NotesItâs the only kind of trade war that Canadian politicians can win against Americans: the kind where prices for Canadians donât go up because of tariffs; where the price of apps, repair, parts, and upgrades goes way down; and where a new, high-tech manufacturing sector pulls in vast sums from customers all over the world.FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notesmost of the people still masking are among the strongest, most self-assured people Iâve known. They are the least concerned about otherâs perceptions, the most concerned about others/our collective well-being, are embodying self-care by protecting their health (and mental health), willing to interrogate their choices and motivations, and are committed to accepting and integrating data and new information - even when they want desperately to be wrong about what they learn. They are also among the most alienated, judged, ignored, harassed, invisibilized, and forgotten. FeedUnfurl
NotesI knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didnât expect, and donât think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be. I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice â but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.Unfurl
NotesWhy does nobody care about anything? The world is full of stuff that could be excellent with just 1% more effort. But people don't care.FeedUnfurl
NotesWarren rejects the concept that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy in isolation.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."
She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."FeedUnfurl
NotesDonald Trump is a dangerous maniac who can barely complete a sentence, and it is lunacy to believe he can even recognize the existentially threatening collective action problems facing our nation, let alone actually solve them.FeedUnfurl
NotesThe company says it will restrict any image, video, or text post that âidentifies a problem that impacts people and is caused by the action or inaction of others,â which is an incredibly wide swath of content. If you speak about these things on Meta, your reach will be limited and your account will be surfaced to fewer people.FeedUnfurl
NotesHighlight:Suddenly, Trump seems less like a guy who has his finger on the pulse of an unseen America and more like a man whose own once-pounding vigor has curdledâand who cannot conceal his rage at a brighter, fresher opponent who embodies all the change that he knows will mark his demise.
Her crowd sizes really are larger, and he cannot accept that.Unfurl
NotesThe main reason to hike top tax rates, in this view, isnât to keep the deficit in check; itâs simply to keep individuals from becoming too wealthy, because inequality is itself toxic for society. Unfurl
NotesAnd she worried that if the Senate does not take Dr. Blaseyâs allegations seriously, it will reaffirm the idea that âboys will be boys,â and teach a dangerous lesson to teenagers today.Unfurl
NotesThe infantile response from the NYPD and the unions that represent it is not worthy of it. It is hardly worthy of a schoolyard bully who can't believe he's finally been called on his bullshit.Unfurl
NotesBut the biggest secret of the Republican triumph surely lies in the discovery that obstructionism bordering on sabotage is a winning political strategy. From Day 1 of the Obama administration, Mr. McConnell and his colleagues have done everything they could to undermine effective policy, in particular blocking every effort to do the obvious thing â boost infrastructure spending â in a time of low interest rates and high unemployment.Unfurl
NotesAlthough the organizers have threatened to kick things up a notch if the government doesn't address their concerns, all you have to do is take a look at their "Manual of Disobedience" to see why things have been mostly smooth.FeedUnfurl
NotesThe co-founder's high-profile exit from the maker of Firefox wasn't just about his gay marriage stance. Insiders describe a revered technologist with management issues -- and a reluctant board.FeedUnfurl
NotesSo hereâs my plea to the âdecencyâ policeâSarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Gov. Bobby Jindal and their many parrots: Defend speech you donât agree with. Stand up for the right to an opinion you donât share.FeedEmbedUnfurl
Notes You are setting up teachers to take the blame for all of this. You have portrayed us as greedy, lazy money-draining public servants that do nothing. I invite you to come do my job for one week Governor Christie. I invite you to come see my students, see how little they really have during the school day as they are being forced to keep learning for a single snapshot of their educational worth. For that one end-all, be-all test, the NJASK. The one that the future of my job and my life is now based upon. FeedUnfurl
NotesDrakeâs story puts the lie to the notion that internal channels serve as anything other than a trap for unwitting whistleblowers. What is so revealing is that if Snowden had gone through internal channels, the outcome would have been worse: the United States would have charged him with espionage and heâd be in jail for, in essence, spying on his own country on behalf of the public. It should not require martyrdom for a free citizen to challenge government abuses of power. It should not require choosing oneâs conscience over oneâs career, citizenship, or freedom.Unfurl
NotesA refusal to even to sit at a bargaining table is another way of refusing to govern. The nationâs founders created two chambers for a reason, but Republicans, in their blind fury to harm the least fortunate, are forgetting even those fundamental national values. Unfurl
Notes "It seems to me that people in Finland are more secure and less anxious than Americans because there is a threshold below which they won't fall," said Linda Cook, a political scientist at Brown University who has studied European welfare states. "Even if they face unemployment or illness, Finns will have some payments from the state, public health care and education." FeedUnfurl
NotesA recording of a private meeting between the Senate GOP leader and campaign aides reveals how far they were willing to go to defeat the actor/activist.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesWhat I cannot quite wrap my mind around is how the mind which wrote such a beautiful meditation on empathy can be the same one that argues for the violent overthrow of the American government because of its failure to ban gay marriage and to outlaw homosexuality generally.Unfurl
NotesIn the past two decades, the AR-15 has evolved into an open, modular gun platform thatâs infinitely hackable and accessorizable. With only a few simple tools and no gunsmithing expertise, an AR-15 can be heavily modified, or even assembled from scratch, from widely available parts to suit the fancy and fantasy of each individual user. In this respect, the AR-15 is the worldâs first âmakerâ gun, and this is why its appeal extends well beyond the military enthusiasts that many anti-gun types presume make up its core demographic.Unfurl
NotesWhat if the private pursuit of profit wasâfor a long timeâproximate to improving the lot of humans but not identical to it? What if capitalism has gone feral, and started making moves that are obviously insane, but also inevitable? Unfurl
NotesLittle Brother is burgeoning, too. More and more people are carrying cameras with them. Typically, these come in the form of mobile phones, but wearable cameras are growing in numbers and shrinking in size. Not too many years from now, lots of people will be wearing âheads-upâ camera/display combos (such as Google Glass) that capture videos of pretty much everything they see. Unless we turn from the course we've set as a society, we'll soon arrive at a day when every square foot of every subway stationâof just about every place, reallyâis being recorded at all times, and probably from multiple views. And all of these devices, capturing higher and higher resolution images plus audio, will be connected at high speeds to digital networks.Unfurl
Notes Now Republicans find themselves boxed in. With taxes scheduled to rise on Jan. 1 in the absence of an agreement, they canât play their usual game of just saying no to tax increases and pretending that they have a deficit reduction plan. And the president, by refusing to help them out by proposing G.O.P.-friendly spending cuts, has deprived them of political cover. If Republicans really want to slash popular programs, they will have to propose those cuts themselves. Unfurl
NotesI keep hearing how this strike forced them to liquidate. How we should just take it and be glad to have a job. What an unpatriotic view point. The reason these jobs provided me with a middle class opportunity is because people like my father in law and his father fought for my Union rights. I received that pay and those benefits because previous Union members fought for them. I won't sell them, or my coworkers, out.Unfurl
NotesIt is delicious to watch a young conservative apply conservative principles to demolish oligopolistic claptrap, even if those industries finance the campaigns of the members of Congress who pay his salary. It is sad to watch his bosses -- who never tire of railing against political correctness - place fealty to corporate elites above the spirit of intellectual inquiry. Unfurl
NotesPerhaps the most striking response to the Hostess news, in that sense, was the tweet from conservative John Nolte, who wrote âHostess strikers had pension. PENSIONS! What is this 1962?â It was once taken for granted that an industrial worker who worked for a big company for many years would get a solid middle-class lifestyle, and would be taken care of in retirement. Today, that concept seems to many like a relic. Just as Wonder Bread does.FeedUnfurl
Notes But although McCain had time to speak on the Senate floor and on television about the lack of information provided to Congress about the attack, he didn't attend the classified briefing for senators Wednesday given to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which he is a member. Unfurl
NotesAmericans didn't intend to elect a Republican majority to the House of Representatives. Thanks to GOP-engineered redistricting, they did.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThe lesson here is simple. At a deep ideological level, Republicans believe that federal bureaucracies are inherently inept, so when Republicans occupy the White House they have no interest in making the federal bureaucracy work. And it doesn't. Democrats, by contrast, take government services seriously and appoint people whose job is to make sure the federal bureaucracy does work. And it does.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThird, I see birth as a firm dividing line because until then the fetus inhabits a womanâs body. A womanâs body is private property â itâs hers. She shouldnât be forced to let another creature live in it. Once that other creature is out of her body, thatâs when it gets rights. Until then, any rights it gets would be taking away from the womanâs rights over her own body. And to me, that matters.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesThe reality is that so-called pro-life movement is not about saving babies. Itâs about regulating sex. Thatâs why they oppose birth control. Thatâs why they want to ban abortion even though doing so will simply drive women to have dangerous back alley abortions. Thatâs why they want to penalize women who take public assistance and then dare to have sex, leaving an exemption for those who become pregnant from rape. Itâs not about babies. If it were about babies, they would be making access to birth control widespread and free and creating a comprehensive social safety net so that no woman finds herself with a pregnancy she canât afford. They would be raising money for research on why half of all zygotes fail to implant and working to prevent miscarriages. Itâs not about babies. Itâs about controlling women. Itâs about making sure they have consequences for having unapproved sex.FeedEmbedUnfurl
NotesWell, if we had any honest national political journalism left in this country, "John Galt" would be fiery wreck that ended Paul Ryan's public career, and the iceberg that finally sank Willard Romney's presidential dreams once and for all.FeedUnfurl
NotesOur results show that the average temperature of the earthâs land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.Unfurl
NotesIt really is that simple. The nation's roads, bridges, electrical grid, water systems, national parksâthe whole infrastructureâis crumbling. At the same time unemployment remains persistently high. Put people to work fixing the stuff that's broken. It's not rocket science.
It would be that simple, except for a Republican Party that won't do what's best for the country, won't attempt to fix these things because fixing these things might help reelect President Obama and Democrats in Congress. Furthermore, making the country work proves that government works, and Republicans want none of that.Unfurl
NotesâThere are a couple of things that you canât really dispute,â Nye explained to CNNâs Carol Costello. âSixteen of the last 17 years have been the hottest years on record. Thatâs just how it is.â
âI appreciate that we want to show two sides of the stories â thereâs a tradition in journalism that goes back quite a ways, I guess â but the two sides arenât equal here. You have tens of thousands of scientists who are very concerned and you have a few people who are in business of equating or drawing attention to the idea that uncertainty is the same as doubt. When you have a plus or minus percentage, thatâs not the same thing as not believing the whole thing at all.âUnfurl
NotesThe Democrats are challenging that win-win story of American capitalism. Their contention is that the U.S. economy is failing the middle class. They argue that those at the top need to contribute âa little moreâ to help rebuild the American middle. Even more threateningly, they point out, as in their critique of Bain Capital, that some of the business strategies that have enriched the elite have actually hollowed out the middle.Unfurl
Notes Michigan House Republicans prohibited state Rep. Lisa Brown (D) from speaking on the floor after she ended a speech against a bill restricting abortions by referencing her female anatomy, the Detroit News reports.Unfurl
NotesThe last couple of days, there's been a fair amount of blogosphere angst over Coding Horror's "Please Don't Learn to Code." Ironically, the best argument for learning to code appeared this morning, when it turned out that Judge William Alsup in the Google case could program, and learned Java in the course of the trial, and wasn't going for Oracle's claim that a short range-checking function was days of work. Alsup recognized immediately (and says he wrote the function hundreds of times during the course of the trial) that it's just a few minutes work for a competent programmer.FeedUnfurl
NotesOne reason the unemployment rate may have remained persistently high: The sharp cuts in state and local government spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and the layoffs those cuts wrought.Unfurl
Aaron Ross Powell | Writer and Podcaster
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