Week 21

Doctorow: "[A]n unwillingness to tax creates all kinds of evils. For starters, if a state can’t fund its core programs out of tax, it has to borrow. And when it borrows, it borrows from the rich. So instead of taxation — which weakens the fortunes and political influence of the wealthy — we get bonds, through which the wealthy are paid interest out of the funds extracted from those who lack the political clout to escape taxation"

Richardson: "[T]he center of the [megabill].. is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations. Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of 117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill.

Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts. Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be 'the biggest cut in the program’s history,' Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about 490 billion from 2027 through 2034.

Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: 'Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.'"

Crazy thought - Europe wants current Ukraine admin's ass kicked, once and for all, to rid themselves of them and the pesky US influence in the region. They are fine with extended Russian influence in Ukraine, so they help prolonging current state of conflict by asking Ukraine "not to give up"

Zero-sum is strategically stupid for US.. it doesn't benefit them. But it benefits certain someone(s).. Conflict is in their interest. Who?

You could make the case Russia had an hand in disrupting Sudan too... But the West turns everything into such a zero-sum game that everyone needs to mobilize to the hilt just to survive. It leads "the other side" to be more agressive.

There is a nice little potential RU transit block from Medi to the Atlantic via Libya-Niger-Mali/Burkino Faso-Guinea.

African Support for Russia and China, map is now dynamic, HTML based,

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"@existentialcomics@mastodon.social

Capitalism didn't give us the internet... Large-scale cooperation [via open source approaches], open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don't work because fifteen ads cover the screen"

Politico: "RFK Jr.’s big report is coming. The GOP’s farm and food allies are sweating."

TDB: "Lawmaker Says Trump Is ‘Literally Yelling’ at Republicans to Make Them Fall in Line.. A Democratic lawmaker said the tense standoff over Donald Trump’s signature bill has given him flashbacks to how the president used to whip Republican lawmakers into submission.In a Wednesday night interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Philadelphia Rep. Brendan Boyle said he has witnessed 'time and again' how House Republicans would indicate that they are voting against a bill, until 'suddenly they get a tap on the shoulder.. They’re dragged out of the House floor and back into the Republican members’ cloak room, and they’re handed a cell phone, and it’s Donald Trump literally yelling at them and cursing at them,' he said"

Politico: "[Megabill] reflects the current tension in the GOP over keeping old guard Republicans, business interests and Wall Street donors happy even as Trump challenges other elements of party orthodoxy... The domestic policy package under consideration in the House contains a handful of.. concessions like increases to the child tax credit, the establishment of $1,000 'MAGA' savings accounts for kids and carveouts for taxes on tips that Trump promised during the campaign"

Sometimes I wish US were an empire. If it were, that concept is familiar to the rest of the world, they could handle things better. The current scheme is far from it, a mixture of McDonalds like franchise-ism, chaos instigation and disinterest, short interventionism followed by regret. US businesses screw the world while its bureucratic structures sit idly by doing nothing or enable the destruction.

What happened three weeks ago, where the graph started to turn? Was it the cabinet farewell of e-douche?

"Britain, France and Canada threaten Israel with Concrete Sanctions if Gaza War is not Halted"

Al Jazeera: "Israel kills 93 in Gaza, shots fired towards diplomats in West Bank"

NYT: "China’s Fighter Jets and Missiles Get a Boost From the India-Pakistan Clash'

This will go on for another few months, per earlier estimate. I don't expect any breakthroughs before Sep.

NYT: "Ukrainians Brace for a Longer War as Trump Backs Off Cease-Fire Call.. President Trump appears to be stepping back from trying to end the war in Ukraine. Many in the country see little choice but to battle on"

Politico: "Wealthy gain, low-income people lose from GOP megabill, analysis finds.. The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is already fueling Democratic accusations that the legislation is a giveaway to the rich."

Zuckerberg is Thy Me.. Mrs Ryan Reynolds, bitch is TM.

See the Sarah Wynn-Williams book story has Zuck wanting to be "gently mobbed". That would be a form of getting affirming attention. But Zuck is doing ok overall. I've seen worse.

TM is prone to tit-for-tat cycles. A constant seeking of "to be treated fairly" gnaws on them whatever that means in their brains...

Notice how hard Netan fought to get back in the game after his 2021 loss. TM's sense of self can get tied to a position, a profession (where they are noticed), a loss like that is like a mental death sentence of sorts, their identity is erased in their minds once the position is lost.

Netanyahoo is Thy Me - they have identity issues, their sense of self is weak. They rely on constant affirmation from outside to feel seperate. Odd ducks.. Since being "seen", noticed helps them feel their identity, they can do most inane stupid shit to stand out.

Michael Douglas is Control Freak #Profile. Now I see why the story of The Game would be compelling to him, in the movie bunch of stuff is done to his character, he 'loses control'.. A CF would like that subconsiously, they need it in a way.

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Cancer results from repressed anger. JB had a lot to be angry about, sure. Gotta let go Biden.

The Verge: "[2021] Apple cares about privacy, unless you work at Apple.. [There is] a growing tension inside Apple, where some employees say the company isn’t doing enough to protect their personal privacy and, at times, actively seeks to invade it for security reasons. Employees have been asked to install software builds on their phones to test out new features prior to launch — only to find the builds expose their personal messages. Others have found that when testing new products like Apple’s Face ID, images are recorded every time they open their phones"

Spanish PM: "Israel Should Be Eliminated from Eurovision.. Sanchez called Israel a 'genocidal state' during his speech in the Spanish parliament on Wednesday, stating that Madrid 'does not do business' with such a country"

H2 Central: "Japan backs hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles with major subsidies"

:) That wld be hilarious.. From the guy who got the Tony Blair dress down (remember the scene, TB starts with 'there are three groups of people...' and just bashes away) to this.

The Independent: "Nigel Farage: 'I will be Tory leader by 2026'"

Boris J gave an interview to GBN, sitting next to UK flag some took that to mean he will run for PM again. Why not? Trump and him were out after covid (BJ held on little more but, anyway), well DJT is back, maybe he can too? Current con leader is a lightweight, there is a giant hole in the right which Farage is too happy to fill. That cld be opportunity for BJ.

Good news.. Rejoin EU at some point

NYT: "UK and EU Strike Post-Brexit ‘Reset’ Deal"

TAC: "Cut Israel Off—for Its Own Sake"

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Politico: "Netanyahu blasts Starmer, Macron and Carney over Israel sanctions threat"

Al-Monitor: "France 'determined' to recognise Palestinian state: foreign minister"

NYT: "Israel Wavers as Far Right and Military Disagree on Gaza Strategy"

TASS: "Talks on resolving conflict in Gaza have not led anywhere yet — Qatari PM.. pointed out that there was a fundamental gap between the two parties"

Masse: "[T]he quantum exists because aether cannot support nonlinear elasticity. Since the maximum amplitude of a wave propagating in aether is fixed, the frequency of the wave must correspond to (be proportional to) the energy $\mathcal{E}$... Physical properties of aether then explain why higher energy light waves take the form of quanta and always have the same distinct sinusoidal amplitude for a given frequency. A photon is therefore a monochromatic, finite-length, constant-amplitude, transverse sinusoidal wave train in aether having a single frequency $v$ and quantized energy $\mathcal{E}$ given by $\mathcal{E} = hv$. All photons have the same distinct constant amplitude. Each photon is characterized, therefore, not by its amplitude, but by its frequency"

If the basis quant computation (QM) is false there is no inherent parallelization to be exploited, QC folk are barking up the wrong tree.

In a foundational sense, QC being bunk strengthens the case of deterministic foundation of QM, Robert P Masse's work comes to mind. There is no wave/particle duality, light is a wave, a real, physical one which travels through tightly-packed aether particles.

"@lonestartallboi.bsky.social

20 years ago we were suing teenagers for millions of dollars because they were torrenting a single Metallica album, and now billionaires are demanding the free right to every work in history, so that they can resell it.

The law only ever serves capital"

The Guardian: "'Impossible' to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says"

Zero Day has some great lines.. One billionaire mogul rapacious capitalist type investigated for fraud, says on TV:

"It was the great Benjamin Franklin who said those who would give up essential freedom to purchase temporary safety deserve neither freedom nor safety"..

Later De Niro's character (former prez, leads a gov investigation) meets this person,

"By the way, the Franklin quote? I think you got it wrong.. It's 'liberty' we shouldn't sacrifice for safety. Not 'freedom.'"

Mogul: What's the difference?

RDN: "'Freedom' is what allows people like you to do whatever you want. 'Liberty' is what protects the rest of us from people like you"

Prez Traore of B. Faso is good friends with Russia. Traore is like an earlier president, Thomas Sankara, a legend in Africa. And of course BF is attacked by Al Qaeda likely bcz their angle does not match with US MIC corporate interests, whose tools must be funding, egging them on to harm Burkino Faso. It's easy to do, flood the region w/ cash, jihadis will follow. This is the Syria playbook.

AJ: "Al-Qaeda affiliate claims 200 soldiers killed in Burkina Faso attack"

"Leading Quantum Computing Firm Accused of Fraud" #DWave

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Same task for article below, one of the answers was "Ukraine | Attacked | Oleshky". Oleshky?? That place isn't even mentioned in the article.

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Asked Gemini to summarize news item below in an Actor | Attacked | Actor format. One of the answers was "Houthi rebels | Attacked | US MQ-9 drone". I had specifically asked it to identify countries, group of people, organizations as actors. LLMs lack categorizations, generalization ability.

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Sad

Masse, Quantum Mechanics: "Following the discovery of the Compton effect.. light was considered to have both wave and particle characteristics, and light quanta became known as photons . The paradox of the wave-particle duality of light thus arose in physics. To make matters even worse, the corpuscular quantum of radiation is defined in terms of frequency, a wave attribute. Or, as was noted by Jammer (1966), 'a hypothesis supported by incontestable experimental evidence, became physically significant only by the use of its own negation'"

"Violent clashes between SDF [Kurds] and ISIS militants in the town of Abu Hamam, Deir ez-zor countryside"

Informed Comment: "Libyan Gov’t Decries Fake News about Taking 1 mn. Palestinian Refugees"

Zero Day, watchable, not bad

MCU's string of fuck ups might have finally caught up with it too.. You can keep releasing average work only for so long before the audience catches up with you.

People who went seem to like it (I still did not get around to it myself).. Story was probably ok, cinematog, fine.. But it probably wasn't grandiose, a spectacle enough to generate the word-of-mouth for the attention to spread. The characters are mostly unknown, most from the Black Widow movie that flopped, some tiny woman not cut for the big screen (the Seinfeld person... basically TV, zero big screen presence), and a Captain America copy after another copy flopped. TB has a chubbier less attractive Widow. The movie seems to tread old territory - a visit to the Stark Tower? Nothing says derivative like a visit to an old, well-known set.

TB will likely flop

Freaking Ant-Man had better opening

u.boxofficemojo("Ant-Man Quantumania")

Out[1]: 
{'Domestic Opening': '$106,109,650',
 'Domestic': '$214,504,909',
 'International': '$261,566,271',
 'Worldwide Total': '$476,071,180'}

Opening was not good..

u.boxofficemojo("Thunderbolts")

Out[1]: 
{'Domestic Opening': '$74,300,608',
 'Domestic': '$143,166,643',
 'International': '$143,556,738',
 'Worldwide Total': '$286,723,381'}

The Lever: "New financial disclosures reveal that new Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano won an indefinite tax break on an estimated $484 million windfall."

The American Conservative: "The Istanbul Talks Were a Success.. the Russia–Ukraine meeting was a promising step toward an end to the war."

#Ukraine 05/11 - 05/18

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Billy Graham: "[O]ur work was never meant to become the center of our lives. That place belongs only to God, and when we allow our work to dominate and control us, then it has become an idol to us — and that is wrong. Someone who brags about working seventy or eighty hours (or more) a week probably thinks he is the master of his job — but in reality he has become its slave. In addition, because his life is so wrapped up in work, his identity or sense of self-worth — that is, his understanding of his value or significance as a person — often comes to depend on his ability to work. Unfortunately our materialistic society only reinforces this view. But God says you are greater than your work, and your work is only a part of His plan for you."