Author: VD

Substack Submerging

As I mentioned on a previous Darkstream, the end of the cult of free and the decline of the equity markets is not looking good for companies dependent upon startup financing to leverage their growth.

Substack is desperate, huh? That’s what I understand from their fundraising email, anyway. They’re now hitting up retail investors for millions of dollars after they failed to raise last year.

After certain recent historical events, I have become skeptical of the term “financial inclusion,” a set of buzzwords for making financial services more available to people who are not stratospherically rich. Maybe my cynicism is because Facebook tried to launch a stablecoin for the “unbanked” that you nonetheless needed (at least, according to the now-scrapped plan) a credit card to use. Maybe it is because Robinhood made a big fuss about how many brand-new retail investors it brought onto its gambling platform. Or maybe it’s the proliferation of buy now, pay later services from the likes of Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm (and now Apple.)

As we all know from reading our 10-Ks, past performance is not indicative of future results

Anyway, Facebook’s stablecoin play failed and was sold for parts. Robinhood’s share price has fallen by a third in the last year. Oh, and Gen Z’s credit card debt is growing fast and furious. So yeah, when someone talks about financial inclusion, I assume the game is afoot…

You see, the last time Substack raised, the Fed hadn’t started its rate hikes yet. Startups — like Substack — are particularly vulnerable to being squeezed when the interest rates go up. It gets harder to raise money because conservative investors can simply invest in safer assets.

Where’s the money, Lebowski?

And during that 10-year period I cited with those outsize returns, interest rates were low and valuations of private companies ballooned. Now, with interest rates coming back up, those balloons are popping. Some VCs are slicing valuations by as much as 95 percent. There may be even more write-downs coming. And following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, there’s a considerable amount of uncertainty in the VC world.

Substack certainly knows this. It tried to raise last year, seeking $75 million to $100 million from investors. But it had revenue of only $9 million in 2021, and a sky-high valuation on relatively little revenue was not the vibe in 2022. The company gave up. On its Wefunder page, the company says that the pre-money valuation on Substack is now $585 million, a 10 percent decrease from 2021.

Any time you see a new platform explode out of nowhere, you can be assured of two things. First, there is hundreds of millions of VC dollars behind it. Second, they are paying the creators a LOT of money to join the platform. Third, the money being made by the creators on a monthly basis is NOT all coming from the subscribers and supporters.

Remember, Clown World is ALWAYS fake and gay. It always attempts to substitute the inorganic for the organic. You just have to know where to look in order to see through the illusions.

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The First 30 Seconds

The Miles Mathis Committee is of the opinion that the tranny shooting in Nashville was another fake event.

I am not even going to bother proving this one was fake. If you can’t tell in the first 30 seconds of mainstream coverage, you aren’t keeping up. They have already released footage of officers shooting her? But that’s not suspicious, right? I am just going to skip straight to commentary.

First: why are places like Infowars selling this as real? Why is Paul Watson selling this as real and then spinning it? He has to know it is fake. Paul and Alex sell themselves as brilliant analysts, but in 2023 they still can’t spot an obvious false flag? Alex is the one who mainstreamed the term, but he still can’t spot one in 2023? Same for Tucker Carlson, selling it as real and then spinning it against the left. Why? Because that is why it was created.

I have no opinion on occurrence of this or any other historical event that may, or may not, have taken place, for the obvious reason that a) I do not believe or trust the news media, b) the news media is the only source of information for current events, and c) the news media occasionally provides reports of events that appear to have happened as reported.

When you operate on the basis of a probability-based philosophy, a binary approach toward reality is irrelevant anyhow. Which is why I see no reason to take any of this sort of thing seriously.

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A Government of Literal Morons

The United States is observably well into the “decline” part of “decline and fall”. If you ever doubted my prediction that the US polity will collapse and break apart, do keep this astonishing statement by a high-ranking government official in mind:

A top official in Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration recently told Congress that “natural immunity is not something we believe in.”

Gil Cisneros, Biden’s undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, made the statement while arguing the case for vaccine mandates for members of the U.S. military. Cisneros made the claim shortly after a British study showed prior infection protects people as well as or better than vaccination.

The armed forces will instead continue to push service members to take the COVID-19 vaccine “and boosters,” Cisneros declared.

He continued by denying an inspector general’s report that officials reviewed Christians’ requests for religious exemptions only 12 minutes before dismissing them.

“We don’t know about natural immunity there, as far as how it works and how effective it is,” replied Cisneros after Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) raised the U.K. study during the congressional hearing.

“There’s no good evidence and the research is still going on as to how we need to progress with this,” said Cisneros.

“But as for right now, natural immunity is not something we believe in for this, and so we are still moving forward.”

This isn’t “trust the science” anymore. It’s “trust the retards who don’t know the first thing about science”. I knew Clown World was fake, evil, and gay, but I had no idea it was so deeply and utterly retarded.

I once said Americans would be fortunate to preserve indoor plumbing. But it’s increasingly clear that we’re not going to be that lucky. The plumbing, it is most certainly toast.

Forget the History subscription. We may need to introduce a Basic Survival and Technology subscription.

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The End of the Cult of Free

The Cult of Free was always fake, gay, and propped up by Clown World. And now it is beginning to come to an end:

Billionaire Elon Musk is further cutting the amount of features that Twitter users can access on the platform for free. From April 15, users who do not pay for Twitter Blue – which costs £11/month for Android and iOS – will no longer be able to vote in polls, Musk has said.

They also will no longer have their tweets appear in the ‘For You’ tab, which shows popular tweets that are boosted by an algorithm.

Musk said the changes will stop ‘AI bot swarms taking over’ the site, although he stopped short of explaining exactly how.

The CEO – who purchased the social media network in October – said that paid social media will be ‘the only social media that matters’. ‘[This] is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over. It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.

He’s absolutely correct. AI bots will utterly destroy every free platform in short order. This is just the beginning, and it won’t be long before Twitter blocks all free posting access.

It’s not even remotely surprising that the major platforms are beginning to go the way of Unauthorized, Arktoons, and Gab. I understood – and I explained to Andrew Torba – that the Silicon Valley Method of propping up a platform with investment capital, giving away the product for free to amass eyeballs, then trying to go public or get acquired before the investment capital ran out was a stupid and short-sighted strategy.

And, of course, the method only ever worked for those who were willing to sell their souls.

So the end of the Cult of Free was always inevitable; what is more interesting about Musk’s announcement is that it signifies that the seemingly-endless resources of Clown World are beginning to run out.

This is precisely why it is so vital to subscribe to projects such as Arktoons, UATV, and the Library. The more who do, the more that we can collectively accomplish, even on a shoestring.

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NOW They Protest?

Germany goes on strike over insufficient wages.

Airports, bus stops, and train stations were at a standstill across Germany on Monday, as more than 400,000 public transportation employees took part in a 24-hour strike. The workers are demanding pay rises to compensate for inflation, which has soared in Germany since last year.

The strike began at midnight and is set to end at midnight on Tuesday. Eight major German airports were affected, with the German Airports Association estimating that around 380,000 travelers were left stranded. Munich Airport shut down entirely from Sunday onwards, with all flights canceled and its terminal deserted.

Deutsche Bahn said on Monday that all long-distance services were canceled, while regional services were only restarting in some areas by Monday evening. Trams, buses, and metro lines were also affected throughout the country.

And yet, the Germans persist in welcoming refugees, re-electing politicians who enforce pro-US policies that murder their economy, bailing out their banks, mass-vaccinating themselves, transferring $62 billion and counting to Israel, and generally supporting Clown World. Of course their economy is in shambles! What other outcome could they possibly have expected?

This industrial action demonstrates a complete inability on the part of the German people to grasp the connection between cause and effect.

DISCUSS ON SG

Demonic Disaccord

Many people, myself included, believe that Dolly had braces in the Moonraker movie, and that the disappearance of those braces is a Mandela Effect. It’s significant enough that it is included among the various effects “debunked” by the self-proclaimed debunkers.

Moonraker is a 1979 spy film and the eleventh movie in the James Bond franchise. It features Roger Moore as James Bond and is the fourth time he played the role in the series. In it, James Bond investigates the theft of a space shuttle which leads him to several locations. From California, to Venice, Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon rainforest, and eventually to outer space to ultimately prevent a plot to wipe out the world’s population in an attempt to recreate humanity with a master race.

It also features the actress, Blanche Ravalec playing “Dolly”, and the star of this Mandela Effect. She is the love interest of “Jaws” (played by Richard Kiel), a tall and burly metal-teethed protagonist and villain in the movie.

Many people recall Dolly having braces, when it fact she does not.

And yet, an a reader emailed yesterday with the fascinating results of his inquiry of ChatGPT concerning the subject.

Did Dolly have braces in Moonraker?

Yes, the character Dolly, who is the love interest of the villain Jaws in the 1979 James Bond film “Moonraker,” is depicted wearing braces on her teeth. The character was played by French actress Blanche Ravalec, who actually wore braces in real life at the time of filming. The braces are notable because they are seen as a key factor in the romance between Dolly and Jaws, as they bond over their shared dental hardware.

ChatGPT, 27 March 2023

It might be a good idea for those with AI accounts to ask the various AI’s similar questions about other Mandela Effects such as the Berenstein/Berenstain Bears, as it would appear that the scrubbing of the past is not only incomplete, but has left enough traces behind that they are being picked up on by the AI datamining.

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If the Dollar is Their Superpower

Then their global hegemony is rapidly coming to an end:

The dollar is America’s superpower. It gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle. The United States can slap sanctions on countries unilaterally, freezing them out of large parts of the world economy. And when Washington spends freely, it can be certain that its debt, usually in the form of T-bills, will be bought up by the rest of the world.

Sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine combined with Washington’s increasingly confrontational approach to China have created a perfect storm in which both Russia and China are accelerating efforts to diversify away from the dollar. Their central banks are keeping less of their reserves in dollars, and most trade between them is being settled in the yuan. They are also, as Putin noted, making efforts to get other countries to follow suit…

America’s politicians have gotten used to spending seemingly without any concerns about deficits — public debt has risen almost fivefold from roughly $6.5 trillion 20 years ago to $31.5 trillion today. The Fed has solved a series of financial crashes by massively expanding its balance sheet twelvefold, from around $730 billion 20 years ago to about $8.7 trillion today. All of this only works because of the dollar’s unique status. If that wanes, America will face a reckoning like none before.

The decline of the US financial superweapon will be exacerbated by the emergence of China as a financial safe harbor, at least for those who have not spent the last decade attacking it or attempting to subvert it.

The unfolding banking crisis in the US and Europe could highlight China as a “relative safe haven,” economists at Citi said in a note seen by CNBC. The Chinese economy could see accelerated expansion this year, giving the country a “hedge” for growth while economies in the US and Europe face heightened risk of financial disruption, according to the note.

It’s going to be interesting. That’s the only thing we can know for certain. And both one’s investment and consumption should be directed toward hard assets that will hold their value regardless of price levels.

DISCUSS ON SG

Profit is NOT the Motive

The Miles Mathis Committee attempts to convince us that the wicked are responsible for manufacturing the chaos that surrends us, they aren’t evil, they’re simply greedy:

This mass-gaslighting project they are calling the Mandela Effect was created as a cohort of the “time/reality is an illusion” project of mainstream science—where they have been trying to convince us we are living in some sort of glitchy hologram. It is to answer the evergrowing awareness of the distortions people have come to have in the past decade—many of them via my research. I have shown my readers that much of recent history is a lie, including the high profile assassinations, the celebrity deaths, the fake serial killers, and so on. Rather than admit that and come clean, the governors have decided to take the hoax up a notch. They want to convince you that the distortion you have become aware of is even bigger than you think. It isn’t just that your government is lying to you all the time about everything. No, it is that you are living in some sort of science-fiction nightmare, where parallel universes are overlapping and intermixing, creating a chaos beyond anyone’s understanding or control.

However, I have already proven the real answer is much simpler: the chaos is manufactured. The governors even gave it a codename back in the 1960s: Operation Chaos. It is admitted that the CIA’s project existed under that name, while the FBI’s similar program was Operation Cointelpro. They joined sometime in the late 60s. That is not a conspiracy theory. It is partially declassified and you can read about it at Wikipedia and cia.gov. Society was purposely destabilized, and they tell us this was done to throw revolutionaries off-balance. It was to infiltrate the Communists, the Anarchists, the anti-war protestors, the hippies, etc. Or that is what they would have you believe. But the real reason chaos was manufactured is for. . . profit. Happy people in a stable society spend only a fraction of miserable people in a fractured society. If they are in constant fear, they spend even more. If they are alone, they spend even more.

This illustrates why it’s logically impossible to trust anyone or any source completely. It illustrates why it is logically impossible for any individual or any source to be 100-percent reliable. And I include myself in this right along with everyone else, because all of us, every single one of us, sees as though through a glass, darkly. Even if we were able to perceive every single observable fact accurately, and identify every single lie, deceit, and distortion with perfect precision, the meanings of those facts and motivations of those deceptions would still be imperfectly understood by us due to the different axioms with which we all operate.

The Miles Mathis Committee is generally correct about the conspiracies and the manufactured chaos as well as the parties primarily responsible for them. It is quite likely correct about many, perhaps even most, of the historical distortions and fictional events it exposes. But either it does not understand the spiritual aspects of the situation due to its inability to perceive beyond the material level of economics or it is itself another layer of deception meant to entrap those who have the ability to see beyond the surface narratives and their intrinsic incoherencies.

Economics is important, but it is neither the core nor the primary motivation for most human action. However, along with sex and power, it is generally believed to be one of the candidates for core human motivation because the materialist is, by essence and by definition, entirely incapable of understanding any elements that transcend the material.

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The Mistakes of Empire

I’ve repeatedly observed that both Russia and China have learned from the mistakes of previous regimes, as well as from those of the imperial USA. Here is evidence that Russia’s current leadership is actively aware of the mistakes made in their Soviet past:

Russia’s economy will not be reduced to the defense industry alone, despite the conflict with Ukraine and Western sanctions, former President Dmitry Medvedev told journalists on Sunday. Imbalances in the economy will not be allowed to develop, he said, adding that the country is unlikely to suffer the fate of the Soviet Union.

“There is currently no threat of economic militarization in a way, in which it existed [in the USSR] in the 1970s and 1980s,” Medvedev said. The former president argued that the Soviet Union gave too much priority to the defense industry. To avoid an imbalance, “priorities just need to be set correctly and major macroeconomic indicators monitored,” he added.

Russia does actually need to boost its defense industry, he said, adding that it is necessary to “lay the groundwork for the future” even after the Ukraine conflict ends. However, taking these steps will not affect other economic sectors, he believes.

The USSR lacked a market system and also the strong consumer goods sector that modern Russia has, Medvedev said, adding that had the West imposed sanctions on the USSR at that time, “we would have had a hard time.”

Now, Russia’s “market does not feel any colossal downturns even despite the sanctions,” the former president said. He lauded Russia’s agriculture sector, saying not only does it allow Russia to meet its own food supply needs, but also enables it to “feed others.”

And they’re clearly also acutely aware of the vulnerabilities created by blindly adopting the false “free trade” doctrine of Western liberalism: China and Russia top list of states with largest trade surplus – study

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