California will provide a public option for some pharmaceuticals. More like this, please. https://prospect.org/health/2023-03-27-california-drugmaking-insulin/
how long until language-model-enabled stuffed animals talk to our children in character?
@SteveRoth Some people in the top 1% earned more than 3.8M, I'd imagine...
@bikeshed you got punked!
This piece by @SteveRoth really highlights the fractal nature of American inequality. Top 1% (by income) households saw their wealth grow on average by a ridiculous 64MM, but I think it's safe to say that the, um, poorest 1%-ers, households earning roughly 600K per year, didn't see anything like those gains. https://wealtheconomics.substack.com/p/new-wealth-accumulation-during-covid
@mihaip what you have done is fucking amazing.
"A country that lets itself be led around by the marginal logic of comparative advantage will end up with short-term economic gains, but these gains may be offset by the loss of deeper technological capabilities." @noahpinion_mirror https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/putin-is-a-rest-stop-on-the-road
I love this, from @mihaip. I wish they had a System 6 or 7 installation with Aldus PageMaker and a lot of fonts and (anachronistically) print to PDF. I could just give a middle finger to the last few decades of desktop publishing churn. https://infinitemac.org/ ht @burritojustice
@tb (it's excellent, of course!)
@tb ( i don't know what's going on, i keep editing to try to mention you here but it keeps at least in my UIs not showing up as a mention. )
"paradoxical misapprehension of agency. People, institutions, forces see it where it isn't, can't see it where it is, imagine they have none and others have it all...
to take the personal authority of believing things that don't fit together easily or clearly, is a sovereign act: it asserts priority over the systems of thought that constrain agency."
by @tb@tldr.nettime.org
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https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-2303/msg00005.html
just remember, the bots made him do it. john galt has no agency.
#musktodon is not a great instance.
"The paradox of freedom, Florida style, is that it’s really an assertion of control. *People like us should be free to do what we want, and free to stop other people from doing what they want when we don’t approve.* That’s why it would be deeply unfair to call Ron DeSantis a petty tyrant. If he is a tyrant, he is an expansive one." #HelenLewis https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ron-desantis-florida-state-politics-gop/673489/
[New Post] Excerpts! https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9830.html
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @yarrriv @Alon @davidzipper (one of my quirky urbanisms is i favor elevated bike lanes. but that’s yet another expensive investment that’s a very hard sell.)
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @Alon @yarrriv @davidzipper it is a bit pathetic. pre-COVID i tried so hard to make MUNI my main way of getting around SF, but I constantly felt like it was some virtuous sacrifice, that i was being dicked around by buses inexplicably terminating early or being 3 minutes away then disappearing, then of course the next one that shows to reward you for the wait is packed like a sardine can. 1/
@failedLyndonLaRouchite @Alon @yarrriv @davidzipper then you go to other countries, and it’s just nice. /fin
@rst what i was trying to get at with the phrase is that traditionally labor represents the hands of the people, an old-school strike is workers, often not college educated, withdrawing their hands.
in Israel now it is a “general strike” of disproportionately the educated professions. this is a group historically more individualistic, less likely to exercise their considerable bargaining power by striking in this way. 1/
@rst i think it is an interesting, potentially very important development. i think taking to the streets is not the greatest form of antifascist resistance, because provocateurs can always engender violence, and chaos draws public support towards fascists. the professional class historically has been a limp resistance, because “meritocratic” professional class norms are very individualistic, and fascism can create very clear individual incentives to conform. 2/
@rst professional class, nonviolent, provocateur-resistant collective action could become a really important political force. /fin
@agocke @Alon @yarrriv @davidzipper and that requires a level of public investment an individual transit authority will never be able to justify with backwards-looking empirical evidence. there are empirical existence proofs in elsewheres, but there’s no meaningful tradeoff btw current levels of fare revenue in car-centric places and anything that could remotely shift the equilibrium. how do you build political support for a big push?