The 'Sahm rule' is officially triggered - "The Sahm rule that is designed to signal the start of a recession has officially been triggered. It reached 0.5%, as in, the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate is now 0.5% above the low in the last 12 months. Bank of America provided historical context on the previous times it's been triggered... Claudia Sahm herself, who designed the rule, had said the Fed should've cut rates on Wednesday. Sahm herself told the Wall Street Journal that she doesn’t think the economy is on the immediate cusp of a recession, but that the situation is getting worse."
UK retains metric system for selling after overwhelming support - "The UK government said on Wednesday it had dropped its plan to start selling in imperial measures after a consultation revealed 99 percent support for keeping the metric system... 98.7 percent of the 100,938 respondents to an official consultation said they were happy using metric units when buying or selling a product... Distances in Britain are still measured in miles, while beers and milk are also sold in pints. The department also announced that rules would be altered to allow a 568 ml "pint" size of wine to be stocked on Britain's supermarkets, pubs, clubs and restaurant for the first time. The move, it said, that was "ever thanks to new freedoms from leaving the European Union"... During the UK's 2019 general election campaign, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson pledged that he would bring back imperial units in shops. The former UK leader claimed that measuring in pounds and ounces was an "ancient liberty" and promised a "new era of generosity and tolerance" towards traditional measurements. The United States, Myanmar and Liberia are the only other countries that use the imperial system on a daily basis."
Why The Difference Between Imperial And Metric Systems Matters - "If the UK were to switch to using imperial units throughout its retail sector, that still would not necessarily make it more closely aligned with the States. The US measures pints and gallons, tons, fluid and dry ounces differently to the UK."
Canadian man makes history after receiving zero election votes: ‘I am the true unity candidate’ - "A Canadian man has made history by receiving zero votes in a contested federal election, after running as part of a protest over the lack of electoral reforms in the country. “When I saw the result, I was like: ‘Well, I am the true unity candidate. Everyone agrees not to vote for me,’” Félix-Antoine Hamel told CBC News. Hamel was among 84 people who listed as a candidate in a recent by-election held in Toronto. He put his name forward as a candidate after he was approached by the Longest Ballot Committee, which works on electoral reform advocacy. As a key campaign promise, Justin Trudeau promised that if his party won power, the 2015 federal election would be the last under the first-past-the-post system. After his government won a landslide majority, however, he abandoned the promise. The Longest Ballot Committee says the current system skews power into the hands of parties winning a minority of the vote. In protest, the group successfully put 77 names on the Toronto ballot, bringing the total to 84 and slowing efforts to count votes in Monday’s closely-watched election. Election workers were forced to sift through paper ballots measuring a meter in length: the longest ever in Canadian history... Hamel lives hundreds of miles away from the electoral district, in Montreal, and because he lives outside Toronto, he couldn’t vote for himself. Previous federal elections have seen zero-vote results, but in those cases, the candidates were running unopposed and were thus acclaimed as winners. Hamel’s feat marks the first time someone has won zero votes – and lost. “I’m one of the last people that would be expected to make Canadian history in any way,” he said."
This is not our traditional dress.. THIS IS. - YouTube
Islamophobia!
Meme - *Kamala Harris* "She will be an inspiration to young girls by showing that if you sleep with the right powerfully connected men then you too can play second fiddle to a man with dementia. It's basically a Cinderella story."
Meme - "Free ROASTED HONEY BBQ PORK
Just follow the steps below to enjoy the free dish on us!
Follow us on any of our social media platforms AND like the Char Siew Content post on 29 April! @crystaljadesg
Mum or Dad to recite the following phrase to your child in front of our service staff."
Crystal Jade Asks Diners To Say “Better To Give Birth To Char Siew Than Give Birth To You” For Free Char Siew - "Want a free plate of char siew next? Simply get your parents to scold you at a Crystal Jade restaurant. And not just any phrase but the infamous Cantonese phrase “It’s better to give birth to char siew than give birth to you”. Trust us, it sounds better in the dialect. Though we applaud Crystal Jade’s creativity, it seems the promo isn’t flying so well with many who have taken to social media to roast the restaurant chain... A quick check on Crystal Jade’s Facebook showed the post which says, “Think having a char siu is better than having a kid?” There is even a video where a mum is seen scolding her with the Cantonese insult after complaining about her daughter’s bad habits. “At least char siew is nice to eat!” said the mum. The clip ends with the phrase: Be better than a char siew."
Comment: "good canto humour. all the non-cantos getting triggered is even funnier than the saying!"
S'porean man mistaken as kidnapper after giving sweets to child in Batam, gets mobbed by locals - "The community most likely grew suspicious as the gestures by the Singaporean were not common in the area, said an officer. The officer also said the Singaporean was deported to remove him from the hostile situation."
Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians? - Freakonomics - "RALPH: “Look, you’re using language that is victim-blaming. You’re using complete lack of agency. ‘A pedestrian was hit’ — by what? By whom? It’s unclear from your analysis.” And so we actually gave them a template of, here is sort of a well-written press release, and you can fill in the blanks with your crash’s details. Traditionally the coverage would say something like, “A pedestrian was hit on First Avenue at 10 p.m.” Instead we’d suggest that, “A driver hit a pedestrian on First Avenue, which is a two-lane road with a 45-mile an hour speed limit,” adding this contextual detail and subtly shifting responsibility to the driver of the vehicle. Now, of course, the caveat is that if they found out that this was a drunken pedestrian who had ran out into the street, like, we should be responsive to what’s happening. But the default up until then has always been to blame the pedestrian with no information whatsoever. And now we’re saying, “Let’s shift the default so that we’re blaming the driver. And that might be wrong sometimes, but the current default is even more wrong.”"
It's interesting what counts as "victim blaming" nowadays. So if your house is burgled and you don't know who did it, talking about that is also "victim blaming"
Are Private Equity Firms Plundering the U.S. Economy? - Freakonomics - "KHAJURIA: If you look on Bloomberg, if you look on the business press, you’ll find lots of articles about large public companies doing things in a way that they shouldn’t — whether it’s Amazon with wages or it’s this hospital with this, that, the other — you see lots. I think it’s very important not to confuse the style of investing with corporate behavior. Is there something intrinsic about private-markets investing that does all these bad things? No. Is there something intrinsic about private investing that is vastly superior in all circumstances to public investing? No, of course not."
Are You Caught in a Social Media Trap? - Freakonomics - "DUBNER: In other words, if I were a research subject here, I might have said, “You need to pay me $50 to not use TikTok for a month. But if I know that a certain amount of my network, friends, whatever, are also not using it for a month, then you only need to pay me, like, whatever, 33 bucks.”...
HANDEL: Exactly. But the most exciting part of the results is the next step. The next step says — we’ve elicited from your network how much they are willing to accept to deactivate their account. Now imagine you’re in control. You’re the boss. And we’re going to ask you, how much are you willing to pay to be social media god and deactivate everybody’s account?... now what we found is that people are actually willing to pay to deactivate everybody’s account, including their own. And on average for TikTok, for example, they’re willing to pay $30 to deactivate everybody’s account, including their own, for four weeks... we ask people, do you consume luxury products — and I think the examples we give are Gucci, Versace, Rolex, etcetera. And then, “Do you wish these products didn’t exist?” And what we find there is that 44 percent of buyers of those products say they wish they didn’t exist."
Clearly, the free market always leads to outcomes that make everyone better off
Jail for man who forced male victim to strip naked and exercise over unpaid loan to friend - "To humiliate a man who owed money to his friend, 47-year-old Nadeson Pillai Sockalingam Pillai forced the man to strip naked and perform several exercises. Nadeson and his two friends then made the man dress up, head to a barber and shave his beard and head. Both acts were recorded by one of Nadeson's friends. For criminal intimidation with common intention with his two friends, Nadeson was sentenced on Friday (Feb 9) to five months' jail. A similar charge and a charge of voluntarily causing hurt were also taken into consideration for sentencing. The friends, Jay Shawn Fernandez and Jude Prabu Davias Pathy, have also been charged with criminal intimidation... At the bar, the trio took turns to physically assault the victim, with Nadeson hitting the victim's cheek with a bangle... The victim was then forced to perform sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks and sprints while naked for three to five minutes, which Jay recorded on his phone. He then warned the victim that he would publish the video online if the victim filed a police report... In his mitigation plea, Nadeson said that he had been drunk then. He also questioned the extent of the victim's injuries from the physical assault and asked if the victim had visited a hospital. "(The victim) was holding my friend's money and never paid back, but took it to another bar and spent it on the women in the bar," Nadeson claimed in court, adding that he felt it was "unfair" he was being held in jail while the victim was free."
Jail for man who claimed 'digital hoarding' disorder led him to take intimate photos of 2 women sleeping in his home - "Mr Peter Keith Fernando of law firm Leo Fernando LLC, who represented the man, said that Soh had been an “avid photographer” since secondary school and that taking photographs was an “integral part of his identity”. The lawyer argued that this desire to document significant memories in his life later grew into a compulsion, which caused him to “(blur) the boundaries between what is legitimate and what constitutes a crime”... District Judge Lim Tse Haw said that it would need a “quantum leap” to conclude that the purported diagnosis of hoarding had any “contributory link” to Soh's offences. “I can hoard images of sceneries, of objects, I can hoard that all in my hard disk, but that’s quite separate from taking pictures of victims without their consent,” the judge said. In sentencing, the judge said he was not satisfied that the psychiatric report provided was “reliable” and “fit for court use” and noted that it did not provide an explanation for how Soh’s diagnosis was related to or caused his criminal conduct."
Hired Killer: Murder of Mary Ann Green 1987 - Iowa Unsolved Murders: Historic Cases - "On September 27, 1987, Mary Ann Green was found in her home stabbed to death in what looked like a personal and up-close attack. When she tried to defend herself against the knife blows, several of her fingers were slashed nearly off. And in her last moments of life, Mary Ann managed to get to a closet door mirror. With her own blood she wrote the letter “N.”... Friends and members of Mary Ann’s large, extended family were baffled by the horrible crime. Neither they nor investigators could give any meaning to the letter “N” that Mary Ann wrote with her own blood as a clue about her killer."
GRACE and GRACE-FO - Wikipedia - "The two satellites (nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry") constantly maintain a two-way, K-band microwave-ranging link between them. Fine distance measurements are made by comparing frequency shifts of the link"
The day the Atlanta Braves signed Satchel Paige so he could get his MLB pension - "Satchel Paige reached out to the 20 Major League Baseball teams about the prospect of joining them in 1968. The 62-year-old pitcher needed only 158 days on an active roster to reach the five-year minimum required to receive his pension. Nineteen teams turned him down, but on Aug. 12, 1968, Atlanta Braves president William C. Bartholomay signed the star player as a part-time pitcher and an adviser. The New York Times noted that Paige, a 17-year Negro Leagues veteran and the oldest rookie (42) to play in the majors, was “still without any trace of gray in his hair” at the news conference announcing the signing. “Satchel Paige is one of the greatest pitchers of all time,” Bartholomay told United Press International. “Baseball would be guilty of negligence should it not assure this legendary figure a place in the pension plan.” Said Bartholomay to The Washington Post: “We hope we can use him as a pitcher, but very frankly, we want to make him eligible for a place in baseball’s pension.” Paige was added to the active roster and would also help instruct the Braves’ pitchers on technique and conditioning... Asked about his age, Paige was rather aloof. The right-hander was notorious for not revealing his age, blaming it on a mule for eating the documents or the nurse dying and then a fire wiping out his birth certificate, and so on. All of this added to his mystique and legend... Paige was the first inductee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. He died on June 8, 1982."
. on X - "I was reading something about how autistic folks often cheat in relationships but its due to not catching the non-verbal cues that signify the beginning of a relationship or the boundaries in romantic relationships. im like fuckkkkkkkk"
Stan's Account on X - "really sad news: unfortunately, i have been diagnosed with a condition which means i get to do whatever i want all of the time and nobody can ever be mad at me about it"
komal 🤸🏽♀️ on X - "U notice how in most of these tweets they never share where exactly they’ve read this “fact”"
Fascinating on X - "The Jim twins were separated at birth and reunited at 39. They quickly found that they had lived oddly similar lives. Both had married and divorced someone named Linda, were currently married to a Betty, had sons named James Allan, had dogs named Toy, drove the same car, had jobs in security, and regularly vacationed at the same beach in Florida"
i/o on X - "Twin studies are the cornerstone of research into the heritability of psychological/behavioral traits. Because of these studies, we know that all such traits are heritable, and none more than intelligence. Our genes determine much of what we become. We are not born blank slates."
Spike Cohen on X - "For those who don't understand what Chevron Deference is, and why SCOTUS ended it, here's the long and short of it:
A family fishing company, Loper Bright Enterprises, was being driven out of business, because they couldn't afford the $700 per day they were being charged by the National Marine Fisheries Service to monitor their company. The thing is, federal law doesn't authorize NMFS to charge businesses for this. They just decided to start doing it in 2013. Why did they think they could away with just charging people without any legal authorization? Because in 1984, in the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court decided that regulatory agencies were the "experts" in their field, and the courts should just defer to their "interpretation" of the law. So for the past 40 years, federal agencies have been able to "interpret" laws to mean whatever they want, and the courts had to just go with it. It was called Chevron Deference, and it put bureaucrats in charge of the country. It's how the OHSA was able to decide that everyone who worked for a large company had to get the jab, or be fired. No law gave them that authority, they just made it up. It's how the ATF was able to decide a piece of plastic was a "machine gun". It's how the NCRS was able to decide that a small puddle was a "protected wetlands". It's how out-of-control agencies have been able to create rules out of thin air, and force you to comply, and the courts had to simply defer to them, because they were the "experts". Imagine if your local police could just arrest you, for any reason, and no judge or jury was allowed to determine if you'd actually committed a crime or not. Just off to jail you go. That's what Chevron Deference was. It was not only blatantly unconstitutional, it caused immeasurable harm to everyone. Thankfully, it's now gone. We haven't even begun to feel the effects of this decision in the courts. It will be used, for years to come, to roll back federal agencies, and we'll all be better of for it. And that's why politicians and corporate media are freaking out about it."
Mark Hemingway on X - "Does anyone at all understand the case that overturned Chevron? Because the facts there are pretty damning and show why federal bureaucrats can't be trusted to interpret and enforce their own rules. Basically, the really short version of what happened was this -- a family fishing business sued because they were paying $700 a day to have federal regulators oversee their business. The statute governing the National Marine Fisheries Service says nothing about making their business pay for the cost of their own regulation, and it was just decided along the way that businesses would have to foot the bill for the NMFS' own enforcement. Because of Chevron, which grants overly broad powers to bureaucrats to interpret the law, the idea that federal agencies could essentially make their own regs and make people pay if they didn't have the budget to enforce them was tolerated. That's insane. Imagine if your local cops decided they needed a bigger budget -- gotta keep the town safe! -- and started stopping your car at checkpoints all over town to make you pay up. And the mayor and no one else in town could stop them from doing this because only the cops were allowed to determine what was legal. That's essentially what the feds were doing here under Chevron. It was outrageous, and the fisheries service's abuse of power was hardly an isolated instance of federal overreach defended by Chevron. It was corrupt and needed to end."
sonch on X - "Huh. I guess the Scientific Need to place a monitor on a fishing boat *specifically on the fisherman’s dime* is just the sort of Technical Scientific Detail that I’ve been told require such deference to Actual Scientific Experts to determine"
Journey Into The Whirlwind on X - "A bit like when the Soviets made you pay for the bullet used for your execution. 😁"
Small Government on X - "Judges are in the Constitution. Bureaucrats are not in the Constitution. The Judges and Congress can’t simply abdicate their responsibilities."
RedInDC 💐 on X - ""But...but...the experts!! Won't somebody think of the experts?! And Project 2025! Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" That's the short version of the left's argument."
Janine Curran on X - "What is truly concerning is that 3 justices heard all the details of this case and STILL went “yeah, seems legit”."
The left love government and want it to have more and more power, so
Gary on X - "I asked my son what he wants to be when he grows up, and he said a Department of Energy executive in charge of niche policy decisions that can impact millions of people with no accountability. When I told him about the Chevron decision he was gutted, like his dreams were killed."
like the park on X - "FEDERAL AGENCIES CAN NO LONGER CREATE STANDARDS IN THE INTEREST OF PUBLIC SAFETY BY WHICH PRIVATE COMPANIES MUST OPERATE. IF A COMPANY SAVES MONEY BY PUTTING SHRAPNEL IN YOUR DAIRY PRODUCTS NOBODY CAN STOP THEM."
i/o on X - "Secret to getting 134,000 likes:
(1) Make a statement that is wildly untrue.
(2) Embellish this statement with an implausible example.
(3) Use all-caps.
(4) Get retweeted by red-meat partisan and low-IQ conspiracy accounts."
Meme - Chad Greene Felix @chadfelixg: "The left has no idea how our system works."
Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiff: "This partisan Supreme Court just shredded another precedent, overturning the Chevron decision and weakening our ability to combat the climate crisis, hold corporations accountable, and much more. Our people and our planet will feel the consequences."
Bri4dChange2024 (f... @Bri4Change2024: "Chevron Decision explained in plain English:
Government agencies: we literally wrote the laws. If you have any questions about what we meant, just ask us
SCOTUS. Nope. From now on we're the experts. We get to determine what we think you should've meant. For every law. No matter what the area of expertise. No matter which agency used to have regulatory power. Now we have that power. Consumer protections? EPA? Financial Services? You name it. Now we on the Supreme Court have the ultimate power to regulate (or de-regulate). No more "checks and balances". We reign supreme- it's right in our name so it must be true."
Kal @kalironside: "Government agencies "we wrote laws"
SCOTUS "only Congress can write laws, you agencies aren't allowed to"
There, fixed it."
Tyler Turner on X - "A sitting US legislator is shaming a decision that brought the power back to…..the LEGISLATURE! Meaning no more abdicating their responsibility off to unelected bureaucrats."
Meme - xiomatic Enemy of the State @DeTocqueville14: "It's crazy to me that there are actually people out there who want unelected bureaucrats to control every aspect of their lives."
*I Got You, Brother*
"Chevron Deference"
"Unelected Bureaucrats Trying To Write Laws"
"I got you, brother!"
SCOTUS: "Oh, no, you don't!"
Richard Hanania on X - "People might not understand the implications of the Supreme Court getting rid of Chevron deference. Here's one example. The NYT reports on Elon Musk hoping to colonize Mars within twenty years. Meanwhile the National Labor Relations Board is going after him for making women uncomfortable. Eliminating Chevron deference tilts the law more to the "colonize Mars" side and less towards the "feelings of neurotic women stop progress" side."
hand basket on X - "What it really does is put the "due process" of such things back to an environment of checks and balances. No longer is one agency under the executive branch the lawmaker, judge, jury, and executioner."
How Elon Musk and SpaceX Plan to Colonize Mars - The New York Times
Richard Hanania on X - "NYT reports on Elon Musk's plan to colonize Mars. He hopes to have one million people living there within twenty years and has volunteered his sperm. Practically every company Musk has founded is to help with this mission, which involves bioengineering humans better capable of living on Mars. In a time of cynicism, there just aren't many men who dream like this. Probably rare in any era. We should all be in awe."
Meme - BowTiedRanger @BowTiedRanger: "Incredible Trump ad"
Bryan H., Esq. @X_BryanH: "The Supreme Court has:
-Overturned Roe v. Wade (50+ years of precedent)
-Overturned Chevron (40 years of precedent)
-Overturned affirmative action (60+ years of precedent)
-Allowed cities to criminalize homelessness
And this is all because 1 man became president in 2016."
Meme - Domino's Pizza Ethiopia: "Due to the increased attacks from Somali Pirates we are being forced to separate our working staff in half so that one-half can fight the pirates and the other half can cook. We are sorry for any inconveniences that this may cause. (Our Head Cook, Bogwandi, returning fire on the pirates, proud of you Bogwandi!)"
Oilfield Rando on X - "Mark Cuban is one of the most inspiring people in American history. You look at that guy’s success, and you listen to his thoughts on things. And you realize that even a total f**king retard can become a billionaire."
Bryan Caplan on X - "When I was in high school, I dreamed of a world where people wanted to spend all day arguing about philosophy, politics, and economics. Now we're here, and I was wrong. Wrong!"