https://www.investopedia.com/warren-buffett-s-massive-war-chest-11826399

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A, BRK.B) has amassed the largest pile of cash ever held by a public company. At $344 billion, Berkshire Hathaway’s war chest is more than the combined cash reserves of Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), and NVIDIA Corp (NVDA)—despite them being collectively 14 times Berkshire’s market value.12 Also striking is that the record-breaking stockpile has doubled in just over a year.

So what gives? As in everyday life, companies save for three main reasons: to prepare to weather an economic storm, to make a major purchase, or because they think what’s available isn’t worth it—in market parlance, it’s overvalued.

A key chart value investors like Buffett use could help us narrow down the options: the S&P 500 index’s historic price-to-earnings ratio. That’s because it now sits 67% above its historical norm and almost 50% above its early 2022 value. This remarkable deviation could be a major reason that the famed Oracle of Omaha could be storing cash.

Why Buffett’s Cash Pile Keeps Growing

Buffett famously preaches a straightforward investing philosophy: Be fearful when others are greedy. Given Buffett’s “pledge” to Berkshire shareholders to practice “extreme fiscal conservatism” and since market valuations have been well above historical norms, it’s no surprise, perhaps, that Berkshire sold over $100 billion in stocks during the first nine months of 2024, including cutting its massive stake in Apple by two-thirds.

It would enable him to start fucking his daughter

I don’t think that Melania’s presence stateside has anything to do with the legality of Trump having sex with his daughter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_incest_in_the_United_States

In all but two states (and the special case of Ohio, which “targets only parental figures”),[1] incest is criminalized between consenting adults. In New Jersey and Rhode Island, incest between consenting adults (16 or over for Rhode Island, 18 or over for New Jersey) is not a criminal offense, though marriage is not allowed in either state. New Jersey also increases the severity of underage sex offenses by a degree if they are also incestuous, and also criminalizes incest with 16-17 year olds (the normal age of consent in New Jersey is 16). Ohio allows incest between consenting adults only when one party is not a parental figure (see table below) to the other.

So, that’d work in Rhode Island or New Jersey, as long as they don’t marry, but I don’t think that the public in either of those two states is too keen on Trump.

EDIT: For context, note that I’m assuming that ubergeek is referencing this:

He’s previously called her hot, saying she had the “best body” and speaking on The View even said “if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

Context, for those not familiar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilsa%2C_She_Wolf_of_the_SS

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a 1975 Canadian nazisploitation film about a sadistic and sexually voracious Nazi prison camp commandant.

Honestly, even limiting it to, say, the WiFi network, having a default admin login is not great.

Like, Android isolates apps from the rest of your Android system, but not from touching the rest of the network. If any random app I install on my phone can reflash my WAP’s firmware or something like that, that’s not great.

Why do people keep giving her air time?

Young Turks does progressive political advocacy. If she’s going to do probably-politically-counterproductive stuff like this on air, I suppose I’d probably give her time too.

I think a better question is why Stephen Miller has his wife off doing interviews like this.

EDIT: Man, professionally, she’s even done high-level communications, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Miller

Miller served as a deputy press secretary under U.S. President Donald Trump at the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019. She was the communications director for Vice President Mike Pence from 2020 to 2021 and acted as his press secretary from 2019 to 2020.

Miller was an advisor and spokesperson for the Department of Government Efficiency from January to May 2025, when she departed DOGE to work for Elon Musk in the private sector.

Maybe I’d blame Stephen less and her more.

I think that, TP-Link aside, consumer broadband routers in general have been a security problem.

• They are, unlike most devices, directly Internet-connected. That means that they really do need to be maintained more stringently than a lot of devices, because everyone has some level of access to them.

• People buying them are very value-conscious. Your typical consumer does not want to pay much for their broadband router. Businesses are going to be a lot more willing to put money into their firewall and/or pay for ongoing support. I think that you are going to have a hard time finding a market with consumers willing to pay for ongoing support for their consumer broadband router.

• Partly because home users are very value-conscious, any such provider of router updates might try to make money by data-mining activity. If users are wary of this, they are going to be even more unlikely to want to accept updates.

• Home users probably don’t have any sort of computer inventory management system, tracking support for and replacing devices that fall out of support.

• People buying them often are not incredibly able to assess or aware of security implications.

• They can trivially see all Internet traffic in-and-out. They don’t need to ARP-poison caches or anything to try to see what devices on the network are doing.

My impression is that there has been some movement from ISPs away from bring-your-own-device service, just because those ISPs don’t want to deal with compromised devices on their network.

I think I finally get it. These simps are so spineless that it’s just easier if Trump decides everything.

I’m pretty sure, from the context, that Landry chose to mention Donald Trump specifically because he expected it to be clear that Trump would not be an appropriate choice to make the decision. Trump was used to highlight how strongly Landry was opposed to letting Woodward do it.

Maybe more importantly, he made it known who would not be involved in selecting the next Tigers coach: Scott Woodward.

“Hell, I’d let Donald Trump pick [the next coach] before I let [Woodward] do it,” said the empassioned governor.

They changed to article. Edited out all references to diseases.

So crappy journalism.

I’m starting to think that link aggregators like the Threadiverse software and Reddit should keep a log of headlines, or at least headlines that they see, because it’s a real issue for discussion on those sites. Like, maybe check and update at a geometrically-increasing interval (at submission time, after 1 hour, after 2 hours, after 4 hours, after 8 hours, etc).

Also in the news:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5579661-trump-approval-rating-drop-economist-yougov/

Trump’s approval hits new low for second term: Poll

President Trump’s overall job approval reached a new second-term low in the latest Economist/YouGov survey.

The poll, conducted this past weekend, shows Trump 19 points underwater, with 39 percent of Americans approving of his handling of the presidency and 58 percent disapproving.

YouGov pollsters noted the president’s negative-19 net approval is also lower than all but one poll during his first term.

Among 18- to 29-year-olds in the latest survey, Trump was nearly 55 points underwater — with only 20 percent approving of the way Trump handles his job and 75 percent disapproving.

That represents a stark reversal from February, when Trump enjoyed a positive net approval among young adults of more than 8 points — with 50 percent approving and 42 percent disapproving.

He’s definitely speed-running the unpopularity numbers.

According to the article, the lab is sending someone to pick them up. I feel like the problem with having a shipment of herpes monkeys and COVID-19 monkeys breaking open is that in short order, you’re probably going to have a shipment of monkeys who all have both COVID-19 and herpes, which probably isn’t what the lab wanted.

I’m now imagining RFK, Jr. managing a major national health disaster.

According to authorities, the Rhesus monkeys were on their way to a testing facility in Florida

“Florida Man’s Outbreak Monkeys on the Rampage in Mississippi”

The university says that if the monkeys leave the wreck site, they must be shot.

The only counter to a troop of aggressive monkeys carrying diseases dangerous to humans is a bunch of Mississippians running around with firearms who have been waiting for this very moment all their lives.

https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/does-adelita-grijalva-need-mike-johnson-swear-her-in/75-22b46d7c-26f8-4d8b-819e-4e2b2c2952ce

PHOENIX — Five weeks after Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva’s landslide victory in a special election, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson continues to stonewall the Tucson Democrat on her swearing-in ceremony.

The U.S. Constitution could offer a workaround: Grijalva might not need Johnson to swear her in. A notary public could do it.

“The Constitution itself simply says you must take an oath to defend the Constitution before you’re sworn in, but it doesn’t say who has to administer that oath,” Thomas Berry, director of constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, said in an interview from Washington, D.C.

“Anyone, even a notary public, is perfectly qualified to administer a binding oath.”

EDIT: Note that while I don’t know whether legislators have always followed the convention for who administers their oath, I’m pretty sure I remember reading that Presidents have been sworn in by other people.

kagis

Ah hah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_president_of_the_United_States

While the Constitution does not mandate that anyone in particular should administer the presidential oath of office, it has been administered by the chief justice beginning with John Adams, except following the death of a sitting president. George Washington was sworn into office during his first inauguration, on April 30, 1789, by Chancellor of New York Robert Livingston.[5][6] William Cranch, chief judge of the U.S. Circuit Court, administered the oath to Millard Fillmore on July 10, 1850, when he became president after the death of Zachary Taylor.[7] Upon being informed of Warren Harding’s death, while visiting his family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president by his father, John Calvin Coolidge Sr., a notary public.[8][9] Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes administered the oath of office to Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One after John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963; the only time a woman has administered the oath of office. Overall, the presidential oath has been administered by 15 chief justices (one of whom—William Howard Taft—was also a former president), one associate justice, four federal judges, two New York state judges, and one notary public.

Yeah, I was remembering LBJ being sworn in. And one was actually sworn in by a notary public, so…

EDIT3: Actually, I think I remember the Coolidge one too. There’s a photograph somewhere of the Air Force One swearing-in, if I recall, and some drawing or something of Coolidge being sworn in by candlelight.

kagis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_inauguration_of_Lyndon_B._Johnson

On Air Force One, 22 November 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office as President of the United States following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy earlier in the day. Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at bottom left holds a dictaphone to record the event. Left to Right: Mac Kilduff, Judge Sarah T. Hughes, Jack Valenti, Albert Thomas, Marie Fehmer (behind Thomas), Lady Bird Johnson, Chief Curry, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Evelyn Lincoln (eyeglasses only visible above LBJ’s shoulder), Homer Thornberry (in shadow, partially obscured by LBJ), Roy Kellerman (partially obscured by Thornberry), Lem Johns (partially obscured by Mrs. Kennedy), Jacqueline Kennedy, Pamela Tunure (behind Brooks), Jack Brooks, Bill Moyers (mostly obscured by Brooks).

I think this is the Coolidge image I remember. Apparently it was an oil lamp, not a candle:

https://www.politico.com/story/2011/08/coolidge-assumes-the-presidency-aug-3-1923-060502

I preferred the old one. Think it was clearer what it referred to for people not familiar with the logo.

COVID-19-driven inflation under Biden. Inflation is very unpopular.

Sure, he’d also pass the geography test.

Obama was out of Illinois and made it to the presidency.

In all fairness, I would bet that the percentage of the population as a whole that engages in strategic voting is very low. It’s not just people on here who are well to the left of the US center complaining that they want a more-left candidate who aren’t doing it.

This is coming from a Californian: I am skeptical, purely in terms of political advantage, that it is a good idea for the Democrats to run a California politician for the presidential slot in 2028 unless they are absolutely extraordinary. Two major potential Democratic 2028 nominees, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, are both out of California.

California is going to vote for the Democratic candidate regardless of who it is. If the Democrats nominate a dead orangutan, California will vote for it. It’s like the Republicans nominating the governor of Utah. (Actually, my understanding is that the current governor of Utah is kind of a decent guy, has been one of the people tamping down on divisiveness, but still, Republicans just aren’t getting a geographic benefit out of nominating him).

I’d be more inclined to think that someone like Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, would do well in the general election. She’s managed to win over voters in the Midwest, which have been swing states in recent elections, which is what the Democrats might actually not win in 2028. Biden was out of Pennsylvania.

IIRC from past reading, predictions are that 2028 will see some states further in the southeast might becoming swing states; it’s not as if the set of swing states are fixed. But I am confident that California will not be among the 2028 swing states short of a cataclysmic political upheaval in the next three years.

All that, of course, is entirely disregarding their policies.

AI models may be developing their own ‘survival drive’, researchers say

You could build something that contains an LLM that does so, but LLMs don’t have goal-directed behavior and don’t learn from use, so they aren’t really in a position to develop much of anything.

Honestly, it’s not very hard to create a very simple AI that does have a primitive survival drive. Just subject any kind of learning system to some sort of natural selection.