you’ve made it, but what have you made?
my guru Spam Risk phones occasionally. i pick up, say hello. he responds with
Silence.
always, he is teaching me.
shareholder value is everybody else’s cost.
perhaps this first-order cost is offset by innovation that serves consumers or society at large (rather than merely shareholders, as a lot of business-model, supply-chain, and legal innovation does).
but that’s an affirmative case to make, likely dependent upon institutional details. it’s not an easy case to make these past few decades.
when you’re living in Camelot
it’s easy to forget
those who don’t have a lot.
“Stephen Colbert, unforgettably, labeled Republicans’ habit of uttering things that feel emotionally true, even though they are made up, as ‘truthiness.’ The Democrats had their own, photo-negative version of truthiness: utterances that are meticulously factual, but that convey an unmistakable emotional falsiness.” @Rickperlstein https://prospect.org/politics/2024-08-26-say-it-to-my-face-democrats-truth/ ht @ddayen
Icons of this campaign season, so far:
1) Van Gogh fist-pump
2) Joy
3) Gus
4) Couch
“I remember talking on the playground with kids in the fourth grade about how we hoped we died quickly when we were nuked, as who would want to live after that? That’s not a normal thing for nine-year-olds to talk about, don’t you think?” https://www.technologyasnature.com/2024/08/26/jane-says-wrong-stuff/
// basically my experience as well. i had a persistent “fear-tasy” in which my whole family would be huddled in the basement before we would be transformed into a silhouette on the wall. at least we would be together.
trying desperately to undo what he has done to himself, Trump will soon announce he supports abortions until age three.
fraud fraud is when you fraudulently allege a fraud that in actual fact was not fraudulent.
[new draft post] No which tax on tips? Let it be FICA. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/08/25/no-which-tax-on-tips-let-it-be-fica/index.html
"More often than not, 95% of economists will be right. But in a disturbing number of cases they are not." #ScottSumner https://www.econlib.org/do-tariffs-raise-prices/
I find this “conflict index” (I don’t know anything about it or its source) a bit shocking. Is Mexico really much more dangerous than Ukraine?
Big if true, as they say!
[new draft post] Competition and the form of the subsidy https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/08/24/competition-and-the-form-of-the-subsidy/index.html
when you are young, the world around you seems comfortable, familiar, while the past seems exotic, even alien.
when you are old it’s just the other way around.
I think the following messaging would be useful and true:
“We don’t need a strong man to fix what’s broken in this country. An electoral landslide for a party committed to democracy would enable action and solution just as vigorous, without the lawless unaccountability of a tyrant.”
i wanna quip that this is a campaign fueled by joy and gasoline, but i wonder if anybody would get the joke, and if they do, it doesn’t really quite fit.
We’re kind of in a “You can read the bill after it passes” moment.
from #JoshEidelson https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-22/amazon-is-boss-of-subcontracted-drivers-violated-rights-nlrb-prosecutors-say?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcyNDM1Mzc3MCwiZXhwIjoxNzI0OTU4NTcwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTSU1QRkdUMVVNMFcwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDQThGQ0Y4NkY1QjY0ODlCODA4ODkwNTFBNjMxRERBRCJ9.g3WIIH5wvPNfwiZK9essLliXJpatxrDkVN00x8epX0M
Text: Amazon.com Inc. was legally the boss of a group of subcontracted delivery drivers, US labor board prosecutors have concluded, rejecting the company's claims that workers in its sprawling delivery network aren't its employees. The general counsel office of the US National Labor Relations Board has determined that a group of drivers in Southern California were employees of Amazon itself, as well as of the "delivery service partner" company that hired them, agency spokesperson Kayla Blado said Thursday. The agency prosecutors also concluded that Amazon violated federal labor law by making illegal threats and refusing to negotiate after the workers organized last year with the Teamsters.
so many personalist narratives, from the party offering the alternative to personalist autocracy.
it suggests we’re in a pretty dangerous place, i think. parasocial attachment seems more in tension with than supportive of deliberative democracy. even when the object of attachment is not a wannabe dictator dick.
who has coopted whom?