Week 48
"@trashpanda@m.alittlenook.net
Many years ago I myself lived off $50 a month. I had assistance (SNAP, medicaid, a roof), so it wasn't 50 + nothing. But ~50 was my taxable income.
I could never sell plasma, because of some medical stuff, but I have friends still routinely sell plasma. This kind of poverty is very real and present. I'm actually really bothered by how much of the tech world (obviously not you three) are so completely shielded from it."
Stanford: "Jessica Compton’s family of four would have no cash income unless she donated plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends. After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn’t seen since the mid-1990s — households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children."
Green: "Our entire safety net is designed to catch people at the very bottom, but it sets a trap for anyone trying to climb out. As income rises from $40,000 to 100,000, benefits disappear faster than wages increase...
- The View from $35,000 (The “Official” Poor)
At this income, the family is struggling, but the state provides a floor. They qualify for Medicaid (free healthcare). They receive SNAP (food stamps). They receive heavy childcare subsidies. Their deficits are real, but capped.
- The Cliff at $45,000 (The Healthcare Trap)
The family earns a $10,000 raise. Good news? No. At this level, the parents lose Medicaid eligibility. Suddenly, they must pay premiums and deductibles.
Income Gain: +$10,000
Expense Increase: +$10,567
Net Result: They are poorer than before. The effective tax on this mobility is over 100%.
- The Cliff at $65,000 (The Childcare Trap)
This is the breaker. The family works harder. They get promoted to $65,000. They are now solidly “Working Class.”
But at roughly this level, childcare subsidies vanish. They must now pay the full market rate for daycare.
Income Gain: +$20,000 (from 45k)
Expense Increase: +$28,000 (jumping from co-pays to full tuition)
Net Result: Total collapse.
When you run the net-income numbers, a family earning $100,000 is effectively in a worse monthly financial position than a family earning 40,000...
The anger isn’t about the goods. It’s about the breach of contract. The American Deal was that Effort ~ Security. Effort brought your Hope strike [a finance term] closer. But.. effort no longer yields security or progress; it brings risk, exhaustion, and debt"
Michael Green: "[E]verything changed between 1963 and 2024. Housing costs exploded. Healthcare became the largest household expense for many families. Employer coverage shrank while deductibles grew. Childcare became a market, and that market became ruinously expensive. College went from affordable to crippling. Transportation costs rose as cities sprawled and public transit withered under government neglect.
The labor model shifted. A second income became mandatory to maintain the standard of living that one income formerly provided. But a second income meant childcare became mandatory, which meant two cars became mandatory. Or maybe you’d simply be 'asking for a lot generationally speaking' because living near your parents helps to defray those childcare costs.. Housing now consumes 35 to 45 percent. Healthcare takes 15 to 25 percent. Childcare, for families with young children, can eat 20 to 40 percent...
[Some can] tell you that comparing 1955 to 2024 is unfair because cars today have airbags, homes have air conditioning, and phones are supercomputers. I will argue that because the quality of the good improved, the real price dropped... [That is] a category error. We are not calculating the price of luxury. We are calculating the price of participation.
To function in 1955 society—to have a job, call a doctor, and be a citizen—you needed a telephone line. That “Participation Ticket” cost $5 a month.
Adjusted for standard inflation, that $5 should be 58 today.
But you cannot run a household in 2024 on a $58 landline. To function today—to factor authenticate your bank account, to answer work emails, to check your child’s school portal (which is now digital-only)—you need a smartphone plan and home broadband.
The cost of that 'Participation Ticket' for a family of four is not $58. It’s 200 a month.
The economists say, “But look at the computing power you get!”
I say, 'Look at the computing power I need!'
The utility I’m buying is 'connection to the economy.' The price of that utility didn’t just keep pace with inflation; it tripled relative to it."
Message from the corporate complex: "Remember US leaving Afghanistan, we are pinning this shooting on that leave.. If you leave Ukraine, we can arrange similar mayhem around that too".
BBC: "Suspect who shot National Guard soldiers in DC worked with CIA in Afghanistan"
NYT: "Venezuela’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner Pushes False Claims About Maduro.. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado faces criticism that she is exaggerating threats posed by Venezuela’s leader to justify U.S. force to overthrow him."
That assumes there are many high-paying jobs outside big cities... Inequality tilts the economy towards the rich, so best paying jobs will be in and around areas servicing them.. Alas those areas are precisely those rich "vibrant" cities, to use a Thomas Frank term, regions with a lot of economic activity, concentration. Workers can't simply pack up and move to Buttfuckee Idaho and expect to earn a good salary right away.
"If you cannot own a home in a city move elsewhere"
Russia envoy's call is leaked, clearly instigated by the MIC, the surface state who are trying to sabotage a deal so Ukraine "profit center" does not disappear on them, and Blue-no-Matter-Who Democrat still stares at all this like a gaping fish. How f-ing blind do you have to be to still be stuck on your "bad Putin" position and completely miss what is going on?
If Dems are still hurting from 2016, well, actually they should be thankful to Trump for beating Hillary, a centrist pro-corporate Democrat (and worse, a Clinton). Whatever they accuse Trump for doing since then, I guarantee it with another Clinton in office, things would be ten times worse.
Dem shitlib says that as if that is automatically a bad thing.. If the conditions on the ground require that, then that is what you do.
Why are you so hawkish on Russia? That is a mental pathalogy you need to overcome. It's not good for you.
"The 28-point Ukraine-Russia peace plan was a pro-Putin plan"
BBC: "Trump defends Witkoff after leak appears to show envoy coaching Russias"
One benefit of USDT could be that it being dollar based / guaranteed without being potentially restricted w/ US dollar gatekeeping. They could cut you out of the SWIFT, but via USDT it might be easier to get by restrictions, esp. for small transactions.
NYT: "Auto Industry Was Warned For Years of Poisoning, Sickness From Car Batteries.. Lead is an essential, but toxic, element of car batteries. As demand rose, the auto industry increased its use of recycled lead. But many recycling factories around the world were pumping toxic smoke into communities...
An investigation by The New York Times and The Examination showed that African factories have poisoned people while recycling lead to be sold to American companies. Children near one cluster of factories outside Lagos, Nigeria, had lead in their blood at levels that could cause lifelong brain damage, according to testing commissioned as part of the investigation."
NYT: "‘Imperial Israel’ in the New Middle East.. Despite a cease-fire with Hezbollah, almost daily strikes demonstrate an emboldened Israel"
BBC: "The [UK] Army has paused the use of its Ajax armoured vehicles after soldiers became unwell from noise and vibration during a war game exercise... About 30 soldiers became ill when training to use the armoured fighting vehicles over the weekend, and an investigation has been launched "out of an abundance of caution", the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said."
CNBC: "China industrial profits drop 5.5% in October, worst performance in five months"
"@campuscodi@mastodon.social
A cross-party group of lawmakers will urge the European Parliament to ditch internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous software in favor of a European alternative, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO"
I am keeping tabs... You played that grinder role Holywood tailored for you movie after movie, you are in doldrums my friend.
Materialists, Chris Evans played a "Bernie voter". OK.. I count that as a democratic socialist win, does it make up for playing anti-government-bestest-hero angle he promoted for the MCU? Not yet but one more good role, then he can be in the good books.
"Campbell Soup exec caught on secret recording slamming product, people who buy it Campbell’s VP rants about ‘f---ing poor people,’ chicken from ‘3-D printer,’ former employee says"
Pettis suggests "a new Bretton-Woods", that indirectly means Bancor bcz in the last Bretton-Woods Keynes suggested the scheme, he was ignored. In a new one maybe all countries will accept it. Surplus countries can choose to object but if deficit countries band together they will not have any other choice as it is impossible to have surpluses wout someone else being in deficit.
YV had a good platform during those debt negotiations, esp. in Germany.. I was living there at the time, everyone was talking about YV. Pettis is a former trader, that can help. I've always been more hopeful that a new econ approach, when it arises, would arrive in the form of a financial trader rather than an economist... We can scoff at traders, and mostly deservedly so, but at least they test their knowledge of the economy with trades all the time, and their narrative is sharper.
Yanis Varoufuckis did talk about similar concepts as Michael Pettis, surpluses in one country causing deficit in other countries, but he did not elaborate on the transmission mechanisms, or why surpluses in said countries were triggered in the first place (labor "reforms" in Germany, inequality). YV's main issue at the time (2015) was Greece's debt of course, but as the main negotiator he could have made a better case, using more econ theory. He had the spotlight, but IMO the opportunity was wasted.
Pettis is from one of the PIGS countries too (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain), but his reasoning comes through clearer. You need to be able to rattle off those accounting identities, three types of demand: investment, consumption, trade surplus, bam. Money pours into US than something has to happen in the investment-savings relationship, either investment goes up or saving must come down, because the gap must go up, etc.. Ra-ta-ta-ta. You need to outline the shit clearly. Arguments must map to something mathematical, computations that can be verified via data.
"Michael Burry Vs. Nvidia Heats Up: 'Big Short' Investor Stands By His Analysis Even As AI Chip Giant Privately Denies 'Enron-Like Fraud' Allegations"
Barron's: "Nvidia Says It’s Not Enron in Private Memo Refuting Accounting Questions"
"@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social
We were likely going to be able to release experimental Pixel 10 support very soon and it's getting disrupted. The attacks on our team with ongoing libel and harassment have escalated, raids on our chat rooms have escalated and more. It's rough right now and support is appreciated."
"@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
Everybody go read "Termination Shock" by Neal Stephenson, because apparently that whole scenario is actually about to start happening"
Politico: "The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming.. A 25-person startup is developing technology to block the sun and turn down the planet’s thermostat.. Humanity had gained the power to turn down the sun, and barely anyone on the planet even knew. What’s more, that untested power was now effectively for sale... What if it was the only option left?"
#Pelicans #LLM
"@Pepijn@mastodon.online
Now here's a fun thing many people don't know about #Holland. Due to the ever rising popularity of #cycling, gas stations all over the country have been converted into bicycle repair and rental shops."
Internet search engines are similarly consensus machines, highly cited sites get higher ranking. Higly cited sites where people chat would also be the a treasure trove of content for LLM training. See the Reddit deal here.
Consensus can make LLMs suitable for education, boilerplate code generation. For research, hard-core development the results will be spotty.. I stretched these things with tasks on various scientific, coding goals, and I find there are major gaps in their thinking. Can be useful, but not without guidance - serious guidance.
Zeke Hausfather: "LLMs are at their core consensus machines. We ask LLMs a question and they give us an answer. But what they’re really doing is picking from a distribution of possible answers that they learned from the sum total of digitized human knowledge: the internet, books, papers, code, etc. Call that distribution the model’s “consensus.” It isn’t a vote of experts; it’s what the data and later training steps make most likely given your prompt."
#Thorium
"@davill@x.com
In a recent hotfire our [Blue Origin] BE-3U engine reached more than 211,500 lbf thrust. That makes BE-3U the highest thrust-to-weight hydrogen engine in history, at more than 90! Here is the video of that test for your enjoyment."
"@LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social
Currently, everything indicates that during our lifetime, quantum computers will never break the encryption systems in use."
#Ukraine - 11/16 - 11/24
The American Conservative: "The Latest Step in the Establishment Campaign to Stop Elbridge Colby... Senate Republicans are working overtime to isolate and undermine the Department of Defense undersecretary... Senate Republicans in particular have struggled with a loss of relevancy in the Trump vortex, but when it comes to the issue of war and maintaining business as usual, especially military force projection and the war in Ukraine, they suddenly find their collective backbone. Nothing gets the old predator instincts moving like a realist treading on their marked territory."
F24: "Israeli army chief announces dismissal of generals over October 7 attack.. Israel's military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir late Sunday announced the dismissal of three generals and disciplinary action against several senior officers over their failure to prevent the October 2023 attacks by Hamas."
It's interesting.. Pettis favors capital controls (but his topmost choice is bancor -as is mine-).
We see what happened here... The petulant child, terrorist state Israel kept bothering Syria, finally Syria invited Russia to control the border between it and Israel. Russia will likely get something out of this, continued base access and perhaps more.
The Cradle: "Russia to re-establish nine military positions in Syria's Quneitra.. The Cradle's sources say the new Russian positions are being decided directly with Damascus"
"Russia proposes return to southern Syria to separate Syrian, Israeli forces... Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that a Russian military delegation’s visit to southern Syria the previous day was part of a broader Russian proposal to return to the region and oversee a separation of Syrian and Israeli forces."
Let's not confuse terms... It is, should be about the right and left, the "playful" fight, divisions, tug-of-war should not be about Reps vs Dems, it should be about ideology. The existing two corporate hawkish parties are mirror images of each other on issues that matter, they have no division on ideology.
"It is not about right or left"
It is bizarre how hawkish Dem shitlib types are on Russia. They are straight up hawks, neocon right wing style... How did these people end up representing "the left"?
CNBC: "European defense stocks slide as U.S., Ukraine make progress on peace plan"
HTW: "Zelensky can 'fight his little heart out' says Trump as US pitches Ukraine peace plan"
Good take (I did some edits to take out irrelevant parts bcz @yoitsshaan was targeting another partly misguided commentary).
"@yoitsshaan
'Rent is too high!'
Corporate landlords bought entire neighborhoods and jacked prices so high you need a co-signer just to breathe.
'Groceries cost too much!'
Billion-dollar food conglomerates are price-gouging you while bragging about record profits.
'There aren’t enough jobs!'
CEOs laid off Americans to pump stock prices and walked away with bonuses the size of small countries’ budgets...
'Traffic is terrible!'
That is what happens when everyone drives a giant truck to buy a single iced coffee. Consumerism is wonderful, isn’t it?
'Healthcare is too expensive!'
A private insurance cartel did that. Your elected officials built that system brick by brick...
'I can’t afford a car!'
Automakers slapped luxury prices on basic models because they know you will blame anything except the corporations squeezing you.
'I can’t afford a house!'
Hedge funds bought entire zip codes with cash offers...
Many problems.
A simple reality..
Your government let billionaires strip this country for parts and then told you to blame the people with the least power. They know who’s actually bleeding you dry, but calling out corporate greed would upset their donors"
TAC: "Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her decision to resign from Congress effective January 5, 2026... Greene, a former Trump ally turned critic, said she 'just never fit' in a Washington D.C. controlled by corporate interests and characterized by a divisive political landscape."
Alternatives are a good thing.. Elastic solid version of aether theory shares from recent posts collated below..
"AI" was supposed to help with climate calamity.. Now it looks like it will cause the opposite effect - massive energy needed for its hardware causes more fossil fuel use and there is excessive water consumption.
In US one could convert to Bahaism, there aren't that many Bahais in the country, so no matter the label, that person and his children would not be culturally Bahai... But via accepting Bahaism, one forces himself to act a certain way, it is a concious choice. Cultural act is more like a reflex.
Religious affiliation is a political choice actually, it effects concious decisions. Culture is in a different realm... I am talking about that split-second response to events around you that arises from the subconcious, a massively strong aspect of humans. Those mechanisms are wired at a very early age, and next to impossible to change.
"If one takes even religious values via culture (Catholi-Protestant synthesis in US) why does it matter to be in one religion over another?"
The Spencer Lee Band - The Wolf #music
"@GeofCox@climatejustice.social
All those naive Labour right-wingers that kept saying "It's winning that matters - You can’t change things unless you win" didn't grasp the obvious lesson Farage should already have taught them: that winning Westminster elections doesn't in fact matter that much. He brought about the most significant change to British polity and economics - brexit - without ever winning power... The lesson is that moving the overton window your way is far more important than winning elections."
True Rate of Unemployment, published by the Ludwig Institute is at 24.7%, it was at 23.5% in January this year.
Target down, Walmart up. The reason could be because Walmart caters more to the poor, and since people are getting poorer, the split between Target and Walmart widens.
cols = ["WMT","TGT"]
u.two_plot(u.get_yahoo_tickers(2020,cols), cols[0], cols[1])
If LLMs can displace jobs, they will be in the realm of "bullshit jobs" as described by Graeber. The work of senior white collar people, 10x programmers, high-level hi-tech ppl seems to be safe. That should not be surprising, the so-called AI, neural net LLM tech still doesn't truly think.
#AlJazeera
"Are we in the middle of an escalating global arms race?"