Emil O W Kirkegaard on Twitter - "Voice pitch declines in women with age, making it a reliable sign of youth. Hence men's preference for high pitched voices in women. Interesting is that variability in pitch is a marker of intelligence and openness. So people who speak in monotone are somewhat duller. Didn't expect that one... Their supplements gives us the correlations by sex. Looks like most of these hold up even within sex. This would suggest more feminine women are somewhat duller, and the same for men. An unusual finding."
Meta-analysis of the effect of fiscal policies on long-run growth - "The issue of whether the public sector enhances or retards long-run economic growth has been debated passionately in recent years. We use meta-analysis to shed light on the issue. A sample of 93 published studies, yielding 123 meta-observations, is used to examine the robustness of the evidence regarding the effect of fiscal policy on growth. Five fiscal policy areas are considered: general government consumption, tax rates, education expenditure, defence, and public infrastructure. Several meta-analytical techniques are applied, including descriptive statistics, contingency table analysis and rough set analysis. On balance, the evidence for a positive effect of conventional fiscal policy on growth is rather weak, but the commonly identified importance of education and infrastructure is confirmed. The results are sensitive to several research design parameters, such as the type of data, model specification and econometric technique. The top two tiers of journals appear less supportive of the conventional priors with respect to government and growth than lesser-ranked journals."
A Replication of “Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Fiscal Policies on Long-run Growth” - "This study replicates the article by Nijkamp and Poot (2004), henceforth N&P, and performs a variety of robustness checks. Using a sample of fiscal policy studies published between 1983 and 1998, N&P concluded that certain types of studies on fiscal policies were more likely to confirm prior beliefs about their impact on economic growth than others. N&P also identified study attributes that impacted the likelihood of confirmation. We are able to exactly replicate their findings. We then attempt an alternative replication, returning to the original studies and independently categorizing them using N&P’s general classification scheme. We also investigate the implications of a number of methodological improvements on their analysis. Our analysis produces results that are qualitatively similar to N&P, though few of our results are statistically significant. The full-length version of this study suggests directions for future meta-analysis studies on the subject of fiscal policy and economic growth."
Taxes and Economic Growth in OECD Countries: A Meta-analysis - "This study performs a meta-analysis of the effect of taxes on economic growth in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. A challenge with synthesizing tax estimates is that they measure different things. This follows because studies differ in the government budget constraints implied by their regression specifications. To address this problem, we use a taxonomy from Gemmell, Kneller, and Sanz that predicts the growth effects from various tax-spending-deficit combinations. We apply this taxonomy to 979 estimates from forty-nine studies of tax effects in OECD countries. Our headline result is that a 10 percent increase in taxes is associated with a decrease in annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of approximately −0.2 percent when bundled as part of a TaxNegative tax-spending-deficit combination. The same tax increase is associated with an increase in annual GDP growth of approximately 0.2 percent when part of a TaxPositive fiscal policy package. All of our data, output, and programming code are publicly available at https://osf.io/ 6 bfgx/"
TaxNegative = Unproductive expenditures & Nondistortionary taxes. TaxPositive = Productive expenditures, Distortionary taxes & Deficit/surplus
Do corporate tax cuts boost economic growth? - "The empirical literature on the impact of corporate taxes on economic growth reaches ambiguous conclusions: corporate tax cuts increase, reduce, or do not significantly affect growth. We apply meta-regression methods to a novel data set with 441 estimates from 42 primary studies. There is evidence for publication selectivity in favour of reporting growth-enhancing effects of corporate tax cuts. Correcting for this bias, we cannot reject the hypothesis of a zero effect of corporate taxes on growth. Several factors influence reported estimates, including researcher choices concerning the measurement of growth and corporate taxes, and controlling for other budgetary components."
The ultra-rich and the myth of a philanthropic dividend - "Despite growing global consensus that tax evasion practices and tax havens are problematic, local popular discourse rarely gives serious consideration to how Singapore’s policies facilitate these trends and what costs they impose on society and polity. A recent news article, for example, focused instead on how rich foreigners could moderate any public display of privilege to minimise social frictions, and “contribute to Singapore” through job creation and philanthropy. Such prescriptions — urging the uber rich to display modesty and magnanimity — may indeed improve the optics of the red carpet that Singapore has rolled out for UHNWs. What remains unquestioned, however, is the cost to the public of using low taxes and other financial incentives to woo the wealthy, and whether these costs are outweighed by the promised benefits... Besides being unfair and inequitable — imposing a lower tax burden on capital-owners than on the average worker — the ultra-wealthy’s tax avoidance practices harm their home countries by reducing the tax revenues available to fund the provision of much-needed public goods and services. This is especially impoverishing for poorer countries, but also debilitating for advanced industrial countries straining to keep up with social needs... Tax havens’ policy of attracting the global ultra-rich by facilitating their tax avoidance is thus detrimental to the economies and welfare of their home countries, and of other countries where their capital might otherwise be invested. But, the successful tax haven is not necessarily a winner in this game either. Since Singapore offers the rich comparatively low income tax rates, plus freedom from wealth, capital gains and inheritance taxes, their contribution to local tax revenues — necessary to fund the security, infrastructure and other public amenities that the wealthy too enjoy — must also by definition be low... With respect to job creation, Singapore is well known to be a full-employment economy chronically and severely short of labour, skills, and talent. It is therefore likely that the jobs “created” by UHNW investors will be filled by foreigners, thus increasing rather than reducing dependence on them. At the “low end” of the labour market these will be disproportionately personal service workers, while at the “high end” they will be disproportionately financial, legal and IT professionals facilitating tax avoidance and “wealth management”. In both cases, the cost of living and the cost of doing business will be raised for others, including local and multinational, individual and corporate, employers, and other more “productive” and less “footloose” sectors of the economy. Where resources are scarce—as land, labour, skills and talent are in Singapore—there is always an opportunity cost that is borne by others in society. As for philanthropy, the amounts donated by the ultra-rich are everywhere a tiny fraction of what their normal tax obligations would be — at much below 1 percent of annual income, compared with the 24 percent paid by an average taxpayer in rich countries and the 40 percent paid by high-salaried (but not ultra-rich) taxpayers. Charitable donations — which themselves attract tax benefits — thus do not make up for the loss in tax revenues resulting from tax avoidance abetted by host states. Instead, the tax revenues forgone by privileging the ultra-wealthy amount to a drain of financial resources from the public to the private sphere. Any shift from taxation to voluntary donations also raises important issues of political representation and voice. In democratic societies, tax revenues and public expenditures are ultimately accountable to citizen taxpayers through their elected representatives. In contrast, philanthropic donations are not directed at democratically selected social needs but instead reflect donors’ personal preferences, including their prestige considerations... Over time, the rise of philanthropy as a substitute for well-resourced public agencies has agenda-setting effects, directing attention toward mitigating certain inadequacies and away from structural problems and solutions. The problems of “underprivileged” or “disadvantaged” students, to return to this example, are usually deeply embedded in interlocking problems their families face: poor work conditions, inadequate wages, housing discrimination and insecurity, care gaps, inadequate nutrition and healthcare, and yes, educational disadvantages. The required interventions are correspondingly broad — in wage protections, housing regulations, healthcare financing, care infrastructure, school reward systems. Donor-funded bursaries and scholarships, while welcome, may distract from the full constellation of issues requiring concerted attention. A philanthropy fetish may thus reinforce the Singapore state’s long-standing conception and framing of social problems and solutions — eschewing broad welfare and diluting commitments to large-scale, collective policy responses in favour of the “Many Helping Hands” of charities and “self-help” groups."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Björn Ulvaeus Guest Edits Today - "'‘Holding a conversation in real time in order to decide what to do, this was impossible until the rise of modern Information Technology. With newspapers and then radio and then television and so forth. But you also need trust between people, the other people in your country. You need to trust they are only your political rivals, they are not your enemies. When people start thinking that their neighbors or the people in the next town, they are out to destroy a way of life. Democracy becomes impossible. No more trust, no more democracy. We are seeing that there is a rise of hatred and fear in countries like the US. So I think, it's not a very high chance, but I think there is some chance that the 2024 elections in the US would be the last democratic election in U.S history’...
'You think the UK gave no votes to Sweden. Do you know of any other countries of the 17 that gave no votes to Sweden?... I’ve waited for so long to tell you this… Greece was taking part in the Eurovision for the first time in 1974. They gave Sweden nul point. Monaco, where French is the first language, gave Sweden nul point. Belgium, where France is one of the first languages, gave Sweden nul point. And Italy, which did take part in the voting, gave Sweden nul point... ABBA won with the least points of any Eurovision winner ever’"
Of course, he just bashed Trump, ignoring all the hatred from the other side
Best of Today: Björn from ABBA's Eurovision highlights on Apple Podcasts - "'The most important thing to come out of the 1974 Eurovision song context... when the Portuguese entrant sang, that was the secret signal to the colonels in Portugal to come out of their barracks with carnations in their rifles and start the revolution against fascism'...
'I was the only person in my family that religiously watched Eurovision. I'm the only gay person in my family and it took me a while to work out I was gay. But I didn't understand what that feeling was, like why did I love Eurovision so much?... Why did I love ABBA so much? But it's when you get older that you work it out backwards and you're like oh, I'm gay and I'm part of this community that celebrates inclusion, creativity, diversity and unity'"
If you like Eurovision and ABBA you're gay?!
Watch | Facebook - "Street Fighter Acapella"
Rhetorical Calvinball - "Calvin invents Calvinball because he’s frustrated with organized sports, which he keeps losing. Practitioners of Rhetorical Calvinball often have similar motivations. They’re not getting what they want out of rational debate, so they’ve decided to abandon its rules... Some people will, of course, be tempted to prioritize winning over truthing. Does it really matter that my side might be in the wrong on some small matter if it allows me to defeat a political adversary who opposes things I deeply care about? There are two reasons to resist this argument. First, the number of people who can smell that someone is trying to sell them on bullshit is much larger than partisans or ideologues tend to believe. Staking your chances of realizing noble goals on the ability to stop people from seeing the falsity of your claims is far less clever a strategy than armchair political strategists tend to assume. Second, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to found a just society upon a series of falsehoods. Even a lie that truly is noble remains a lie. Over time, people are likely to realize and resent and eventually reject it. That is why agonistic progress towards truth is necessary for agonistic progress towards justice: in virtually every case, those who are willing to jettison truth in favor of justice will wind up sacrificing both."
Meme - "SHAKESPEARE QUOTE OF THE DAY
An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made."
TikTok Texas DoorDash customer has car tire burst by delivery driver after failing to tip - "After dropping off the delivery of water, the driver leaves. However footage from a doorbell camera shows them returning shortly afterwards and slashing the tires of the customer's car with a rock. While many people condemned the behaviour, some were on the side of the driver. One wrote: "If the tip isn’t already on the order im not taking it! Go get your own shit if u dnt wanna tip." Another posted: "Yeah I’m on his side. U telling me u expect someone to go to the store for u, get u heavy waters, & u have the nerve to not tip & play victim?" A third wrote: "That’s how they make their money??? TIP them or go get the water yourself.""
DoorDash deliveryman fired after cursing out woman over 25% tip - "A DoorDash delivery driver has been fired for cursing out a woman after she gratefully offered him a $5 tip for a $20 order of pizza... Purciful said she was initially unable to rescind her tip, but after her husband complained to DoorDash, they were sent a $5 voucher to reimburse them. The Purcifuls escalated the problem, and after DoorDash opened an investigation into the situation, it canned Corey and upped the voucher another $75"
It's always DoorDash
Find out if you're misusing words like trauma and gaslighting - The Washington Post - "In our work at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, we teach people how to “recognize,” “understand,” “label,” “express” and “regulate” (RULER) their own and others’ feelings to reach goals. We’ve seen how teaching children and adults to use “feeling words” can help them express themselves more accurately, understand others and build greater interpersonal connection. And we’ve seen there are risks when people choose the wrong word. Others are likely to misunderstand your feelings, which makes it hard for them to help. Among the words we hear misused — and overused — most frequently are “trauma,” “gaslighting,” “narcissism” and “depressed.” We call them “fuzzy words” because their misuse gets in the way of clear communication. You might think of these words as “therapy” words because you’ve heard them discussed in therapy or by mental health professionals. Here’s what these words mean — and the potential consequences when they are misused.
We frequently hear people say they are traumatized. But what they’re experiencing is actually grief, stress or unrelenting anxiety. These are emotions that people typically feel in times of transition, instability, uncertainty and loss. People experience traumatic events. But many use the word “trauma” too casually to describe life events that make them uncomfortable or that they perceive as negative. In his book “The End of Trauma,” psychologist George Bonanno observes that nowadays it seems that “anything bad is trauma.” The American Psychological Association defines clinical trauma as “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer-term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.” By using the word “trauma” to describe an emotion such as grief, you may write off helpful strategies for healing and recovery. Describing yourself as traumatized, when you’re merely overwhelmed, may keep you from recognizing that there are concrete actions — such as taking tasks off your plate — that can make you feel better.
In 2007, one of us wrote a book called “The Gaslight Effect,” which popularized the term “gaslighting.” Over the past decade, we’ve watched the meaning of the word become diluted and warped through overuse. Today, we hear it used several times a week — often inaccurately — and it has become so pervasive that Merriam-Webster named “gaslighting” its 2022 word of the year. Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse in which the gaslighter uses psychological manipulation to undermine the gaslightee, causing the person to question themselves and their reality. The gaslighter’s need for control and power in a relationship is a key component of gaslighting. Today, many people use “gaslighting” when someone merely disagrees with them...
If someone does something you find inconsiderate or selfish, that alone does not make them a narcissist. And calling someone a narcissist is so fraught that it seldom yields a productive outcome...
The American Psychological Association defines depression as “extreme sadness or despair that lasts more than days. It interferes with the activities of daily life and can cause physical symptoms such as pain, weight loss or gain, sleeping pattern disruptions, or lack of energy.” We have found that the term “depressed” is used to describe myriad feelings that are unpleasant but not necessarily depression. This is important, because many emotions that feel close to depression have very different psychological causes and treatments. “Disappointed,” for example, is about unmet expectations; “discouraged” is about losing confidence or enthusiasm for something; “sadness” is associated with loss."
Damn toxic gatekeepers!
Of course I get slammed whenever I point out that people keep misusing these terms
Meme - "Dessert
Boobs ice Y80 (without tax)
Mellon sherbet Y100 (without tax)
University of potato ice Y180 (without tax)
Ice cream
The offer at a special free for girls. Male shalt pay 150 yen in silence"
From Hanbe Shibuya Dogenzaka
Canadian judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement - "A Canadian judge has ruled that the “thumbs-up” emoji is just as valid as a signature, arguing that courts need to adapt to the “new reality” of how people communicate as he ordered a farmer to pay C$82,000 ($61,442) for an unfulfilled contract."
It's not just Nigel Farage. My own daughter was blocked from opening a bank account - "my daughter Domenica, now 28, got caught up in this morass. In 2016 we decided to open a bank account for her. She has Down's Syndrome; this was not something she could do herself. But when my wife Rosa went to the Barclays in our nearest town (where Rosa had had an account for many years), she was told it would not be possible for Domenica to have an account. No reason was given. Fortunately Rosa knew the manager there — the position now no longer exists, and the branch itself is about to close — and he said that he would look into the matter. He came back to Rosa: 'I'm really sorry, but it's out of our hands. It's because of money-laundering risks. 'I know this sounds ridiculous, but it's because of Domenica's grandfather. He is a politically exposed person.' This was a reference to Nigel Lawson, my late father, the former chancellor, who was by then a member of the House of Lords. And as the Lords is a legislative assembly, that counted under the regulations. As, absurdly, did his granddaughter, who was of course oblivious to the bank's implication that she might be a link to money laundering, or the funding of an international drugs cartel... When I spoke to Sir Charles yesterday, he told me that he knew of ten current Members of Parliament who have seen their bank accounts closed, including some 'who have only ever been backbenchers . . . They have nothing like the political footprint of Nigel Farage'. He also pointed out how the banks use the so-called 'anti-tipping-off law' (which bans financial institutions from telling customers anything to alert them about an investigation into their affairs) as a convenient cover for refusing to give the 'banned' account holder any details of why he or she is thought to be suspect."
What to say when 'experts say' - "journalists rarely call on “experts” to discuss canonical theory or their own original research. Instead, they are asked to opine on the cut and thrust of everyday politics, where they have no special insight... if a journalist asks you an inane question, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with giving an equally inane answer. The real question is, why is the journalist asking them in the first place?"
The "Wheel-less" bicycle that’s shattering conventions and turning heads
Meme - "r/stripper. I am NEVER giving a dance to an indian man again."
"There was a thread a while back on r/stripclubs where an Indian man was saying he was being ignored in clubs and if there was a bias against men like him. One girl made a comment that yeah most of them push boundaries and try to rip our tits off. And it's true. I've been dancing for 16 years and learned the hard way to not approach Indian men unless I literally don't have gas money to get home. I'm sorry if it makes me racist to not want to be assaulted literally every gd time I get a dance with an Indian guy. I had one grab my tits SO HARD after gently moving their hands off my boobs several times and saying 'no touching' that I had five point bruises so bad I had to take two weeks off of work to heal. Every day rubbing Arnica gel on my sore ass boobs as the bruises go from dark purple to yellow and finally fade. Over a $20 dance with no tip. Fuck that noise never again"
Meme - "Facts. I dont dance for Indian men (that aren't Americanized like someone else pointed out) for the same reason. I discovered pretty quickly that they ALL behave the same way. And on top of that, they're super cheap! It's really hard to not have this bias because it truly does have a lot of truth and correlation to it. One time, there was this group of YOUNG, Indian boys, and swear to god, one of them came up to me and said "How much for p*ssy fingering?" Honestly, I fucking laughed at him. But what the F bro hahahahaha. Pleaseeee."
"Or Arab men. They think it's a brothel."
"For real my clubs Middle Eastern so we have so many customers like that and they'll be like "well in Dubai they don't even charge that much" I like bro go to Dubai then not my problem"
Meme - "They want to fuck you for 40 dollars and will try and twist your nipples off during a dance. If I could go back in time I would tell my baby dancer self to stay away from them."
"Yep. I've danced for a few Indians and I've had to restrain their hands because they were getting rough. I was really aggressive with them and they eventually got polite and calmed down, but I had to keep reminding them. They're surprisingly polite yet gross at the same time. PS. I am part Indian. The men are weird and repressed (which is not entirely their fault) and every single one I've met, not just at the club, was a creep. I'd never date one of them and I feel really sorry for their women."
"I'm glad to hear from someone who is actually Indian on this topic. I always account it towards their repressed sexuality as thats what i've heard before. I am literally a POC & the people commenting saying we're racist must have not been sexually assaulted enough to understand our bias. What you're saying here is impossible to be racist. Cause you are Indian as well, but also aware that this is a common theme along with everyone else in the comments. When I am outside of the club and not in a sexually vulnerable situation I have never had any issues with the guys. Its just for some reason at the club."
"So many of the young Indian men I've met in the club claimed to be virgins. The ones that are trying to do right, usually ask for advice on sex and relationships. This is an easy segue into a chat about consent and boundaries. They may ask those red flag questions but can be corrected"
Meme - "I've had this same experience with Indian men and know many others who have too but yet I got attacked when I spoke out a few days ago. Their favorite line is "wEll wHITE mEn aSsAULt tOo" like DUH. Nobody says they dont. But Ive definitely noticed a pattern with Indian men misbehaving in the club. Its a cultural thing. Even Indian women I know talk about how poor their men treat them. If their westernized it's a different story."
"EXACTLY!! I am asian, asian men assault too. Literally EVERY variety of man has sexually assaulted, not every man, but every different color/race. Like you said it is a pattern though with Indian men and 95% of these comments agree. I'm just not going to take the risk of it happening, and the people accusing some of us of being racist for taking our own power and free will back to make decisions as to what WE do with our own bodies and choosing not to put ourselves at risk of sexual assault, those people are just as much of a problem, ina different sense that's to do with telling other people that a choice is wrong or demeaning them for that choice."
"Literally like what clownery is this that im supposed to accept being treated like shit just to not look racist how many times does it have to happen before its just self preservation"
Thread by @Noahpinion on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I think what's going on with Twitter checkmarks is very easy to understand, and has very little to do with Elon being a loose cannon. It's about trying to pivot from an ad model to a subscription model in the presence of uncertain network effects and switching costs. Twitter isn't good at making people buy stuff, so its ad-based business was always shitty. A bunch of advertisers probably wanted to yank their ads and just used Elon's purchase of the company as an excuse to do so. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter's old shareholders knew they were living on borrowed time and that's why they jumped at the chance to sell the business... the only alternative to an ad-based model, for an online content platform, is a subscription model. Elon knows this, so his original plan coming in was to make people pay for Twitter. That's the only way this platform is economically viable. Now we get to *why* Elon decided people would pay for Twitter. Two reasons. First reason: network effects. If Twitter is THE place to get news, and THE place to talk about news (i.e. scream and fight), then no one who's interested in news can leave. But staying on the platform is not the same as paying for the premium product. You can still scroll, chat, etc. for free. Elon's business hypothesis has to be that a sufficient number of Twitter users will pay to be able to use Twitter in some "better" way. There are many features that might make a "premium" Twitter product that people will pay for. Editing tweets, getting a special boost for your tweets, writing long tweets, etc. But Elon doesn't know what that mix of features is... So that's what he's been doing: Experimenting. Rolling out various features, for one thing. But also threatening to revoke "legacy verified" status from the people he thinks are likely to pay for a premium service. He's probing, trying to suss out what people will pay for. But there's a danger here. Twitter depends on a strong network effect. This platform sucks, and the only reason we're still on it is because a ton of other people are still on it. Once a critical mass leaves, there's no reason to stay. So Elon's experiments are inherently dangerous. If they drive too many power users away, this whole place collapses in short order and Elon just paid tens of billions to become the new MySpace Tom. He can't have that. So he's cautious with the experiments. 11/This is why you see a lot of rapid reversals, bold declarations of intent that end up not happening, etc. Elon is probing to find out what people will pay for, but can't afford to probe too boldly for fear of killing the network effect and thus killing the company. Fortunately for Elon, he does have one powerful ally on his side: switching costs. Twitter people have made their digital home here, in this rancid sewer. And to find a new home is always a jarring, dislocating experience... Of course the longer term problem is that young people aren't that interested in Twitter (because frankly it's obsolete and it sucks). But Elon is hoping to execute a turnaround well before generational turnover starts to bite... What's also interesting -- and what I haven't seen anyone point out yet -- is that whether or not Elon succeeds here, his stint as an attempted turnaround CEO for a dying legacy social media company is keeping him from doing anything in generative AI..."