Black tea: Yorkshire Gold (by Taylor’s of Harrowgate). Other: Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time tea

You might be able to 2FA via text or phone call. That’s what I do. It’s bad enough I have to BYOD for a laptop. I don’t want MS BS on my personal phone as well

I wouldn’t know about biggest surprise, but I didn’t see the Red Hot Chili Peppers replacing guitar with keyboard. I really liked what John Frusciante and his predecessors had brought to the group. I went from a deep Peppers fan to not listening to anything post Stadium Arcadium

Great article. Nice to see an economist doing such important work. I don’t really understand finances. I snipped the parts of the article that helped me understand the finding/headling. There’s a great chart in the article of taxation differences since the 1960s too - staggering! Plutocracy in action!

Published in The New York Times with the headline “It’s Time to Tax the Billionaires,” Zucman’s analysis notes that billionaires pay so little in taxes relative to their vast fortunes because they “live off their wealth”—mostly in the form of stock holdings—rather than wages and salaries.

Stock gains aren’t currently taxed in the U.S. until the underlying asset is sold, leaving billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk—a pair frequently competing to be the single richest man on the planet—with very little taxable income.

“But they can still make eye-popping purchases by borrowing against their assets,” Zucman noted. “Mr. Musk, for example, used his shares in Tesla as collateral to rustle up around $13 billion in tax-free loans to put toward his acquisition of Twitter.”

deleted by creator

Insofar as I understand it, privatisation is the very purpose of neoliberalism

I respect your disagreement.

In general, AI requires a lot of data to build useful models. Warfare would be a unique opportunity to build those models. And the goal is not just spending money, but developing the most effective instruments of war (compared to say the US’ adversaries) to continue militaristic, profit, and geopolitical dominance

It really is nuts that there is a poor occupied land half full of children that has lacked access to adequate potable water, sufficient food, hygiene, healthcare, etc for over half a year.

Then there is a rich country next to them committing colonial genocide with AI-powered weapons that we know are designed to accept about 20 civilian deaths for 1 rank and file member of Hamas death and 100 civilian deaths for a higher up.

And then you have one of the richest countries in the world giving $26 billion dollars in “aid” to top up Israel’s genocide fund.

It seems clear to me that the genocide in Palestine is largely being used as testing and funding grounds for US, Israel, and their other cronies (like google perhaps) to accelerate development of more advanced weaponry. They’re not just indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinian people/children. They’re (deliberately) profiting off that suffering.

For a related editorial: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-house-26-billion-to-israel

We do live in plutocracies - I agree with you there.

I don’t think the problem with the average person is gullibility per se, I think it’s 1) how much strain/overhwhelm they face make a nice life for themselves (with the accelerated cost of living, lack of safety nets, impending climate change) and how marginalized rational concern about the climate change and growing wealth inequality is compared to how loudly trumpeted the lies used to maintain the status quo are that serve the billionaires.

For many, (and this example is a big issue in my country of Canada at the moment) it’s easier to direct anger towards a tax meant to curb climate change than it is to face reality and anger at larger and more influential factors like neoliberalism.

Anger lends itself to simplified reasoning. Billionaires and conservatives know this very well. If we want to open the average person’s eyes we need to be very strategic in our messaging, otherwise it won’t stick as well as the earworm crap the right uses.

As soon as wildfires start up in Canada again this season, the rise of ‘clean fossil fuel’ ads (i.e, propaganda saying “nothing to be concerned about, keep consuming”) will happen again. It is still possible to hear about Greta Thurnberg on the news or online - to use an example. That type of content might only be available on the dark web in a couple decades

The greatest barrier to reducing climate change is the ultra wealth financing denialism of climate change and the tight grip they have on what the average person thinks is real through immense lobbying, owning media outlets and controlling what they publish, and unlimited disinformation campaigns. Maybe it’s frowned upon to talk about those things at such a rich university, but if you’re not talking about those things are you really helping the situation or are you maintaining the delusional status quo of “we can get to it when we get to it”

I’m increasingly confused by how many people seem to not understand that.

Me too, and I’m Canadian and don’t know much about US politics. Are there sources out there (e.g., US news, social media campaigns, messaging from actual Democrats) spreading the idea that an uncommitted vote in the primary means voting for trump in the election?

https://web.archive.org/web/20240229202618/https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/no-legitimate-business-purpose-trump-sued-by-truth-social-business-partners/ar-BB1j7hc6 :

Former President Donald Trump is now being accused in a lawsuit of intentionally devaluing the media company he co-owns with two associates who met him as contestants on his reality TV show “The Apprentice.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20240229202348/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/29/truth-social-lawsuit-trump-media-founders/ :

The case could complicate a long-delayed bid by Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of the social network Truth Social, to merge with a special purpose acquisition company called Digital World Acquisition and become a publicly traded company.

That merger deal, which could value Trump’s stake in the company at more than $3 billion, would offer the former president a financial lifeline at a time when he is facing more than $454 million in penalties from a civil fraud judgment this month in New York.

I’m a little out of the loop, but I’d guess they’re trying to build precedent such that if an IVF embryo has ‘fetal rights’ or whatever they term it, then the same will apply to pregnancy at the earliest stages. And they can say: No abortions 1 day after pregnancy or something like that.

The attack on reproductive rights is unconscionable

I think for me this thing is a symbol of where we are and where we’re heading in terms of not being able to look away from ads

As a former guitar player my first question was what are the two pedals that create “Lake Effect” lol, then I read the description. That is such a beautiful pedal board!! Looks like there’s room for another 1, possibly 2, pedals. And I like the idea that a band’s name is not just on the bass drum lol

That was my best guess too but I didn’t want to assume. You said it really well

Thanks! Why do you share it?

Thank you, that’s a nice example that a nation can learn from its history and do better going forward. South Africa is on the moral right side in 2024, while most powerful countries pretend there isn’t a genocide going on by the apartheid state of Israel. My home country of Canada, which has its own history of genocide (Indigenous peoples), has something to learn from South Africa, the Non-Aligned Movement, and other nations who are bravely standing up against the perpetrators of war crimes and their accomplices

End the genocide - Free Palestine!

It’s totally not genocide though /s