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Joined 15 days ago
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Cake day: January 15th, 2026

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  • Yeah, search has degraded along with the Internet, you almost need an LLM now to filter out all the garbage hits. For a while, adding “reddit” to your search term was an OK high level filter to remove blogspam and e-commerce sites, but interacting with reddit is so annoying now that it’s barely an option and many of the quality reddit posters have moved on while the state and corporate astroturfers are running the show. Never mind that the “reddit filter” also removed results from much better sources, like specialist forums.






  • The problem is that it isn’t clear what kinds of exposure private credit and other actors in the shadow banking space hold, because they generally operate on a model of financial obfuscation to get around banking regulation (i.e. being actual banks). What is known is that they are deeply intertwined with financing the AI bubble, even if all their exposure is through debt instruments, crypto schemes or insurance contracts (that probably is not the full scope though), they will be hit hard when their “borrowers” can’t pay back.







  • Yes and no, it moves the goal post and makes it harder for some criminals/terrorists to launder money. But organized crime is one of the largest business sectors in the world, so many have large incentives to get around the rules.

    It’s helpful to think of crime as a (or many separate) business sector(s) in this context, because at large scale criminals can benefit from much of the economic infrastructure that is required for legitimate international businesses, particularly modern businesses that sell things that don’t cost much/anything to produce (doesn’t have a fixed profit margin), such as subscriptions, streaming or intellectual property (e.g. music or games downloads).

    Not long ago the circulation of this dirty money was a staple of many parts of the established financial system (see the Wachovia cartel scandal as an example). Today’s rules and crackdowns after the 2008 financial crisis has changed that somewhat.