acid corbyn dallas

An homage to a panel from the Achewood web comic. Phillipe, a young and eager otter, who is wearing a shirt and tie and a helmet for some reason, is happily singing a song to himself as follows: Born... in the USA! I went to school and I got an... A! I ate a hamburger and said hooray! Maybe it will happen today! The final line is obviously my addition. The art was redrawn by me and is not just a copy of the original panel. Done in black lines and halftone shading on a toned paper background. You do not need to trouble Chris Onstad about this.

to me it rocks that this company that has never come within light-years of making money and has a bad product with zero practical use cases is the pivot point of the global economy because a bunch of embarrassing Burning Man dorks just decided it should be

I would argue they knew exactly what they were doing, which was deliberately sabotaging needed public works programs by offering snake oil they never had any intention of delivering.

If we cannot explain how human consciousness exists, wouldn't that make it extremely unlikely that we would be able to recreate it artificially? Odds of it happening are low enough for me to confident.

This is what elevates human thought above rote reactivity. I can explore and generate content of the mind in an internally driven way. Claude does not do this, it is purely reactive. LLMs do not have any kind feedback loop that would allow it to actually explore its own internal states.

We can freely explore the content represented in our brains by self stimulation. Instead of waiting around for sensory input to engage various parts of the brain, I can engage in complex thought by self-stimulating the language comprehension faculties in my brain (e.g. have an internal monologue).

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his substack depends on his not understanding it".

Listen to @edzitron.com's Better Offline and subscribe to his email newsletter to have known all of this well over a year ago and be part of a few thousand sickos playing the most horribly fun waiting game of all time.

The left stays cursed with remembering, alas

The myth was invented on the RNZAF 757, where top gallery journos had nothing to do for hours on end but watch Luxon orbiting Key and convince themselves the aura of God Kings Of NZ Inc was shared rather than just being reflected off his dome

I’ve said it a bunch of times. I’ve worked in large FMGC corporates like Unilever for 15 years and I’ve seen a million Luxons. If you’re motivated and willing to tell the people above you what they want to hear there’s no limit to how high you can rise. Actual ability is barely a factor.

I’m convinced he got his taste for politics when he was invited on endless Prime Ministerial trade missions as the CEO of the flag carrier. I think that’s all he thought the top job was about, a victory lap for his own surpassing excellence

Look, we all have things we’re hoping for, here’s a recommended follow:

@today-maybe.bsky.social

Topped up on petrol just now, figure I should be good through the end of the third world war

Probably not the only tech company doing this.

It’s going to be pure cinema watching Luxo tie himself in knots trying to explain how the current oil led rapid rise in inflation caused by the Iran war is different from the one in 2022 caused by the Ukraine invasion. Strap in, you’re about to hear some absolute bullshit.

Also that fucking falconer keeps hollering for the falcon. I wish he’d shut up

Everyone in any position of power on earth seems to be such an ASSHOLE right now. It's exhausting

Fortunately we have had a many years ongoing priority to reduce transport inflation by having the mass movement of internal goods focused on rail fulled by renewable electricity.

(listens to earpiece) Oh No.

Responsibility for the health cuts and the harms being done to vulnerable people by rationing their dialysis rests with one person: Nicola Willis. She's the one that decided a tax cut for families with an average of $276 million in assets is more important than healthcare

The IRD report that laid bare this state of affairs came out in 2023, and there was an election later that year. So the incoming National government did two things: it told IRD to stop reporting that data; and then in her very first Budget, Nicola Willis gave those families a tax cut

So if we want to know why dialysis is being rationed, there's a clear answer: it's so the 311 richest families in the country can enjoy one of the lowest effective tax rates in the world. We're killing people in order to make the ultra-rich ultra-richer

In other words, a mere 311 families have net assets that are about half the size of the entire NZ government. That's a lot.

And on the income from those assets they pay around 9% in tax. No-one reading this thread only pays 9% tax

Analysis: What would it take for Christopher Luxon to quit as prime minister? Analysis - One of Luxon's weaknesses has been his inability to take feedback. Another is his complete lack of self-doubt, writes Jo Moir.

Key should be embarrassed he gave us this buffoon, but he won’t be. He’s mentored Luxon since day 1 and this is what we’ve got. Key would have voted for Trump because he’ll always put his venal self-interest ahead of the common good in any country. #nzpol www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Telling Jesus he'll never make it if he keeps being so hostile to wealth. Advising him to moderate his message to appeal to the Galilee suburbs

New Zealand economic policy since 2023 in 10 charts Steven Hail argues New Zealand is enduring a period of economic self-harm and offers a way to end this and create a future based on hope

www.interest.co.nz/economy/1374...

So where are we, at the end of this discussion? We are at an understanding that government deficits are normal in New Zealand. The New Zealand government is not going to run out of New Zealand dollars. There was no fiscal crisis in October 2023. There was no reason for cancelling infrastructure investments. There has been no reason for underfunding public services. The New Zealand Government could pursue a vision of a future New Zealand with job opportunities for all (and a job guarantee); could invest in its young people and in the creation of a clean, modern economy; and would be better able to do this if it understood that the means of New Zealand are its people and skills; its capital and technology; its natural resources and its institutional capacity. This would be a future based on hope which might end the mass emigration to Australia and which, in my view, would tempt ambitious young Australians to move the other way. It would at the very least end the self-harming policies of the past three years.

Louder for the people in the back:

Based on this statistic [general government net lending or borrowing as a percentage of GDP, 2010 to 2024, the only one of these three economies [Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the US] to run annual government financial surpluses since 2010 is New Zealand. Indeed, it is not normal for currency-issuing governments to run such surpluses, as the private sector has a habitual preference to run financial surpluses, and barring trade surpluses a private-sector surplus requires a public-sector deficit. Governments which attempt to run surpluses often fail, because unless you can run a trade surplus and/or induce the private sector to go further into deficit, your austerity policies will undermine economic prosperity, reduce tax receipts and force additional welfare payments, and ensure you stay in deficit anyway. The government balance in an economy where policies are aimed at the maintenance of non-inflationary full employment is not a suitable policy target variable. The appropriate fiscal balance will be set endogenously by the desired behaviour of the private sector and the rest of the world at full employment. If you do not understand this, you will rely on private debt and a property bubble, as was the case before 2020, or will cause a recession and fail to run a surplus in any case.

Nice to see it put so clearly why the obsession with getting government books “back in the black” is stupid and destructive:

www.interest.co.nz/economy/1374...

I promise to never, ever go live on Bluesky and if I break that promise please universally unfollow and block.