So! It’s actually kinda crazy how accurate your professor might be. Because progesterone, the chemical in birth control, does indeed break down into estrogen under the right circumstances. The components of broken down progesterone pass through the body via urine, enter the water system, and - this is the important part - is far too small and difficult to be collected or filtered out of the water.

So people taking birth control have absolutley added an insane amount of estrogen to the water supply. And most tap water now does have low levels of estrogen in it because people have been taking birth control for 60+ years.

In that same time, the average age of puberty has continued to fall.

So, it sounds a bit wild, but that theory is far more feasible than most realize.

You do realize you were adding to that hell right? Just because you hate Mormons doesn’t mean you should be saying that publically 12 times in a day. Twitter is hell because racists are there doing the same, likely about Mormons just as much as Jews.

Just because you aren’t racist doesn’t mean the hate you are spreading needs to be spread. Hate Mormons on your own time, or hate the religion, not those practicing it.

But fuck Charlie Kirk. He’s one guy and his death unquestionable makes the world a better place. But he was a shit head by his own actions, and most Mormons I’ve met are just as gullible as anyone else getting taken advantage of by an organized religion.

Just saying, it’s hard to find places online, and even harder when you go in hot. Don’t go in hot. Maybe Bluesky would treat you better. Their starter packs actually are great ways to find niche communities. The surface level Bluesky is where most of those flurries are. Below that there’s actually quite a bit of righteously enjoyable counter culture. Just don’t go in hatin.

This is the second No Kings rally. Isn’t that reoccurring? I get what you mean, but Trumps only been president for 10 months. In that time, all US media has been gobbled up by fascist conservatives who are fighting tooth and nail to make every American at these protests seem like a terrorist extremist.

The protests WILL increase. And they WILL keep reoccurring. There’s clear momentum gathering.

Just that momentum needs to be slow, and silly, to effectively disrupt the false narrative being broadcast on almost every single news network in the US right now.

Trump won because people here fully believe whatever bullshit the TV tells them. Batboy and Bigfoot are basically real to these people, and there’s literally no convincing them otherwise because it’s now on every channel they watch.

We need those people to see how the TV is wrong before they can even begin to understand how wrong our country now is.

If protests were every week the moment Trump took office, then it would just become white noise to these people.

Letting Trump dig his own grave by constantly altering the narrative is more effective than giving him the same material to work from that got him into position in the first place.

Hardcore Republicans are finally seeing how dangerous the rhetoric is becoming because Fox News is telling them people in Frog Costumes are Terrorists. Now that it’s obvious they aren’t, maybe more of what Fox News has been saying isn’t true as well.

Slow and steady resilience to a Fascist whose going senile is a far better way to defeat that fascist than becoming the terrorists he wants his opposition to be.

I know you’re saying this as a joke, but art theft and related crime has been on the rise since the pandemic. And there has been quite a lot of art recovered from dying old mobsters and conmen.

Here’s the current FBI case list, and it’s WILD:

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/violent-crime/art-crime/art-crime-news

More Than 50 Years After Theft, Stolen John Opie Painting Recovered and Returned to Rightful Owner

The FBI was contacted in December 2021 by a Washington County, Utah, accounting firm acting as a trustee for a client who died in 2020. [An old mobster] The client had hired the firm to liquidate his residences and personal property. While appraising the painting for auction, it was discovered to likely be an original Opie stolen in 1969 from a private residence of the Wood family in New Jersey.

From a case in February of this year:

According to Acting United States Attorney John C. Gurganus, Dombek, Boland, and Joseph Atsus were part of a larger nine-person conspiracy which lasted over 20 years and whose goal was to break into multiple museums and other institutions and steal priceless works of art, sports memorabilia, and other objects.

Fuck it. Believe me or don’t.

I made a documentary that got C&Dd by Netflix. It was about Orson Welles and the final movie he made in '71 that didn’t get finished until 2021 (by Netflix).

In researching Welles, I discovered a rediculous amount of information about him that is not at all publically known.

His children?

One daughter lives in New York. Another in Sedona.

But there’s also the two he had out of wedlock in secret. (Both of which have documentaries about them)

And then I discovered his fifth child.

Sasha Welles. Who he had with his mistress Oja Kodar during the making of his last film. The kid is almost 100% his, but might not be Kodar’s as he basically had sex with her whole family.

But that’s not what this comment is about.

It’s about the movie he filmed but never finished editing, “The Otherside of the Wind” and starred Oja Kodar.

It’s now on Netflix, and while it did receive some nice critical reviews. Very few people came to look at it as close as I have. (And the others that have kinda sorta agree with what I’m about to say).

The closest (for the most part) was Peter Bogdonavich, who said the movie was a perfect book end for Welles career - a movie that matched his creativity with Citizen Kane.

But, the movie was actually much more than that. Much much more. (At least imo.)

Orson wanted this film to be finished more than anything. He even begged Peter Bognonovich to finish it in case he died. Something Bogdonavich actually tried to do well into the 2000’s!

The reason he wanted it finished? No one knows. But I have a theory, and that’s what my doc was about.

The theory:

Orson Welles created The Otherside of the Wind as a sequel / spiritual successor to Citizen Kane. Except instead of a story about a media magnate based off William Randolph Hearst, The Otherside of the Wind is about a filmmaker based off of Orson Welles.

Basically, Orson Welles made an autobiography of himself and his struggles to be the first Independant filmmaker in the style of his masterpiece Citizen Kane, and then died before telling anyone.

You can watch it on Netflix right now too. The Otherside of the Wind.

So. Every interview he gives about the movie. Literally every single one (I’ve seen 13 or so) he lies about the meaning of what the “Wind” in the title of the film means. In one interview, it’s about the duality of Men and Women. In another, it’s about art and commerce. In another, it just sounds good.

He was an artistic guy. And was known to tell lies and grandiose stories for attention. But at the end of his career, Orson was literally operating on another level. Want to know who coined the term “visual essay?” It was Orson Welles in his documentary F is for Fake. Where he basically makes the first YouTube video (in 1974) about art forgery and art. Which is what F is for Fake is about: faking art.

He has a monologue in that movie. One about a beautiful Church in England built in the old eclesiastic style. And one built by an anonymous architect over 20 years. He wonders at the thought of making something so grand, and never putting your name on it. Something those who appreciate architecture would love, even if they’re biased against the architect.

At this point in his career, Orson was making commercials and getting drunk while doing it. All to raise funds to finish his films. But despite being THE GUY who made Citizen Kane, Othello, Chimes at Midnight, etc, he just got an endless raft of shit from Hollywood for being in these commercials. In one of his many lunches with Bogdanovich, he muses about removing his name from his next movie, so Hollywood might appreciate it as a film instead of crapping on it because of his name.

So he makes Wind. People point out the story of the filmmaker in it kinda resembles him. He denies it. Eventually saying it’s inspired by him. And being a Welles movie, it also has a unique meta narrative. A movie within a movie. As it’s literally about a filmmaker trying to finish his last film, but he tragically passes before it’s completed. Which is what ended up literally happening to Welles and this movie. He died before he could make it. So his unfinished film due to his passing was about a filmmaker having an unfinished film due to his passing.

Great coincidence. And one that attracted me to this story. But it COULD just be a coincidence right? Maybe Otherside just HAPPENS to parralel Welles life through Kanes narrative structure.

Except what I discovered about the title of the film. He never gave a straight answer about it. And that bothered me. Anytime he played coy, it was for a reason.

And it got me looking at the name “The Otherside of the Wind” in a new way. What if the name wasn’t a metaphor at all? He was certainly known for them. (Cough Chimes at Midnight) But, what if this name that really sounded like a metaphor was just a literal, practical name?

The Otherside of the Wind has a movie within a movie. As you watch the film, the filmmaker in it screens his new movie to friends and execs to different results. Eventually you see parts of that movie. The ending to The Otherside of the Wind is also the ending of that movie.

It ends with a woman walking onto a dusty Hollywood set built in the desert. Props of flimsy buildings sway in the wind, as she wanders through them. Eventually the wind picks up and knocks over all the props.

“The Otherside of the Wind” ENDS with a strong WIND blowing down props in a dusty storm.

So if that’s the WIND part of the title, what would the OTHERSIDE of that BE?

Well, the very FIRST shot of Citizen Kane has a cold wind in a snow storm opening up the gates to Kanes mansion.

The otherside of that wind, is the wind in the final shot of “The Otherside of the Wind.”

The movie is named after the first shot in Citizen Kane. And is about literally being the final shot of Welles career.

One that will likely never be noticed, as he made sure to tell no one. Just to make sure they would watch that movie without a bias towards him. Instead the whole point of the movie basically got lost. Because by the time it was finished 50 years later, not many were left who could fit the pieces together.

In the interviews I did, I talked with many people who worked with him as part of VISTOW. A group that thanklessly helped Orson make his movies. Many who went on to have large careers in Hollywood or Academia.

VISTOW stands for “Volunteers in Service to Orson Welles.”

And I’ll be damned if I didn’t say I’m envious of those in that group. Despite the horror stories.

Consider this very condensed rant about this topic that probably only 5 other people on the planet know my service to Orson Welles.

The Otherside of the Wind needs to be looked at as follow up to Citizen Kane, not as the final movie in Welles career.

If you watch the movie on Netflix, I encourage you to do so through this lense. (But be warned, the first 10 minutes are rough, as intended).

Tariffs only go to the government when people can actually afford to pay them.

When Tariffs jack up the costs of goods in a supply chain exponentially higher than they’ve even been, small to medium sized business can’t afford their now Tariffed supply chain and don’t pay.

That’s how the money disappears. Whatever industry Tariffs are added to is now an industry that small to mid size companies can no longer afford to manufacture in. Which lowers the total value of that market as the profits smaller businesses had are now captured and destroyed by Tariffs.

Without Tariffs, the supply chain is affordable. With Tariffs, it’s destroyed and doesn’t magically come back. Soy bean market? Literally no more future profit potential now that our largest buyer has gone elsewhere.

Tariffs just effectively convert long term viable market wealth to short term government wealth in a time when markets are already suffering.

In no reasonable calculation will the gains of any Tariff offset the long term losses in the market those Tariffs destabilize. There’s literally hundreds of years of historical evidence supporting this as the outcome.

100%, thats why a lot of companies are trying to buy houses / cars / etc. For the last few years the writing has definitley been on the wall.

I do have one recommendation for an asset that requires no maintenance, but a lot of people aren’t going to be happy when I say Bitcoin and Ethereum are worth investing in now more than ever.

Both are fairly simple to own, you don’t need to buy a whole coin, just a fraction, and self-owned wallets are still legal. (Which let’s you stake your crypto for a nice 5% or more return). I’ve made 12% staking Cardano, beating nearly every bank savings account in existence. It’s very easy to do the same with Ethereum.

Crypto in general is certainly full of scams, but the foundational tech and the coins that come from it are certainly worth holding now more than basically any other currency. All currencies are basically tied to the Dollar for dumb and complex reasons, so crypto is literally the only thing that will not lose value as the dollar does.

Not much maintenance to hold it either. Just do research to be secure with your wallet. I hate Coinbase, but they are certainly the best at getting you started. Diversifying into crypto is likely safer than any other physical asset too at the moment as there will always be a buyer. (Not as easy for a car to become liquid)

And a note: for anyone that wants to argue about crypto, please understand I see it as something that is both a currency AND commodity. So know that I belive it has the strengths and weaknesses of both. Most crypto debates categorize crypto as either one or the other to focus on the weaknesses in each. Yet crypto has a return better than any other investment in the last 10 years, likely because there’s value in something that works as both a currency and commodity.

Anyway, it’s probably not the answer you wanted, but Crypto, specifically Bitcoin and Ethereum are a great way to diversify against uncertainty when bluechip markets are now as uncertain as crypto ones.

Next best after that is appliances, but same issue with maintenance.

It’s a bit complicated, but in short, today is a bank holiday both for the US and for Japan. And the Japanese Yen carry trade is likely unwinding in that time.

Last Friday, the stock market fell pretty hard as well as the crypto markets. This means people were selling what they had of each at a very high rate. When that happens, financial institutions have a bunch of mechanisms to absorb that loss and redirect it.

But one of the biggest mechanisms to do that, the Japanese Yen Carry Trade, has been unwinding over the weekend.

This is not only a bad thing, but is also what caused the 2008 crisis to accelerate.

Here’s a quick overview of what that is, and what’s happening to it now:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unwinding-yen-carry-trade-dawn-new-monetary-era-harshad-shah-bgnvf

For thirty years, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) maintained an ultra-loose monetary policy, with interest rates often at or below zero. This created a perverse incentive for the global financial community: borrow massive amounts of Japanese yen for almost no cost, convert it into other currencies like the US dollar or euro, and invest those proceeds in higher-yielding assets abroad—US Treasuries, European bonds, Brazilian debt, Asian equities, and real estate. This trade was the quiet lifeblood of global asset prices. It suppressed borrowing costs for governments and corporations worldwide, inflated valuations, and encouraged risk-taking.

So, the Yen Carry Trade was a way for big institutions to safely buy Yen and convert it to other high yielding assets. When the market is going down, as it was on Friday, instutions would buy Yen at less than 0% interest then divert it to high yield assets that would offset their losses. In short (and simple example), if the stock market fell 10%, they’d buy Yen, then use it to get some high yield assets at above a 10% return.

But! The Yen carry trade ALSO “inflated valuations.” Companies could use this trade to hide the actual value of their assets. Usually through combining a bunch of other instruments, including some illegal mechanisms that are still legal in the US like naked short selling.

So, the Yen carry trade let Wallstreet inflate their valuations to lure in investors. AND offset losses when they were being too risky.

So the question is: how much longer can they pretend to be valued higher? How much longer can they offset losses and still keep going?

Seeing as how the Japanese Yen Carry trade is a key to both, it’s a critical tool needed for companies not to collapse back to their actual value.

And as of this weekend, that tool no longer works. As the BOJ (Bank of Japan) raised their interest rates to a level never before seen. Because:

Japan is now confronting persistent, above-target inflation. This economic sea change has forced the BOJ to cautiously abandon its yield curve control policy, allowing Japanese Government Bond (JGB) yields to rise. The 40-year JGB yield’s surge from 1.5% to 3.4% in just two years is not a mere statistical blip; it is one of the fastest and most significant monetary shifts in the modern era.

The implications are profound. For a Japanese pension fund or insurance company, the calculus has fundamentally changed. Why shoulder the currency risk and geopolitical uncertainty of US Treasuries when you can now secure a attractive, risk-free yield at home in your own currency? The logical, and indeed necessary, response is repatriation.

Repatriation = Permanant death of the Yen carry trade.

So in short, the tool every major US institution has been using to inflate their own values and cover their losses will likely no longer be working as of today. And that’s after a very rough Friday for them. The tool they usually use to recover from that kind of loss is now broken.

Since it’s a bank Holiday, we won’t know until tomorrow, but with how high silver and gold prices are getting, that tends to indicate smoke before the fire. The last time Japan raised their rates like this it was followed by the 2008 crisis, and the 1998 crisis before it.

So whatever happens next likely isn’t great, but that will depend on how honest Wall Street has been since Covid. And from what I can see, they have basically created another “Big Short” situation as they never learned the first time.

Imo, outside the above, and in addition to it, ETFs are a time bomb just like mortgages were in 2008. There is very likely a looming ETF crisis similar to the mortgage crisis with just a matter of time before they explode, and something like the Yen Carry Trade unwinding could cause it.

If that happened, a depression event is almost certain. As ETFs have secretly replaced everyone’s 401ks in the last decade. So instead of losing an overpriced mortgage, if there is an ETF bubble, and it pops, people lose their retirements.

Which is something that very much could be starting tomorrow. Depending on how many other tools are left to contain what the Yen carry trade was doing. AND how fraudulent ETFs are. But that’s a very big other conversation.

In short - Wallstreet has one less cheat code to prevent their bullshit from leaking out into the market and rest of the world like it did in 2008. We’ll know tomorrow how needed those cheat codes were.

I don’t think you understand what Economics is my dude. It’s just the study of commerce and goods changing hands between people. Something people have done for the totality of human civilization.

Saying all of economics is corrupt is like saying all of math is corrupt. It’s literally just measuring the velocity and rate of change of goods in the form of graphs and predicting where they intersect. That’s 90% of economics.

Whatever you believe it to be is wildly inaccurate. Just because there’s a single part of economics you don’t like, doesn’t mean the sum total of all that knowledge is bad or corrupt. That’s such an incredibly bad and completely illogical take. It’s like saying math isn’t real because you just learned about imaginary numbers.

I provided advice on what to do if you have money in this failing economy to try and keep it. I have no control over the powers that be, and just pointed out clear red flags that suggest how messed up our economy is. Red flags that real economists care about, but seem to upset you?

Nothing you said was supported by facts, just your opinion. I have no idea how I upset you by providing a clear warning on how fucked everything is, and is about to be worse.

What exactly are you upset at? The exact indicators and red flags I pointed out, or the fact that I’m pointing them out again now that things have gotten worse?

I seriously don’t get your take. If anything, it proves that clearly explaining how bad things are leads to people taking it poorly. Not usually for the wrong reasons you have, but poorly nevertheless.

Hey there. I’ve got an economics degree and work in business. I’ve been literally telling people how we’re in a massive bubble, propped up by fraud and snake oil for years now. The economists you’re thinking about on TV have been enshitified just like everything else in the US. It got so bad someone created a Jim Cramer ETF that collected all his stock advice but did the OPPOSITE of what he said. That ETF had a 12% return in 2024.

So the advice you are hearing from “economists” is advice they were paid for. Real economists have seen the writing on the wall for years. We’re spectacularly fucked. Like there’s almost complete red flags across the board, and the stock market is likely captured and fraudulent and has been since 2008.

Nvidia’s price is just propped up by all the AI investment, and it’s worth is propping up others like Microsoft. The whole thing is an obvious ponzi scheme as total value in the market exceeds our GDP by 218% now. This literally means the stock market is at least 118% inflated bullshit.

Inflated because the SEC has taken 17 years to roll out the CAT system to prevent fraud that was created as a response to the 2008 crisis. 17 years, and the “fix” TV hosts cheered was so great in 2008 to prevent another crisis is just now as of 2025 kinda being used. I say kinda because it’s not fully integrated, doesn’t need to be used, and is currently reporting billions of fraudulent failures and trades nearly every day.

The system has been captured and tortured for years and anyone that knew what they were looking at and were vocal about it were laughed at by experts paid to disagree. I’ve been saying all the above for years, and people thought I was insane. Now you think all economists are insane because they’ve been paid to sane wash the bullshit I’ve been talking about for years.

The problem isn’t economists, it’s that you believe the people on TV are the experts instead of industry plants. Actual experts, they get ignored. All the time. Because they can’t compete with the amount of idiots on TV saying the opposite.

So no offense, but stop listening to the people on TV who call themselves expert economists, expert investors, etc and just listen to someone who’s actually experienced in that field. My opinion has been discarded for years as I’ve made hand over fist betting against our economy. Advice I’ve freely shared yet always been ignored because it goes against what the TV says.

Anyway, here’s the next 3 years:

Massive recession turns into a depression. Starting now, but this Monday is going to be a pretty rough day for the stock Market. Maybe not another Black Monday that started the original crash in 29, but we’re getting close.

Likely by this November, if not tomorrow, a stock market crash will happen. It’s completely propped up, so just a matter of time until the money runs out. Seeing the dip in stocks and crypto at the same time last week screams massive liquidity crisis (big companies needing more liquidity to prop up the current ponzi scheme of AI.) And there’s not many places left where liquidity can be found.

Anyway, the value of the dollar has already decreased by 10% this year. Which is an astronomically fucked thing for no one to be talking about.

So just FYI, whatever savings you do have, consider converting some of it into property / vehicles / assets with value as they will each retain their worth as the value of the dollar looses it. Advice you’ll never hear on TV, but is actually viable if you want your money to have any of the same value it has now as idiots ruin everything.

It’s a contradiction to them having a successful next console. This is Sega + Dreamcast vibes all over again.