A potpourri, or Your first time gazing upon the intimate workings of power

As you perhaps heard, MtGox collapsed. Let us quote :

mircea_popescu O look at that, Luke-Jr needs to learn to listen to MP.
Luke-Jr Why?

mircea_popescu Because you'd still have 70% of your savings, that's why.ⁱ
Luke-Jr I didn't know you had access to MtGox's code

mircea_popescu There's a lot of things you didn't know. But the fact that I said mtgox is going down, you knew. Next time, listen. It's not like it's coming out of my pocket if you don't, you know ?
Luke-Jr Oh, so I'm supposed to just believe everything you say but can't/won't provide evidence for?

mircea_popescu Nope. You're supposed to listen to it. There's a fucking difference.
Luke-Jr If I knew it, then I must have listened to you say it.

mircea_popescu Notrly.
Luke-Jr And thought you were full of crap since you couldn't substantiate it.

mircea_popescu Yeah well, see, that's a broken implication there. Or two. However you count.ⁱⁱ
Luke-Jr Did *you* steal the bitcoins?ⁱⁱⁱ
Apocalyptic Heh.

mircea_popescu If we had the luxury of discarding anything of reality that doesn't conveniently fit with our theoretical system, we wouldn't for instance be stuck with quantum mechanics. Newtonian physics'd have been just fine.
Luke-Jr Because right now, it sounds like you're implicitly confessing.^iv

mircea_popescu No, it just sounds like you still have issues listening. I get that you're very emotionally invested in this "master of all i survey" nonsense, but that's not how reality works.^v
Luke-Jr the only way to know MtGox was going down like this, is if you had evidence, or you were behind it. And you clearly did not have evidence.

mircea_popescu Lmao! Because why. Because I live in Luke-Jr world, where if Luke-Jr asks I am forced to comply ?^vi
Apocalyptic Having evidence is different from diclosing it
Luke-Jr Apocalyptic: yes, but mircea_popescu is generally clueless too^vii

mircea_popescu I guess 30% of your savings is too much for you huh. Aite, carry on.
Luke-Jr Just because you're right for once in your life, does not mean you will be right ever again.

mircea_popescu Apparently your one-bit counter is well smashed. Add some overflow control there.

That was yesterday. As perhaps you've heard, overnight the Cyprus government collapsed and BFL disappeared. Let us further quote :

mircea_popescu Anyway, let's pull a little chain here. Hey Luke-Jr, how about that BFL ? (You know you're going on the list of accessories for that prosecution, right ?) Better spend the 30% left of those savings and anything you can borrow to retain counsel now, before the freeze orders start raining down. You'll need all the help you can get propping up the "ignorant idiot without a clue" defense.
ThickAsThieves So BFL never shipped those PCI boards that were guaranteed for X-mas deliver? Color me serbprized.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out exactly what's going on in Bitcoin these days, especially seeing how what's going on in Bitcoin these days is being live-blogged by the sovereign doing it. Nevertheless... check this out :

14:26 nubbins` http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z9e3l/bitcoins_warren_buffet_makes_8k_btc_profit_in/
14:57 mircea_popescu nubbins` aaand it's buried. you couldn't tell them if you wanted to.

This would be the difference between actual power and pretend-power, claimants to power, defeated Byzantines clinging on to the shreds and shards of shattered power : when MP hides the explanation of what sunk MtGox in plain sight, it's hidden. You're more than welcome to stand on your head, do cartwheels, whatever suits you. Powerlessness, that's what it is : the inability to alter the workings of power. On the other hand, when investigative agent tries it, he gets made within six hours.

Strategic superiority, a saga. It continues. What can you do ?^viii

1. His own numbers, I make no representation of accuracy. [↩]
2. For the slow : "Won't" does not map neatly to "couldn't". "Won't do what we ask for" does not map neatly to "full of crap", "asshole", "evil", "male chauvinist pig", "racis", "psychopath", or whatever other linguistic convention you're familiar and comfortable with. [↩]
3. You gotta love it when the lamers are being edgy and everything. All tactical and whatnot, challenge your oppressors, bring the battle over to them, stuff like that. Sucks that reality doesn't work the same way cinematic renditions of reality work huh. [↩]
4. This is fundamentally what the fundamentalist mind does, whether religious or not. Did our "god-inspired" diets kill our wife ? Clearly she was burdened by sin. [↩]
5. Depends for whom, in truth. It's not how it works for the 99%. [↩]
6. More on this topic in a coupla days. I promise it'll be good. [↩]
7. For the record, let us explore the difference between a man too stupid to qualify as a boy and a boy doing a decent job of posing as a man :

   Charlie Shrem @CharlieShrem · Feb 25
   . @Mircea_Popescu We both had opinions and facts. This time you were right and I admit it. Admission of being wrong separates boys from men

   [↩]

8. Allow me to quote from one of the wiser of this generation, responding to what you will do, irrespective of what you could do :

   You are the 98%

   There's a difference between what you need and what you want, and the media will always, relentlessly give you what you want. Do you know why you have such poor candidates every single election? Because you want them, you want someone you can easily judge for some sexual indiscretion or because they called latinos chicanos. "Well, that matters to us!" Then you got what you asked for.

   The media will have data mined the culture and chosen for you two cans of Campbell's Chicken Soup, and then encouraged a public debate about which can is a better representation of the spirit of the country, the one on the left or the one on the right. "Well, that matters to us!" I know.

   [↩]