At a basic level, the USD's special status has been anchored by a security arrangement. Allied governments (except sometimes France) don't try to diversify out of it in part because it finances the US military umbrella. Change the arrangement, and others might become curious about say what the BRICs are up to.
"The ultimate function of the entrepreneurial ethic was (and is) to reconcile workers to precarity." #BeccaRothfeld (@heideggirl?) reviewing #ErikBaker's "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/01/03/make-your-own-job-entrepreneurial-work-ethic-erik-baker-review/ ht @SteveRoth
the genius move would be to use the anti-Denmark animus he is ginning up to justify compulsory licensing of Ozempic / Wegovy at generic prices. he'd become the most popular President in history.
@susannah@octodon.social @Tarnport ☹️
i'd be more positively disposed if the plan was to divide Canada into states, each with the population of Wyoming. Republicans like small states, right?
people act like Trump is trying to strong-arm Canada or something, but actually he's offering them a sweetheart deal with two whole senators.
democracy depends upon collective cognition, and we cannot cogitate well or sanely while dopamine machines owned and manipulated by Musk and Zuckerberg constitute the public and coordinate the effort. cf @henryfarrell https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis
@seachanger it’s been a bad pneumonia season this year.
billionaires are pathetic.
@John @ryanlcooper if we can get then to write, not ephemeral throwaways but things durably attached to their names, they will read again. life of the mind is neither consuming content nor drive-by commenting, but conversation.
and fascism!
from @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/power/2025-01-06-bluesky-proves-stagnant-monopolies-strangling-internet/
Text: The old internet wasn’t perfect, but it used to feel like a place of almost magical potential, where you might stumble over a fascinating new site at any moment, instead of watching in horror as your aunt is driven mad by flat-earth conspiracies. This internet did not die of its own accord; it was murdered by a handful of mega-billionaires so they could sell ads for chukka boots and washing machines.
“A sensible politics needs to ask: how can we create constituencies of countervailing power to the regressive rich?” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2025/01/against-if-i-were-king-politics.html
“prioritize dense, mixed-use, and car-light ecodistricts. There are a number of wonderful examples in planning throughout the world, but I will note that the most visionary are so far removed from our status quo in the US – we lack the ability to even comprehend how much higher quality of life in these neighborhoods could be.” #MikeEliason https://ronpdavis.substack.com/p/mike-eliason-on-corridor-zoning ht @drvolts
peaceful transfer of power vs peaceful surrender of power
you get angry at a group of people, then you get incurious about what they say and write, then you have a blind spot.
why is “leftist” used as a term of derision more than “rightist”?
[tech notebook] Supporting all-item RSS https://tech.interfluidity.com/2025/01/06/supporting-all-item-rss/index.html
i think Putin persuaded himself that territorial expansion is what marks a leader as durably "great", then persuaded his admirers and imitators of this. Trump doesn't actually want to invade anybody, to his credit he's squeamish about that kind of thing, but he figures he might work some kind of deal.
Why did Lina Khan succeed so much more than Gary Gensler?
he's resigned to resigning.