Category Archives: economics

September 3, 2026 · 5:10 am

Zohram Mamdani is better for America than Doug Wilson

Doug Wilson is a slimy Christian theocrat who think women should lose the vote and that marital sex means men conquer, women submit. He thinks race relations in America were best under slavery and says he would have fought for the Confederacy — but totally not because of slavery. Sorry, Mr. Wilson, if you were fighting for the Confederacy you would have been fighting to protect slavery and against abolition. The CSA was quite open about slavery as a fundamental principle of their government. And here’s his latest deep insight:

“Citizenship is more of a privilege, dependent upon ancestry, background, how long you’ve been here, whether you meet the qualifications or not,” Wilson said as he insisted citizenship was not a right. “And if America is a creedal nation, then you have to have creedal standards. So anybody who voted for Mamdani should lose their citizenship.”

This is two contradictory arguments. The idea of America as a creedal nation is that we don’t base citizenship on things like ancestry or background, we base it on whether you can accept the Constitution, embrace “all men are created equal,” believe in inalienable rights. Ancestry is irrelevant. But like so many on the right, Wilson’s worldview is that the creed is Christianity, therefore Muslim=Unamerican. It’s his country, not someone like Zohram Mamdani. Of course even by that logic, depriving people of citizenship for voting for Mamdani makes no sense — except for a power-hungry religious tyrant, which I think he is.

In other words, he’s much further from the American creed than Mamdani. I am embarrassed to share my faith with Doug Wilson (technically they’re two different, incompatible versions of Christianity, but still). Where Wilson sees an apocalyptic battle between his theocracy and Islam, Christianity and Islam (and Hinduism, atheism, etc.) can coexist just fine, as they always have. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running to be senator from Michigan, is not coming for our culture. Sharia law is not going to take over. Nor did El-Sayed dismiss 9/11 as unimportant.

Michael Savage, a would-be Rush Limbaugh (he never came close to the same success) who wants Mamdani deported is as far from the American creed as Wilson. Ditto the vapid yet venomous Ben Shapiro who speaking of Muslim immigrants asks “What has been the the vast boon to the American taxpayer from these people? What has been the great cultural reawakening that has occurred because of these people who despise the country?” A)We don’t allow people to immigrate because of some “vast boon to the American taxpayer” — and if that was a standard for judging people, Shapiro hardly qualifies. B)America has always been a nation of immigrants. If he despises that, he despises America, just as Republicans despise America for giving equal rights to gays, POC, Muslims, women … Republicans are the barbarians they imagine they’re fighting.

Mamdani meanwhile forges ahead with his policies, including plans to open grocery stores in food deserts. This may not work for a variety of reasons: expense, effectiveness, groceries suing to block the project (which they are). There’s some good discussion here including what I thought was an excellent point: “if they work well we figure out how to scale and if they don’t then oh well.” It’s a pilot project, a test. Try it, tinker with it if it needs improving, give it up if it fails. That’s okay. In fact it’s probably a healthy approach. As I’ve said before, more people should study Mamdani and learn from what he’s doing and how he’s tackling things. And responding to criticism, like claims the rich will flee his tax policies. His response: “When we talk about taxing rich we hear about fear of capital flight- flight of Black New Yorkers who can’t afford it has happened for years… Dems were branded as ‘SoCiALisT’ forever — Obama was called one…”

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August 31, 2026 · 5:15 am

The rottenness and folly of so many of the “elite”

Right-wingers have been sneering at elites for years. The “pointy-headed intellectuals” who had the ridiculous idea Jim Crow segregation wasn’t righteous. The conviction that small town and rural Americans are the real Americans, not the decadent cosmopolitan immigrant scum living in cities. That the simple, honest view of a common man who knows nothing is better than someone with an education. It’s a variation of the Imaginary Republican fantasy: all small towns are sweet and decent like Mayberry, all cities are the same crime-ridden hellholes as in Dirty Harry. The uneducated man sees the simple common-sense truth that blacks are inferior, women belong in the kitchen, rape is an attack on men; the elites are out to deny all that with their … facts.

While this is bullshit, they got one thing right: many of our “elite” don’t amount to much. They’re rich because chasing money is an end in itself, no matter what damage it does. Rather than risk any fractional loss of prestige or money, they kiss the Toddler’s ass. Those elites the right-wing is fine with because they end up supporting the social hierarchy instead of challenging it. Rupert Murdoch’s elite but he’s not going to topple white men off their position as apex predator. That said, let’s looks at some of our odious elites in action:

Centimillionaire Flock CEO Garrett Langley insists that restricting Flock cameras from intruding into people’s privacy puts safety at risk. Regulating or refusing to use Flock would be bad! Of course, the topic he was discussing was cops using Flock to stalk women, the loss of privacy isn’t increasing safety, it’s putting people in danger. Police tracking someone with Flock to create a pretext for a search doesn’t seem like a safety vs. privacy issue either.

The Toddler is letting Wall Street know, for a price, what he’ll be tweeting about on Truth Social, an obvious business advantage. Business woman and Toddler supporter Carla Sands insists it’s all Democrats fault.

“President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on more than a dozen of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi, federal investigators with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission found, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.” Prediction markets are also arguing that betting on the survival of individuals with cancer isn’t at all objectionable (no handy link, sorry).

Turn over an accused murderer to Minnesota? Not on Greg Abbott’s watch!

Treasury Secretary Luke Bessent is planning to revoke the non-profit status of left-wing groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Someone should explain to him that the corrupt tax man working for the evil tyrant is never the good guy. Oh, and they’ve also arrested a former SPLC employee for fraud. Guess it really hurts right-wing fee-fees when SPLC labels hatemongers as hatemongers.

Corporate elites? Looking at the way some drug stores now lock up even trivial items, Danny Katch concludes “the great lotion lockup was a corporate moral panic, which has been a disaster for their profits and for the rest of us a degrading enshittification of running basic errands.”

SCOTUS continues putting the one before the many, and using the shadow docket to avoid explaining.

Okay, Sean Duffy ain’t much of an elite as far as accomplishments, but he is a Toddler cabinet member. So let’s remember a couple of months back when he announced he’s fighting DEI by defunding bike lanes.

How private equity bled Red Lobster dry to line their own pockets.

BMW is a luxury car brand. Owners are less than thrilled that when they start a new car up, they have to endure ads.

Republican Rep. John McGuire revives the old bullshit about human baby parts in covid vaccines “when they could just have used ivermectin.”

The entire Republican caucus voted for RFK Jr. as head of federal health policy, even though they knew he was anti-vax. They knew his views but when he lied about his track record, they pretended to believe him. Now kids are dying of measles. But hey, there’s money in quack medicine — there always has been.

“If we ask why is this outrage, this fundamental tax cheating permitted to continue, the answer is very clearly, it is the power of people with money who want to be able to avoid taxes. And their ability to avoid taxes leads them having even more money, which reinforces that power.” Small wonder that one billionaire CEO suggests we make it official: give him extra votes for being rich.

And of course, there’s the least competent, most dim-witted member of the elite, our Toddler president.

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August 27, 2026 · 5:15 am

We could use some imaginary Republicans right now

Back in 2004, writer John Rogers mentioned how much he missed Republicans: “Sober men in suits, pipes, who’d nod thoughtfully over their latest tract on market-driven fiscal conservatism while grinding out the numbers on rocket science. Remember those serious-looking 1950’s-1960’s science guys in the movies — Republican to a one. They were the grown-ups. They were the realists. Sure they were a bummer, maaaaan, but on the way to La Revolution you need somebody to remember where you parked the car.”

Instead, we had the insanity of the W years: incompetence, opposition to science, a stupid never-ending war waged for stupid reasons (almost certainly including that W, by his own admission, wanted to be a War President), massive military spending that benefited contractors more than those who served … And two years later, in another post, Rogers concluded things had not improved.

The trouble is, that really doesn’t register with voters. A couple of months back I wrote about how Democrats not only struggle with Republicans but with the imaginary Democrats in people’s heads:

Here’s a related comment from Lawyers, Guns and Money on the “activist class” mentioned above.

(There’s also sexism towards “wine moms” in this — women just can’t be authentic working-class liberals, you know!).

The media also endorse this portrayal, as do the Sensible Centrist Democrats (see my comments Monday on Very Serious People). Dems must moderate their supposedly ultra-liberal policies, or to denounce party members who are supposedly too extreme, like Zohran Mamdani. Possibly the Imaginary Democrats are why one conservative NYC district voted for him: someone concerned about lowering their cost of living must be a conservative.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, a senseless centrist, just declared the federal deficit is the result of socialist polices, not the Toddler’s tax cuts (did his imaginary Long Island voters tell him that?). It never registers that even centrist Dems will be turned into Imaginary Ultra-Liberal Democrats, no matter how centrist they are. And the media will always treat the left-wing of the party as an inconsequential fluke. I doubt Joe Manchin’s efforts to push liberals to the center will get the same scrutiny.

At the same time, Dems have to run not against the Toddler, Vance and their ilk but against the the imaginary Republicans who are the polar opposite of the imaginary Democrats. The fantasy Republicans are the stereotype Rogers write about. Sensible guys (never women. They’re the daddy party after all)who always balance the budget, know how to manage the economy, believe in a strong defense and a tough-but-fair legal system. They’re battle-experienced veterans who support the military, unlike the Democrats who all protested the Vietnam War and spat on the troops coming home. Imaginary Republicans believe in America and they put their country first. They don’t believe in a nanny state regulating everything but trust Americans to make their own decisions. As witness this piece on JD Vance presenting him and his party as sensible mainstream Americans (small wonder Vance and Marco Rubio aren’t suffering from the Toddler’s unpopularity).

As plenty of bloggers and liberal pundits have pointed out, this image doesn’t seem to die. Never mind that Reagan, W and now the Toddler all set record deficits. Reagan’s 1980s economy went through a recession and the poor wound up poorer because of his policies (I was poor. I know). Reagan’s attorney general Ed Meese said we shouldn’t worry about the rights of the accused because if the police accuse someone, they’re guilty. As for regulation, it’s Wilhoit’s law: conservatives don’t want government telling them what to do but they’re fine with regulations that hurt gays, Muslims, women, etc. (even though members of all of those groups exist in the Republican tent). Speaker Mike Johnson is fine with Republican red ink but eager to gut Social Security. As for the military, the draft-dodging W (who also blew off his National Guard service) squandered hundreds of soldiers’ lives in Iraq; the Toddler is exhausting our armaments in Iran. Lots of Republicans avoided the draft but somehow it was only an issue for Bill Clinton (probably because only Democrats have agency — Republicans can’t be held responsible for being hypocrites).

I’d like to hope things are changing. It’s tempting for people to imagine the Toddler is the problem and the rest of his administration and its enablers will turn into the Imaginary Republicans once he’s gone. They won’t. People have been predicting for more than 15 years their right-ward march would end soon. It hasn’t. Here’s some recent examples:

The Toddler is now thinking about more budget-busting tax cuts. Which will become a serious problem once a Democrat is in the White House.

Strong on crime? The Toddler’s pay-for-a-pardon corruption has cost victims of crime $1.7 billion because pardon recipients don’t have to repay any of their ill-gotten gains.

Supporting the troops? Well, no.

Deep religious faith? “Faith groups suing President Donald Trump’s administration filed a motion Thursday (Aug. 20)alleging the Department of Homeland Security committed “multiple egregious violations” of a court order that largely barred warrantless surveillance at their churches.”

Have I mentioned the Toddler has threatened to bomb our ally Oman?

Fixing housing problems? The Toddler finds that a big yawn.

Sensible and moderate? If you ignore the party’s Nazi wing. Or their odious misogyny.

The Toddler is far and away the biggest pimple on the face of our democracy but he’s not the problem. His entire rancid party is. Like Rogers, I miss the sensible Republicans but there’s no point in pretending they’re ever coming back. As I put in 2022, “Republicans aren’t interested in compromise. They haven’t been interested in it for years. And they do want to end democracy, in favor of a banana republic where they can do what they damn well please to the rest of us. Or so they imagine.”

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July 2, 2026 · 5:19 am

What are human lives compared to science?

That’s the kind of argument you’d get from a B-movie mad scientist back in the last century: sure, there might be some adverse side-effects from their experiments, maybe the patients didn’t exactly consent — but how can science advance if you worry about ethics? Now Jeff Bezos has made that exact argument about AI (this clip comes from a twitter account by one Lisa Kippy):

There is a boatload of bullshit packed into that statement like the assumption LLMs will eventually become “a super-intelligence that could solve all our resource problems.” And that the growth of data centers, despite their demands for electricity and water, are a good, no a great thing, because science! We can’t worry about things like humans having adequate water for their needs — after all, it’s not like they’re Jeff Bezos or someone whose thirst matters.

This adds to the reasons for hating AI that Paul Krugman discusses here. For all their talk about the wonderful future ahead, what they tell us, repeatedly, is that AI is going to take all our jobs. Marc Andreesen literally claims it will take all the brain-power and creative jobs except, of course, venture capitalists like himself — no mere computer intelligence could do what he does (Kevin Leman discusses, more accurately, why LLMs can’t do what historians do)! Krugman remembers other techbros predicting 20 percent unemployment due to LLMs. Plus it will replace all creative work so authors, musicians and others can do … what? Somehow I don’t think they imagine the Jetsons kind of future where we can make a good living working an hour a day pushing buttons.

And as Krugman notes, we’re being pushed to use LLMs in various ways, whether we want to our not. My writer’s group had to put in more effort than we should to stop Zoom’s AI from recording us reading our stories. Nothing nefarious — it was an automatic, like taking minutes — but we still don’t fancy someone recording our work without our consent. Silicon Valley screams about how wonderful it is but it’s spreading more from pressure than the enthusiasm with which we adopted home computers or the Internet. Apparently even businesses are discovering the cost is not worth the output that results, as Krugman and 404 Media note.

Or consider California State University insisting they have to invest in AI to train their students for the “AI-driven future of work.” Which assumes the future will be driven by LLMs and that training to use them is the best use of the college’s money. Meanwhile, in the actual working world, the use of LLMs by both job-seekers and hirers is wreaking havoc on the job market.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising tech companies are presenting themselves as victims of some radical conspiracy. Kevin O’Leary, who’s developing a data center in Utah, had to walk back his accusations opponents of his center were proxies for China. Cops are monitoring criticism of data centers because who knows, maybe the critics wi’ll turn violent. One man who spoke out against data centers at a city council meeting was arrested for speaking too long. It would have been appropriate for cops to escort him out for speaking beyond the public-comment limits but arrest? That’s insane. Perhaps cops like AI because companies are so willing to share surveillance data without any Fourth Amendment concerns.

In other LLM notes:

Companies have figured out how to manipulate LLM searches for data.

LLMs are not helpful at answering small-molecule mass spectrometry questions.

How bad will Google going with AI summaries over actual links hurt online companies?

For a nonfiction writer, the only way to ensure LLMs aren’t giving you false data is not to use them.

If LLMs are sentient, so is the computer game Age of Empires.

“AI systems are beginning to replicate the same anti-LGBTQ bias and misinformation problems that have long plagued social platforms, according to a new GLAAD report previewed at Axios’ AI+NY Summit. The problems GLAAD flags — biased training data, privacy risks, automated discrimination, misinformation and the suppression of legitimate speech — extend beyond LGBTQ users to other minorities and groups in political disfavor.”

“Less than a day after President Donald Trump falsely suggested that Ilhan Omar had staged an attack on herself, the images started to circulate. In AI-generated fake photos that soon flooded both X and Facebook, the Minnesota representative is depicted posing next to the man who invaded a town hall meeting and sprayed apple cider vinegar on her from a syringe. In the AI-generated images, Omar and the man are both smiling; in some, the congresswoman is foisting a wad of cash, presumably to suggest that she bribed her attacker. “

I’ll close with some advice from David Dark: “Be the non-AI generated content you want to see in the world.”

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May 14, 2026 · 5:15 am

AI and some other tech stuff

“When the model gave accurate responses, the people using it outperformed a control group of people relying on their own brainpower. When the AI gave the wrong answers, the people using it did much worse than the control group. In other words, people stopped thinking for themselves.”

“Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain—in under 120 characters—that they were “related to DEI.” That’s what the newly released proposed amended complaint from the Authors Guild against the US government reveals about how DOGE actually decided which National Endowment for the Humanities grants to kill.”

I’m delighted Durham has imposed a 60-day moratorium on data centers. The city considered a longer ban but that will take a different procedure. I’m also happy Minnesota has banned apps that can take photos of people and strip them naked.

“Users of the platform can join video calls with an avatar of Jesus generated by artificial intelligence. Like other religious A.I. tools on the market, it offers words of prayer and encouragement in various languages. With the occasional glitch, it remembers previous conversations and speaks through not-quite-synced lips.” Ugh!

“An AI coding agent designed to help a small software company streamline its tasks instead blew a hole through its business in just nine seconds.”

How much does it tiring us if we’re constantly thinking “Is this AI?”

Some tech firms are cutting back worker benefits (PTO, 401k match, parental leave) to put more money into AI.

“Sales employees at Flock have been accessing sensitive cameras in the town to demonstrate the company’s surveillance technology to police departments around the country. The cameras accessed have included surveillance tech in a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a pool.” Here’s some intel from our local publication the Indy on What Is Flock?

Arizona State University used AI to turn professors’ lectures into online modules. The results were bad.

Well that’s alarming: Webinar TV scraped anonymous Zoom recovery meetings.

Another side-effect of all the money and tech being poured into AI: archiving the Internet has gotten harder and pricier.

Schools push back against excess tech. Jill Filipovic cheers them on.

Google is now using AI to rewrite headlines of articles found in google searches. As I don’t want to pay for the linked article, I’m curious whether it’s dumbing them down, sanewashing the Toddler or what — but it’s definitely not their call (headlines are not randomly selected, trust me). And let’s not forget, AI synopsizing news articles frequently gets them wrong.

“Five developers are planning to build six data center campuses in Archbald, which will cover a full 14 percent of the town, evict a trailer park, and border many residential properties. One campus alone, as The Scranton Times-Tribune reporter Frank Lefneskey pointed out, is expected to use more power than the region’s largest power plant is able to produce. “

China has superior EV car batteries. There’s a push to keep them away from Americans.

Some members of the Austin City Council are seeking answers from Waymo after video showed one of its vehicles blocking an ambulance as it was responding to the scene of the mass shooting at Buford’s bar on West Sixth Street on March 1.

Tech companies hate “right to repair” laws that allow people other than themselves to repair or modify tech. Their new angle to block them: national security.

If aluminum can be turned into a catalyst, that would be a scientific and technological game-changer.

Why the payphone was once a cutting-edge invention.

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December 24, 2025 · 5:10 am

Liar, liar, pants on fire

The Necrotic Toddler claims he cut drug prices 600 percent — in other words, if the drug cost $100, it would now earn us a $500 rebate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tries and fails to make it make sense.

The Toddler is a bullshit artist. As Paul Campos puts it at the link above, he’ll say whatever he thinks will get him the sale or the vote or shut up those mean people who think he’s not the bestest little baby who’s ever been president. Like declaring unemployment is only up because of all the government employees he fired. It isn’t.

As Paul Krugman points out, it’s also that he has no other cards to play. He has no solutions that work. “Faced with adversity, he’s unable to propose policies to improve the situation. All he can do is continue to gaslight the public and claim that everything is great, while smearing his opponents.” So we get ideas like “instead of giving money to insurers, I’ll give it to people to give to insurers! See how different that is!”

While this is good news for Dem prospects, it’s horrible news for lots of people, like those whose insurance is spiking way, way up next year (I know a couple). For all the things government does wrong, it does a lot right, and we need competent people to make it work properly. We do not have that now.

While we’re on the subject of lies, JD Vance has announced that “We don’t treat anybody different because of their race or their sex” so it’s good Republicans are rejecting DEI. “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

JD Vance lives in a fantasy world where criticizing white power or patriarchy means white people and men are being told to apologize for the accident of their condition. No, people have to apologize if they’ve been racist/sexist dicks. And he’s made no secret about treating women differently: he talks a lot about childless cat ladies but I don’t hear him judging childless men the same way. And shall we mention that the Felon administration is hating on Somali-Americans simply for their ethnicity?

Oh, he seems to be okay with throwing out anti-semitic dog whistles too.

I’m sure Vance sincerely doesn’t want white people judged. But he’s fine judging everyone else.

And for a final lair, Batya Ungar-Sargon who claims the theme of the Necrotic Toddler’s first year is bringing dignity back.

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October 29, 2025 · 5:15 am

The idea is not the hard part; more thoughts on AI

There’s an anecdote many writers have, myself included. Someone tells us they have an amazing idea for a fantasy story/movie/high-octane thriller; how’s about I write the story based on their idea and we’ll split the profits (which will be huge, of course. Their idea’s that good).

I can’t help thinking this explains, in part, the belief that if someone gives AI a prompt and tells them to write a story, therefore the prompter has written the story themselves. Isn’t coming up with the idea the hard part? AI just makes it easier to build on your concept, by saving you from having to think about character arcs, plot or writing well. Lots of people say “Someday I’ll write a novel,” but never have the discipline to sit down and do it (I’ve known a couple of talented people like that). Now they don’t have to sit

Case in point, Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist who believes AI may never be able to do what he does, is quite confident it can master comparatively trivial skills such as art and filmmaking.

(I got this off BlueSky. My apologies for losing track of the source post).

That is an interesting definition of “future creatives.” No cameras, no set, no filmmaking skills, but they’ve got an idea! Thanks to AI, they can become Spielberg!

It’s true that improvements in tech have made it easier to shoot a low-budget movie than ever before. However that does not guarantee you can make a good or even marginally competent low-budget movie. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, shooting a movie well is a skill. Or as I put it some years ago, “Photojournalism is a skill, not just a matter of pointing a camera because something interesting is happening.” Even less is it a matter of telling AI to point the camera for you.

A less charitable interpretation than my opening remark would be that the AI-is-art boom is a bunch of techbros who do not get art, can’t make art (but remember, Andreessen’s investment skills are much more of an art than art!) and resent the accolades flowing to artistic people. Well, now they’re going to annex art. Their tech will make it and real artists will soon be nothing special!

Plus there’s the money. As comics artist Jamie McKelvie put it, “the main achievement of the tech industry has been increasing the flow of money from people who make or do things to people who already have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes” Case in point, Spotify; great for tech, ruinous for musicians (“It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts.”).

I read a dubious argument recently that using copyright against AI tech companies to protect them from learning on our work for free is wrong: copyright is supposed to promote innovation and this will work against innovation by stifling all the awesome creative work that will come out of AI. I’m less optimistic. As Charlie Warzel puts it in The Atlantic, “This is how it feels to live in the golden age of slop, a catchall word used to describe the spammy quality of easy-to-generate AI material. I’ve begun to think of it as the digital equivalent of an invasive species. Just as the introduction and replication of a novel plant or animal usually results in some form of ecological harm and threatens native organisms, the arrival of chatbots pumping out lorem ipsum–flavored text has polluted Google search results and added hallucinations to scientific archives.”

Warzel also has an answer to claims that AI will liberate creatives: “The idea is that Sora 2, like all AI tools, removes an enormous amount of friction between conception and completion in the creative process. Ideas and imagination are universal to the human experience, but execution is learned, the result of energy and time spent to develop the skills necessary to bring an idea into the world. Altman’s definition of creativity seems to elide this second element altogether—so much so that it appears to be an animating principle behind most of OpenAI’s tools.

‘ “The fact that you will be able to have an entire piece of software created just by explaining your idea is going to be incredible for humans getting great new stuff,” Altman said on the comedian Theo Von’s podcast this summer. “Because right now, I think there’s a lot more good ideas than people who know how to make them. And if AI can do that for us, we’re really good at coming up with creative ideas.”’

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October 15, 2025 · 5:15 am

Links about creative and artistic stuff

So I’ll illustrate with cover art.

An account of conservatives taking over a library board and what followed.

I wouldn’t say House Speaker Mike Johnson is a square (as we used to call them) just because he suggests replacing Bad Bunny as Superbowl entertainment with MAGA-approved Lee Greenwood. Okay, yes I would say it.

Is Spotify using ghost artists (not AI, though I’m sure that’s coming) to replace legit musicians entitled to royalties?

As a concept for storytelling, Choose Your Own Adventure goes back further than I thought.

Among Ben Franklin’s accomplishments: inventing the modern lending library.

Daniel Kibblesmith on AI art: “People who don’t know how to invent anything except fundraising are using computers to create a world where they can insert themselves as middlemen and pretend they invented everything we already had.”

“Popular music may not be satanic, but MAGA is right to see it as mostly liberal. That’s why they fear it. Far from avoiding transcendent artistic experiences, the left can lay claim to most of them. Most everything from Taylor Swift to the grittiest punk music is made by people on the left. That’s why evangelicals want their kids to avoid it. They rightly believe that it’s hard to go back to mediocrity after you’ve tasted excellence.”

The real life young women who inspired the Pink Ladies of Grease.

“Asian Americans, especially Asian American women, are NOT some test case for seeing what you can get away with, Patriarchy.com. We know you THINK we are, because we’re the model-adjacent-minority or WHATEVER, but we are not that football.“

“A former Wyoming library director who was fired amid an uproar over books with sexual content and LGBTQ+ themes that some people complained were inappropriate for youngsters and who sought their removal from youth shelves will be paid $700,000 after settling a lawsuit.”

Covers top to bottom by Gervasio Gallardo, Earle Bergey, Ed Emshwiller, Richard Powers. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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October 9, 2025 · 5:15 am

If you think $10 million is enough, you will never make $10 million

That insight came from entrepreneur and business guru Harvey Mackay back in the 1990s (I browed his books when I worked at Waldenbooks). I think there’s a definite truth to it. For a lot of rich people “enough” doesn’t exist.

Take Robert Murdoch. He’s a centibillionaire so even if he wasn’t an old man, his money is never going to run out; his kids, grandkids, great-grandkids will never have to do a day’s work if he gives them the option. But when he discovered Fox — following the standard science regarding covid and vaccines — was losing ground to Newsmax, he immediately ordered an anti-vax stance, while requiring all employees get vaccinated.

Or consider the medbed, a non-existent miracle technology that supposedly cures as well as Wolverine’s healing factor. Unsurprisingly some tech companies have tried to milk the myth while maintaining plausible deniability: “Tesla BioHealing sells a “MedBed Generator,” which is a metal canister that patients place under their actual bed, for $11,000. Speaking to The Daily Beast in 2022, Tesla BioHealing CEO James Liu insisted that the company did not want to be associated with the medbed hoax, but promised its products would deliver “life force energy” to sick people.” This is, of course, a form of fraud that’s been around forever, but that’s no excuse.

College sports are hooked on the money too. I wrote in a previous post (but I can’t find it) about how colleges are partnering with online betting rings to encourage students to bet on games. Bad for students’ bottom lines, great for the college. Because even when the college has a multi-million dollar endowment, they hoard it like Smaug.

Or consider the endless string of sports events and now a comedy festival willing to set up in Saudi Arabia. Comedian David Cross on the festival and the comics who signed up: “I don’t understand how being rich can make someone such a whore. Poor people desperate to improve their (or their families lives), sure. Still not acceptable but I can understand the desperation to put food on the table. But this? I mean, it’s not like this is some commercial for a wireless service or a betting app. This is truly the definition of “blood money”. You might as well do commercials for Lockheed Martin or Zyklon B.”

At least some of the participants, such as Louis CK, are millionaires. It puts me in mind of Rod Serling’s observation in Requiem for a Heavyweight: first you get a thousand a week (we’re talking 1950s money — today that’s over ten grand a week) and it’s unbelievable! Nobody can spend that much! A year later, you’re spending that much. A year after that, you need it to live. Or feel like you do.

Paul Campos: “One thing I’ve watched pretty much totally collapse over the past generation, and the past decade in particular, has been what could be called the I’ll do a lot of things but I won’t do that ethos. The notion that you shouldn’t sell certain things no matter what you’re offered because that would be wrong is becoming almost literally incomprehensible, in a frank plutocracy in which money is essentially God.”

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September 30, 2025 · 12:24 pm

Republicans insist Zohran Mamdani becoming NYC mayor would be good news for Republicans

For instance, the Necrotic Toddler of the United States, who claims Mamdani’s proposals will fail miserably — the Toddler will cut off all federal funds to NYC to ensure it! Plus it’s good for Republicans.

The “centrist” Democrats are saying the same thing: Mamdani’s policies are bad because Democrats should focus on economic concerns. Which he is, but he’s doing it wrong! Except he isn’t: “He has found a framing that has resonance far beyond New York City: The cost of living is killing ordinary people.”

For too many Democrats, it seems that’s one step away from Mao’s cultural revolution in the 1960s. Worse, Mamdani might redefine what it means to be a Democrat, which would hurt the party with moderates — a New York radical will be a party killer in other areas of the country!

As one Democrat points out in one of those articles, he’s not running in those areas, and nobody is being forced to run on the same policies. Sure, Republicans will try to hang him around every Dem neck but if a candidate were fiscal conservative, watch-the-budget type, Republicans would still call them a tax-and-spend liberal, so what’s the diff? And I don’t recall the same worries about conservative Sen. Joe Manchin hurting the party, not even when he tanked lots of legislation.

And I don’t think grocery stores in food deserts, free childcare and free mass transit would, in fact, be unpopular elsewhere. Mamdani may not be able to accomplish his goals but at least he has good targets. Yet we still have Sen. Charles Schumer withholding an endorsement.

Part of this is undoubtedly that he’s a Muslim and sympathetic to the Palestinians hit with Israel’s genocidal attacks. Which may be why the Jewish Anti-Defamation League falsely claims Mamdani has made no attempt at outreach to the Jewish community. Republicans, of course, are eager to hit Mamdani with every classic anti-Muslim smear.

As for Mamdani’s plans being insane budget busters — well, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has declared open-ended support to propping up Argentina’s economy. The Argentinian president has Republican-style right-wing economic policies that have tanked the country’s finances, so naturally we’ll spend billions to save his butt. Plus it helps Bessent’s friend Rob Citrone, who’s invested heavily in Argentina. What they’re going to spend on Argentina, what they’ve already committed to spending on ICE — Mamdani’s plans ain’t nothing by comparison. It’s not about the national wallet but the national will.

I was going to end there but we have this interesting tidbit from the WaPo’s current op-ed editor explaining they’re not going to be biased: they’ll credit Republicans for valid criticism of Democrats and they’ll credit Democrats for criticism of Mamdani. So long as everyone criticizes Dems, it’s all good.

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