Week 34
The Onion: "MYTH: The government will take away your money and give it to the poor. FACT: You are the poor."
Democratic Presidential Nomination, Harris +11.2
Republican Presidential Nomination, Vance +17.8
Texas - Paxton vs. Talarico, Talarico +1.2
Ohio - Husted vs. Brown, Brown +0.6
Michigan - Rogers vs. El-Sayed, El-Sayed +0.7
Iowa - Hinson vs Turek, Hinson +0.7
Maine - Collins vs. Jackson, Jackson +2.3
New Hampshire - Sununu vs. Pappas, Pappas +3.7
Alaska - Sullivan vs. Peltola, Peltola +2.0
Florida Special - Moody vs. Vindman, Moody +8.4
Georgia - Collins vs. Ossoff, Ossoff +7.5
North Carolina - Whatley vs. Cooper, Cooper +8.0
#RealClearPolitics
"@wandrew@godforsaken.website
what kind of asshole rides a horse through the desert and doesn't even give it a name"
"@aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social
People are like, you can’t refuse LLMs forever, someday you’ll have to use them. But listen, motherfuckers, I have been refusing to drive a car for the entirety of the twenty-first century. I am practiced. Refusing AI is easy mode."
"@metin@graphics.social
Using 30 months of panel data on 26,811 Chinese students in grades 7-12, it has been studied how generative AI affects homework productivity and learning.
- X-Axis: Homework scores
- Y-Axis: Exam scores"
"@vwestlife@mastodon.social
Guitar string manufacturer D'Addario posted an AI-generated video, got called out, denied it, posted "proof it's real", which was debunked because the notes and timing were different, blamed that on "using AI mastering tools", which was again debunked because mastering cannot create those differences, deleted comments, stayed quiet for two weeks, and finally admitted they used AI to make the whole thing. If AI is the future, why do companies keep running away from it?"
"@gwynnion@mastodon.social
Everyone is tired and angry about living in a society that wants us to pay more for worse products and utterly fails to restrain the worst people on Earth and still demands to be taken seriously."
Excessive amt of money flow into all kinds of assets bcz wealth is more concentrated now than ever. That money needs to be invested somewhere.
Aalbers makes a good point; investors will go after existing homes, they won't finance building of new homes. I see a lot of commentators make this mistake, they look at housing demand on a headcount basis, then housing construction and try to gauge some kind of shortfall, or balance. What they really need to look at is money flowing into housing, and the housing stock. Does the growth of the stock correlate with the amount of money going in? If not, why not?
#Housing #AlJazeera
NYT: "[2021] Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin as payment for its cars."
Financial Times: "[2024] El Salvador to scale back bitcoin dreams to seal $1.3bn IMF deal"
"@infobeautiful@vis.social
Climate impact isn't evenly distributed
Map @jasonhickel of www.globalinequality.org"
"Iran’s foreign minister said Friday President Donald Trump’s Economic D-Day campaign against Tehran was bound to fail and that Iran had seen similar US pressure campaigns... 'We have seen this movie before. Same bull. Different bullies,' Araghchi added."
CNN: "Key Iranian trading partner China rejects Trump’s ‘economic D-Day’ threat"
HTW: "Panama Canal is running low on water, and it's rationing ships to cope"
TAC: "U.S. Debt Tops $40 Trillion for First Time"
F24: "Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell sharply on Thursday, with just seven commodity vessels crossing the vital waterway, as heightened security risks and stalled US-Iran peace talks deterred ships from using the key energy route."
Some see the world through rules, judges, points, by who is up who is down. This a fictive world, it is made up, an illusion... Some see life through the eyes of staying alive, survival. The judge is nature, the outside, not some ring or some judge. If you are playing a game, it should prepare you for the reality, not for more instances of that same game.
UFC punk says "oh I get great athletes (who don't know MMA) spar with me all the time, I throw'em around, choke'm, they are helpless". Right, but they are playing by your rules, they are playfully doing "MMA-sparring" with you. When they spar with you on your terms, by the rules you trained your whole life, of course you will beat them. But if that other person, one of those athletes were fighting for their life, I guarantee it, they will f-ing kill you. All your gay grappling, rolling around on the ground feeling the other guy's ass will amount to nothing.
Notice in matches, both fighters constantly move around, test eachother, move back and forth, do their little faints.. it's like a dance. Real world is nothing like this. Out there people hurl themselves at you. There can be multiple attackers. You have to watch out for the one-combo finishers, a move the f-ker would have practiced hours on end, involving the groin, the temple. You keep distance, it's about defense, not point scoring.
Listen to MMA fighter Anthony Smith, he fought an intruder who broke into his home, he could not disable, subdue the man or knock him out, he called the event "one of the toughest fights of his life". You hear this often from fighters, that confronting a frantic or intoxicated person is vastly different from a controlled sporting match.
The UFC rules dictate the way they fight, and the rules are not street rules.
It's gay. Stay away from that shit if you are interested in self-defense.
"Have you seen [the recent UFC bout]"
CNBC: "'Perfect storm' brews for global food supply this winter as grain prices soar.. Fears over crop yields and farmers' ability to plant ahead of next year have come to the fore as wheat prices jump."
NYT: "Missile Barrage Shows Russia’s Doubt That Ukraine Can Defend Itself.. Moscow is taking advantage of Ukraine’s depleted stock of interceptors"
Chomsky: "By mid-1963.. the client regime was calling for a reduction of the US role or even US withdrawal, and was making overtures for a peaceful settlement with the North. Given its unwavering commitment to 'our fundamental objective of victory,' the Kennedy Administration therefore resolved to overthrow its client in favor of a military junta that would be fully committed to this objective. The planned coup took place on November 1, 1963, placing the Generals in control... [T]he coup led to further disintegration, and as the bureaucratic structure of the former regime dissolved, to a belated recognition that reports of military progress were built on sand...
Basic policy remained constant in essentials: disentanglement from an unpopular and costly venture as soon as possible, but only after the virus was destroyed and victory assured (by the 1970s, with increasing doubt that US client regimes could be sustained). Tactics were modified with changing circumstances and perceptions. Changes of Administration, including the Kennedy assassination, had no large-scale effect on policy"
Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot: "Policy towards Vietnam fell within the general framework of post-World War II global planning, and faced little challenge until the general framework was modified in the early 1970s, partly as a consequence of the Indochina Wars. The US quickly threw in its lot with France, fully aware that it was opposing the nationalist forces and that its clients could not withstand political competition. For these reasons, resort to peaceful means was never an option; rather, a threat to be avoided. It was also understood that the wars and subversion had little support at home. The operation therefore had to be wound up without too much delay, leaving Indochina [Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia] under the control of client regimes, to the extent feasible.
Basic policies held firm from 1950 into the early 1970s, though by the end questions of feasibility and cost became pressing. The Geneva agreements of 1954 were at once subverted. The US imposed a client regime in what came to be called 'South Vietnam.' Lacking popular support, the regime resorted to large-scale terror to control the population, finally eliciting resistance, which it could not control. As Kennedy took office, the US position seemed to face imminent collapse. Kennedy therefore escalated the war in 1961-1962. The military command was exuberant over the success of the enhanced violence, and thought that the war could soon be wound up, leading to a military victory and US withdrawal. Kennedy went along with these predictions..
Without exception, withdrawal proposals were conditioned on military victory. Every known Administration plan was explicit on that score, notably the October 1963 'program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort,' coupled with instructions from the President to 'increase effectiveness of war effort' so as to ensure 'our fundamental objective of victory' (my emphasis).
F24: "Europe’s seas reach record heat as climate change threatens marine life.. Human-caused climate change was the main driver of record-breaking sea temperatures around Europe this summer, scientists said on Wednesday, warning of severe risks to marine ecosystems and coastal communities. The Mediterranean averaged a record 27 degrees Celsius in July, while waters near Mallorca reached 33 C in early August."
They gave him the nickname "Pablo Pledgescobar"
HTW: "[Agostino] Abbatiello has emerged as the central figure in an alleged cocaine trafficking network that operated through off-campus fraternity houses at Pennsylvania State University."
Right-wing guy.. It goes to show ppl vote on outcomes, not on ramblings around ideology or policy, and will associate everything that happens, good or bad, with the person in charge.
TAC: "The Iran War Is Sinking Chile’s New President.. Kast took office on March 11 with a commanding electoral mandate and a net approval rating of about 20 points. By the end of the month, however, his approval had already slipped underwater.. Chileans were furious about the surge in fuel prices caused by the Iran War, and they blamed the man who had just moved into La Moneda.
Liu: "Paulson, .. Bernanke.. went to Congress to urge lawmakers to bail out the collapsing banking sector. In 2009, under the new Obama administration, Timothy Geithner engineered TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program, giving banks $700 million of public money to balance their books. According to Tooze’s analysis, the Federal Reserve transferred an additional 5 trillion to non-American banks to guarantee global financial liquidity.
In the meantime, between 2007 and 2016, 7.8 million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The economic crisis and subsequent bailout exacerbated inequality by every metric and did not lead to significant reform of the financial sector. Bailed-out banks continued to foreclose on the homes of working-class families while refusing to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers"
Liu, Virtue Hoarders: "[2021] The PMC is deeply hostile to simple redistributive policies that a Bernie Sanders presidency would have implemented: it is against the idea of building solidarity among the oppressed. It prefers obscurantism, balkanization, and management of interest groups to a transformative reimagination of the social order. It wants to play the virtuous social hero, but as a class, it is hopelessly reactionary. The interests of the PMC are now tied more than ever to its corporate overlords than to the struggles of the majority of Americans whose suffering is merely background décor for the PMC’s elite volunteerism."
"Car Mechanics Are FINALLY Breaking Their Silence About What's Wrong With New Cars"
Liu: "By 2016, PMC elites became even more worshipful of money and more contemptuous of ordinary people: Hillary Clinton as a successor to Barack Obama was the incarnation of PMC values and the Democratic Party’s power elite. Under Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party would no longer concern itself with working-class interests, the ones her husband had ignored despite his good old boy style: the exercise of power would con- sist of protecting capitalism while setting up a carefully groomed lineup of diverse, donor-friendly candidates to run for the highest offices in the land. Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors would be appeased. No one to her left dared to challenge her run, except for Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont. Clinton was the PMC elite’s dream candidate, a sign that the class had completely taken over the once unruly Democratic Party that had formerly represented working-class interests. Clinton was an alleged shoo-in, the most qualified presidential candidate ever, a woman who loved Wall Street and the ruling class, a Lean-in pseudo-feminist who wanted to inspire girls to become girl bosses. Clinton’s defeat was not just a blow to centrist rule; it was an angry rejection of the hypocrisy of the PMC tout court.
Liu, Virtue Hoarders: "The poststructuralist cultural studies theorists despised the oppressive post–World War II liberal consensus as much as the most visionary of neoliberal economists like Alan Greenspan and his overlord, Ayn Rand. That liberal consensus was based on state and corporate support for lifetime employment, labor power, and strong social services and redistributive economic policies. The New Left/cultural studies types hated the liberal consensus as much as the neoliberals. If you do not believe me, do a search for liberal consensus in digitized copies of cultural studies books of the 1990s and you will see it appears only to be dismissed with the patriarchy and heteronormativity and a vaguely Foucauldian idea of 'domination'"
They support attacking a country unprovoked for days on end, when China gets agressive towards Taiwan, it's all of a sudden "rules based order"
CNBC: "Depleted [US] strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage to caverns, operations"
#Ukraine 07/30 - 08/16
ABC News: "Ukraine launches 600 drones toward Moscow in major barrage, mayor says"