MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
Are you serious that there have been no domestic Irish issues that were the Current Thing in Ireland at any point in the last decade? (I agree Brexit and COVID had pretty large domestic impacts, such that being the Current Thing in Ireland is reasonable).
Domestic issues that have been the Current Thing in the UK over that time period include Brexit (obviously), COVID (obviously), ongoing uncovering of cold case paedo scandals, Partygate, Trussonomics, and small boat immigration.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
Yes - I was surprised that the line on MAGA Twitter was "Trump woz robbed" and not to congratulate Machado and make hay out of her anti-leftist status (which she was very much up for), possibly along with a call for Trump to be nominated next year for the Gaza ceasefire. (If it holds, he may have actually earned a Nobel Peace Prize. If it doesn't, given the history, he has definitely earned a Nobel Peace Prize).
Trump himself went for the pro-Machado approach, so I don't know why the number of Trump sycophants posting "Trump woz robbed" were doing it. Obvious candidate theories include King Canute's courtiers tier more-royalist-than-the-King competitive uber-sycophancy, back-channel co-ordination to give Trump himself plausible deniability that he was having a bitchfest by proxy about not winning it, and failure of the administration to co-ordinate with its supporters on MAGA Twitter.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
I'm always surprised he survived the Night of the Long Knives. Von Schleicher didn't, so Hitler wasn't afraid of killing off Hindenberg's buddies.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
In the early 70s you would have paid the equivalent of about $1000-$1500 in today's money to fly from coast to coast in the US.
Which confirms @fmac's point - a quick search on Kayak found that Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines* have 1st class transcon fares in that price range. And "Economy with extra legroom" plus the checked bag and other such upcharges is a lot cheaper, and closer to a 1970's economy experience than 1st class is.
* The big 3 carriers use long-haul configured aircraft on the premium transcon routes, and long-haul business class is a lot nicer and a lot more expensive than traditional US domestic first class. So you need to look at smaller airlines to get a fair comparison.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
I would be surprised if no other highly compensated industries did that.
In finance it is part of the deal at mid-levels and above. As a quant VP I get my bonus in cash, but a VP-level trader or corporate financier would be getting part of their (larger) bonus in RSU's, as do my bosses at director and MD level.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
For a different extreme, look at Tesla. 125,000 employees right now. Market cap 1.3 trillion. Elon Musk right now earns about 8$ billion a year under current conditions, but it goes up by 1% of Teslas total market cap for each additional trillion in their market cap. If he hits just the easiest goals, he gets $36 billion a year. If it goes up to 8 trillion, he clears an eye watering $878 billion in 10 years, almost $90 billion a year. (yes that's in stock, not cash, if that makes a difference)
Musk's CEO pay at Tesla is uniquely generous even compared to other overly-generous CEO pay packages - to the point where the Delaware courts ruled it illegal. Tesla has the most liquid options of any single stock so it is quite easy to measure the ex ante value of Tesla share options. The pay package Musk "agreed" with Tesla in 2018 that was rescinded after it turned out to be worth $56 billion ex post was worth $2 billion ex ante back in 2018 - at a time when Tesla was only a $50 billion market cap. The number of public-company CEOs who made $2 billion from CEO compensation ex post is small enough to count them on your fingers. But even as the highest-paid CEO ever (by an order of magnitude) Musk made more as an owner than he did as CEO.
But the typical fat-cat non-owner CEO retires with a net worth in the high double-figure millions. Overpaid non-owner CEOs get a grossly disproportionate amount of public attention relative to how relevant they are to rising inequality, or falling living standards for line workers. I was particularly amused by the press coverage of Andy Jassy's $40 million payday as CEO of Amazon - none of which made the comparison to how much Jeff Bezos made off Jassy's work (about $80 billion, so 2000 times as much).
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
A bad CEO can destroy a hundred million dollars of value, maybe even a billion, before the board removes them.
A lot more than that, if they are Steve Ballmer. The difference between Ballmer's and Nadella's Microsoft is exhibit A in the case for "Some of our most talented people should be non-founder executives at legacy companies."
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
In a commodity drone, the rare earths are in the motors, not the chips.
The main (but not the only) industrial use of rare earths is for strong permanent magnets, and the main industrial use of permanent magnets is electric motors and generators.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
Housing abundance + walkability is possible, because Tokyo exists.
I agree that it requires world-class policing to work and is therefore not an immediately applicable answer to anywhere in the US, with the possible exception of NYC.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1d ago
Papen in which year?
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
The US would have occupied North Korea in the Korean War if the Red Chinese hadn't chased them out.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
I haven't noticed a large difference in TP quality between countries (including last time I was in Prague), although the quality improvement in cheap TP in the UK since I was a kid in the 1980's is massive, so there is definitely a correlation with economic growth.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
Europe probably not a great place to start.
By far the best locations within western civilisation for this kind of business are the empty bits of the western US and the Australian Outback.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
About 80% of $100 bills are outside the US. It isn't clear whether they are being used by crooks or as a bullion-equivalent by normies who don't trust their local currencies.
Based on these stats that works out as about $1.5 trillion of Benjamins held outside the US (15 billion notes), representing an interest-free loan to USG that covers a few percent of the national debt.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
Again completely agreed, it's weird how the USA seems to be that one single country in the world where the price you see on labels is not the price you pay.
Canada add GST (their equivalent of VAT) and provincial sales tax at the till in the same way as America.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
My understanding is that at the time the EUR was introduced in 2002, Germany still had sufficiently backward payments tech (for similar reasons to the US - basically a lot of small state-licensed banks and a culture that wanted to protect them against competition from large national banks with proper IT departments) that sometimes the only way to get a large transaction through on a same-day basis was to use a wad of 1000 DM notes. The 500 EUR note was a like-for-like replacement, and was no longer needed once Germany developed a nationwide electronic payments system that actually worked.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
The 100k only existed as a gold certificate (and therefore illegal for private individuals to hold during the New Deal era when private holdings of gold were restricted). The 500, 1k, 5k and 10k existed in all forms of US currency including legal tender Federal Reserve Notes ("green" money). The original Binion's Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas (home of the WSOP) had a tourist attraction where you could be photographed in front of a million dollars in 10k bills.
As with all obsolete US currency, the large denomination notes are still legal money and a regulated bank should accept them for deposit at face value. They are rare enough that the numismatic value normally exceeds the face value, so this never happens.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
Depends on the date. The SA was the Nazi militia before Hitler took power, and engaged in a lot of non-state political violence. After Hitler consolidated power it had become an embarrassment (it was also a hotbed of Nazis who took the "Socialist" part of "National Socialist" more seriously than Hitler's new industrialist buddies were comfortable with) so it was dealt with in the Night of the Long Knives.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
America went to the moon and back before we opened the immigration floodgates
And I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun.
As well as the Project Paperclip scientists, George Mueller grew up in a German-speaking household so he wasn't exactly a "heritage American". The ancestors of Aldrin (grandson of Swedish immigrants) and Collins (long-established Irish-American family) wouldn't have been let in if the nativists of their day had won their political battles.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
Both dogs and horses could be working animals and valued companions. I suspect the Neolithic dogs given honoured burials were hunting dogs, not housepets.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
When a boss gives a speech to subordinates, we should at least consider the possibility that what he said was meant literally.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
8-10. Most parents put considerable effort into the appearance of "Christmas magic". There's an adorable age where they're old enough to question, but afraid of what they might find out. They'll test their parents and gossip among themselves. But my own were afraid that if I knew that they knew, then I might not bother with the presents ritual, so they pretended to believe longer. And once it was explicit, they solemnly accepted the responsibility to not break the kayfabe for their younger cousins.
This is the point where the potential harm is. If a child spends 1-2 years thinking "Santa breaks my model of reality but I can't think deeply about this because the presents will stop coming" then they are learning to suppress curiosity for fear of punishment.
FWIW, I understood that Santa was the same type of being as God and Jesus*, as opposed to the same type of being as my Mum or the Queen, as early as I remember having complex thoughts - certainly before age 6. Having been taught about Santa therefore made me less likely to accept Christianity as an older child (whether this is good or bad is unclear). I had Santa, God and Jesus in the same bucket as Mickey Mouse and Peter the High King of Narnia by the time I was 9.
* My parents were not Christian, but the local primary school was a C of E school so I was partially raised Christian
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
There is free movement within borders. Open borders for one part of the country means open borders for all.
The fact that doing X (which is morally unproblematic of itself) makes it easier to do Y (which would be immoral) doesn't change the moral character of doing X-but-not-Y. As a matter of practical calculation, it might change the wisdom of banning X. Law and politics, not morals.
In the case of immigration, where X is migrating to a place where you are welcome, and Y is migrating to a different place in the same country where you are not welcome, there are good practical reasons for granting permission at the level of the sovereign state. But you absolutely can run a regime where legal immigrants can travel freely within a wider freedom-of-movement area while only enjoying the right to reside and work in the state that granted their visa - this is how Schengen visas work in the EU.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
The section of the speech I was thinking about was (transcript - at 40:51)
Washington D.C. went from our most unsafe city to just about our safest city in a period of a month. We had it under control in 12 days, but give us another 15 or 16 days, it was -- it's perfect. And people other than politicians that look bad, they think. You know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places and we're going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in. You know, we had no people enter in the last four months, zero. Even I can't believe that.
Clear statement that Trump wants to send troops to Chicago, in a warlike posture. And the enemy is "radical left Democrats" in a context which suggests that the term includes the elected governments of Illinois and Chicago and the voters who elected them. Even if it isn't a promise of war against Chicago as a whole, it is a promise of war against domestic political opponents who are broadly popular in Chicago. Given the segue to controlling the border, I think you can argue that Trump considers the war on domestic political opponents to be secondary to the war on illegal immigrants you mention - this is consistent with administration behaviour to date. But that just gives him a comprehensible motive - it doesn't change what he is doing.
If there still hasn't been a female President 10 years after Nancy Pelosi dies, then this question will have an easy answer. She is by far the most significant female political leader in the US to date.
Right now, I don't see any advance on Susan B Anthony, who was on the 1979 dollar coin for a good reason. She was also a leading candidate when the Obama administration wanted to replace Hamilton and/or Jackson with women.
It's a good thing we put at very few politicians on British banknotes - the row when feminists decide we need a woman and the only serious candidate is Margaret Thatcher would destroy confidence in the currency.
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