Week 21
Maybe Dems, that repulsive cesspool of Clintonite centrism, will simply go bankrupt and cease to exist. That would be one solution for the crisis in American politics. Not only do they suck, they use (pretty effective) lawfare for any alternatives to exist. If they disappear, one block towards progressive politics goes away.
NYT: "Many Democrats were alarmed at the poor financial state of the party. On Wednesday, the D.N.C.’s latest financial report showed it had $3 million more in debts than cash on hand...
NYT: "The Democratic National Committee on Thursday released a nearly 200-page draft of an internal autopsy of what went wrong in the 2024 campaign.. The document itself was widely mocked.. [its] conclusions are limited, often veering into political clichés and hard-to-follow explanations. 'Democrats must organize everywhere to win anywhere through Majority Party Strategy focused on everywhere, cohesively, strategically, and decisively,' concludes one section."
The Lever: "It’s primary season, and powerful political forces within the Democratic Party are stomping into local races, trying to pick winners and losers.. we’re diving into The Lever’s exclusive investigation that exposed billionaires and party operatives pulling strings behind the scenes... David Sirota sits down with two Democratic candidates, Randy Villegas from California and Matt Dunlap from Maine, who are running in hotly contested races that are likely to decide control of Congress — and who are now facing opposition from House Democrats’ big-money machine."
#Ukraine 05/07 - 05/22
Politico: "The $5.02 ghost: Trump’s team faces a symbolic blow to one of its favorite economic talking points.. Trump officials are 'absolutely, totally freaked' about the political symbolism of breaking Biden's high gas price record."
"@FluentInFinance@mastodon.social
Jeff Bezos says half of Americans should pay $0 in federal income taxes"
"@docpop@mastodon.social
ArXiv announces a ban on AI content and the responses are hilarious.
You expect us to actually read the papers we cite?!
yes, lol!"
404 Media: "ArXiv to Ban Researchers for a Year if They Submit AI Slop"
"Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU [Switzerland is not part of the EU] — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland."
"@pikesley@mastodon.me.uk
Once again woken up mad that we have made a world where the number one priority is that the money is happy"
Liu, Virtue Hoarders: "Let’s not forget that in the 1980s, Bill Clinton made national waves by courageously 'standing up' to teachers’ unions, which became a part of the centrist politicians’ playbook to curry favor with conservatives. As governor of Arkansas, Clinton listened to think tank elites and proposed raising educational standards without raising school budgets... The Heritage Foundation had found that Arkansas citizens’ lawsuits to maintain per-student funding levels at $5,400 was a sign of public profligacy that needed to be tamed. Bill Clinton agreed. Inciting moral panic about the state of public education has been a political expedient for liberals and conservatives alike. Bill Clinton’s unique style was able to combine post-1968 institutionalized identity politics with a fervor for austerity and budget cutting that made the wealthiest Democratic Party donors as happy as their Republican counterparts."
Reps are a hierarchical party.. it's tough to go against the big guy and survive. Plus all that Zio money, it can tilt the balance.
USA Today: "As Trump's approval ratings drop, how does he keep ousting GOP rivals?.. Call it the political dichotomy of the 47th president: Millions of the voters who helped elect him in 2024 now disapprove of the job he's doing in office, a warning of weakness. But the guts of his base remain unshaken, the most solid of any president in decades, a source of strength."
"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
A published author used Claude to write a book about AI making things up and then is surprised when his book contains made up things."
NYT: "Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I."
People are pretty worked up on this one... Next admin might look into it.
BBC: "Throughout US President Donald Trump's second term in office, traders have been betting millions of dollars just before he makes major announcements. The BBC has examined trade volume data on several financial markets and matched them to some of the president's most significant market-moving statements. It found a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.
Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, whereby bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public."
FT: "Donald Trump and sons granted ‘forever’ immunity from existing tax audits"
"@nutjob4life@fosstodon.org
I wish audiobooks had transcripts"
"@GeePawHill@mastodon.social
It's too bad that LLM grifters sought to shine their reputation by calling it 'AI'.
It didn't shine their reputation.
It ruined the world's opinion of the fascinating & legitimate science -- and remarkably creative uses -- of actual artificial intelligence."
#ThinkScholar #India #Thorium
WaPo: "[2025] Viral essay [by Mike Green] says $140000 should be the new poverty line"
Green made waves recently arguing federal gov calculates the poverty line all wrong.
Green used to work for Focker afaik, now he's bashing Zero to One (bunch of delusional dipshit observations somehow collected in a book).
Mike Green: "[2025/11] A simple tweet from a 'right-wing influencer' noting that 1950s working-class men could afford houses, families, and dignity triggered a thousand nearly identical mocking responses. Not debate—choreographed ridicule.
The crime? Remembering that Americans once owned things...
The Mamdani Trigger.. The timing is not accidental. In November 2025, Zohran Mamdani wins the election in NYC, running on material politics—public housing, rent control, actual affordability—rather than the vibes-based identity liberalism the Democratic establishment has used for decades to avoid economic issues. A socialist wins in NYC one year into Trump’s presidency. This terrifies everyone who relies on the pretense that scarcity is natural. That Zero to One is a template."
PIB: "India has marked a major milestone in its nuclear energy programme. The indigenously designed and built Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu successfully attained its first criticality on 6th April 2026, marking the initiation of a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This PFBR is a 500 MWe (MegaWatt electrical) reactor built by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (BHAVINI) at the Kalpakkam Nuclear Complex.
With this achievement, India has officially entered the second stage of its three-stage nuclear power programme, a vision first conceived by Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the architect of India's nuclear programme. The milestone carries substantial global significance. Once fully operational, India will become only the second country in the world after Russia to operate a commercial fast breeder reactor...
Fast Breeder Reactors are a cornerstone of India’s long-term nuclear strategy.. Through transmutation, Thorium-232 will be converted into Uranium-233, which will fuel the third stage of India’s nuclear power programme."
#NickelHydrogen
"@FrenchHistory@mastodon.social
Life expectancy: 84 France, 73 Mississippi
Food insecurity: 10% (F) 24%(M)
Homelessness per 100k: 8(F) 35(M)
Without healthcare: 0(F) 10% (M)
Debt per capita: $56k(F) $62k(M)
Homicide rate per 100k: 1.5 (F) 20(M)
If you measure a society by how wealthy the rich are then the poorest US state is richer than France. If you measure society by how most people live it's clear which is richer" #WapoPropaganda
Ellis Bates: "Georgia’s transformation into the next Virginia is happening at lightning speed. The state is trending leftward at an unprecedented pace. In 2024, Georgia voted less than a point to the right of the nation. Not long ago, it was 4 to 5 points to the right."
According to the map, IMEC (and IDR) go near the strait.
"The troubles at Hormuz prove how essential IMEC is"
David Edgerton: "It is a common complaint, from Wes Streeting to the left, that Starmer has no vision, no project. But that is quite misleading. Starmer had an exceptionally strong vision for the future of the country, and a profoundly blinkered one. Starmer's party abhors the left and wishes for a future without it. He is continuing the New Labour project: to create a new conservative and conformist party. That is, a party with minimal member influence, funded by private donors, committed to maintaining a status quo, and offering remunerative post-political careers for its apparatchiks. It is a party deeply committed to the alliance with the United States, and the one country with which the US has a special relationship, Israel."
A BRICS currency is not available yet. Until then countries still need to play in the existing system. Currently 80% of all international trade is done in euros and dollars. The other currencies are small potatoes compared to that.
Clearly dollars are used for both oil and gold imports, but oil costs more now, creating a dollar "leakage". To plug the leak one could reduce oil imports, or something else, like gold.
Reuters: "India caps duty-free gold imports.. to curb demand.. [India] earlier this week raised import tariffs on gold and silver to 15% from 6% as part of efforts to reduce overseas purchases of the metals and ease pressure on foreign exchange reserves from higher oil prices."
Andersen, Evil Geniuses: [T]he reengineering was helped along because the masterminds of the economic right brilliantly used the madly proliferating nostalgia. By dressing up their mean new rich-get-richer system in old-time patriotic drag. By portraying low taxes on the rich and unregulated business and weak unions and a weak federal government as the only ways back to some kind of rugged, frontiersy, stronger, better America. And by choosing as their front man a winsome 1950s actor in a cowboy hat, the very embodiment of a certain flavor of American nostalgia...
Of course, Ronald Reagan didn’t cheerfully announce in 1980 that if Americans elected him, private profit and market values would override all other American values; that as the economy grew nobody but the well-to-do would share in the additional bounty; that many millions of middle-class jobs and careers would vanish, along with fixed private pensions and reliable healthcare; that a college degree would simultaneously become unaffordable and almost essential to earning a good income; that enforcement of antimonopoly laws would end...
Rather, when we were promised in 1980 the wonderful old-fashioned life of Bedford Falls, we didn’t pay close enough attention to the fine print and possible downsides, and forty years later here we are in Pottersville instead, living in the world actually realized by Reaganism, our political economy remade by big business and the wealthy to maximize the wealth and power of big business and the well-to-do at the expense of everyone else. We were hoodwinked, and we hoodwinked ourselves."
Two interesting takes on the American frontier... And let's also not forget, when neocon, neolibs wanted to usher in unfettered capitalism, they used frontier nostalgia to do it.
Vivek Chibber: "[T]here's another reason [why social democracy has been historically weak in US].. the US conquered more and more of the western regions as it grew, which means that working-class people who were unhappy with their situation were just able to go out and get some land for themselves, instead of having to fight for through a union and through then a political party. [T]his was.. 'the frontier'. The American frontier kept expanding"
"[2015] marks the 125th anniversary of both the birth of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the U.S. Census Bureau’s declaration that the American frontier had closed... The events are related, for Eisenhower’s understanding of the frontier’s demise shaped his ideas on the proper role of government and, as a result, led him to affirm New Deal social welfare programs..
Turner’s Ideas Influence Two Future Presidents.. An important corollary to the Turner thesis was the belief that the free land of the frontier had provided a 'safety valve' of economic relief to eastern factory workers thrown from their jobs by recession or depression. The safety valve must also be recreated by the state in the form of direct government relief to those unemployed by the dislocations of an industrialized economy."