The Federal Reserve is done talking about recession - "The word "recession" doesn't appear even once in the minutes from the central bank's last three meetings, which took place between September and December. In contrast, the term pops up more than a dozen times in reference to an upcoming economic downturn in the minutes from the preceding seven meetings, dating back to November 2022."
Canadian journalist, who asked minister about Iran, arrested for ‘assault’ - "“Ms. Freeland, how come the IRGC is not a terrorist group?” he asks, of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Why is your government supporting Islamo-nationalism?” The minister, who ignores the questions, veers to her left—per video that Rebel News posted on social media—leading Menzies to apparently walk into a police officer, who has planted himself seemingly like a basketball player setting a pick aiming to get fouled. “Excuse me,” Menzies says at first, seeming to have not seen the officer. “What are you doing?” “You’re under arrest for assault,” the officer says, before throwing Menzies, who wears a tan hat and still holds his microphone, into a wall... “A Canadian government that props up an Islamo-fascist regime, that’s OK. But if you ask questions about that, that’s not OK.”"
How Liberalism Failed - "A massive amount of ink has already been spilled trying to figure out what has gone wrong, but two narratives can be plucked from the confusion. The first focuses on economic change... The second narrative focuses on social change... Most analysis stops here, at viewing economic or social change or some combination of the two as leading inevitably to dissatisfaction with liberal democracy and a readiness to embrace populist, illiberal, or even undemocratic alternatives. The issue, of course, is that social, economic, and technological change alone are not the problem—they only become so if politicians and governments don’t help citizens adjust to them. If we want, therefore, to understand liberal democracy’s current problems, we need to examine not only such changes, but also how elites and governments have responded to them... they argue that government has played a large and underappreciated role in creating or exacerbating these problems. They describe how the misregulation of the financial sector enriched the financial elite and introduced unnecessary risks and distortions into the economy; how the expansion of copyright and patent protection has created “monopolies,” limited innovation, and showered “riches on a favored few”; how occupational licensing protects incumbent firms and favored professions and obstructs competition, entrepreneurship, and consumer interests; and how land-use regulations and zoning distort markets, hamper Americans’ ability to move where opportunity is, and instead redistribute wealth to “higher-income homeowners and the bankers who provide mortgage finance” to them. Why has government acted in socially counterproductive and economically inefficient ways? Because it has been “captured” by plutocrats who use economic resources to influence government policy in ways that rig the game even further... Polakow-Suransky argues that liberals’ “failure to confront the real tensions and failures of integration, by pretending violent extremism and attacks on free speech were not problems, infuriated many voters and left them feeling abandoned by mainstream parties.” He is also particularly critical of the left for refusing to acknowledge problems within immigrant communities such as crime, unemployment, and radicalization and for believing that national sentiment should be “purged” and replaced by cosmopolitanism. These missteps helped create a political opening for the populist right, which took over, albeit in warped ways, positions that used to be the provenance of the left, including a defense of the welfare state, activist government, and secular values, while also reaching out to workers and other alienated voters who in a previous era would have voted for social democratic or communist parties... “[L]iberals,” he states, “proved better at finger-pointing than at self-reflection. They spend more time explaining the rise of populism than the fall of liberalism. They refuse to look in the mirror and recognize their own shortcomings, which led to the populist surge across the continent.” For Zielonka these shortcomings involve facilitating the trends currently menacing liberal democracy including rising inequality, a backlash against globalization, and nativism. Zielonka takes liberals to task for their denigration of communal links and identities. Most people, he notes, “feel ‘at home’ with like-minded and like-looking people, they trust those whom they know.” Wishing these realities away is unhelpful. If liberals want to defend liberal values, particularly pluralism and tolerance, they need to figure out how to “create harmony, solidarity and communal spirit, which are needed for any serious collective endeavors.” These arguments are not, Zielonka insists, populist demagoguery—progressive communitarian critiques of liberal ideas have been made by thinkers like Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel, and Charles Taylor. Liberals ignored the challenges posed by cultural and demographic changes and failed to envision how to make them compatible with social stability. This provided an opening for populists and other anti-liberal and anti-democratic figures to insist that homogeneity was the only way to protect national harmony and traditions. Zielonka is equally scathing about liberal elites’ acceptance of (or at least acquiescence in) unregulated markets, austerity, and the disproportionate accumulation of wealth by the rich... Neoliberal capitalism raises the question of whether democratic elites are able to control markets and protect societies. If they are not, is it any surprise voters have grown dissatisfied and disillusioned with them? This brings Zielonka to the European Union, which was supposed to be the “transnational public authority capable of regulating transnational markets.” But, like national governments, the EU turned out to be unable or unwilling to play this role. Zielonka argues that the EU’s support for economic liberalization and austerity and its inability to mitigate their painful effects or provide mechanisms for Europeans to voice their opposition to them has eroded its legitimacy. The undermining of national power by the EU insulated democratic politicians and institutions from the “voice of the people” by turning decision-making over to regulatory bodies, central banks, and technocrats. Zielonka again charges liberals with the rise of technocracy: as “public pressure [came to be] considered irresponsible if not dangerous,” “professional politicians . . . bankers and jet-set experts” told “majorities what is best for them,” and the electorate was increasingly “deprived . . . of a say on politics.” If the defenders of liberal democracy can’t convince citizens that their voices count, then they should not be surprised when populism wins."
From 2018
'Monty Python's Life of Brian' Is Actually the Easter Movie We Need - "On the surface, Monty Python's Life of Brian is an irreverent take on the life of Christ, criticized as a comedy rife with blasphemy and sacrilege, resulting in the film being banned in numerous countries (we'll get to that). But as any Monty Python fan knows, there is a far deeper level to the film that purposefully avoids direct correlation with Christ, shines a light on the hypocrisy, in-fighting and absurdity of his followers, and elements that border on the prophetic. Life of Brian speaks volumes about Christianity, including a brilliantly simple summation of what Christ's sacrifice means to the faithful. The Passion of the Christ may be the film that more accurately depicts the events of Easter, but Life of Brian is the Easter film we need... Most amusingly, the film was banned in Norway until 1980 for jokes deemed offensive to religious people. Neighboring Sweden, who did not ban the film, made light of the ban by releasing the film with the tagline "The film so funny that it got banned in Norway"... By carrying out its bans and protests, the outraged faithful only made the point of the film glaringly obvious. The People's Front of Judea's vendetta against the Judean People's Front, and the followers divided between the Holy Gourd and the Holy Sandal (Shoe?) are a scathing mockery of the hypocrisy of denominational superiority, divisions within the church that follow the same God but deride one another for their differences in doing so. Brian's followers growing in number, hanging on his every word as a truth, a jab at the mentality of the horde."
Henry Smith's answer to The late Christopher Lee said 'Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.' What actor or actress has played their part the best in the most terrible movie? - Quora - "There are a lot of actors who shine in otherwise bad or mediocre films. I think one of the canonical examples is Raul Julia as M. Bison in the 90s Street Fighter movie: Now, like pretty much every pre-20s adaptation of a video game, its an absolute dumpster-fire. But Raul Julia is clearly having an absolute blast hamming it up, and is the only reason this movie continues to remain in the popular consciousness."
Ontario driver caught with high-tech device to block licence plate - "A luxury car driver in Ontario was pulled over with a retractable licence plate cover, just the latest case in a growing problem of drivers turning to tech to cheat highway tolls, red light cameras, and reports of speeding. Officers of the Halton Regional Police Service's Milton District Response Unit encountered what was initially believed to be an un-plated vehicle on Sunday evening. However, the driver of this Porsche Panamera 4S was actually just holding a high-tech trick up their sleeve. After pulling the driver over, police located push-button controls from the driver's seat to operate a retractable licence plate cover. The issue of obstructed licence plates is only growing more common. According to a 2015 Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police report, between 2011 and 2014, there were over 92,000 cases of red light cameras capturing plates where their jurisdiction and or alpha-numeric characters were obstructed by licence plate frames and covers. That number is on the rise, according to a Toronto Star report from March, stating that red light cameras in Toronto recorded 82,000 obstructions in just the last three years."
Meme - "You only like me for my breasts *Turkey*"
Canada rules that flipping the middle finger is a 'God-given' right - "A Canadian judge ruled last month that giving someone the finger is protected under the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. "It is not a crime to give someone the finger. Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian," Judge Dennis Galiatsatos wrote in the Feb. 24 ruling."
Intimate relationships between races more common than thought (2000) - "Intimate partnerships between the races—estimated at more than 5 percent of all marriages in the United States—are much more prevalent when cohabitation is also considered, according to a University of Michigan study presented here today (March 23) at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America . While 25 percent of married Asian women have white husbands, for example, nearly 45 percent of cohabiting Asian women have white partners. And while 17 percent of married Latino women have white husbands, about 22 percent of cohabiting Latino women live with white men... For the study, Harris and Ono analyzed 1990 U.S. census data for Black, white, Asian and Latino couples between the ages of 18 and 30, who were either married or living together... In general, whites and Blacks were much more likely than Asians and Hispanics both to marry and to cohabit with their own racial group, the researchers found. But within each racial group, there were slightly different patterns, depending on gender as well as type of union. While almost 96 percent of married white women have white husbands, the researchers found, fewer than 93 percent of cohabiting white women live with white men. White women are 3.5 times as likely to live with Black men as to be married to them, and they’re also more likely to live with than marry Asians and Hispanics. About 96 percent of married Black women are married to Black men, compared with about 94 percent of cohabiting Black women who live with Black men. But while Black women are more likely to live with than marry white and Hispanic men, they are no more likely to marry Asian men than to live with them. About 69 percent of married Asian women are married to Asian men, while 25 percent of married Asian women have white husbands. “But as common as marriages are between Asian women and white men, cohabitations are even more prevalent,” says Ono. “In fact, Asian women are more likely to be living with white men than with Asian men. Nearly 45 percent of cohabiting Asian women have white partners, while less than 43 percent have Asian partners.”... In general, the researchers found that Black, white, Asian, and Latino men and women consistently choose to cohabit with people who are different from the people they marry. For all of these groups, cohabiting unions are more likely to be interracial than are marriages"
Jodie Foster: Superhero Movies Are Phase That’s Lasted Too Long - "“It’s a phase. It’s a phase that’s lasted a little too long for me, but it’s a phase, and I’ve seen so many different phases,” Foster said of her half-century-spanning career. “Hopefully people will be sick of it soon.” She added, “The good ones — like ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Black Panther,’ ‘The Matrix’ — I marvel at those movies, and I’m swept up in the entertainment of it, but that’s not why I became an actor. And those movies don’t change my life. Hopefully there’ll be room for everything else.”... Foster added that she is “OK with sacrificing a certain amount of success or access in order for me to have the life that I want,” and advised rising actors to look outside of franchise work as a whole."
Meme - Peta: "Looks weird right? It's what you're doing if you drink cow's milk *Sexy cow girl breastfeeding adult man*"
This is an edited version of the original
Meme - *Spider-man takes off his mask and opens the fridge, and as a black-clad hand is about to touch his shoulder, his spider sense tingles*
*Busty Felicia Hardy/Black Cat and other busty black-clad woman*
Meme - "This drunk girl using a slice of pizza as pillow is still one of the greatest drunk photos of all time"
Meme - "Climate crisis could kill off great tits, scientists warn"
"Busty anime girls: *sad big tiddy noises*"
Steaks cooked in the microwave are better, says scientist: 'The ideal way' - "“It’s always a good idea to heat the meat first in a microwave,” explained physicist George Vekinis on BBC podcast “Instant Genius.” “When you cook it directly from the fridge, essentially what you’re doing is not heating up the meat from the inside,” said the researcher, who authored October 2023 tome “Physics in the Kitchen” as a wowing window into the world the food sciences. Vekinis, too, discouraged gourmands from salting the cut prior to frying it, telling podcast listeners: “Salt has this osmotic ability to drag out as much water as possible from the meat and you’re going to get tough and inedible … salt must never be put on a steak before frying.”... “Put it in the microwave for one or two minutes — depends on the thickness of the meat,” the grub guru advised. “Then you fry it quickly, a very short time, as short time as possible, just to give it that little bit of reaction on the surface,” he said, adding that the searing process shouldn’t exceed 60 seconds, “just fry it on both sides as little as possible.” “The temperature inside the meat should reach at least [131 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit] and that’s absolutely minimum,” said Vekinis, “so, you get this slight aroma and pleasure of the taste.”"
Meme - "Imagine if you were the one being stuffed for Thanksgiving dinner. - PETA
My husband, Barry, stuffs me after dinner. Gobble Gobble. God bless..."
Jonathan Haidt on X - "New study shows that TikTok and Insta trap young people, who feel they MUST use the platforms because… everyone else does. But if offered the chance to PAY to have everyone in their college delete the apps, most on TikTok, and half on Insta, would pay. Also: most students say they’d PREFER to live in a world with no TikTok or Insta. Even most active users of Insta say that. Social media is not a normal consumer product. The negative spillover effects are enormous, not just on non-users, but on active users as well, the authors conclude. The business models of Meta and TikTok require trapping young users in this way. The presence of major external costs imposed on others--especially children--is the textbook example of why societies impose regulations, and why class action lawsuits exist."
When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media - "Users would need to be paid $59 to deactivate TikTok and $47 to deactivate Instagram if others in their network were to continue using their accounts.
Users would be willing to pay $28 and $10 to have others, including themselves, deactivate TikTok and Instagram, respectively. Accounting for consumption spillovers to non-users reveals that 64% of active TikTok users and 48% of active Instagram users experience negative welfare from the products’ existence. Participants who do not have accounts would be willing to pay $67 and $39 to have others deactivate their TikTok and Instagram accounts, respectively.
Taken together, these results imply the existence of a “social media trap” for a large share of consumers, whose utility from the platforms is negative but would have been even more negative if they didn’t use social media.
The authors use these results to quantify the role of network effects on social media, or the extent to which users value social media platforms more when their peers use them. They find positive and quantitatively significant network effects: users value TikTok and Instagram 33% and 24% more, respectively, when their peers are on the sites compared to when they are not.
Building on these results, the authors explore whether product market traps exist in other domains as well. They field online surveys with consumers concerning their opinions on luxury goods and technology, where similar spillover effects are a plausible driver of consumption. They find the following:
Among respondents who own luxury brands that they themselves bought (e.g., Gucci, Versace, Rolex), 44% prefer to live in a world without any of those brands altogether. Among respondents not owning such brands, the fraction preferring to live in a world without them is 69%.
Among iPhone owners, a striking 91% of respondents indicate that they would prefer Apple to release the iPhone every other year rather than every year. Among respondents not owning the iPhone, this fraction is even larger, at 94%.
This research challenges the standard argument that the mere existence of a product implies positive welfare for its users. This could help reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings in the social media literature of a large consumer surplus coexisting with negative effects on wellbeing. It also suggests a heightened need for regulators to assess whether different products create traps for consumers and whether they generate positive welfare. For instance, large tech companies commonly use tools that might decrease non-consumer surplus, such as increasing the salience of being a non-consumer or tying together messaging apps and social media platforms and thus increasing the cost of not being a user."
Meme - "WARNING. These Brownies are for Shits and Giggles. Some have Laxative. Some have Pot. Eat one. Give it 30 minutes. You'll know which is which"
Meme - invisible turkey wraps @Erick_Akins: "Just found out Grindr isn't an app for upcoming hustlas
also just realized in my bio I put "I'm young, hungry and tired of being at the bottom.""
Meme - "Forced to do treadmill cardio, cus the cardio I want leaves me on delivered..."
Meme - *Pork belly with nipple*
Meme - Medusa: "Hey, buddy. Eyes up here"
Greek Hoplite: "No"
Japanese Tinder In Real Life: Aisekiya - "Aisekiya (相席屋) is a combination of the words, 相席 (aiseki, sharing tables) and 屋 (ya, shop). Take Tinder and speed-dating, mix them together, and throw it into a Japanese 居酒屋 (izakaya) and you’ve got yourself one Aisekiya. Walk inside and you’ll see a dimly-lit restaurant filled with table booths, except the main purpose for these booths isn’t for ordering a meal. It’s so you can chat it up with your assigned pair (although a buffet and drinks are available as well #score). If you’ve ever heard of 合コン (gokon, joint dating party), this is very similar to that group dating concept, but Aisekiya is different in that the pairs meeting each other are totally random and have no connections whatsoever. You sit down at the booth, you’re paired with a couple of guys, raise your glasses and cheers to a (hopefully) enjoyable night... While it’s understandable why a girl would want to go (I mean, everything is free), why would a guy choose to spend money to go? My Japanese roommate gave me this insight: “Aisekiya puts people in a situation where they get ‘assigned’ to each other. For a lot of shy Japanese men, this makes it worth spending the money because they can’t muster the courage to speak to women on their own. This kind of set-up is very Japanese.”"
Meme - *Cake of sins*
Muslims: *cut cake and remove the whole cake except for a small slice: "eating pork"*
Shawn Micallef: ‘Luxury condo’ is a slur the left wing needs to drop if it wants to help the housing crisis : toronto - "IKEA is so cheap it's actually impressive. They cut corners off with every iteration of product. The cabinets are made from corrugated cardboard now because it's cheaper than particle board. They come with warnings not to step on them while they're laying flat for assembly, and they make a noise like a rain stick when you stand them up as the manufacturing detritus falls down inside the corrugations. The mirrors are made from plastic instead of glass. The last time I assembled a cabinet I thought the instructions were wrong because it told me to put the fasteners showing on the inside, instead of hidden on the outside or back/bottom where they should be. I couldn't figure it out until my GC told me yup, they're showing now. They eliminated the production step where the machine flips the panel over to put fasteners on the back side. Everything is on one side now, to save money."
"So I have a living room side table from ikea I bought in 2010.. It’s round with 4 legs. I went looking for it in 2022. The version I found is triangle shaped with 3 legs. It’s ingenious really serves exactly the same purpose but saves them a leg."
“What In The World?”: This Couple With $1,000,000 In Debt Calls Into A Finance Show, Leaves Everyone Including The Host Speechless - "The video clip taken from Ramsey’s radio program shows a 29-year-old woman calling in to ask for advice for dealing with a spine-chilling debt of $1,000,000...
– Uh, the mortgage is about $210,000.
– So you have $600,000 in what?
– $335,000 is about in student loans. We both have advanced degrees, and then a lot, the rest is really credit cards and personal loans.
– So you have $300,000 of credit cards and personal loans?
– We have about $335,000 in student loans and then about $136,000 in credit cards, $44,000 personal loans, and $35,000 car loans... Both of ours are advanced degrees. No, he has an MBA and I have an advanced degree in Policy. I work in the government. We actually both do now at this point, actually.
– Okay. So your household income is?
– Our household income is about $230,000."
Clearly, the system is broken and capitalism has failed, and they just need to earn more money
Why you do not need to shower each morning, according to a hygiene expert - "She said washing too much could strip the body of its self-regulating microbiome — the microorganisms that live in our body and help control oil levels on skin. In theory, dermatologists say it may leave skin more susceptible to irritants. Despite her claims, Professor Bloomfield admitted that she still showers every day to keep her hair looking 'reasonable'. Professor Bloomfield told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast: 'In my opinion we don't need to bath and shower every day. In fact, we don't need to bath and shower at all. 'There are microbes on our body that produce nasty odours but they're not harmful to us. 'And the reason we bath and shower is that we want to get rid of those odours and we want to feel comfortable. 'That's fine — but as far as preventing disease, it's really not important.' She added: 'We don't need to shower or wash at all. The reason we do it is to be socially acceptable... She said the body has evolved to have a microbiome that is 'nice and stable and looks after it' but can be stripped off by constantly washing with soap... she said people should always wash their whole bodies before going into a swimming pool. She said: 'We can harbour all sorts of microbes on our body that we're perfectly comfortable with but put them into a swimming pool and we can pass them on to other people. 'So I would say that's the only time where we really should have a shower.' She also urged people to wash their hand regularly, even if they do not have to shower. Professor Bloomfield said: 'Hand-washing is still vital to prevent the spread of infections and diseases. 'We're very confused about the difference between cleanliness and hygiene. 'Cleanliness is what we do to look and feel clean but hygiene is the cleaning we do in order to prevent the spread of germs."
‘World’s dirtiest man’ dies in Iran at 94 a few months after first wash - "Irna news agency reported that “Amou Haji”, an endearing nickname for an elderly person, died on Sunday in the village of Dejgah in the southern province of Fars. Haji, covered in soot and living in a cinder-block shack, was reported by local media not to have bathed with water or soap in more than 60 years. Villagers said he had experienced “emotional setbacks in his youth” that led him to refuse to wash. In 2014, the Tehran Times reported that Haji would eat roadkill, smoke a pipe filled with animal excrement, and believed that cleanliness would make him ill. Photos showed him smoking multiple cigarettes at once. But a few months ago, villagers had persuaded him to wash for the first time, Irna reported. After Haji’s death, the unofficial record could go to an Indian man who also had not bathed for much of his life. In 2009 the Hindustan Times reported that Kailash “Kalau” Singh, from a village outside the holy city of Varanasi, had not washed for more than 30 years in an attempt to help end “all the problems confronting the nation”. He would reject water in favour of what he called a “fire bath”. “Every evening as villagers gather, Kalau … lights a bonfire, smokes marijuana and stands on a leg praying to Lord Shiva,” the paper said. Singh was reported to have said: “It’s just like using water to take a bath. Fire bath helps kill all the germs and infections in the body.”"
