inspectorst

In 2017 his name was mentioned as a visionary comparable to the Wright Brothers and Zefram Cochrane (inventor of the warp drive) on a Star Trek episode set in the 2250s. It felt at the time that this line risked dating the episode but I don't think anyone could have expected just how much he would go on trash his own reputation.

The only thing that saves this line is that we found out a few episodes later that the character who spoke it secretly came from the Mirror Universe - where he grew up Musk's embrace of Nazism was probably seen as a virtue.

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/Gt4z1

Having watched Joe Biden retain most of the tariffs he inherited, America’s trading partners have been fond of complaining the US president is “continuity Trump” and wondering whether Kamala Harris will be continuity Biden. The first epithet was never entirely fair: Trump’s focus was on closing trade deficits and gaining negotiating leverage, Biden’s mainly about industrial policy. Now Trump is threatening a massive and damaging escalation of trade protection, Harris only has to keep Biden’s policies in place, as she probably will, and she will look positively free-trade Clintonesque (Bill not Hillary) in comparison.

[...]

At any rate, her launch of the price control plan last week was accompanied by an explicit repudiation of Trump’s new tariffs: “These actions stand in stark contrast to Trump, who would increase costs for families by at least $3,900 with what is, in effect, a new national sales tax on imported everyday goods.”

The consumer-focused critique is not new from this administration — Biden made similar comments about Trump’s 10 per cent across-the-board proposal — but it does illustrate the gulf in policy and messaging opening up with the Republicans.

[...]

Let’s be clear: Harris hasn’t repudiated the trade and industrial policy elements of Bidenomics, and is unlikely to. But the Democrats are at least charting a steady course that balances their desire to protect industries they deem strategic with the need to hold down economy-wide inflation. Meanwhile, Trump is sailing off towards areas of the trade policy map marked “Here Be Dragons”. Clear blue water is emerging between the Republicans and Democrats, and the idea that second-term Trump trade policy would resemble that of a Harris administration is rapidly receding.

NIMBYs' excuses are becoming more and more elaborate.

When asked about Trump's attitudes to climate change and the environment, literal tumbleweed emerged from the mouth of famed environmental lawyer and lifelong environmentalist RFK Jr.

Sky invented football in 1992.

Never heard of him. Do you mean Stephen Yaxley-Lennon?

I was disagreeing with you perpetuating the lump of labour fallacy that one can be anti-immigrant for pro-worker reasons.

When nativists use this argument, it's usually shit-stirrers deliberately trying to pit people against each other. They rely on the fact that the average person probably hasn't taken the time to conduct a literature review of the economic studies of immigration, but might be able to be seduced by a superficially easy argument that all their ills can be blamed on some minority and drawing on some cherry-picked anecdotes.

The reality of immigration bears little relation to the skewed narrative the nativists are trying to sell. Irregular migration represents only a tiny fraction of UK immigration. Immigrants are no more likely to commit crime than natives. Immigration grows the economy and has little or no effect on jobs and wages. Immigrants are net contributors to the NHS and public services. Once you knock away all the far-right's factual lies, it's hard to find the nugget of a 'legitimate' reason why people might consider immigration to be one of the major 'problems' facing this country that doesn't start and end with xenophobia.

The idea that the unions would legitimately oppose immigration is nonsense. Economic analysis of the actual impact of immigration has consistently shown that immigration has little-to-no negative impact on the incomes of native workers - immigrants don't undercut the wages of native workers so the unions shouldn't be worried about them.

A large part of that is because of the 'lump of labour' fallacy. Unthoughtful people assume there's a fixed number of jobs to be filled, but the reality is that immigrants don't just fill jobs but also create jobs through their own demand for goods and services. But there are other factors too like entrepreneurialism and business start ups - immigrants, as evidenced by them being part of the small subset of people who are prepared to pack up their lives and move to another country, tend to be more entrepreneurial than the general population in either their home or host countries. Some of our biggest high street names like Tesco and M&S have immigrant origins.

The small caveat to this is that immigration in recent decades has been shown to have a tiny negative impact on the incomes of the lowest paid 20% of the population (of about -0.5%) but this is dwarfed by the positive impact it has on those further up the income spectrum (e.g. +1.7% for the richest 10%). Obviously +1.7% of a very rich person's income is a lot more than -0.5% of a poor person's income. So if the unions are rational and actually want to improve the lot of the poorest in society then they should be campaigning for a lot more immigration and a very small increase in taxes on the richest to fund redistribution of this income, which will more than compensate the poorest for the fraction of a percentage point of lost income from over two decades worth of immigration.

Not sure if people are following the betting markets but I can see Kamala is now the narrow favourite. On Betfair, the mid-odds pricing equates to a 51% probability for Kamala vs 46% for Trump. That compares to Trump's win probability peaking just above 70% in the immediate aftermath of the debate.

What I find so dumb about naming children Khaleesi is that:

a) It's not the name of a character anyway. Apparently a lot of casual fans thought Dany's actual name was Khaleesi because several other characters often addressed her by her title. So there's a good chance that either these parents are casual fans who nonetheless then misnamed their child after a character, or they are serious fans who named their child in a way that will lead other people to infer her parents were casual fans. (Nothing wrong with being a casual fan, but I'd find it a bit dumb to name my child after an IP that I was only loosely into...)

b) The child is six years old. The final episode aired only five years ago. That means they named their child before Dany's story had even concluded. George RR Martin had been dropping hints throughout the book series that Dany might or might not end up as a genocidal mad queen like her father (the TV show had laid the groundwork for this less effectively, which is in part why the abruptness of her turn was so unpopular) and I find it bizarre that a parent would name a kid after a character who might still end up as a murderous tyrant

I think about the amount of thought and research that many of my friends have conducted when naming their children (including looking up famous real and fictional people with that name, doing word associations, etc). Then these guys come along and just say 'fuck it, let's just call her after that blonde girl off TV, Khaleesi I think?'

He didn't 'appear' to justify the rioting.

He literally said 'of course it’s politically justified!' There's no ambiguity here.

That's their worst feature.