An increasingly popular pastime
12.03.2026 20:56
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An increasingly popular pastime
the upshot was that my dad, who literally lost big clients when he refused to inflate his evaluations, ended up losing his business in the 2008 crash—and then the condo he'd been able to afford quite comfortably for years.
worst case scenario, you could sell into a rising market and make a few bucks. and the alternative, again, was to watch helplessly as your purchasing power dropped rapidly. you'd be crazy not to participate, and millions of perfectly sensible people did.
lenders themselves did not expect to see foreclosures, because they were selling off the loans. so why would borrowers worry? a loan they couldn't easily afford today would be affordable six months later; you could watch it happen all around you.
people were perfectly rational in trying to get into homes before they became unaffordable, and in expecting to refinance before their ARMs locked in. they'd be paying more for rent anyway, and their savings would fall in value.
and the buyers' qualifications were immaterial; the loans were packaged into MBS and sold literally overnight.
the inflated evaluations and easy loans put intense pressure on both renters and potential buyers, as rents went up and the value of savings for future down payments went down.
okay, I know you were alive in the run up to 2008, but were you conscious?
my father was a real estate appraiser during the period. you would not believe the pressure he was under to inflate his evaluations for banks and mortgage brokers. their income depended on the size of the loans
thinking of this for no particular reason
this is playing in my head for no particular reason
I don't think Tom understands how bubbles work.
because being smart is condescending, woke and gay
that's the problem! we need FBI agents who can throw down in the local Walmart parking lot
like we told the Melians, we're coming for you because we can
Plato had a substack. its subscribers ended up doing the tyranny he warned about
it's "whatever we're doing is good actually" all the way down
but you need the trenchcoat to get funding
wake me when Claude can identify and locate the publications that constitute a field
Hobbes famously described the Williamsburg bridge as nasty, brutish and long
someone tell Karp and Thiel that Plato was being ironic about the whole philosopher-king thingy
Palantir is Plato's philosopher-kings irl. except he was probably being ironic.
the Vikings carried their boats hundreds of kilometers over land. we can do this
wonder if his listeners feel betrayed by Rogan himself
if AI can hallucinate information sources, it can damn well hallucinate enemy combatants on swing sets
what did the sun ever do to you?
Hard to disagree
“Reasoning”
That seems not to be working here, at least
Yet more reason not to support City
Don’t we have to get past Leverkusen first?