People may remember Tai Lopez from his "Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here" YouTube ad, subject of several parodies such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GIwTG8V-Ko
I think he was one of the first to realize that you could take regular YouTube videos that are several minutes long and turn them into skippable pre-roll ads, and some people would watch the whole thing. I know nothing else about him and I hope to keep it that way.
Biden gave 80 full pardons. The other 4165 were commutations.
The difference is that a full pardon effectively negates the conviction (or prevents conviction if granted to someone not yet convicted). Any rights lost due to the felony conviction such as voting rights, firearm rights, holding some public offices, and such are restored.
A commutation merely reduces the sentence, sometimes to time already served so that the person is immediately released, and sometimes to a lesser sentence but not on that will result in earlier release (e.g., a President could commute a death sentence to life without parole). It does not restore any rights that were lost due to the felony conviction.
Most of Biden's commutations were for non-violent drug possession, with a large fraction of those being for marijuana. Many of these were for cases that nowadays would not even have been prosecuted.
Compare to Trump. Almost 1600 of his were full pardons for January 6 people. Only 14 of them were commutations, which were to time served.
Biden and Obama pardons were done by setting criteria (non-violent drug offenders mainly who got caught up in three strikes nonsense, serving huge sentences) and applying the criteria broadly. Trump is targeting specific folks who are contributing to his cause. Tai Lopez has very little chance under a Democratic presidency, per hard data. He has a decent chance under Trump if he can buy enough trump coin and say some flattering things about Trump, per hard data.
> Didn't Biden pardon his own son for Gun and tax evasion charges? In fact, James and Frank Biden got them too
He pardoned several family members. It should be noted that Hunter is the only one who had actually been charged or convicted of a crime.
The others were all preemptive with the stated reason being that Trump was promising to go after the families of basically anyone he saw as an enemy.
Biden had earlier said he would not pardon Hunter, but that was before Trump won. He pardoned Hunter because he didn't think Hunter would be treated the same as the other prisoners in federal prison with Trump in charge. If Harris had won it is very likely Hunter would not have been pardoned and would have went to prison for the maybe 3 years that most experts predict he would have received.
Considering that a decade from now if you tell someone that the origin of the phrase "trumped up charges" comes from a 300+ year old meaning of the verb "trump" related to an Old French word for deceive and a Middle English word for fabricate they will probably will think you are making it up and the "trump" in the phrase means Donald Trump, it is hard to argue that Biden was wrong.
Right, in the grand tradition of Bill Clinton pardoning Marc Rich in exchange for large donations. I'm not attempting to defend Trump's pardons but abuse of that power is clearly a persistent bipartisan problem.
If those numbers are accurate, Trump is already averaging more than Biden per year. That could obviously fluctuate but he's on course to double Biden's Pardons/Month numbers
I wonder if his prominent online persona made him more likely to be targeted. People at the SEC are very likely to be in the age range who is familiar with him.
Not to suggest he is or is not guilty but that being loud often makes others watch you more closely.
Circa 2010, I met Tai and he wanted some work done for his portfolio of dating websites he had back then. (He had a whole bunch of them targeted to various ethnic groups, religious subgroups and so on.)
It became apparent that (a) he had a huge pile of messy PHP, WordPress-based sites, and then (b) expressed contempt for paying $35 an hour for programmers since his opinion was you could get programmers in the third world for $5 an hour. He negotiated me down to $25. I ended up declining.
Like many people who crow about how they’re a “millionaire”, when it came time to show the money, he was suddenly really concerned about very small amounts of money here and there.
Lately he has been promoting “AI automation agency” course.
He says anyone can label themselves “AI automation expert” and charge thousands of dollars for it, then just use vibe coding tools to do the job or outsource it.
I don't know Tai Lopez and he seems like an asshole based on his public persona but I think you'd be surprised by the number of (especially first generation) millionaires who will negotiate over pennies. The easiest way to have a lot of money is to earn a lot and not spend a lot.
A study found that most American millionaires lived in modest homes and drove used American cars. They made their wealth by being concerned about relatively small amounts of money because it adds up. When we think "millionaire" we think of the dream that is sold to us by Hollywood—mansions, fancy cars, endless parties. But entertainers are paid in the millions and then encouraged to live like billionaires, so that they're desperate enough to continue being slaves to the entertainment-industrial complex to keep the gravy train going.
But $35/hr was a pittance for a programmer even in 2010. Tai Lopez is a gigantic tool for cheaping out on that.
I'd be interested to know what proportion of these millionnaires' net worth came from inheritances. That's the real dream Hollywood never tells you about.
Probably not as much as you probably think. Most "millionaires" today are just boomers from working class backgrounds who bought a modest property back in the 70s and now 50 years later all their illiquid assets, primarily their property, can be added up to one or two million.
I think the point is someone who has 500k after a lifetime of putting money in a 401k along with 600k in home equity is not the same as someone who lives in a mansion and has a few exotic cars.
Tai posed as the latter, so suddenly caring about $35 an hour is very suspicious.
Well actors have a very strong union in the US, they used to be paid peanuts. When you have that kind of labor power, your security comes from the union, not your stored wealth, so they can afford to spend because they know they will be well compensated for their work.
There is no security. The actors' unions set minimum wages for union productions. But they don't guarantee work to anyone, and many productions are non-union. Every experienced actor is aware that they might never get another role.
Acting is notorious for being a bad career choice, and the small fraction of actors who become wealthy through acting do so because of the structure of the market for entertainment (namely, fame sells tickets, so the employers of entertainers all want to hire already-famous entertainers, making it very difficult for unknown entertainers to become famous, which is necessary to start earning good money), not because of anything to do with any union.
Since ancient times, acting and prostitution have been considered closely related industries and I think this probably never changed. The actors who "make it big" are the ones that win favors with producers one way or another, probably in many cases by sating their perverted desires. Some of this was revealed in #MeToo cases, like all the Weinstein stuff.
People may remember Tai Lopez from his "Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here" YouTube ad, subject of several parodies such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GIwTG8V-Ko
I think he was one of the first to realize that you could take regular YouTube videos that are several minutes long and turn them into skippable pre-roll ads, and some people would watch the whole thing. I know nothing else about him and I hope to keep it that way.
Tai Lopez became so famous he was immortalized in the cute rogue-like "Going Under" where he is spoofed as the "Hauntrepreneur"[0]
https://going-under.fandom.com/wiki/Hauntrepreneur
he legitatmely innovated/invented a whole type of youtube channel/influencer. clearly was never a moral person, doesnt mean he wasnt influential
Not because you are next to a Lamborghini it means it's yours.
And many houses featured in videos are content houses... (lavish rentals for influencers to have a luxury background for their videos)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_house
https://blog.giggster.com/how-to-rent-a-tiktok-collab-house-...
I've had that video in my saved videos playlist for so long now.
I only clicked into this thread hoping someone would link exactly that video.
Previous context?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29607989 ("RadioShack – Bringing Cryptocurrency to the Mainstream (radioshack.com)" (2021))
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31958998 ("RadioShack reinvents itself as a crypto platform with wild tweets (washingtonpost.com)" (2022))
(Amusing to count five different HN'ers calling it a "scam", and two more calling it a "Ponzi").
[delayed]
He needs to make a donation to the administration asap if he’s going to get this dropped.
He's small fry now. Maybe if he had a popular podcast things would be different.
Yep. Pay the Dongeld.
Too little too late
Biden pardoned 4,245 people, in one term. Trump 1,700 so far, into his second term. Obama 1,927 in 2 terms. GW Bush 200 in 2 terms.
Tai should wait for the next Democrat presidency, per hard data.
Biden gave 80 full pardons. The other 4165 were commutations.
The difference is that a full pardon effectively negates the conviction (or prevents conviction if granted to someone not yet convicted). Any rights lost due to the felony conviction such as voting rights, firearm rights, holding some public offices, and such are restored.
A commutation merely reduces the sentence, sometimes to time already served so that the person is immediately released, and sometimes to a lesser sentence but not on that will result in earlier release (e.g., a President could commute a death sentence to life without parole). It does not restore any rights that were lost due to the felony conviction.
Most of Biden's commutations were for non-violent drug possession, with a large fraction of those being for marijuana. Many of these were for cases that nowadays would not even have been prosecuted.
Compare to Trump. Almost 1600 of his were full pardons for January 6 people. Only 14 of them were commutations, which were to time served.
Biden and Obama pardons were done by setting criteria (non-violent drug offenders mainly who got caught up in three strikes nonsense, serving huge sentences) and applying the criteria broadly. Trump is targeting specific folks who are contributing to his cause. Tai Lopez has very little chance under a Democratic presidency, per hard data. He has a decent chance under Trump if he can buy enough trump coin and say some flattering things about Trump, per hard data.
Didn't Biden pardon his own son for Gun and tax evasion charges? In fact, James and Frank Biden got them too.
Obama pardoned his close advisor who lied to the FBI
Clinton pardoned Marc Rich - fugitive who's exwife donated lots of money to the clinton Presidential Library or something.
Grant pardoned his own private secretary
Truman pardoned his own yokel local union mobsters from KC
etc
> Didn't Biden pardon his own son for Gun and tax evasion charges? In fact, James and Frank Biden got them too
He pardoned several family members. It should be noted that Hunter is the only one who had actually been charged or convicted of a crime.
The others were all preemptive with the stated reason being that Trump was promising to go after the families of basically anyone he saw as an enemy.
Biden had earlier said he would not pardon Hunter, but that was before Trump won. He pardoned Hunter because he didn't think Hunter would be treated the same as the other prisoners in federal prison with Trump in charge. If Harris had won it is very likely Hunter would not have been pardoned and would have went to prison for the maybe 3 years that most experts predict he would have received.
Considering that a decade from now if you tell someone that the origin of the phrase "trumped up charges" comes from a 300+ year old meaning of the verb "trump" related to an Old French word for deceive and a Middle English word for fabricate they will probably will think you are making it up and the "trump" in the phrase means Donald Trump, it is hard to argue that Biden was wrong.
The issue isn’t the absolute number of pardons — they aren’t doled out randomly — it is the reason for the pardons.
It appears Trump gives pardons to allies, and one straight forward way to become his ally is send him money.
Right, in the grand tradition of Bill Clinton pardoning Marc Rich in exchange for large donations. I'm not attempting to defend Trump's pardons but abuse of that power is clearly a persistent bipartisan problem.
One example from 25 years ago hardly demonstrates a "persistent bipartisan" pattern.
If those numbers are accurate, Trump is already averaging more than Biden per year. That could obviously fluctuate but he's on course to double Biden's Pardons/Month numbers
I wonder if his prominent online persona made him more likely to be targeted. People at the SEC are very likely to be in the age range who is familiar with him.
Not to suggest he is or is not guilty but that being loud often makes others watch you more closely.
I guess he didn't have enough knowledge
Circa 2010, I met Tai and he wanted some work done for his portfolio of dating websites he had back then. (He had a whole bunch of them targeted to various ethnic groups, religious subgroups and so on.)
It became apparent that (a) he had a huge pile of messy PHP, WordPress-based sites, and then (b) expressed contempt for paying $35 an hour for programmers since his opinion was you could get programmers in the third world for $5 an hour. He negotiated me down to $25. I ended up declining.
Like many people who crow about how they’re a “millionaire”, when it came time to show the money, he was suddenly really concerned about very small amounts of money here and there.
Lately he has been promoting “AI automation agency” course.
He says anyone can label themselves “AI automation expert” and charge thousands of dollars for it, then just use vibe coding tools to do the job or outsource it.
He also says he built an entire app using replit.
Unironically the gap between his AI automation agency and VC backed "Enterprise Automation" startups is smaller than you think..
I don't know Tai Lopez and he seems like an asshole based on his public persona but I think you'd be surprised by the number of (especially first generation) millionaires who will negotiate over pennies. The easiest way to have a lot of money is to earn a lot and not spend a lot.
A study found that most American millionaires lived in modest homes and drove used American cars. They made their wealth by being concerned about relatively small amounts of money because it adds up. When we think "millionaire" we think of the dream that is sold to us by Hollywood—mansions, fancy cars, endless parties. But entertainers are paid in the millions and then encouraged to live like billionaires, so that they're desperate enough to continue being slaves to the entertainment-industrial complex to keep the gravy train going.
But $35/hr was a pittance for a programmer even in 2010. Tai Lopez is a gigantic tool for cheaping out on that.
"Millionaire" is now practically synonymous with "professional nearing retirement". About 1 in 15 Americans have a net worth of over $1m.
A million dollars isn’t cool anymore, it’s like $500k a few years ago.
It starts to be cool when you have like $10 million dollars. We need a term for people who have 8 figures now that 7 is so common.
Rich?
I'd be interested to know what proportion of these millionnaires' net worth came from inheritances. That's the real dream Hollywood never tells you about.
Probably not as much as you probably think. Most "millionaires" today are just boomers from working class backgrounds who bought a modest property back in the 70s and now 50 years later all their illiquid assets, primarily their property, can be added up to one or two million.
Those assets are typically not counted when counting millionaires, IIRC.
Basically, your net worth is total asset minus your primary residence.
I think the point is someone who has 500k after a lifetime of putting money in a 401k along with 600k in home equity is not the same as someone who lives in a mansion and has a few exotic cars.
Tai posed as the latter, so suddenly caring about $35 an hour is very suspicious.
Well actors have a very strong union in the US, they used to be paid peanuts. When you have that kind of labor power, your security comes from the union, not your stored wealth, so they can afford to spend because they know they will be well compensated for their work.
There is no security. The actors' unions set minimum wages for union productions. But they don't guarantee work to anyone, and many productions are non-union. Every experienced actor is aware that they might never get another role.
Acting is notorious for being a bad career choice, and the small fraction of actors who become wealthy through acting do so because of the structure of the market for entertainment (namely, fame sells tickets, so the employers of entertainers all want to hire already-famous entertainers, making it very difficult for unknown entertainers to become famous, which is necessary to start earning good money), not because of anything to do with any union.
Since ancient times, acting and prostitution have been considered closely related industries and I think this probably never changed. The actors who "make it big" are the ones that win favors with producers one way or another, probably in many cases by sating their perverted desires. Some of this was revealed in #MeToo cases, like all the Weinstein stuff.
he is going to have plenty of time to finally read those books and acquire knowledge in prison
unfortunately the SEC can't do that - will have to wait on the DOJ
Three REV executives were charged:
> Taino Lopez and Alexander Mehr, co-founders of Retail Ecommerce Ventures LLC (“REV”), and its Chief Operating Officer, Maya Burkenroad
I'm here in my cell
If they had just thought to get in the Trump cabinet they could have gotten away with it.
Here in my garage
knowledge