AfTea - Sanewashing MuskFire, Caged Goods, and Stochastic Tariffs
Afternoon Tea | 9.25.24 | TNaj
Flush toilets took over 70 years to catch on, but only 10 years for the smartphone to be adopted by 75% of the US populace. I guess you needed the toilet before the phone could have you sat on it for so long you lose feeling in your legs. Unrelatedly, a Trump heavy edition of your Afternoon Tea, unfortunately. There’s a whole mess of stupid that isn’t being talked about, that makes Moo Deng, Pesto, and I very frustrated. Get to the end for Moo Deng Phonk and sick Hi-Tech from Henrique Camacho.
More than 20 election offices have been targeted with suspicious packages this week (CNN) We’re really sleepwalking into a Stochastic Terrorism Jamboree aren’t wee. There are going to be hundreds of bomb threats, SWAT’ing incidents, and straight up shooters before election day. And the GOP has no one to blame but themselves.
Teens Say Trump’s Former Personal Aide and Project 2025 Higher-Up Made Them Uncomfortable in Chats (Wired) You’ve probably seen this guy’s TikToks, or heard about how he’s amazing in his “nonpartisan, common sense” videos. You could probably guess that he was this scummy behind closed doors after watching them.
Trump's lunatic plan to replace sanctions with tariffs (Programmable Mutter) & Tariffs are neither fair nor simple (Apply Liberally) This is dumb. Sanctions hurt the enemy government, tariffs hurt the home team. They’re also vividly complex and have exceptionally nuanced effects on the economy. As we learned while we waited for Infrastructure Week in the Before Times.
Tesla Semi Crash Required 50000 Gallons of Water, Fire-Fighting Aircraft to Put Out Blaze (Road & Track) & How Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer (NPR) A Tesla semi-trailer truck that caught on fire needed a literal plane full of water to quench it. Between that and us recreating Industrial Revolution-level pollution to power Computers That Add Wrong, everything with technology seems dandy these days.
6 of Every 7 People With Mortgages Have an Interest Rate Below 6% (Redfin) Half a percent Fed cut is great and all, but the previous 20 odd years of the prime rate hovering around zero means a lot of people have comparatively cheap mortgages. This is why it’s going to take more than 0.5% to turn this ship around.
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Two in three shoppers won’t buy products in locked display cases (Retail Brew)
Lock up all impulse purchases, high value items, and dry staples.
Lay off all staff that have keys to unlock the product cages.
Complain that people aren’t buying things.
Profit!!
The Secret That’s Driving Up Highway Costs (Boondoggle) Legitimately interesting analysis about DOT and highway bidding. As the number of different vendors bidding on contracts go down, cost goes up. As America has gone from a place of competition to a place of rent-seeking, when you hand a contract to a friend, they tend to overcharge. For anyone unsure of how this works, see “Military Industrial Complex.”
The quiet rollout of Cop Cities across the US meets a growing resistance (Waging Nonviolence) There’s probably a massive “police training facility” proximal to your metro area. It’s probably a huge pay out to your PD as well. Thankfully, people all over the country are waking up to what can be done with hundreds of millions if it’s NOT spent on training cops don’t need and won’t use.
How to avoid sanewashing Trump (Poynter) & Trump is 78 and barely coherent. Where's everyone who questioned Biden's age and fitness? (USA Today) Why are we still attempting to translate Donny T’s rambling insanity? Biden is out, Kamala speaks using noun-verb agreement, why are we still pretending Orange Julius is coherent. Stop “sanewashing” that guy and report the goofiness as such. Given how well airing Project 2025 out to the public worked, the sanitizing light of unfiltered attention could do wonders with Laura Loomer’s new groomer.
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