$DJT, Truth Social, and bribery

Many people, including myself, have been talking about how Truth Social’s stock is a bribery system, existing to launder bribes given to Donald Trump.

($DJT stock hit the a level so low on Wednesday, by the way, that literally no one who has ever bought it in open trading is above water. This doesn’t actually matter for this purpose, and might even make it a little easier for lower-tier multi-billionaires and smaller sovereign wealth funds.)

There are multiple ways to go use $DJT for bribery; we’re going to talk about one that can be fairly public while maintaining a superficial outer layer of legitimacy. It also maintains the illusion of a wall between Trump and those who want to bribe him.

It’s a simple game for three players: Trump (as a larger entity, meaning Trump and his inner circle), a trusted intermediary, and the persons and/or organisation who want something in exchange for a bribe, who we will refer to as Some Fucker.

Some Fucker calls in an intermediary – there are plenty of options, it doesn’t matter specifically who – whose job is to ‘lobby’ Trump for an opportunity to exercise or acquire ‘influence,’ on a superficially-legal level. They may even register as a lobbyist, it doesn’t matter; the intermediary and Mr. Trump’s inner circle negotiate, obliquely, with Mr. Trump himself involved as little as can be managed, but with direct influence on the numbers.

If Trump and Some Fucker’s terms can be reconciled and a deal can be made, Mr. Trump issues a sell order of $DJT stock at a price $X. This price will be clearly outside whatever the current trading range of the stock might be.

For those who don’t know, this is a perfectly normal trading action, something done routinely by anyone who actively trades stocks. It lets you cash out a position when you’ve reached at particular profit, without having to micromanage anything. It raises no red flags.

Once Some Fucker sees the conditional sell order, they then start driving up the stock price through a combination of purchases – some direct, some options – and churn. They maintain that price long enough for Mr. Trump’s sell order to go through, plus a little after that to make it look like a natural rally.

At that point, Mr. Trump has his money, and the bribe has been – indirectly – tendered.

This kind of bribery is useful for both sides, as Some Fucker will end up with some overpriced stock, but overpriced stock which still has value as long as the scam continues, and which may even be worthwhile to hold onto until the next group does the same thing. Depending upon how it goes, Some Fucker may well be able to cash out at minimal overall expense – if not a small profit.

This bribery system creates a sustaining price for $DJT stock independent of its theoretical value (Truth Social), based on its true value (bribery). In turn, this allows Mr. Trump – and those who bribed him already by investing in his farce of a social media network originally – to cash out over time without crashing the trading price. Once he and his first-round-funder bribes are out completely – once he’s sold all his stock – he doesn’t have to care anymore, its only value will be Truth Social, and it can go to zero.

This – like most things Trump does – is a scam. Like many scams, it is explicitly illegal. It is not a stock market hack; it is illegal market manipulation. This is why Mr. Trump has to be president and to have had his way with Project 2025’s personalisation of the bureaucracy. That way, no one will be allowed to investigate it, or even question it.

Preventing this is, obviously, critical – particularly with that broad presidential immunity ruling, which his stacked court will expand as much as is necessary to cover him. If you want that ruling narrowed, you want Harris in office immediately, because wow will they start hacking it back if she’s in charge.

But if he’s in office, the dictatorial sky will be the limit.

Explain this to your family and friends. Truth Social should be at zero; it has absolutely no worth as a social media site, no users to speak of, and not even its own code base. (It runs a somewhat modified and old version of the Mastodon server, under the hood.) It’s without value.

But as a bribery conduit? It can work wonders, and have all kinds of value.

And that’s why it exists.

Let’s drive this thing to zero, folks.

60 days remain.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

what was this bike route?

This thing – this sign and the route it indicates – is NOT on Seattle’s official Bike Map.

And it’s old. It’s pretty dang old.

The sign is on Burke-Gilman, on the left side, as you bike south. The picture’s from Riviara because Google Maps is annoying that way, but at least with this you see the trail itself.

Is this a leftover sign from a dead route that just never got removed? What is – or maybe more accurately was – this route?

If you go down any of the streets in that direction, you don’t find any followup signs. At least, I can’t find any. Nothing on Lakeshore, which would need it the most and right away, if nothing else to tell you go to north or south, even if south is obvious. No sign of one on NE 103rd, 100th, or 97th.

I’ve noticed it for ages biking by, and never bothered trying to track it down until I got into building bike maps (Greater Northshore shoutout) and it’s not even in my primary coverage area, but now I’m curious and interested and it just goes…

…nowhere.

And now I’m wondering, where even could it have gone? 103rd and 100th both stop at Sand Point Way which is your first opportunity to continue south, and you don’t want to be biking on that. 97th goes past tho’, continuing two blocks further, to 45th Ave NE, and that’s a reasonable bike road if you’re okay with hills… but… again, no signs.

You can get back onto Burke-Gilman from 45th NE via … NE 94th and 93rd both, though. But that’s a weird and short “bypass,” and isn’t UW, so I don’t know what’s up with that.

Past there, you’ve got to get off 45th as quickly as you can because there’s nowhere else to go, it spirals down into dead-end side streets with no way out.

Going west on NE 92nd gets you onto 43rd NE gets you to NE 88th to… 35th NE? Is that what they were doing? I hope not, dang, that’s scary riding.

Let’s say they put you on 40th NE off of 88th instead. That’s not terrible. It’d get you back to Burke-Gilman in close-to-UW territory, at one of the more unpleasant crossings. It’s not my favourite idea but it’d work.

Or if you wanted or need to stay off Burke-Gilman you could go right onto to NE 52nd off of 40th Ave, then left onto 39th Ave, then right onto NE 50th. I’ve done this; it doesn’t actually save you time, despite saving you distance. That road would dump you onto Blakeley, which points you straight at UW campus north but doesn’t give you a good way in. Or you could drop down to NE 49th, which gets you to 24th NE and from there Pend Oreille, which does.

No matter how you do it, it’s gonna be a weird goddamn bypass and I don’t understand why you would want to do that.

It is a M Y S T E R Y O F B I K E R O U T E S!

To me, at least.

Somebody has to know what this used to be. Is that person you?

If it is, let me know! I’m really curious, because seriously – what the hell? ٩๏̯͡๏)۶

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.