Never Gamble With Strangers

[ed. Will be in LV later this month (but definitely not playing cards). Who can afford the buy-in limits these days anyway?

Carly Simon

[ed. She reportedly suffered from near debilitating stage fright, which makes this performance all the more impressive.]

National Nature Assessment Goes On

After President Donald Trump canceled a report on the state of nature in the United States, the scientists working on it — many from the Seattle area — say they’ll continue their work and build on it.

The report, announced by President Joe Biden during a visit to Seattle’s Seward Park on Earth Day in 2022, was intended to be the country’s first nationwide assessment of the state of nature.

In all, more than 150 scientists were at work on the assessment across the country — and they had nearly completed the first draft of their work. Then Phil Levin, professor of practice in the University of Washington College of the Environment, and the national director for the report, was informed shortly after Trump took office that the assessment was being terminated.

He said he got the news indirectly, and without explanation other than the one he was required to send to project participants: “ … as called for in the Executive Order Unleashing American Energy, released on January 20, 2025, we are discontinuing the work on the National Nature Assessment.”

Trump’s order was a broadside against a wide range of green energy and environmental initiatives under the Biden Administration and a sweeping directive to achieve American dominance in mining, energy extraction and facilities such as pipelines.

Levin sent that email as directed. Then sent another — this time from his personal account:

” … Yes, this is disappointing. Yes, this is frustrating. However, it is not unexpected. Therefore, I am moving on from those emotions to see opportunity in this challenge. This work is too important to die … And so, inspired by Lenny Kravitz (1991): I say, “It ain’t over ’til [we say] it’s over.”

In the works now is completion of a new report. It will still be comprehensive, peer-reviewed, and the first report of its kind. Originally scheduled to be released in 2026, the report will still make that deadline, Levin said, or maybe even beat it, now that every chapter doesn’t have to be cleared by a government agency. (...)

The report is not just a species count; it takes stock of biodiversity and species, but there also are chapters on nature and the economy, bright spots in conservation and restoration, environmental justice and equity, nature and climate change, and even nature and cultural heritage, delving into people’s perception and understanding and value for the natural world.

Levin said he has been amazed at the outpouring of support to continue the work. After a story on the ordered cancellation ran in The New York Times, his University of Washington inbox was stuffed with hundreds of emails, Levin said. Many publishers have since stepped forward, interested to bring out the report, as have academic journals, wanting to publish portions of the report within their discipline. Copy editors, artists and others have volunteered to help.

The assessment was authorized as part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, created by Congress in 1990 to assist the nation and world in understanding, assessing, predicting and responding to human-induced and natural processes of global change. The first National Nature Assessment was intended to examine the status, observed trends and future projections of America’s lands, waters, wildlife, biodiversity and ecosystems and the benefits they provide, including connections to the economy, public health, equity, climate mitigation and adaptation, and national security.

An outline of the report has already been published in the Federal Register.

“It’s a different game, but the overall project remains the same,” Levin said, “to really think about the status and trends and what the future looks like for American nature and why it matters in people’s lives today.” (...)

Josh Lawler, a professor of environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington, is an author on the chapter about frameworks and approaches. It’s crucial the assessment still be published, he said, because it will help people understand what we get from the natural world, how we depend on it, and what state it is in. “It’s like going to the doctor,” he said of the assessment. After all, “We do depend on these natural systems for our survival.”

by Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Ivy Ceballo
[ed. Heros of the day.]

Deconstructed Wonton Soup

I’ve never met a wonton soup I didn’t love. A bowl (or plastic takeout container, more often than not) of succulent dumplings suspended in a savory, salty broth is reliable comfort. My friend Abbe described the dish as “a dumpling giving you a warm hug,” which is why it’s one of my go-tos when I’m under the weather. But it’s much more than just something I crave when I’m sick — wonton soup is delicious any time.

Any food that involves a flavorful filling wrapped in some sort of dough — gyoza, pierogi, samosas, mandu, empanadas, ravioli, etc. — immediately piques my interest. Something about these little parcels really embodies the gifts they resemble. But wrapping each present can take time, typically more than I have to spend on weeknight dinner, and that time increases with a lack of experience. That’s why I was so intrigued when I first saw a video for a deconstructed wonton soup. (...)

“Deconstruction” can mean different things in the world of gastronomy. Seattle Met senior writer Kathryn Robinson defined it as “breaking a classic dish down to its component parts — then reimagining from there. Sometimes it means recombining. Sometimes not combining. Sometimes recasting ingredients in clever ways.”

In fine-dining circles, the adjective can be a synonym for overcomplicated plates or more artistic interpretations. In this instance, fussiness is nowhere to be found. Instead, deconstruction is all about streamlining the dish to make it easier to prepare at home. Store-bought wonton wrappers are cut into strips that end up resembling hand-pulled noodles, and ground pork seasoned with soy sauce, scallions, toasted sesame oil and sugar is shaped into meatballs. (One could argue that “unconstructed” is a better descriptor since you skip the step of folding and sealing the wontons entirely.)

Bowls of juicy meatballs, slippery noodles and baby bok choy (for added nutrition) in a ginger-scented chicken broth or stock that’s ready in about 40 minutes? Sounds like a winning combination to me. Sure, there aren’t any little “pockets of happy,” as my other friend Anne described traditional wonton soup, but all the flavors are there, and the time saved is well worth their absence. Finish each bowl with a spoonful of chili crisp and a drizzle of more toasted sesame oil and you won’t even miss the wontons.

Deconstructed Wonton Soup

Adapted from Cook’s Country
Total time: 40 minutes
Servings: 6 (makes about 10 cups)
This recipe delivers all the flavors of wonton soup without the trouble of making the dumplings. Instead, the filling is formed into meatballs and store-bought wonton wrappers are cut into strips to form noodles. Drizzle each bowl with chili crisp and toasted sesame oil for extra punch and flavor.
Make ahead: The meatballs can be formed, covered and refrigerated up to 24 hours in advance.
Storage: Refrigerate for up to 3 days.
Where to buy: Wonton wrappers can be found at Asian markets and well-stocked supermarkets.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground pork
4 scallions, thinly sliced, divided
1 large egg, lightly beaten
4 teaspoons grated or minced fresh ginger, divided
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari, preferably reduced-sodium, plus more as needed
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil, plus more for serving
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
½ teaspoon fine salt
8 cups no-salt-added or low-sodium chicken stock or broth
6 heads baby bok choy (1½ pounds total), halved or quartered, if large, and cut into 1-inch pieces
8 ounces wonton wrappers, defrosted if frozen, cut into roughly 1-inch-wide strips
Chili crisp, for serving

STEPS

Set a sheet pan or platter as well as a bowl of water near your workspace. In a large bowl, use your hands to gently mix the pork, three-quarters of the scallions, the egg, 2 teaspoons of the ginger, the soy sauce or tamari, sesame oil, sugar and salt until evenly combined. (The mixture will be a little loose.) Use a small cookie scoop or 1-tablespoon measuring spoon to form the mixture into 1½-tablespoon portions about 1 inch in diameter. Use damp hands to gently roll the portions into balls, and arrange on the prepared sheet pan or platter, rewetting your hands as needed. (You should have about 24 meatballs.)

Set a large Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat, add the stock or broth and the remaining 2 teaspoons of ginger, and bring to a boil. Add the bok choy, return the liquid to a boil, then stir in the wonton wrappers, a handful at a time, separating them as you work so they don’t stick together.

Carefully add the meatballs to the pot; cover and cook until the meatballs are cooked through, about 5 minutes. Stir in the remaining scallions. Taste, and season with soy sauce, as desired. Ladle the soup into bowls and serve hot, with a spoonful of chili crisp and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Substitutions: Ground pork: another ground meat or plant-based alternative. Scallions: shallots or yellow onion. Allergic to sesame oil? Omit it. Granulated sugar: other types of sugar. Chicken stock or broth: vegetable stock or broth. Baby bok choy: spinach, chard or cabbage. Chili crisp: sriracha, chili-garlic sauce or other hot sauce.

by Aaron Hutcherson, Washington Post/Seattle Times |  Read more:

Images: Peggy Cormary and Carolyn Robb
[ed. I know this is all about expediency, but wrapping the fillings is not that time consuming after you've made the mix. And worth it, I think (for those little 'pillows of happiness' or whatever). Plus, throw a few in hot oil and you've got crispy wontons.]

Aki Sogabe
via: (and here)

Bo Burnham

Lyrics

The whole world at your fingеrtips, the ocean at your door
The livе-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show
Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go
Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul
A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall...

Tired of Losing

In a sleepy Washington state beach town roughly five miles from the U.S.–Canada border, you’ll find Birch Bay Storage. Last December, my mom, 64, reached out her car window to punch in a code that opened the electric gate. She was reluctant to unlock her unit, sensing that something she cherished was crushed under heavy boxes and Rubbermaid bins. In the dark recesses, I could see items precariously stacked 14 feet high.

Next to a couch tipped on its side, she showed me a landscape painting by my grandmother. She found a broken frame that she planned to fix. She put both items in the back car seat along with a kid-sized plastic Santa. When I asked why she couldn’t use the trunk, she told me it was full. Just like her closets and garage were also full. She pulled out a cracked plastic bin filled with charred pots and pans and a random bag of marshmallows from the early aughts. Another bin contained just tank tops. “Why did I think I needed that many tank tops?” she laughed. (...)

In the U.S., there are an estimated 52,000 self-storage facilities, covering 2.1 billion square feet‍—‍enough for 6 to 7 square feet for every American. The self-storage market is expected to be worth $50 billion by 2029. The industry itself is the perfect union—a service that fulfills a human need and a growth investment that can thrive during historical shifts, such as the dot-com boom and bust, the Great Recession, and COVID-19. One recent survey found that 38 percent of Americans use self-storage, spending an average of between $75 and $185 month, usually due to one of the four Ds: death, divorce, dislocation, and a disputed fourth D, which toggles between disaster and downsizing, depending on the source. (...)

In 1994, my mom signed the paperwork for her first unit with Birch Bay Storage. She had lost my father to brain cancer in 1991. A 31-year-old widow with three girls under age 11, my mom moved from Seattle to Birch Bay, where she met my stepfather. In 1992, she got a divorce when it was clear he was dependent on drugs and alcohol. “I had to be very sneaky,” she told me, in order to maintain full custody of my newborn sister. The need for a second storage unit arose when we moved and continued moving for six years.

Over the phone, my mom explained that the early ’90s were like a “dark alley” she didn’t want to wander down. Together, we tried assembling a timeline of the places we’d lived: a tent, a hotel room, with family members, and in rentals in several cities in Washington state. Those years were about survival—an effort to escape another D that could be added to the reasons people rent storage units: domestic abuse. (Women are more likely to have units than men.) Despite a restraining order, my stepdad always found out where we were staying and maintained an unyielding presence in our lives until he died in 1997. By that point, we’d returned to Birch Bay, attempting to regain stability after moving seven times.

The Great Recession was really the inflection point that proved the storage industry could thrive amid an economic tailspin. In late 2009, more than 15 million people were unemployed. That same year, foreclosure filings hit a record high of nearly 4 million homes lost. Between 2007 and 2009, family homelessness rose by 30 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Americans didn’t simply have too much stuff and nowhere to put it: People had lived through the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, and many had nowhere to go.

Where the housing market was in sharp decline, the self-storage industry was the one area of Real Estate Investment Trusts—investments sold on the stock exchange—that were delivering growth, with 5 percent return during an economic nosedive for housing values. While people may have been forced to rent, move into smaller places, or live with family, they didn’t want to give up all they owned.

And if people could no longer afford to pay the cost of storage, the facilities could always hold an auction. Shows like Auction Hunters, Storage Hunters, and Storage Wars began to personify the old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”—except with objects of value, monetary or sentimental, on the line.

I assumed that because my family was already low-income, we’d somehow weather the storm, just as we always had. I was wrong. In 2009, my mom filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

In 2012, after missing three mortgage payments, she was encouraged to do a short sale by her bank, Washington Mutual, a subprime-mortgage pusher and the largest bank to fail in U.S. history. She was offered roughly $4,000 to walk away from a property—worth $350,000 today—to avoid foreclosure. She owed over $5,000 in missed payments, and without the ability to make the full payment, she didn’t feel she had a choice. That year, she rented two more storage units for a total of four.

Two impulses pushed my mom’s habit beyond clutter: ordering things online and saving everything because each item held a memory, a meaning, a story. Two lamps weren’t just two lamps, but the best outing she spent antiquing with my grandmother before she passed away from Alzheimer’s disease. Two oak chairs weren’t just two oak chairs, but beautiful 100-year-old antiques my dad carefully refurbished and nicknamed “Grandma” and “Grandpa.” When one of the chairs was damaged in storage, she was deeply hurt. Already knowing the answer, I asked her if she threw it out. She replied knowingly: “Me, throw anything out?”

Storage provided a place to keep things at a safe distance from familial judgment. After six years of renting four storage units, my mom finally narrowed it down to one. Or at least that’s what I thought. When I visited that storage unit in Birch Bay last year, I learned that there was a second. “Don’t be mad,” she said. “I have a big one and a little one.” By that point, I’d learned to have more compassion—storage wasn’t just a space the size of a room, it was a fixture “always there … it’s always on my mind,” she said. (...)

As of 2024, the monthly storage facility occupancy rate remains high at around 84 percent. For the many individual business owners who operate more than half of the country’s facilities, new technology has allowed for fewer employees, and self-storage is easy money thanks to the most basic truth: After people move stuff into storage, it’s a pain to move out.

Between 2020 and 2021, it became clear that the self-storage industry was not only “recession-proof.” Extra Space Storage Inc. and Public Storage were 97 percent full during the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal. The same four Ds applied: death, divorce, dislocation, and disaster/downsizing.

But there are other reasons people need storage. Many homeowners association rules forbid boats and RVs in driveways and side yards. As summer approaches, I’m bombarded with emails about student storage discounts (despite no longer being a student). Year-round housing isn’t standard practice, which leaves students facing housing insecurity with nowhere to go. (...)

The cost of dislocation is very real. Unless people start making the connection between a lack of affordable housing and storage use, it’s not likely the narrative will shift from an overconsumption issue to an inequity issue.

When I visited Birch Bay again in July, my mom and I sat down at the kitchen island and calculated how much she’d spent on storage fees since 1994. When I finally did the math, I reminded her that I was in nearly six figures of student debt and was in no position to judge. Self-storage had cost her approximately $106,000, a staggering amount considering that since 1991, my mom has mostly relied on an annuity from my dad’s death that brought in roughly $12,000 annually.

I struggled to reconcile that the money my mom put toward storage fees could have been enough for another down payment on a house. But I was missing the point. She was trying to maintain a grip on normalcy—waiting for a time when she could set up her antique farm table and favorite dish set and gather her kids and grandkids for a home-cooked meal.

A couple of years ago she told me, “I think I know why people hoard. They’re tired of losing.” I sat down on a bench when she told me this because I finally understood. Loss was at the root of it. When you’re tired of losing, you hold on to whatever you can.

by Julie Poole, EHRP/Slate |  Read more:

Image: yalcinsonat1 via Getty Images

[ed. I've always thought driving ranges and storage units would be great businesses to own if you've got the upfront capital. Low operational and maintenence costs forever after they're installed.]

Pierre Piscitelli/Lyle Mays

[ed. Pierre Piscitelli has a YouTube channel for piano instruction (a very good one) and seems like a nice guy. A week ago he posted a video about his friend Lyle Mays on the fifth anniversary of Lyle's death: Remembering Lyle Mays, My Biggest Musical Hero. As most probably know, Lyle was the principle keyboardist and co-composer with the Pat Metheny Group, a successful solo artist in his own right, and an extraordinary musician. Pierre talks about how they met, quickly became friends, and how he eventually ended up collaborating with Lyle to transcribe all his music into a songbook before he died. The video above - Slink - started it all. Apparently someone who knew Lyle had found it and forwarded it to him. He was so impressed he contacted Pierre out of the blue, they started exchanging emails and that's how it all got started (as well as Pierre's eventual path to his own YouTube channel). So anyway, that's the story. Enjoy.]

Stephanie Kelton on the Disastrous Republican Economic Agenda

"We don't have two years. You won't be able to pick up the pieces."

Right this minute, Elon Musk and the Trump administration are trying to subject America to a rapid program of destructive austerity. There is no one better to discuss the economic implications of this than the economist and professor Stephanie Kelton. A former chief economist to the Senate Budget Committee and economic advisor to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, Kelton is the author of “The Deficit Myth,” the book that catapulted the ideas of Modern Monetary Theory into the mainstream.

Much of Kelton’s career has been spent on dismantling the intellectual underpinnings of the idea that the government cannot afford to help us all. I spoke to her about the Republican economic agenda, inflation, crypto, Donald Trump’s inexplicable beliefs, and what the feckless Democrats should be doing now. Our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, is below.

Hamilton Nolan: What’s your basic assessment of the austerity argument being put forth by Elon Musk right now—that cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget is a necessary or desirable thing to do?

Stephanie Kelton: He amplifies all the time that the country is going broke. He’s constantly tweeting that we’re bankrupting the nation. There could well be a self-serving motive. I don’t know to what extent he actually believes what he’s saying, or if he just sees it as a convenient narrative that most people are already primed to accept. Logically, intuitively, people think, “If you put more money out there, money will be worth less.” Sounds right. Therefore part of the reason that we experienced the high inflation, and part of the reason that even very high profile economists, former Treasury Secretaries, politicians, they’re all saying there’s a problem with budget deficits and the debt, and something has to be done. You’ve heard these warnings for decades. So, along comes a guy who says, “I’ve identified the source of the problem. The federal government’s too big, and it spends too much money. And my DOGE crew and I are going to go in and right size the federal budget.”

What’s your explanation for what caused the pandemic-era inflation? Is there an alternate narrative you think people should hear?

Kelton: There is no simple story when it comes to inflation. In the case of the pandemic and post-pandemic inflation, there were a whole lot of things that happened. A series of mostly supply shocks, the pandemic itself being the first major shock. When you shut down large parts of the economy, and you mostly aren’t producing on the service side of the economy—and 80% of spending is on services.You tell people, you can’t go to the gym, you can’t go to a coffee shop, you can’t go to a restaurant, you can’t go to a theater, and so forth and so on. People were still spending, but they couldn’t spend in the ways they otherwise would have spent.

So they tried to cram a lot of spending into the goods pipeline, because you couldn’t buy services, but you could still buy goods. People turned their spare bedrooms into home offices. They ordered furniture and computer equipment and all that stuff that has to be manufactured and shipped. A lot of that stuff is made abroad. And we all remember what happened with the ports, and ships that were backed up. So the first thing we did is clog that pipeline, and then encounter bottlenecks in the supply chain, and disruptions. And that led to some price increases. Shifts in the composition of demand. Alongside that, you had the start of the Ukraine war, with Russia invading Ukraine. Then you had energy price increases, and that led to additional supply side shocks. Food and energy prices increased.

And against this backdrop of high and rising prices, you had companies who said, “I’m raising prices in part because I’m paying higher prices—you had pressure on wages—but also because the cost of my inputs was going up. So I’m raising prices to protect my profit margins—but you know, I think I can get away with even more. I can raise prices above and beyond what’s necessary to protect my profit margins. I can actually fatten them.” So you had economists who were pointing this out, most visibly Isabella Weber, who said, “this is a form of seller’s inflation.” It got described as everything from price gouging to greedflation. But it was real. I’m not saying it explains all of it, but it certainly was a contributing factor. If you look at some of the studies that have tried to do kind of an autopsy—Where did all of this inflation come from?—they assign a non-trivial part of the story to corporations taking advantage of the inflationary environment and pushing prices even higher. (...)

Speaking of the element of inflation that was greedflation, or increasing corporate prices—isn’t it possible that the set of political policies now being enacted, including gutting the CFPB and other forms of government oversight of corporations, could make that element even worse?

Kelton: Oh, sure. You’re removing some guardrails that were in place to provide checks on the extent to which—whether it’s financial institutions or non-financial firms—could charge higher prices and gouge consumers. Everything from the FTC to the FCC to the CFPB. But also the tariffs and other policies. When people start hearing the world “inflation” creeping back into the national conversation, you’re priming the consumer to expect to see higher prices. In total, whether it’s the stuff they’re doing on the regulatory side, or the stuff they’re doing with respect to tariffs, I think you’re very right to say, “Could this be another opportunity for companies to raise prices?” Yeah.

What do you make of the tariffs? What will the economic impact be, and also, why the hell do you think Trump is doing this?

Kelton: I think he got this in his head, maybe decades ago. When I was growing up, it was Japan. I remember being in high school and hearing people say, “The Japanese are killing us. We’re all going to be speaking Japanese.” Because they were a manufacturing powerhouse. They were running these large trade surpluses. The US had gone from a trade surplus position in the 50s and 60s and early 70s, to running persistent trade deficits. And this was just seen as part of the demise of the United States of America. This other big country was beating up on us. Trump has talked like that for many, many decades when it comes to trade. Only now it’s China. Only the names have changed. He even looks at Canada, $200 billion in trade deficits, and says, “They’re killing us. We can’t subsidize them this way.”

It’s like…what are you talking about? Somehow he thinks that if you import from another country then they’re taking advantage of you. All he looks at are the dollars. He sees a trade deficit, and he sees that another country ends up with our money. What he doesn’t see, apparently, is that we end up with their stuff.

I remember watching the 2016 Republican primary debates with my son. There’s Donald Trump on stage, and he’s talking about “Mexico’s killing us, China’s killing us, Japan is killing us. We don’t win any more. All killing us on trade.” He said, “look at Japan, they send us millions of cars. We send them wheat. This is not a good trade.” My son looks at me and says, “Wait a minute, what?” They manufacture cars, we get the cars, and we export wheat, and somehow he thinks we’re being ripped off in this deal. It’s just a very strange oversight.

But there was also something [legitimate] in 2016 when he talked about trade. He would go into hollowed-out Rust Belt communities in Ohio, in Michigan, in Pennsylvania and the like. And he’d say, “Your communities are a shadow of their former selves. The good jobs are gone, aren’t they? They’ve gone to China, they’ve gone to Mexico. We had bad trade deals that have hurt American workers, and we’re going to fix that.” And that spoke to real pain in these communities, where they had suffered a loss of good-paying union jobs with security. And you had another candidate on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, who was talking very much along those lines when it came to trade and the impacts on working class Americans. So I don’t want to say Trump completely misses it when it comes to trade, because some of that narrative was recognizing a real byproduct of some of what’s happened.

Ironically, the top Republican priority is the tax cut bill, which will primarily benefit the rich. What do you think the economic results of that tax cut bill would be, if they pass it?

Kelton: First, let’s remember that the last time Donald Trump was president, the signature piece of legislation, the one really big accomplishment, was tax cuts. In December of 2017, Trump signs the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% down to 21%, made that permanent, doubled the standard deduction—which actually is a good thing for mostly lower income folks who don’t itemize and have complicated tax returns. That was actually good. And then huge tax cuts that were concentrated at the very top of the income distribution. There are estimates that some 83% of the benefits went to folks in the top 1% of the income distribution. Everybody got a little something all the way down the chain, but the people at the very top did extremely well. A huge windfall. That’s what they accomplish: They exacerbate income inequality, wealth inequality. They don’t do much to stimulate the economy. This is why people say trickle down economics doesn’t work. Because it just doesn’t trickle down. Those [rich] folks tend not to spend that money, disproportionately, back into the economy. They mostly save.

So what are they trying to do now? Extend the tax cuts, because they’re set to expire at the end of this year. But they want to go beyond, so they’re talking about reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%. More tax cuts for people at the very top. Make no mistake, the overarching goal is to enact tax cuts that once again disproportionately benefit people who are already doing extremely well.

People on the left often say that the government should tax the rich and use the money to pay for social programs. Can you explain the flaw in that thinking, which was a key theme of your book?

Kelton: The flaw is thinking that the federal government’s budget works like a household budget—that if you want to spend more, you’ve got to find the money somewhere. And, that the federal government has two options when it comes to financing its spending. This goes back to Margaret Thatcher, who would say, “The government has no money of its own. There’s only taxpayer money.” She’d say that if people want more from their government, then the government is either going to have to tax them more, or borrow their savings. And that borrowing means the government going into debt, which has its own assumed limitations and risks. So this idea that if government is going to do more, it’s going to have to come up with more money, and that relies on us, the taxpayer, to finance spending, is actually getting things quite wrong. And in fact, backwards.

Think about what happened when Covid hit. The first big piece of legislation passed in March of 2020, and it was a $2.2 trillion fiscal package called the CARES Act. Everyone knows, or should know, that Congress has the power of the purse. If you think about what happened with that piece of legislation, there was no tax increase to “pay for it.” We didn’t go to China and ask if we could borrow $2.2 trillion. They were spending more to deal with the pandemic themselves. Congress writes a piece of legislation. The piece of legislation is a set of instructions that essentially tell the government’s bank, the Federal Reserve, “we are ordering $2.2 trillion to be created and spent into existence.” That’s how all government spending works. There’s no menu of options when it comes to paying for things, where you can say “Well, we could use tax revenue to cover some of the government’s budget, we could borrow to cover the rest of it, or we could print money in the extreme and finance spending that way.”

There’s only one way to pay. The reality is that every single dollar the federal government spends is a newly created dollar. Taxes don’t pay for government spending.

by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: What the data says about federal workers (Pew Research):]
"In November 2024, the federal government employed just over 3 million people, or 1.87% of the entire civilian workforce, according to BLS data."

They Are a Minority

For many politically minded people who are not fascists, the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration have felt like an unstoppable whirlwind of doom. By plowing ahead with plans to shutter entire federal agencies, cut tens of thousands of federal workers, and generally govern by decree in bold defiance of written laws, Trump and his allies are inculcating in their opposition the feeling of being overwhelmed. I have already heard entirely too much despair creeping into the tone of those who should form the backbone of the political opposition to what is happening right now.

Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Trump-Musk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future.

When you brush away the chaotic bombardment of daily outrages and look at the actual base of support for these policies, you will see that that base is a significant minority of the public, and that it is going to shrink as the impact of the policies begins to be felt in the real world. (...)

Rather than allowing yourself to be drowned in frantic headlines, consider what Donald Trump’s base actually looks like. He got about half of the 150 million votes cast in 2024. (Close to 90 million eligible people did not vote.) Out of the half of the population willing to vote for him, a significant portion are more or less traditional Republicans, who view the party’s MAGA turn with some level of distaste, who would be happier with Mitt Romney or George Bush or Ronald Reagan, but who prefer Trump to a Democrat. Of the portion of Trump’s base that are MAGA faithful—the red hat variety of Republicans—a majority or close to a majority are going to bear significant negative material impacts from the actions that Trump is allowing Elon Musk to take. Every Republican voter who receives any form of Medicaid is now at risk, and Social Security and Medicare cuts may well come as well. Everyone who has relied on the federal government for consumer protections or environmental protections is going to be disappointed. Everyone who likes to take their family to national parks is going to find that they are understaffed. People will find that their health care system does not work as well. Multiply this by everyone who is touched by the myriad functions of the federal government which are now being dismantled. The farmers going on Tik Tok to complain about how they voted for Trump and are now being screwed over by USDA budget cuts have become a source of schadenfreude, but they represent one small part of a much bigger constituency: Trump voters who are finding out in very tangible ways that Trump’s presidency is going to be materially bad for them.

This constituency is only going to grow as more and more functions of the federal government are destroyed. There is no way for it not to. And every new person that falls into this category represents a shrinkage of the enthusiastic base of support for Trump’s presidency. This trend will happen not for any ideological reason, but because Trump’s best buddy is systematically breaking things that performed key functions in millions of Americans’ lives, up until now. That will not go unnoticed. [ed. As I've said before, I don't know any engine or piece of machinery that works better once you've removed a good portion of its parts.] 

Now think about Trump’s institutional base. He has the billionaires, and I will give him the business community for now as well—both of these groups are fundamentally agnostic and/ or cowards when it comes to things like “right and wrong,” and they lend their political support to whoever they think has the power to help them, and that will be Trump for the foreseeable future. Money is behind him. (They may regret this support if he, you know, destroys the economy by undermining the dollar and launching idiotic trade wars and smashing the stability of the financial system, but that is a separate matter.) Notably, though, Trump has, in less than a month, pissed off some significant sources of institutional support—groups that may in fact have preferred him in the election, but who are now finding that they themselves are targets of his agenda, rather than beneficiaries. These groups include, but are not limited to:

• Millions of government workers and their families, who may have voted Republican but now find their own livelihoods threatened;

• Veterans who will see the VA decimated;

• Members of the military, who will see austerity imposed upon them;

• Clean cut law and order types at the FBI and the Justice Department who are finding that Trump is actually lawless, and is attacking them;

• Law enforcement types disillusioned by Trump’s pardoning of January 6 protesters who attacked cops;

• Parents of schoolchildren who will find their public schools getting worse and worse;

• Latinos who voted for Trump who will find themselves and their families targeted by his anti-immigration agenda;

• Black people who voted for Trump who will be unhappy with the wave of officially condoned racism he has unleashed;

• Women who voted for Trump who will at some point find themselves or their family personally harmed by the restrictions on reproductive rights;

• Sober small business types who will find that they are, to their surprise, on the losing side of the oligarchy;

It is easy to say “these people deserve what they get!” and it is easy to say “nah, these people are blind dead-ender racists who will ride the Trump Train to hell no matter what!” but both of those sentiments miss what is consequential here. Sure, within all of these groups, it may be the case that most of the people who suffer material harm will grit their teeth and ignore it and continue to back Trump because of unshakeable party affiliation or racism or cultural mores or failure to pay attention or whatever. But I guarantee you that some portion of all of those groups is going to be so pissed or disappointed or disillusioned with what Trump and Musk are doing that they will lose their enthusiasm for Trump. They will lose their will to affirmatively support him. And all of these defections, remember, are coming from a base of less than half of the public to begin with. MAGA is a minority, and the more it carries out its political program, the more it will shrink.

The many people who have already become and the many more who will soon become pissed or disappointed or disillusioned with what is happening will not automatically rush off to register as Democrats. Rather, these people compose and substantial and growing pool of support that is up for grabs. They are the persuadables. Many of them will experience the cognitive dissonance of having their own image of what Trump stands for contradicted by things happening to them or their families or friends personally—things that they cannot deny, because they are living them. When this happens, they will search for explanations. Trump, of course, is always ready with lies about why things are bad: it’s immigrants, it’s Biden, blah blah, you know the things he says. When people are confronted with hard realities, though, the power of lies is weakened. The political opposition—already at least half of the country, and likely more, at least on a policy level—will have this expanding pool of people who have been burned to work with, to talk to, to bring in, to ally with.

The opposition is the majority.

by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work |  Read more:

Image: Unpopular people/Getty
[ed. Actually, the majority should be all rational people, Republican or Democrat, who love their country and hate seeing it disassembled before their very eyes. As Ezra Klein notes in his recent podcast Congress has become NPCs (so-called nonplayer characters in video games): "Agreement with Trump’s policy aims need not mean agreement with his power grab. But the most powerful branch of government — the branch with the power to check the others — is supine. It is not that it can’t act to protect its power. It’s that it will not act to protect its power. This is a nonplayer Congress... What a strange life to rise as far as they have in politics and be as afraid as they are to use their power and judgment... This is the NPC problem we actually face: a nonplayer Congress, driven by Republicans who serve Trump’s ambitions first. We are left relying on the courts, and that may work. But this is not the system working. It is the system failing." See also: The Business Community is Extraordinarily Stupid (HTW):]

"If you follow American politics, you may think of a “pro-business” platform as something that consists of the things that business interests often lobby for: lower taxes, less regulation period, less oversight, less protection for labor, less responsibility of all sorts to anyone other than their own shareholders. Yet all these things that they seek (for the purpose of increasing short term profits) are things that they assume will exist within the context of the basic principles outlined above. Businesses want lower taxes, but they still want well-maintained roads. They want weaker labor protections, but they still want a healthy and well educated workforce. They want less regulation, but they still want transparent laws and functional enforcement. Their short term greed, unwise and distasteful as it may be, is only something they fight for because they assume that the big, fundamental pillars of society and government that allow them to operate freely will always be in place. [ed. emphasis added]

Dictatorial strongman governments in which the rule of law is subsumed by the whims of the lone unaccountable leader are not ideal for business. Sure, some businesses can flourish by flattering the leader enough to be granted special privileges. The oligarchs flatter Putin, and in return they are allowed to loot the country. That’s good for the net worth of the oligarchs. But is it good for business? No, because it will always be a minority of businessmen who are blessed by the strongman, and a majority of businesses will remain subject to unpredictable lawless rule. You cannot make long term investments if you can’t trust that contracts will be enforced fairly. You can’t grow your business if you can’t find adequate workers because the public school system has been decimated and too many people have medical issues because the health care system has been privatized for profit. You can’t feel confident reinvesting your profits in research and development if you have little idea which regulatory agencies will exist, or whether the strongman will launch a war in a fit of pique, or whether your own business may become food for one of your more politically favored competitors. A stable, democratic, well-governed society is good for business. An unstable, undemocratic, wildly governed society is bad for business. The business lobby’s many years of ceaselessly trying to nibble away at the foundations of stability and democracy and fairness for their own immediate gains have now brought us to the brink of a strongman government that will, I assure you, be very bad for business.

Unpredictable trade wars are bad for business. Eroding confidence in the US dollar because you want to prop up crypto scams for your donors is bad for business. Letting religious zealots control public education is bad for business. Destroying access to contraception and abortion is bad for business. Constantly toying with provoking wars is bad for business. Allowing the environment to become polluted is bad for business. Even enormous wealth inequality is bad for business, because it means a few people have all the money, instead of all your customers having plenty of money to spend with your business.... The tech oligarchs who sat on stage with Trump at his inauguration were not there because he is good for business—they were there because being there, right there on the inside, is the only way to flourish.

Let me distinguish what I am saying from some common criticisms of the way business interests act in the political realm. People often criticize business as greedy. Yes. It is greedy, as water is wet. Understanding corporations as anything other than soulless robots seeking profit is a mistake. This is why it is wise to tightly regulate them and unwise to allow them to do whatever they want. In a related sense, people often say, “Hey, wouldn’t it be in the self-interest of business to pay more taxes and subject themselves to more regulations and and generally push for more progressive values because it would help to create the stable and happy society outlined above, which is good for business in the long run?” Well, sure, but this question misunderstands the fact that the political actions of the business lobby assume that they will always be pushing against some force that is pushing back, and that the progressive forces they are pushing against will be enough to protect the basic structure of democratic society, even as businesses try to undermine it just enough to put money in their own pockets. Businesses want to pick up pennies in front of the steamroller, but they don’t want the steamroller to run them over.

Well fuckers, you have miscalculated. You rats. (...)

The business lobby’s many years of selfish conduct and support for deleterious public policies have produced so much inequality and undermined our democratic institutions so successfully that we are now watching a strongman seize control of our government... Your efforts have gotten us here. All the Koch Brother/ Federalist Society types who invested so much money in capturing the courts for the right wing have gotten us here. All the nice Chamber of Commerce types who supported the Republican Party even as it radicalized further and further because they wanted those tax cuts have gotten us here. Some of these people still anticipate that the second Trump administration will be a prosperous time for business. They are wrong. Putting zealots and incompetents and outright grifters in positions of great power in the government does not produce the stability and social health inherent to business growth. We, the people, will not like oligarchy, but neither—I assure you—will all the businessmen who are not, themselves, oligarchs. Watch and see."

A New AI In Shorts

YouTube is upgrading the YouTube Shorts experience with more generative AI features — but it looks like they’re already falling behind ByteDance.

YouTube introduced Dream Screen last year, which is a feature that lets people generate unique AI backgrounds for Shorts with just a text prompt. Now, Dream Screen is getting another upgrade with the integration of Google DeepMind’s newest video generation model, Veo 2. The update gives YouTube Shorts creators the ability to generate standalone video clips that can be added to any Shorts.

“Need a specific scene but don’t have the right footage? Want to turn your imagination into reality and tell a unique story?” the YouTube blog announcing the feature asks. “Simply use a text prompt to generate a video clip that fits perfectly into your narrative, or create a whole new world of content. It’s that easy!”

The move closely follows some scarily-realistic videos previewed by ByteDance via its AI unit, OmniHuman. That included a number of Taylor Swift performance videos that looks amazingly realistic despite never occurring. After a brief, pre-launch preview of those Swift ‘shows,’ OmniHuman abruptly removed the videos.

The development is undoubtedly grabbing the attention of YouTube and others. Whether it’s DeepSeek or OmniHuman, the message is clear: China’s AI capabilities are incredibly-competitive, and potentially far ahead of US-based tech giants like Alphabet.

Back to the YouTube release, Veo 2 can generate high-quality videos in a wide range of subjects and styles intended to match creators’ vision. YouTube says it has also made improvements to Dream Screen so that it now generates videos faster than before. Veo 2 also understand real-world physics and human movement better, making its output more detailed and realistic. AI generated videos tend to have a hazy, bokeh effect in the background—while human movement can be uncanny.

YouTube says creators will be able to specify a style, lens, or cinematic effect to generate, making Dream Screen an easy way to express yourself. Here’s a peek at how to utilize this new feature on YouTube Shorts.

by Ashley King, Digital Music News |  Read more:

Image: YouTube

Return To Forever: Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Al Di Meola, Lenny White - 43 Jazzaldia Festival

[ed. Doesn't get any better than this, RTF at their peak. Check out 52: 00 - 1:30 for a master class in bass playing by Stanley Clarke.]

TikTok Returns to US-Based App Stores—Apple and Google Restore App Downloads After Department of Justice Intervenes

Just shy of a month after the US government banned TikTok, the app has unexpectedly returned to the Apple App Store and Google Play.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Apple assuring the company that it will not be fined under the current administration. The Biden administration’s TikTok ban contained a provision that would hold platform owners accountable for providing downloads of the app after January 19. With a hefty $5,000 fine attached for each download, neither Apple nor Google were willing to budge without assurances.

Both tech companies removed the app from their respective storefronts on January 19. Because Android allows sideloading of apps relatively easily, ByteDance made a version of TikTok that was able to be downloaded outside of Google Play. But the return of TikTok to Apple’s App Store means the ban might as well not even exist as iOS is by far the most popular mobile platform in the United States.

According to app data analytics firm Sensor Tower, around 52% of TikTok downloads last year came from the Apple App Store. Google Play was responsible for the other 48%—so the platform is easily split between both iOS and Android users.

Speaking about TikTok, President Trump said his 75-day deadline on TikTok finding a U.S. partner for sale could be extended—but he does not think it is necessary. He has assigned Vice President J.D. Vance and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz to lead a task force overseeing the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations.

by Ashley King, Digital Music News |  Read more:

Image: Ashley King

[ed. Anyone wondering why Trump would be interested in keeping TikTok alive while burning other China industries? Well, maybe this, or this? We'll see how that plays out, probably like everything else, all bluster and impulsiveness before someone reminds him of *consequences* and where his deep support/money is coming from that week. But, you know, beyond that this soverign wealth fund they're suddenly very in love with will likely be the ultimate scam (and I mean ultimate. TikTok would be a sideline benefit). I'm familiar with these types of funds and why they would look like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for this crew. More later.]

How to Draw a Hole

[ed. Pretty cool. Saving this for my grandkids.]

NMIXX

[ed. Don't know much about K-Pop but these are clearly a talented bunch of gals. No auto-tune or other weird special effects, just straight up great singing and harmonies.]

My Girlfriend Proposed to Herself on My Birthday

I (28M) had my birthday dinner last weekend, and my girlfriend, Sarah (27F), offered to plan it. I was excited because I usually keep things low-key, but she said she wanted to “make it special.” She booked a nice restaurant and invited close friends and family.

Everything was going great until it was time for dessert. The waiter brought out a cake, but instead of my name, it said: “Will You Marry Me, Sarah?”

I was completely blindsided. Sarah got all teary-eyed, turned to me, and said, “Well? This is the best surprise ever, right?” Everyone around us started clapping, and her friends were filming.

I just sat there, stunned. She took my silence as hesitation and started going on about how she knew I wasn’t “big on grand gestures,” but she couldn’t wait anymore, so she “took matters into her own hands.”

At that moment, I stood up and said, “This is my birthday. If you wanted a proposal, you should’ve talked to me about it first.” Then I grabbed my stuff and walked out.

Sarah was mortified, and her friends blew up my phone, calling me an asshole for embarrassing her and “ruining the night.” She even said I humiliated her when she was just trying to do something romantic.

Now, my family is split. Some say I should have just gone along with it for the night, while others think she crossed a major boundary.

So… AITA for leaving my own birthday dinner because my girlfriend hijacked it for a proposal?

Reddit (AITA - Am I the Asshole)

[ed. A sometimes fun Reddit forum to scan - cross between Dear Abby and Miss Manners. What I found most interesting here was how some people (a few, not most by any means) figured out that this was AI generated. How did they know that? Because of this, apparently: 

"Now, my family is split."
Why go to the effort of making a fake story while leaving AI fingerprints like this?

Really? Now I'm wondering what other AI phrases/clues one should look out for in random posts?]

Golden Fleece

• More than 813,000 crypto wallets have lost a total of $2 billion after buying President Donald Trump’s memecoin, according to an assessment by Chainalysis commissioned by the New York Times. Meanwhile, the Trump Organization and its partners gained $100 million in trading fees. Since its Jan. 17 launch, $TRUMP has lost most of its value, which is now about $16 per share, down from its $75 peak.

Less than three weeks after its release, President Donald Trump’s memecoin has produced more losers than winners. For every dollar in trading fees the Trump crypto creators raked in, investors lost $20.

A total of 813,294 wallets holding cryptocurrency lost money through ownership of $TRUMP meme token shares in the 19 days since its launch, according to an analysis by cryptocurrency forensics company Chainalysis commissioned by the New York Times. The losses—accumulated as users either held onto shares of the coin as its value plummeted, or because they sold shares at a loss—totaled about $2 billion.

Meanwhile, trading has generated about $100 million in trading fees owed to the entities behind the coin, including the Trump Organization, according to analyses from Merkle Science and Chainalysis. However, the majority of it hasn’t been cashed in. CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and Fight Fight Fight LLC, which is co-owned by CIC, own about 80% of the coin. Though Trump is the owner of the private holding company behind his family’s real estate, entertainment—and now crypto—investments, he handed over the conglomerate’s reins to his children ahead of his second presidential term. Trump previously resisted creating a blind trust or divesting from his businesses.

Launched on Jan. 17, days before Trump’s inauguration, $TRUMP initially skyrocketed in value, peaking on Jan. 19 at nearly $75 per share with a market capitalization of more than $14.75 billion before crashing days later. Today, the memecoin hovers above $16 a share with a market cap of $3.72 billion, about a quarter of its value at its apex. (...)

A perfect ethical storm

The Trump family’s massive stake in a meme token known for its volatile status has raised concerns $TRUMP is both unethical and almost certain to baffle less sophisticated retail investors, according to some finance experts.

“In terms of investors, of course there’s a huge red flag,” Leonard Kostovetsky, associate professor of finance at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business, told Fortune last month. “All of these memecoins don’t really have any value beyond just what other people are willing to pay for them. They’re pure bubbles.”

Should the Trump Organization sell its stake in the coin, it would still stand to make billions from the transaction but douse the value of the token in cold water by extension. Beyond concerns of a rug pull and more losses for investors, the Trump family’s ownership of the token has others sounding alarms about conflicts of interest and how the currency could be manipulated in business and diplomacy.

by Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. Thanks for your support! (and real cash, lol).]

The Empire Self-Destructs

The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants who have seized control of Congress, the White House and the courts, are cannibalizing the machinery of state. (...)  [ed. Yow... that's getting to the point.]

I spent two years researching and writing about the warped ideologues of those who have now seized power in my book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Read it while you still can. Seriously.

These Christian fascists, who define the core ideology of the Trump administration, are unapologetic about their hatred for pluralistic, secular democracies. They seek, as they exhaustively detail in numerous “Christian” books and documents such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to deform the judiciary and legislative branches of government, along with the media and academia, into appendages to a “Christianized” state led by a divinely anointed leader. (...)

Christian Dominion

Christian fascists come out of a theocratic sect called Dominionism. This sect teaches that American Christians have been mandated to make America a Christian state and an agent of God. Political and intellectual opponents of this militant Biblicalism are condemned as agents of Satan.

“Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’ form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all,” I noted in my book.

“Labor unions, civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and ‘homeland’ security.” (...)

The seizure of government personnel records and classified material, the effort to terminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government contracts — mostly those which relate to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the offers of buyouts to “drain the swamp” including a buyout offer to the entire workforce of the Central Intelligence Agency — now temporarily blocked by a judge — the firing of 17 or 18 inspectors general and federal prosecutors, the halting of government funding and grants, sees them cannibalize the leviathan they worship.

They plan to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service, part of the internal machinery of the empire. The more dysfunctional the state becomes, the more it creates a business opportunity for predatory corporations and private equity firms. (...)  

[ed. Don't know any piece of machinery that works better when you remove a good portion of its parts.] 

“The demise of the United States as the preeminent global power could come far more quickly than anyone imagines,” the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power:

When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, “empires become brittle.” He writes:

“So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly wrong, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, eleven years for the Ottomans, seventeen for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, just twenty-seven years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003 [when the U.S. invaded Iraq].”

by Chris Hedges, Consortium News |  Read more:

Image: Mr. Fish

[ed. Pretty sure this isn't going to change anyone's mind either way, but nice to see a good liberal rant once in awhile just for balance. By the way, House Republicans just released a budget plan Wednesday providing for up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit so the U.S. can continue financing its bills (AP). 

The Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles health care spending, is asked to cut $880 billion over the decade, while the Education and Workforce Committee is asked to reduce spending by $330 billion. The Agriculture Committee is asked to save $230 billion, while the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is asked to find at least $10 billion in cuts through 2034.

Even as some programs would be cut, money would be shifted to other Trump priorities, including a $100 billion boost in defense spending over the next decade through the Armed Services Committee and an additional $90 billion for the Homeland Security Department, which is carrying out Trump’s massive immigration deportation.

Of course. See also: Given Christianity’s dominance in US, Trump raises eyebrows with anti-Christian bias initiative (ST):]

***

Christianity is by far the largest faith in America, and Christian conservatives have a strong grip on the levers of government. That dominance is leaving many to question why President Donald Trump’s new task force on eradicating anti-Christian bias is needed.

Critics see the task force initiative as unnecessary and pandering to Trump’s base. But some Christian supporters said it is overdue, claiming the Biden administration had discriminated against them through actions and inactions.

The two-year task force, chaired by Attorney General Pam Bondi and composed of Cabinet and other government representatives, is assigned to review and “identify any unlawful anti-Christian” actions under the Biden administration, change any objectionable policies and recommend steps to rectify any past failures.

Bruce Ledewitz, a law professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, criticized the mindset behind the executive order as that of a powerful group claiming victimhood.

The Christian conservative movement — a core Republican constituency — now has significant sway on the Supreme Court and in numerous states, Congress and the presidency, Ledewitz said. And still, they declare, “We are victims,” he said.

“There’s a struggle for the soul of America,” said Ledewitz, who studies the relationship between constitutional law and religion. “We call this a culture war, but it’s very deep,” animated by the charge “that you people, the Democrats, you are not religious, and we are.”

Trump said exactly that at a National Prayer Breakfast gathering on Feb. 6.

“The opposing side, they oppose religion, they oppose God,” Trump claimed, accusing the previous administration of engaging in “persecution.”

It's Later Than You Think

This fall, prospective students and parents should be looking at university recruitment materials with one question in mind: what exactly is a university education worth in the AGI era?

The AI systems of 2024 were tools, limited to tasks like writing essays or analyzing data. Artificial General Intelligence is different. The AGI systems launching now can reason, learn, and solve problems across all domains, at or above human level. If universities cannot articulate in detail how their faculty exceeds AGI capabilities, what value are they offering to tuition-paying students? Traditional arguments about the value of a college education collapse without faculty expertise.

The usual, comfortable rhetoric about “irreplaceable” human elements of education—mentorship, hands-on learning, community building, and critical thinking—might suffice for a four-year social networking summer camp, and some parents may still value that. But in the AGI era, the only defensible reason for universities to remain in operation is to offer students an opportunity to learn from faculty whose expertise surpasses current AI. Nothing else makes sense.

Marketing that touts traditional benefits of a university education while ignoring AGI actively harms the sector, suggesting that higher education either fails to grasp the AGI revolution or is trying to hide from it. Universities must instead lead with brutal honesty: students should pay precisely for the “last mile” of human knowledge that surpasses AGI’s capabilities. The true value of a university lies in faculty who can offer advanced education, mentorship, and inspiration at the highest level, while every other aspect of college life becomes a secondary consideration that no longer justifies tuition on its own.

Immediate Faculty and Dean Action Required

Every faculty member should begin to write a detailed memo specifying the following: “What specific knowledge do I possess that AGI does not? What unique insights or capabilities can I offer that exceed AGI systems? Which students, and in which topics, would benefit enough to pay to learn from me and why?” Faculty who cannot produce this memo with concrete, defensible answers have no place in the institution. There is no middle ground.

Every dean must immediately audit their course catalog against one criterion: what advanced knowledge or skills does this course offer that AGI cannot replicate? Each course must demonstrate specific knowledge transfer or skill development that exceeds AGI capabilities. It will become obvious that the highest value courses are those aligned with specific faculty expertise. General education courses focused on basic knowledge transfer become indefensible. If the information is general enough to be called “general education,” AGI can deliver it more effectively than any human instructor. This will eliminate most of the current curriculum.

Universities will retain faculty in three categories: those advancing original research beyond AGI capabilities, those who teach the use of advanced equipment and sophisticated physical skills, and those handling previously undiscovered source materials or developing novel interpretations that outstrip AGI’s analysis. In the sciences, this means laboratory-based faculty who validate AGI-generated research proposals and offer advanced hands-on training with advanced equipment. In engineering and the arts, it’s faculty who guide students in high-level physical manipulation, augmented by AI tools. In the humanities, it’s scholars working with newly discovered primary sources, untranslated manuscripts, or archaeological evidence not yet processed by AI, as well as those creating fundamentally new interpretive frameworks that transcend AGI’s pattern-recognition capacities.

The curriculum narrows dramatically. Most lecture courses disappear. What remains are advanced research seminars where faculty share findings from new source materials or original experiments, intensive laboratory and studio sessions for hands-on skills, and research validation practicums where students learn to test AGI hypotheses. This represents a 60-70% reduction in current faculty positions, with remaining roles requiring fundamentally different capabilities than traditional academic work.

by Hollis Robbins, Anecdotal Value |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Sorry... if by chance higher education does eventually trend this way (and we allow it to happen) then humanity will truly be screwed. We could apply this metric to anything not smarter than AI (parenting?). If you want to reduce the value of higher education to simple knowledge transfer then this is your template - for producing student robots. None of the joy (and sharing) of discoveries, growing into intellectual maturity, developing various mentorships, and just learning how to enjoy learning for learning's sake. One thing I can agree with is that it will likely make most administrative jobs irrelevant, which I view as a positive. Bloated, entrenched, obstructive, and soul-killing... Low hanging fruit. We need to not lose sight of what makes learning and humans important, otherwise we're just ceding our humananity (and development) to AI and hastening our irrelevance. See also: AI and the Last Mile; and AI in the Last Mile 2]

"The dominance of STEM-thinking has left so many of us hollow inside. In a world of intense rationality and digitization, people’s inner lives are gradually destroyed. They are hungry for something deeper, holistic, and more vital than data manipulation can deliver. ~ Ted Gioia

Nice Little Country You Have There. Hate to See Anything Bad Happen to It.

Trump demands $500B in rare earths from Ukraine for continued support.

American support for Ukraine has a price tag: $500B worth of mineral riches, said U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the second part of an interview with Fox News that aired late Monday, the Republican said the U.S. should get a slice of Ukraine’s vast natural resources as compensation for the hundreds of billions it has spent on helping Kyiv resist Russia's full-scale invasion.

“I told them [Ukraine] that I want the equivalent like $500B worth of rare earth. And they've essentially agreed to do that so at least we don’t feel stupid,” Trump said.

“Otherwise, we're stupid. I said to them we have to — 'we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money,'” he added.

Ukraine holds huge deposits of critical elements and minerals, from lithium to titanium, which are vital to manufacturing modern technologies. It also has vast coal reserves, as well as oil, gas and uranium, but much of this is in territories under Russian control.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been dangling allowing the U.S. to develop his country's natural resources as a tactic to keep Trump on side. The idea was also part of Ukraine’s “victory plan,” a list of economic and security policies aimed at securing a just peace with Russia, which Zelenskyy presented to the country's allies last year.

“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most,” Zelenskyy said Friday in an interview with Reuters. 

by Seb Starcevic, Politico | Read more:
Image: RFE/RL 
[ed. Brilliant move on Zelenskyy's part. Take a look at the chart below (via RFE/RL and Naked Capitalism). See Ukraine listed there anywhere? It's because they don't have much in the way of rare earth minerals, and what they do have are either hard to mine and process, or currently under Russian control. So sure US, bring in your mining companies and technology and go to town. We'd love the help developing our resources. By the way, do you know what these types of 'negotiations' are called? Pizzo! (protection money paid to the Mafia often in the form of a forced transfer of money resulting from extortion - Wikipedia): ]

It’s amusing to see a US influence operator, RFL/RL, trying to preserve an image of accuracy while carrying official water. Here, the case in point is Trump’s promotion of the idea that the US could continue to arm Ukraine if Ukraine mortgaged its future by paying the US via ownership or other concessions of its rare earths deposits, or as Trump put it, “rare earth” and one presumes other strategic materials.

Here we have Trump again proving himself to be the truest follower of the Kamala Harris exhortation, “What can be, unburdened by what has been.” Here the “what has been” includes what is. In this case, it’s that Ukraine has bupkis in the way of rare earths. Worse, the media has been simply parroting what Trump said as if Ukraine really had these goodies, as opposed to engaging in some throat clearing. So it sure looks like Trump is prepared to send Ukraine more arms in return for an empty bag. (...)

Many commentators have tried to burnish the Trump remarks by saying he likely meant lithium (which is not a rare earth) and other strategic minerals. Wellie, as various commentators have already pointed out, Ukraine has four major lithium deposits, two of which are under Russia’s control. The severity of gnashing of teeth when Russia recently captured the second of these two areas suggests that it represents the largest supply. (...)

And any Ukraine mortgaging of these assets is subject to prior claims, such as nearly 30% of the farmland being owned by oligarchs and/or the likes of BlackRock and Vanguard. (...)

But the fact that Trump floated this idea does not mean he is serious. It may simply be an effort to create another option, that the US still has a way to continue to supply weapons to Ukraine that Trump can make look palatable to the American public.

~ Even US Messaging Outlet RFE/RL Having Trouble Prettying Up Trump Planning to Buy Ukraine Rare Earths Empty Bag (Naked Capitalism).