers who can actually be told things:
Here are some facts, to help you understand what Millennials are trying to tell you.
Here is what the middle-class experience is right now. Not for losers, but for your average hardworking, but unexceptional, dude born in 1992.
- No company pensions. Ever. No job offers this.
- Laid off every 2 to 3 years.
- No vacations. Ever. If you are lucky, you have 10 to 15 days of annual "PTO" (paid time off). But this is not vacation. This is your sick days. You can take a break with whatever's left over.
- If you are not lucky, you have "unlimited" PTO. Which sounds nice, but in practice it means you get sick days and nothing else.
- They pay social security taxes, but they know they will never receive those benefits, because the system will crash first.
- Not promoted. Ever.
- No annual raises. Instead, these are effectively pay cuts, because they don't match inflation.
- Because of this, can only get a raise by changing jobs. Some judicious prevarication about salary history is recommended.
- Good chance you'll have to change careers at least once, possibly more, as industries get rugpulled by offshoring or work visas.
- Total mortgage cost on a median house in 2026 is 104,600 minimum-age-hours. This is 50+ years of full-time work.
- For comparison, a 1972 purchase would be 23,750 minimum-wage-hours, about 11 years of full time work.
What this all adds up to is that Millennials can't buy homes until they are past their child-bearing years.
And, no, scrimping and saving doesn't change that equation. This is with scrimping and saving.
I am not a Millennial. I am GenX, the child of Boomers. I do not need to be told how much Boomers forwent luxuries to save, and how hard they worked. I know exactly how much they did of each. I was there. I saw.
They worked hard at the beginning of their careers, and lived frugally for about 5 years to save up a down payment. After that, things gradually eased up, bit by bit. Until, by retirement, a lot of them had nice fat stock portfolios and multiple rental property investments, and Caribbean cruise holidays.
And this seems, to them, like a fair and natural progression.
But as America has been hollowed out and by a corrupt political machine, those doing the robbing have left the Boomers whole, and placed the burden of that corruption squarely on the backs of younger generations.
For Millennials, there's no light at the end of that tunnel.
Just another tunnel.
And another after that.
They have been standing between Boomers and the reality of the modern economy for 20 years.
At some point, they are going to break.
Worked 46 years in a factory to pay my home off , no one gave me anything. I paid taxes worked hard and raised my children. Some people like me could not afford to contribute to a retirement account all I have is the SS I paid in and small pension from my employer. I make do with what I have but it’s not easy to come up with the property taxes every year to keep what I have.