u/Angeline4PFC

The juxtaposition here is really something.

A small-town Michigan credit union is enforcing what used to be a completely ordinary standard of leadership decorum against behaviour modelled on the President of the United States.

She seems to have absorbed the new norm: trolling is funny, offending the target is the whole point, and "LOL Canada won't like this" is apparently a perfectly normal thing for a CEO to post.

Then she ran headfirst into an institution still operating under the old norm: You're the CEO. What the hell were you thinking?

And that's why I find her insistence that "but the shirts were AI!" so bizarre. Who cares whether the shirts physically existed? You deliberately created the image and posted it because you thought insulting Canadians would be funny.

The credit union wasn't evaluating the authenticity of a sweatshirt. It was evaluating the judgment of the person running the credit union.

The weirdest part is that their response feels almost refreshing now. Twenty years ago we probably would have just shrugged and said, "Well, of course they fired her."

That's how far the baseline has moved.

This video was like listening to GTL wearing a different hat

FAFO

I follow the Canada-US trade war pretty closely, but this interview with economist Justin Wolfers was interesting enough that I kept pausing and rewinding some of the points he was making.

Wolfers is Australian but lives and teaches in Michigan, and I think the interview was partly intended to bring an Australian audience up to speed. As a result, he starts by putting the whole tariff war into context from the beginning, including the actual scale of the various rounds of tariffs, before getting into the much bigger political and long-term economic consequences.

A few quotes that stood out to me:

• On how differently this is being experienced in the two countries: “If you look at Canadian newspapers right now, this is the front page all day every day... they think this is a question of national sovereignty.”
• On Trump making it politically impossible for Carney simply to back down: “He has made it politically impossible for Mark Carney to agree with him... the Canadian people will not forgive him if he blinks.”
• On what leadership and negotiation actually require: “Leadership is allowing other people to say yes to the things you need.”
• On the problem Carney now faces: “Mark Carney's job is to look after the Canadian people. The president's job appears to be to defend his own pride.”
• On Trump's attempt to turn Canada into an enemy: “This is a terrible group to try to "other.” it simply does not resonate with the American people. We are too similar.
• On what happens to future investment if the border can no longer be trusted: “If you're a Canadian auto parts manufacturer, you get to decide where you build your next factory... are you going to build it on the border... or are you going to build it close to a port where you can export to the European auto manufacturers instead?”
• On the difference between tariffs and the Canadian boycott: “The president can negotiate with Mark Carney over tariffs. Along the way, his childish games have led the Canadians to boycott and Mark Carney can't undo that boycott.”
• And probably my favourite: “Every time he has a cool Truth Social post to appeal to his base... I want them to understand he's actually paying for that post with money out of their pocket.”

Switching to MapQuest!

Not an especially interesting mainstream media report, but what I found interesting is that one of the journalists acknowledges that the harm done will take a generation to fix.

>
Regarding the damage to America's global credibility, Basil Smikle states (03:31-03:36): "It's going to take a generation, multiple presidencies to build that back up."

My husband is 2 years younger and will not retire for a few more years. He is continuing to accumulate CPP, and contributing to this RRSP.

How do we account for this?

I encountered this when I started playing, as most of you have. Someone pretends to recruit you to their alliance, gets you onto Discord, claims some version of the game is shutting down, then tries to get you to install Infinity Kingdom and make purchases.

So I finally got curious and went digging.

There is an actual industry recruiting players into Infinity Kingdom.

Infinity Kingdom is made by YOOZOO, and there are CPA affiliate programs that pay third parties for bringing new players into the game. That part is fairly ordinary performance marketing.

But then there are middlemen who appear to have turned those incentives into a business.

A company in Lagos called MoltenGame openly advertises two Infinity Kingdom jobs on its website.

A Game Promoter finds foreign players online, builds rapport through chat, gets them to download and register for Infinity Kingdom, and collects their game ID.

Then there is Game Support. They receive players from the promoters, teach them how to play, team up with them as in-game friends and promote in-game virtual items.

And here's the part that explains a lot.

MoltenGame advertises commissions of ₦2,000 to ₦10,000 for every new player recruited, plus 2% to 7% of that player's in-game top-ups, paid in US dollars.

They provide training, computers and 24/7 internet.

And MoltenGame isn't the only company doing this. I found another Nigerian company advertising specifically for Infinity Kingdom "Game Promoters," paying commission for each valid foreign player recruited and instructing workers to collect the player's Game ID.

So the chain appears to look something like this:

Infinity Kingdom/YOOZOO or publishing partners
→ affiliate networks / marketing intermediaries
→ companies specializing in player recruitment
→ individual promoters
→ find players in other games and on Discord
→ get them into Infinity Kingdom
→ collect their Game ID
→ encourage them to spend
→ collect commissions

This also explains why they don't lose interest once you've downloaded the game. At least one of these companies explicitly pays recruiters a percentage of everything their recruits subsequently spend.

And Infinity Kingdom makes enough money to support this ecosystem.

Sensor Tower currently estimates that Infinity Kingdom generated roughly US$2 million on iOS worldwide last month, plus approximately US$1 million on Android. Those are third-party estimates, but they put the game in the neighbourhood of US$3 million a month in mobile revenue, despite having been released in 2021.

When individual players can potentially be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, paying people in lower-wage countries to spend hours finding and cultivating potential customers starts making economic sense.

What I couldn't find was evidence that YOOZOO itself instructs recruiters to infiltrate other games, pretend to be ordinary players, or tell people their current game is shutting down. I didn't really expect to find a paper trail for that.

My guess is that the uglier tactics developed further down the chain as recruiters and middlemen figured out what produces conversions. Given how widespread and longstanding the complaints are, however, it's hard to believe YOOZOO is unaware of what is happening around its game.

TL;DR: Those friendly strangers trying to lure you onto Discord and into Infinity Kingdom really can be professional recruiters. There are companies that train people to do this, pay them for every player they recruit, and in at least one documented case pay them 2% to 7% of the money those players subsequently spend.

They're trying to make money off you.

What a shocker, I know.

I love a good rant, and Jonathan Pie is a master at it

It keeps making me laugh unexpectedly. Is it just me? Am I easily amused?

I asked for a recipe involving eggplant, and this is what it slipped into the instructions

>Heat a large covered skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and eggplant with a good pinch of salt. Cook 8–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until browned and starting to soften. Eggplant will initially attempt to drink all the oil. Don't indulge it by continually adding more.

Then I mentioned that I had never seen that in a recipe instruction, so it doubled down

>Eggplant needs boundaries. Left unsupervised, it will absorb half a bottle of olive oil and stare at you as though you are the one who has failed to provide adequate lubrication.

>The recipe writers who say “add 1 tablespoon oil and sauté the eggplant until golden” are concealing what happens during minutes 2–6, when the pan is bone dry and the eggplant is sitting there looking thirsty and accusatory.

>Hold the line. It eventually softens and gives some of it back.

So I asked if I should instead use the oven to roast them. It agreed.

>Eggplant in a crowded skillet tends to steam while simultaneously demanding increasingly absurd quantities of oil. The oven gives you browned edges and a creamy interior without the negotiation.

Quit your alliance, park yourself in a corner, spend all your resources, and remove your soldiers from the wall (you'll hit zero eventually)?

Either I missed it, or Wealthsimple still does not support it. With Questrade, I can choose a date range and download every single transaction ever made in a couple of clicks.

I saw that Wealthsimple now allows you to download a CSV, but only in a limited way, per security, and per month.

Did I miss this option?

Update: Found it. It's quite nice actually.

From their newsletter:

With our new account guarantee, if you're ever the victim of fraud or a scam, we’ll reimburse you for all direct losses from unauthorized activity on your account.4 All you need to do to be protected is set up and use a passkey — an extra security step involving your fingerprint or face ID, or a special PIN. And in case the idea of financial security isn't exciting enough to convince you, having a passkey also makes logging in faster.

https://preview.redd.it/ajlkpkrv4afh1.png?width=577&format=png&auto=webp&s=7eb09bd927521a4773bdadc3f8b34b82c572b8df

Small print: ^(4) Terms and conditions apply. Only direct losses from unauthorized transactions in eligible personal Wealthsimple Chequing, Trade, Managed Investing, Crypto, portfolio line of credit and margin accounts will be reimbursed. To be eligible, you must: 1) log in to your account(s) using passkeys, 2) comply with security responsibilities, and 3) report unauthorized activity. Full terms here.

Hey guys, just bought the game. I also played subzero in early access, wow, so long ago now. And Subnautica as well of course.

Is this a friendly place for dumb newbie questions ? I don't want to bother anyone

Kjersti makes a unsettling point in this video. So this California law means that if your employer has a legitimate grudge against you, then all you have to do is hurry to launch a SH suit and now they can't sue you back.

I understand the purpose of the law. It's to protect victims. But this is the sort of thing that will be exploited. The law still has that new plastic smell and it already is being exploited.

This is really well done and interesting. Quite a different take from what we are used to see