Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $350 billion valuation (pre-money) in February.
Google's deal from prior rounds likely lets them buy in at the same valuation other investors get every round, so they're just getting the February valuation.
Amazon did almost the same thing last week, at the same valuation.
The NHS study cited in the post is pretty strong evidence that precarity can increase support for proto-fascist politics.
But that rationale falls flat in the US context, as many analyses show that the median income of MAGA supporters is quite high. Right-wing extremism in the US isn't really about revolting peasants, it's about an alliance among multiple groups up and down the security-precarity spectrum, with very strong support from the top 5% and even more support from the top 0.1%.
Just because precarity can be a causal factor doesn't mean it's the only factor or even the dominant factor in the US.
And I wouldn't be surprised to see the US regime move into full money-printer stimulus mode to finance its wars of choice and give its base a little financially security before this year's midterm elections.
And it's coming from a starting point in which MAGA already distrusts government, so there's no need to have an external factor involved. It's quite odd looking in from another country where the government may not necessarily be too competent but generally tries to do the right thing and most people are looked after even if they grumble a bit, to the US where the government could cure cancer and half the population would say its a conspiracy by George Soros or Bill Gates or Big Pharma or the lizard people and would want nothing to do with it.
Just because a social construct is silly when you think about it doesn't make it any less real or useful.
A national border is silly as a physical reality; it is just a cartographic whim. These invisible lines, drawn by long-dead men, pretend that the lithosphere is fundamentally different on one side of a coordinate than the other.
Fiat currency is silly as a store of value; it is just a digital ledger or a piece of cotton-linen blend. Its "worth" is derived entirely from the collective hallucination that a central bank’s promise is more substantial than the paper it is printed on.
Yes. And we should never forget that these ideas are just that: useful ideas. They may seem without alternative to most people, but that doesn't mean they necessarily are.
Honestly it seems like the only thing Trump's base cares about is the price of gasoline. They don't give a shit about what's actually happening in the war.
From the MAGA folks I know, they don't even care about the price of gasoline. That was when Biden was president. Now they have excuses. All they really seem to care about is whatever they're currently told to care about by the administration.
Trump has a loyal hardcore, but he is absolutely bleeding supporters around the edges. If you follow the US right many of them are pledging to vote democrat in the midterms as a protest.
I noticed a wave of that right as trump declared war (declared conflict, whatever), people going "I voted for no new wars," but I noticed on /r/conservative that the takes quickly gave way to sudden concern about Iran's nuclear capability as the propaganda mills got their fodder in order.
r/Conservative is, IMO, almost 100% guaranteed to be majority bots and the most hardcore admin apologists. They're a permanent safe space and often will delete even their own members' posts if they directly criticize the Leader.
Its only value is to see the desired responses from Fox News and the far-right media.
Who moderates /r/conservative? Whenever I drop into old subreddits these days the whole place feels very astro-turfed. High chance that it's modded by zionists, they have a lot of money and a lot of different organisations that hire full time people to "fight disinformation".
There is only one reason for us to give a damn about Israel other than religious fervor, and it's their technology and intelligence apparatus. They only care about us because we give them a lot of money and weapons, and apparently will follow them into their Leeroy Jenkins war and do the heavy lifting.
They're committing a genocide and now are ethnically cleansing Lebanon of Muslims under the cover of the Iran War. Their government is not worthy of support.
That subreddit literally requires asking mods for permission to post threads and the flair that permits posting can and does often get revoked too. Its a "whitelist" subreddit so its astroturfed or filtered by definition.
r/flairedusersonly needs mod permission to even post threads and they revoke that permission happily too. They are the party of free speech remember. Everything is "outside users" to them, everybody is a liberal in disguise.
The big lesson from the US/Israel war against Iran is that the power balance has shifted away from strike capability toward defense magazine depth.
You can't win with stand-off strike capability. You can't seize and control territory, you can't keep strategic choke-points open, you can't change regimes.
But you can definitely lose by spending two or three multi-million dollar air defense interceptors per incoming projectile that costs 10x to 100x less. Especially when your supply chain can only produce hundreds of interceptors per year and your adversary makes that many missiles per month and 10x that many drones per month.
> You can't win with stand-off strike capability. You can't seize and control territory, you can't keep strategic choke-points open, you can't change regimes
To be clear, there is zero historic evidence—going back to the Blitz—that strategic bombing has ever been able to do any of these things.
Except the one about choke points. That isn’t strategic. It’s tactical. And using artillery or airpower for shaping operations absolutely works.
> you can definitely lose by spending two or three multi-million dollar air defense interceptors per incoming projectile that costs 10x to 100x less
Agree. Fortunately, the MIC seems to have recognized this. None of it fundamentally changes the value of carriers. It just means they need to be defended differently from before. Sort of how you can’t sent lone carriers out into the ocean, they have to be escorted.
I agree with all of this except the notion that this is a recent change. Infantry being needed to seize and hold territory has been standard military doctrine around the world throughout history. Air power can tip the balance between opposing armies but has never been enough to settle a war alone. I'm confident that every person working in the Pentagon is aware of all this, aside from the SecDef.
I'm also not aware of a single case in history where a massive bombing campaign from a hostile country resulted in an immediate populist uprising and a regime change that favored that aggressor country. Having your city bombed for weeks on end tends to cause people to shelter where they can, worry solely about how they will survive the wreckage, and bond with their fellow citizens.
The fact that an air campaign and magical thinking was the complete game plan from trump and hegseth shows how utterly unqualified they are for the positions they have.
I treat people who blindly believe an LLM the same way I treat people who blindly believe a religion or a political ideology or medical advice from Instagram.
If they ask what I think, I tell them.
If they don't want my opinion I keep it to myself.
Google's deal from prior rounds likely lets them buy in at the same valuation other investors get every round, so they're just getting the February valuation.
Amazon did almost the same thing last week, at the same valuation.
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