mircea_popescu: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/weekends/pastrecords.htm << if this doesn't tell the story of inflation, i have no idea what does.

mircea_popescu: holy shit, it turns out Marvel's The Avengers is the highest grossing and highest opening movie of all time.

mircea_popescu: it's kinda fun to watch, tbh

mircea_popescu: nobody's using that thing to try and do something to mah powerbase ? or else paranoida.

mircea_popescu: dude the smpoe war...

mircea_popescu: i wonder if my%20bras is the magic word.

mircea_popescu: gee, look at all the fucking bras.

mircea_popescu: samir doesn't sound like a slut name and twitter doesn't sound like it is going to publish good boobs. so i'ma click on something else instead.

mircea_popescu: was there a black death in the us nobody reported ?

mircea_popescu: why do businesses in a country that's struggling with the spectre of deflation - businesses locate in the prime rib of that country, even - have problems typical of hyperinflating environments ?!

mircea_popescu: instead of pretending like we're fixing the problem like preet, let's try and think about the causes. why do firms perceive the need to artificially cap salaries ? this seems only rational in an hyperinflationary environment.

mircea_popescu: incidentally i suppose, the quote also throws a harsh light over the widespreadness of price fixing in silicon valley. seriously, fucking law interns ?

mircea_popescu: and you know "rudius media empire" was a thing, and some kids that meanwhile got jobs / wives / unsuspended sentences ACTUALLY BOUGHT INTO

mircea_popescu: "strategist". what is your strategy ? "i pretend like i matter on the internet" why ? "YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HOW THE WORLD WORKS".

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform generation... ...hoping they will be able to make a living off this << straight to butugychag. http://trilema.com/2014/yo-trilema-fratires/#footnote_2_57239 < example.

mircea_popescu: well i can't seem to find it, but he has a bit about "you don't believe me ? then believe x, she was stupid enough to quit medical school to join x shartup and now is a relationships expert"

mircea_popescu: tucker max at any rate quit law school for it, or to quote tlp

mircea_popescu: by now, there's an entire generation of essentially useless men hoping they will be able to make a living off this model.

mircea_popescu: the author is one tucker max, famous for nothing in particular (and whose life story is instructive, in case any chickies born yesterday actually believe amanda hess or randi zuckerberg are "feminist" models, and something good for her, and failed to understand that http://trilema.com/2015/the-worm/ is simply a fable about gawker.

mircea_popescu: About a week after Fenwick’s announcement, and the resulting Infirmation.com message board “explosion,” Wilson, a Fenwick competitor, announced they were paying summers $2,400. Each of the other Silicon Valley firms quickly fell in line after that, including Fenwick.

mircea_popescu: . I even used one of my aliases to play the other side. It was beautiful. Of the 20 messages on this topic on the first day, I probably posted 10 of them. I kept this up, at a slightly lower output, for about three days.

mircea_popescu: I was unhappy with this, so I immediately posted this info on the Infirmation.com Silicon Valley/SF Greedy Associate board, and then, using four or five different anonymous screen names, proceeded to have a thread discussion on how horrible this was, how Fenwick was insulting it’s summers, how no one was going to accept their offers because the firm was so cheap it wouldn’t fork over the extra $300 a week, etc, etc

mircea_popescu: How does this relate to the story? The summer salaries had already been announced in New York at $2,400, and everyone was waiting for the Silicon Valley firms to announce their summer salaries [Fenwick had four major competitors in Silicon Valley at the time: Cooley, Wilson, and Brobeck (these are abbreviated names of law firms)]. Fenwick was the first to announce; they did so sometime around late April, and they annou

mircea_popescu: a flood of associates or law students to that firm, and away from Firm B, before Firm B even knew what was going on.

mircea_popescu: As a result of these developments, partners at all the majors firms monitored these message boards, looking for the latest gossip about their firms and their competing firms. They had to stay up to date, because a change in benefits in Firm A could mean a flood of ass

mircea_popescu: a few others like it, junior associates at all the major firms started sharing info with each other about the relative benefits and detriments of their particular firms on these Greedy Associate boards.

mircea_popescu: ith each other about salary, benefits, work conditions, anything they choose. One of the sparking events was when Gunderson, a relatively small firm in Silicon Valley, raised their starting associate salaries from somewhere around the industry average of $100,000 to $125,000. One of the first places this information was posted and disseminated was the messages boards on Infirmation.com, and from that event, as well as

mircea_popescu: Infirmation.com is a job-related website that has message boards on it, where anyone can anonymously post anything. The message boards are divided by region, one being for New York associates, one for Silicon Valley, one for Chicago, etc. These message boards, called “Greedy Associate” boards, had vaulted to fame in the preceding months as a means for associates at different firms to anonymously share information w

mircea_popescu: What does this have to do with anything? Well, I was almost single-handedly responsible for Fenwick, and basically every other Silicon Valley firm, raising their summer associate salary from $2,100 to 2,400. How is that possible, you ask? The beauty of the internet, and the influence of an amazing website called Infirmation.com.

mircea_popescu: During the spring, Fenwick announced that they were going to pay summer associates only $2,100, which was below the $2,400 that most big firms in New York, LA and Chicago were paying their summers. Yet, right before we arrived in Palo Alto, Fenwick, along with every other Silicon Valley firm, announced that they were going to pay summers $2,400, commensurate with the big firms in other major cities.

mircea_popescu: anyway, if anyone's curious as to how exactly stuff like reddit or tardstalk work, here's a blow by blow, by a guy in the know :

mircea_popescu: your ability to verify, not nearly as important.

mircea_popescu: to replace "in god we trust" fiat currency

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i don't trust it, if it wasn't obvious already.

mircea_popescu: i very much doubt they still believe "the problem" can be contained with muppets.

mircea_popescu: http://log.b-a.link/?date=01-02-2015#1001684 << come to think if it, usg's Freisler's unceremonious dismissal of o'reilly media's version gavin (perhaps even at some point prepared for a gavin substitution, in case) is telling of a certain change of winds in that camp.

mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes it's not too bad for my health. definitely worse for the long term prospects of the heathens

mircea_popescu: then soon enough the HABIT of innovaton forms, and it's set. becomes culture, and win.

mircea_popescu: when there's money to pay for it, and necessarilty in the shape of "fallen from the sky", the marriage with absurd constraints is the most productive thing known to man.

mircea_popescu: they nevertheless sent mail on special paper. thinner than the bible sheets.

mircea_popescu: these absurd constraints are a great driver of innoivation. for instance, the "lawless", "rugged" and obviously unwashed rapists of the wild west ?

mircea_popescu: and it's a great blessing, too, you know ? if that's what it costs you won't be sending much gawker across.

mircea_popescu: 13k a ton.

mircea_popescu: freigthage at 200 gold dollars per ton.

mircea_popescu: er. All the bullion was shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was usually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1,500 to $3,000 according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the freight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per cent. of its intrinsic value."

mircea_popescu: e was traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing serpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over that hundred and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price for all express matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads. One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid $10,000 a month freightage. In the winter the freights were much high

mircea_popescu: here : "Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business going on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains from California (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession, and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals stretched unbroken from Virginia to California. Its long rout

mircea_popescu: these arrangements, the making thereof, that's what the whole tinseltown is built on.

mircea_popescu: and yet, arrangements were made to get the hay there.

mircea_popescu: more importantly : the cost of hay in carson city was 250 dollars per ton in 1962, and had been as much as twice that. at the same time a horse could be had for 30.