Florida has a few bros.

People in Georgia and Washington State apparently don’t have friends.

The dick-shooting has been real. Canada massively depends on the US, and US tariffs against Canada are devastating, but look at the CAD vs USD graph. Yes, Canada is taking damage, but the US is doing so much damage to itself that the Canadian dollar keeps climbing.

No, not tariffs. Tariffs would make Europeans pay more.

Hit the US where it hurts: intellectual property. The US forced the rest of the world to adopt its absurd intellectual property protections as a condition of getting tariff-free access to the US markets. Now that the US has reneged on that, the EU should restore rights to EU citizens that were restricted with these new laws.

Yeah, there were never any wars in the middle east before the Ottomans or British came along. Right? Right!?

I wouldn’t say capitalism is good, but the alternatives we’ve discovered so far are either unworkable or worse.

Capitalism emerged at a time when Feudalism / Manorialism was the norm. In a Feudalist society, lords owned the land, and serfs belonged to the land. Workers were required to work on the land allocated to them for their entire lives, and their children were bound to the same land. There was no incentive for anyone to innovate or improve efficiency because there was no competition.

Capitalism was an improvement on that system. At least under capitalism, workers could move to another capitalist’s factory. At least there was competition so there were incentives to improve efficiency, and maybe sometimes to improve working conditions so that workers were more willing to work in that factory. Also, at least in theory, people weren’t assigned “factory owner” and “worker” titles at birth. It was difficult, but at least possible for a worker (or group of workers) to start a new factory. And, a badly run factory could result in a factory owner becoming just a worker.

Capitalism is better than feudalism, and better than the systems that came before feudalism which were mostly slavery-based and/or violence-based (obviously there’s a lot of overlap there).

Then, there are theoretical alternatives to capitalism which don’t actually seem to work in the real world, at least on a large scale. Collectivist things sound great in theory, but in practice almost always seem to result in oligarchs or dictators taking over. Also, because economic systems and political systems are intertwined, collectivist systems without centralized decision making power are vulnerable to being invaded by neighbours who are centralized and organized. AFAIK, we’ve never seen a collectivist system able to fend off invasions and keep operating in a collectivist way.

As a result, capitalism is the best solution we’ve been able to come up with so far that takes human nature into account and is stable over hundreds of years. But, the best capitalist systems are heavily regulated ones where the accompanying political system is constantly working to reduce the power of the people who get rich via capitalism. The capitalists hate that, and want a system where they get all the power, without realizing that effectively transforms the system into a dictatorship / oligarchy, which isn’t a good system even for the capitalists. But, oh well.

There’s no point in living at all. Reproduction doesn’t change that.

Why is it the highest thing someone can aspire to? You don’t think being a Nobel-winning scientist is as important as being a parent?

The thing with autocorrect is that you don’t have to accept the correction.

Writing them that way would be Sodum.

This is also why the modern trend is making YouTube videos. The people who do that are frequently hoping the channel takes off and they can get paid. It’s not just public service or documenting an interest. The scientists of the early 1800s were frequently people who didn’t have to work. They had estates that generated money for them, allowing them to pursue science as a hobby.

What’s interesting is that this boring speech isn’t just an actor reading something boring. Stein is a second-generation economist. He has a BA in economics from Columbia University. His father had a PhD in economics and chaired the Council of Economic Advisors under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

His father was apparently well respected by both parties, but the son has gone full MAGA, which is unfortunate.

The revised name is better though:

• Helium
• Lithium
• Beryllium
• Sodium
• Magnesium

And the next should be…? If an element ends in “um” there’s normally an “i” before the “um”. We should also fix Molybdenum, Lanthanum and Tantalum while we’re at it. There are 80 elements with an “ium” ending, but only 3 or 4 (depending on if you say Aluminum or Aluminium) without the “i”.

Also, screw it, #79 should be Aurium.

What counts as advertising?

Let’s say you ban ad breaks on TV / streams. In the early days of radio and TV they didn’t have ad breaks, the host of the show would just go on for a while about his favourite brand of cigarettes. In the modern world, pretty much any time you see a name brand in a TV show or movie, it’s because they’ve been paid for product placement.

So… you could solve that by never allowing the mentioning of any brand name in any form of media. That would make reviews illegal. That’s fair, I suppose, because reviews are definitely seen as a form of advertising. That’s why companies often provide review copies of things for free to journalists in the hope they might talk/write about them. Maybe you could carve out an exception allowing a brand and model to be mentioned if there are safety issues or product recalls?

Ok, so now you have a Formula 1 event, it’s on TV but you have to pay for that broadcast because it’s not ad supported. The cars, of course, don’t have any ads on them. But, are they allowed to have the manufacturer’s name and logo on them? Is it advertising if say Ferrari puts a lot of money into F1, wins a lot, and so when you watch the news you see Ferrari-red cars with Ferrari logos winning a race? Also, could the drivers wear coveralls with the Ferrari logo on them? What about fans of Ferrari, could they wear a shirt with the Ferrari logo on them if they were simply fans of the brand? What if this supposed Ferrari fan were a supermodel? Does someone have to carefully go through the finances of any very attractive person to see if they’re ever wearing a logo not because they’re a fan but because they’ve been compensated?

I’m in favour of reducing the amount of advertising we see. I think it’s a bit absurd now. But, while it’s possible to tax it or regulate it, I think it would be very hard to completely eliminate it.

Another example of that is Pyongyang. They do have billboards to Kim Jong Un, and memorials to Kim Jong Il. But, for the most part the city is free of billboards. It’s really strange if you’re used to modern western cities.

I don’t really care about the idle rich. It’s good when society is rich enough that the non-rich can spend their time making YouTube videos.

Or she set it to private because she was overwhelmed with the messages she was getting.

That’s a pretty meaningless comparison.

In 1820s Germany, the only guys documenting every beetle were basically the idle rich. The average person was working 12 hour days on a farm, or weaving cloth, or sorting through sewage for something useful.

This is the perfect time for Americans to learn / re-learn about why May 1st is celebrated around the world.

It would be a massive missed opportunity if it wasn’t a day of action in the US this year.